The Top Decks of Pauper: Mono Blue Control (MUC)

In this series we will walk you through the top decks of Pauper as played on Magic Online. Pauper is the Magic Online format where you are only allowed to play commons.  These are the official rules:http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/pauper

We will be using this tier page as the basis or our walkthrough: http://mtgostrat.com/pauper-tier-listing/

Today we will be discussing Mono Blue Control, hated by many under the name "MUC". MUC has been doing very well lately in the premiers, having a good matchup against many of the top decks.

Earlier installments in the series

Burn: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-burn.html
Affinity: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-affinity.htmlDelver: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-delver.htmlDelverFiend: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/the-top-decks-of-pauper-delverfiend.htmlStompy: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-stompy.htmlUB Trinket Control: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-top-decks-of-pauper-ub-trinket.html

Pauper Mono Blue Control sample deck list

This deck was played by Schmirglie in the premier event of March 22nd. He won the tournament.  Deck list here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/6894798

Main Deck
18 Island

3 Quicksand
4 Delver of Secrets
1 Sea Gate Oracle
4 Spire Golem
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Counterspell
2 Deprive
2 Exclude
4 Miscalculation
1 Oona's Grace
4 Piracy Charm
4 Preordain
2 Repeal
2 Repulse
1 Think Twice

Sideboard
2 Coast Watcher
3 Curse of Chains
2 Curse of the Bloody Tome
1 Dispel
4 Hydroblast
1 Mulldrifter
2 Serrated Arrows

The idea here is to just sit back, counter everything and win by your flyers eventually. Your massive card advantage is supposed to win you the game and it often does. It is draw-go control, a thing that is very rare in today's Magic. If you are a blue control player, you are going to love this deck.

Here is a video of me taking on a White Weenie deck with this list.

One question I often get is what the difference between this and the very popular Delver deck (see above) is. The two decks may look similar, as they are both mono blue and has Delver of Secrets in them, but they play very differently. Delver tries to win like a Fish deck - tempo and aggrocontrol. MUC tries to win by pure attrition. Counter, counter, draw cards, win much later. Playing both lists will teach you a lot about the Pauper format.

Schedule for Flashback drafts

Flashback drafts are back and schedule for upcomming month is below.

Odyssey, Torment, Judgment: April 2-9
Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, Future Sight: April 9-16
Shards of Alara, Conflux, Alara Reborn: April 16-23
Lorwyn, Morningtide: April 23-30
Shadowmoor, Eventide: April 30-May 7

Be careful and adjust your prices in advance.

MTGO Library Bot 6.71

ML Bot 6.71 has just arrived, carrying a number of important improvements and bug fixes.

• first of all, 6.71 loads your PersonalPrices.txt and PersonalPercentages.txt faster. On some computers we observed a loading time of more than 20 minutes for these files.

• the creation of the .csv is now more robust. On March 19th, Wizards of the Coast released a MTGO update that broke the creation of the .csv on some computers. ML Bot 6.71 fixes the problem.

• the selection of the wishlist, in Buying Mode, used to fail if the first "dropdown men" (the one with Net Deck / Local Deck) was not set to Local Deck. The bot is now able to handle the menu correctly and selects by itself the right choice ("Local Deck")

Improved Inventory - Part II

This afternoon we deployed a major update to the Inventory (launched 16th March http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/inventory.html and improved a first time 18th March http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/improved-inventory.html).

Now all the cards are grouped - you can check the details by clicking on the name of a card and a submenu will open. The prices are grouped in brackets like [2.0 - 3.0] 2.7] where the first number is the minimum price among your bots, the second is the max and the third one is the weighted average.
Prices are grayed out if your don't own the card or you don'y buy it.

The story of Ajani Goldmane

Learn more about Ajani, one of the three prime planeswalkers in White:

Ajani is rumoured to be in Journey into Nyx. The reason is this Picture that was released a few months ago (Before Born of the Gods)

The speculation is that this time Ajani is White Green. He has already been multi-colored and there has never been a Selesnya Planeswalkers, so that seems very likely to me.

