Community

Hmm, perhaps how to goldfish test your deck? Didn't see it in a quick glance over the interface guide, and I know someone asked that in here last week.

One of my main questions you answered in another thread, but it has do with more bot trading. Your bot trading section is good, but some of us noobs need it spelled out for us

I think most new players are going to want to know the easiest way to get free cards, and or cheap cards to start building our collections.

I could probably write up a simple 'bot trading guide' from what I've learned in the past few weeks that might be helpful with the (very) specific details.

In your 'How To Trade' section, I see you added a link to the wishlist post, but that link is currently broken (missing a bracket). Also, unless I missed it, it does not mention the chat window and/or typing 'done'. You might also mention the mistake I made, which was how I managed to completely break trading by ticking the boxes:

'Ignore non-buddy chat requests'

'Ignore non-buddy trade requests'

I did that instinctively to avoid spam and/or pests - just from my experience in other games like WoW, but in MTGO it will disable the ability to trade (AFAIK).

I'll try to add more later. As it is I'm heading into a 10 hour workday on 5 hours sleep

A long time ago I wrote up an explanation as to why it's actually more worth it to buy boosters with one's cash and/or 9.99 coupon instead of straight up tickets. I'm trying to find this explantion, but it was a long time ago and thus very elusive. I remember Algona quoted it for something... I think it was a thread where we stored answered to commonly asked questions at the time? In any case, it might prove useful to add to the new player FAQ, though it might involve moving the question on how to use one's 9.99 coupon until after the "how to trade" question.

EDIT: I found the explanation, updating it to be more new-user friendly.

Ok, heres what I'm thinking in terms of a restructuring:

1. Completely new to Magic: the Gathering? An Introduction, Tutorial & an article series all beginning and returning Magic players should read.
2. MTG:Online Free Trial
3. Is MTGO Free? How much does it cost?
4. How do I buy boosters/product?
7. Should I buy a Theme Deck/Intro Pack? < mention bots in here, but don't elaborate on them.
5. Tickets? What are (Event) Tickets?
6. And what are bots?
7. You mentionned I could build a theme deck for 3-5 tickets. How? (Or: What is the best way to get singles?) < Go into detail about bots trading tickets for cards.
8. How to Trade.
9. How to find people to trade. < Talk about classifieds, especially about how to find people in it, how to tell if they are buying and/or selling, and how to tell what prices they are buying/selling at.
10. How to get some free commons.
11. What should I buy with my $9.99 coupon? < I'll provide something you can use at the end of this post.
12. What are "Formats"? // Illegal card error when starting/joining a game?
13. Building your first deck.
14. An example of a new player starting up MTGO (cheaply, to boot).
15. What are the Vanguard Avatars for?
16. How do I get more basic lands?
17. What is an ORC?
18. MTGO interface guides.

Here's my answer for the "best way to use 9.99 coupon) question:

11. What should I buy with my $9.99 coupon?

(This answer will make alot more sense once you've read questions 5-10)

That depends on how quickly you want to start playing, or how much value you want to get out of your coupon. If you want to begin buying cards right away, buy Event tickets. Your coupon will get you 9 of them with $.99 remaining. You can then use these tickets to buy whatever cards you cannot get at the free card bots.

However, if you have a little bit of time you can spend and want to maximise the number of cards you can buy with your coupon, there is another strategy. Note that the following assumes you only pay base price for product at the Magic Online store. That is to say, this works best if you don't pay any taxes in the store. If you do, you are going to have to figure out if this is profitable for you, and if it isn't, then just buying tickets as described above makes most sense.

Many players and bots want to purchase packs with their tickets, sometimes at "prices" higher then at the store in dollars. You can use this to your favor. For example, suppose someone wants to buy 2 packs of the current core set for 9 tickets*. These packs are only 3.99 in the store, so the 4.5 tickets you get from each is more then the 4 tickets you would get paying for them directly in the store.

The following is the procedure to spend your coupon in the most effective way possible.

1. Go into the Classifieds section and find a player or who is buying packs of a set at more than their current price in tickets (usually around 4.5 or 5 tix per pack).
2. Confirm they are still buying these packs at this price.
3. Use your coupon to purchase as many packs of this set as you can afford, and tickets to "use up" the remaining balance.
4. When the packs arrive in your account, sell them to the player you found.

Again using the example above, you can buy 2 packs of the latest core set* and 2 tickets for 9.98 and sell the two packs for 9 tickets, netting you a total of 11 tickets for 9.98, or about $0.91/ticket.

* Please note that it is not always necessarily true that the core set is being bought at a high enough price. Always check the buy prices in the Classifieds before using your coupon in the store.

LostKarma wrote:

How about adding an explanation of the F keys, like what F6 does, what F7 does etc...i still dont know all the uses for them myself

In the Main FAQ in MTG:O General