MTGO Library Bot 6.70

ML Bot 6.70 has been released. It's just a maintenance build fixing some bugs related to the creation of the csv.

Procrastination, part 3

Some other tips:

Rule 30-10. Firstly, you decide on what your reward would be. Let it be a thing that you cannot do without during a day, such as reading your favorite book, surfing on the Internet etc. Now set yourself alarm clock 30 minutes ahead and start to perform a task that originally you wanted to postpone. Promise yourself that you will focus on it by those 30 minutes, after which you will be able to do one of the predefined pleasure. When the alarm rings, give yourself a reward, and set the alarm for 10 minutes. So 30 minutes duties - 10 minutes of pleasure and so on. Until you complete what you had to do. It is a very simple technique and extremely effective.

Stop being a perfectionist. At the time when you want to make sure everything was done perfectly, you'll always be waiting for the moment when you will have the appropriate mood, an appropriate amount of time, the right amount of energy. Having all the resources together and wanting to do the job perfectly, you can wait and put off the job indefinitely ! And, paradoxically, something that had to be done perfectly is not executed at all. Even if you do not usually do something perfectly, so what? What is important is the fact that the task will be actually done. Even if you want to have done this better, you can always improve your work. Remember that an imperfect job is always better than the complete lack of it

A habit "I'll do it NOW". Make a conscious decision to get rid of the habit of procrastination and replace it with the new so that you dealt with all at once. Every time, when you stand in front of some task tell yourself  "I will not put it for later, I'll do it NOW."

Do the most important tasks as first each day. Usually the most important tasks are the most difficult and taking the most of time too. As result, we do not want to do them right away. I observed that, I often put off the most important things for later, firstly doing these small , pleasant task. After some time, it turned out that yes, these little things were done well but I didn't have time for what was really important. Doing the most important task first you are ensured that it will be executed. If you do not have time for less important duties, nothing serious happens - in the end they do not have much significance.

My first two Mirage drafts

It is Mirage Flashback week and I am loving it.

You might remember me writing about how to draft Mirage Block here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/03/mirage-block-flashback-drafts.html

I decided to try out my theories. These are my first two drafts.

In the first one I ended up with a clunky WB deck.

In the second draft I went blue white flyers, which is a very nice archetype for the format.

Future drafts will be added to this playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G55kcrwwriU&list=PL2jQrD9SkZOOR1VRoPoNsl4N8_hzhAfOx

I hope you are having as much fun with the format as I am having.

MTGO Library Bot 6.69

ML Bot 6.69 has just been released, fixing a couple of bugs happening on the creation of the csv and causing the bot to loop and aborting all the trades.

We also implemented slightly slower clicks when picking boosters in Buying mode to avoid MTGO freezes and make it processing all the clicks (sometimes the bot clicked 8 times and mtgo just picked 6 items)

MTGO Library Bot 6.68

ML Bot 6.68 has just been released. This is mainly a maintenance build fixing some bugs. In particular:

• in "Inventory" and "Inventory History" (on the Online Control Panel) Event Tickets were shown twice: as regular and foil/premium. This lead to an inflated evaluation of the value of the collections.
• fixed a bug on restart, causing the bot not to restart correctly. The bot was unable to restart because the "username" and "password" fields in the "General Tab" were not loaded correctly.

Mirage Block Flashback Drafts

Do you recognise this card? You should. It is the #1 expensive card on MTGO, but it will not remain in that position for long. Why? Because it is a promo, a very likely reprint in Vintage Masters and it is getting flashbackdrafted today.

That is right. Mirage Block Drafts! Happening on Magic Online today.

If you get a LED, sell it immediatly IMHO.

So how do you win the MI/VI/WL drafts? Well, I have some experience doing just that when they were drafted last time (October 2012). Here is what I learned:

• Everyone Thinks GR is the best archetype. It isn't. But be aware of this!
• Many games will go to time, so be sure to be quick on Magic Online!
• Blue is overpowered as was often the case with the old sets
• Do not play more than two colors.
• Blue-White flyers is a good deck
• Blue-Black control works wonders.
• Crypt Rats and Kaervek's Torch are really good cards, but you want to be Blue Black and not Blue Red if you can help it.
• Evasion wins games. It is not hard to clog the ground so the RG beasts can't get in.
• Do not draft RG unless it is severely underdrafted. It will most likely be overdrafted as everyone wants to get in on the Torch action.
• You have to know all the tricks you can do with a Quirion Ranger, even if you are not playing a green deck yourself.
• Blue tempo works extremely well thanks to Undo and Man-o-War.
• Breezekeeper, Azimaet Drake and Cloud Elemental win games.

Money cards to look for

Money rares: Lion's Eye Diamond, Cursed Totem, Phyrexian Dreadnaught, Vampiric Tutor, Mox Diamond, Null Rod, Firestorm, Doomsday, Natural Order, Undiscovered Paradise

Money Commons: Crypt Rats, Impulse, Fireblast, Quirion Ranger, Spinning Darkness

Improved Inventory

A couple of days ago we released the Inventory (read more here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/inventory.html), a tool to view your collection from remote. We have now improved  it adding some additional filters and fixing some bugs. We added the "rarity filters" (Mythics, Rares, Uncommons, Commons, Basic Lands) and the sortable columns.

In the next days we'll continue improving Inventory, in particular we'll focus on the speed of the search.

Procrastination, part 2

In one of Kevin Hogan book's author described the study that tells us something very interesting. Basing on this book I will present you in a while very accurate way of dealing with procrastination. The study was carried out by Dr. Sean McCrea at the University of Konstanz in Germany. The experiment was conducted on a group of students. In the first study, half of the group was asked to write why anyone would like to open a bank account or write a diary. The second half had to write a few sentences about what you need to do to open a bank account or write a diary. In the second study, half of the students was asked to name the members of a group, such as specific types of birds. The second half was supposed to name general categories, which include birds. In the third study, all students had some time to look more closely at the picture from the 19th century. Half of the group received detailed information about the method, which has been used to paint this picture. The other half heard a general description of the style of painting, not knowing the method of the painter. Afterwards, both groups evaluated subjectively other pictures in the context of a style that was previously described.

The results of all three studies were very clear. It turned out that almost all students who received the task in explained and accurate form (they knew exactly what to do) have done their job. If the instructions were general and vague, the task done only half of the group.

The presentation of the task determines whether you even start doing it. If something is defined too broadly, there is a small chance that you will take the action. The more detailed the job is, the easier it will be to accomplished it. Let me show you an example. For instance, you would like to sign up for foreign language classes. Thinking about it, you do not see what the task really is and you get a feeling that this is something big and serious. You do not know exactly how to handle with  it, what is the first step? And what the next step is. So you postpone it. What if you know that signing up for classes consists of a greater number of smaller tasks so that you better understand how to do it. You know what course you are looking for. You do know which school to choose. You know your level etc. You are aware that every next step will be a single, small task, and you have the vision in your head. It does not scary you.

Show yourself that your challenge is not a big watermelon, which you must eat at a time. It is rather a dozen of small pieces that you can easily crunch for a dessert, one after the other.

Pauper in Portugese

The Pauper format has a strong following in Portugal and Brazil. They even have paper Pauper tournaments.

As a tribute to all the Pauper players over there I would like to feature JorgeJacoh's excellent portugese Pauper videos on the MagicGatheringStrat channel.

Here is a deck tech of Mono Black Control





And here JorgeJacoh plays the deck against RG Aggro



If you want to discuss the Pauper scene in Brazil with Jorge, comment below or on the videos and I will make sure he reads it.

You can also read Thiago Lanza's article about the paper Pauper scene in Belo Horizonte here: http://mtgostrat.com/2014/02/pauper-real-life/

I sure wish my country had as many Pauper players.

Inventory

Yesterday we released a new feature available on the Online Control Panel, the "Inventory". It is a place where you can browse the inventory of your bots, search for cards and get their price. The idea is to know every item you have and where those items are located.

"Inventory" is still in beta and will be reworked during the coming weeks to offer a faster and a more complete experience, possibly integrated with the Trade Log and the Card Log. If you have any idea about what would you like to see there, please write us at staff@mtgolibrary.com or reach us on LiveChat.

Please note that Inventory works only with ML Bot greater than 6.66

MTGO Library Bot 6.67

ML Bot 6.67 has just been released - it is a build that will unlock a new functionality coming this weekend. 
Botters with version < 6.67 will not get it until they update.

Please visit regularly these pages to stay up to date and get more info.

A new deck for the Modern Noob

Hi! I am Dan! I am the Modern Noob!

This is part of a series about my quest to learn Modern.

RG Tron did poorly in the PT and card prices dropped, so I finally got to realize my dream of playing Tron in Modern. 

I am basing my deck list on two primary sources:

1: Draysor's 4-0 deck from this Daily Event: https://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/6834337

2. The mtgsalvation RG Tron primer here: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/proven-modern/220174-g-r-tron

This is the starting deck list: 

4 Urza's Mine

2 Forest

4 Ancient Stirrings

4 Karn Liberated

1 Ghost Quarter

1 Pyroclasm

4 Urza's Power Plant

1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

3 Oblivion Stone

4 Grove of the Burnwillows

3 Firespout

2 Wurmcoil Engine

1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

1 Wurmcoil Engine

3 Relic of Progenitus

3 Sylvan Scrying

4 Urza's Tower

4 Chromatic Sphere

1 Eye of Ugin

4 Chromatic Star

4 Expedition Map

2 Spellskite

Sideboard

1 Dismember

1 Vandalblast

2 Surgical Extraction

4 Nature's Claim

1 Grafdigger's Cage

1 Sundering Titan

2 Slaughter Games

2 Combust

1 Torpor Orb

See me play this deck and the other decks still in the Modern Noob on my YouTube channel at youtube.com/MagicGatheringStrat

MTGO Library Bot 6.66

ML Bot 6.66 has just been released. It is just a minor release fixing a crash happening with some antivirs. If you are using ML Bot 6.65 and it is working smoothly, you don't need to upgrade.

Procrastination, part 1

According to wiki procrastination is the practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in preference to more urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time, sometimes to the "last minute".

Wouldn't it be lovely if you could take a look at your today's to-do list and without any hesitation, just take the action? Crossing out done things and starting new tasks one after another so that in the afternoon with a sense of pride indulge in relaxation and pleasure. It may seems as impossible. Read on, because there is a way. There are many reasons for not acting, even when so you want to so much. What can block you? Perhaps your lack of motivation, because you plan to do something what you don't want deep inside, perhaps you have a habitual, limiting thought patterns, and perhaps your mental and physical condition you will not allow it.

For several years I was quite effective procratinator. One day, when I started to count the number of wasted hours in a month (what resulted in a mental kick in the ass, the motivation in pure form) I decided to put an end to this irritating habit. I researched the subject of  procrastination. Thanks to this action, I learned alchemy of dealing with procrastination. Well, I uprooted bad habits from my life. It turns out that there are some really good ways to deal with procrastination and in the next part I'm going to tell you more about it. For now, I'm leaving you with a quote "Procrastination is like a credit card: it's a lot of fun until you get the bill" - Christopher Parker

Why Fetchlands are likely to be reprinted, possibly in Magic 2015

Fetchlands are an extremely dangerous investment right now. They are very likely to be reprinted and possibly soon. Ithink they will be reprinted within two years from now and I think the most likely set to reprint them in is Magic 2015.

Here is why:

1. The cost of Fetchlands are a barrier of entry into the Modern format
2. Only enemy color Fetchlands in Modern makes no sense
3. Great replacement for Shocks in Standard for a year
4. A set with Fetchlands (even only five of them) would be a great financial success for WOTC
5. Three months of Modern mana in Standard would make everyone happy
6. It is very likely that we will return to Zendikar soon. Kiora's story is one hint.

See my full line of reasoning in this video:

MTGO Library Bot 6.65

ML Bot 6.65 fixes a problem with wikiprice happening on the "solo buyer" bots. The number of tixs available in collection was always "0", even if the bot had many more tixs. This resulted in less trades because customers are unwilling to sell cards to a bot with zero tixs.

ML Bot 6.65 is also faster in accepting the trades and formatting the trading interface. After the introduction of the Overbuy and Oversell Protections, the bot was slower because it had to communicate with the server and exchange much more data than before. The update fixes the problem and restores the "good old speed" everyone was used to.

Finally, version 6.65 does not withdraw immediately when a customer open trade with no cards tradable. The withdraw happens after 10 seconds so the customer can read the message: "You have no tickets or cards tradeable, please make them tradeable and reopen trade." The problem here was that an immediate withdraw closes also the chat window and thus the customer cannot read the info message.

MTGO Library Bot 6.64

We have just released ML Bot 6.64, a maintenance build fixing a couple of minor issues of 6.63.

• SpecialBuddies and OverBuying protection were not working together. OverBuying protection was overriding totally SpecialBuddies: now the two "corrections" can work together
• Fixed a bot crash happening on XP and Win7 systems at login  

What should you buy at any given moment?

I often receive questions like this: "Dan I have 205 tix on my account currently not playing mtgo can you give me some tips on what to invest and sell? Can log in everyday ect. Thanks"

That question is impossible to answer, because I have not been given enough information.

Look at some of the possible answers:

Invest everything in Pauper staples that are currently low

This is a high-return, high-risk investment. If you manage to buy Pauper cards for 15 cents each that have historically been over 1 ticket, you can get 500-2000% out of this after only 4-6 months, but so much can go wrong. What if the cards you bought are reprinted in Vintage Masters? What if the deck that uses the cards has a new replacement card, which prevents your cards from ever spiking again? What if Pauper never gets as popular as it used to be when Daily Event were around? 

Risk: High. Possible return: Up to 2000% in 6 months.

Invest everything in M14 Mythics and sell after rotiation for redemption

This is the safe alternative and still significantly better than any stock options. Look at the M13 Mythics. Right after rotation, they were all 2+ tickets. Currently you can buy some of the M14 Mythics below 50 cents. In November you should be able to sell them for at least 1 ticket each.

Risk: As low as it gets on Magic Online. Return: Up to 400% in 9 months. 100% looks very easy.

Invest Everything in Modern Staples right after Modern PTQ Season ends

If you go down this route, you will have to wait until August to buy. Then you wil have to wait until Modern PTQ season comes around again. That should happen in June 2015 but you never know with Wizards of the Coast. Looking at the way Modern cards are spiking already, you should be making some very nice profits.

Risk: Low.   Return: 100-600& in 10 months.  Cards will be very easy to move compared to the above alternatives.

Invest Everything in Theros cards when they bottom out. Sell during Standard PTQ Season

In June 2014, Theros cards will be at their lowest Point Before they rotate in October 2015. Why? Well, read this: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/when-to-invest-in-fall-set-theros-for.html

If you buy the Theros cards in June, you should be able to sell them in February (given that Standard PTQ Season do not move in 2015).

Risk: Medium. Return: Up to 100% in 8 months. Cards are super easy to move.

----------------

I could go on and I probably will at a later time. But the Point is that I can not answer your question unless you tell me your goals and answer the following questions:

• Why are you investing in Magic Online?
• When do you need the Money?
• What will you do with you profit?
• What kind of risk are you willing to take? Could you take a loss?

Starting a second business or expand your existing one? Part 1

There are many issues involved in whether to start a second business or not, often they go down to: "would the time, money and energy invested in starting a second business be better spent by focusing on the growth of the first one?"

This is something I am going through at the moment as I am investing most of my (little) free time on my new second business (Photography), sacrificing time to fine tune my pricing, advertising my bots and a good part of my stock (Event Tickets) in order to kick start it.

Many entrepreneurs have become successful by putting all their efforts into growing a single business, while on the other hand, many have found success through diversification. Just like most choices in the business world, both have pros and cons. On the next part I will be going to share some of them with you.

MTGO Library Bot 6.63 - Overbuy protection

Recently we released (6.46) and upgraded (6.62) the Overselling Protection, a set of rules that apply to customers that buy more than "x" copies of a certain card in a 24 hour period.

Today we release ML Bot 6.63, featuring the new Overbuying Protection rules. The rules apply to customers selling to the bots more than "x" cards in 24 hours. The buying rules works exactly as the selling ones, apart from they apply to the "buying" trades and they decrease the price of the cards.

As for the overselling protection, feel free to use these rules but don't abuse because they can reduce the number of trades. If you are in doubt, please write us an email (staff@mtgolibrary.com) and we'll happy to help you.

The Top 17 Investing Quotes of All Time

Investopedia had an article about the Top 17 Investing Quotes of All Time here: http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0511/the-top-17-investing-quotes-of-all-time.aspx Let us examine them and see how they apply to MTGO Finance!
  1. "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin Knowledge is everything. Check MTGFinance on Reddit, #mtgfinance on Twitter, listen to Brainstorm Brewery, read the finance articles. Keep yourself educated! Actually you will have to read even more as you have to know what is happening in the different Magic formats to know which cards will move.

2. "Bottoms in the investment world don't end with four-year lows; they end with 10- or 15-year lows." - Jim Rogers Magic Online lows last a month at most, because we have no memory. Look at what happened when tournaments went away. Prices were back to normal in a month. This obviously does not apply to Magic Online.
  3. "I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful." - Warren Buffett We already talked about this in the Warren Buffet article here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/01/approach-mtgo-finance-like-warren-buffet.html
  4. "The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing." - Phillip Fisher Research is much more than just listening to popular opinion. Well, this pretty much just iterates what Benjamin Franklin said in #1.
  5. "In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable." - Robert Arnott I could not rephrase this better than investopedia said it: "At times, you will have to step out of your comfort zone to realize significant gains. Know the boundaries of your comfort zone and practice stepping out of it in small doses. As much as you need to know the market, you need to know yourself too. Can you handle staying in when everyone else is jumping ship? Or getting out during the biggest rally of the century? There's no room for pride in this kind of self-analysis. The best investment strategy can turn into the worst if you don't have the stomach to see it through."
  6. "How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case." - Robert G. Allen This is a very important point for me personally. I don't speculate in Standard cards that I think will go up 20% because some deck just became popular. I invest in stuff that I think will go up 200% within 12 months, like buying Modern staples during the off-season. I talk more about these principles in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOReVWiQgZo
  7. "Invest in yourself. Your career is the engine of your wealth." - Paul Clitheroe Very few MTGO Speculators do this as a full time career. But if you do, you better invest. How do you invest then? First you have to educate yourself, but we have already talked about this. I would invest in myself by taking care of myself, by acknowledging that I am sitting in front of a computer all day and take appropriate measures to stay healthy. I would go to the gym, eat healthy etc
  8. "Every once in a while, the market does something so stupid it takes your breath away." - Jim Cramer Yes, this happens on Magic Online. All the time! Can you think of an example? Or twenty? :)
  9. "The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator." - Ben Graham To me, this means that we should invest in long-term trends (like buying Theros cards in june and selling them during the height of Standard PTQ Season in February 2015. So less speculation and more long term trading.
  10. "It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for." - Robert Kiyosaki Mr Kiyosaki is certainly right here, but it is hard to apply to MTGO Finance. Even if Magic has been around for 20 years I doubt we will have our grandchildren running our bots in 60 years.
  11. "Know what you own, and know why you own it." - Peter Lynch Do your homework before making a decision. And remember to sell! Its not about who owns the most cards - its about who earns the most money. Selling is as important as buying.
  12. "Financial peace isn't the acquisition of stuff. It's learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can't win until you do this." - Dave Ramsey Every nickle counts. Speculating is a game of small edges and you need to take them all. Keep your playing to a minimum and remember that it is a leak and costs you tickets all the time. Try to avoid playing limited, unless it is the 4-man New Player Tournaments (that are decent EV).
13. "Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas." - Paul Samuelson If you think MTGO Finance is about predicting what will score on the Pro Tour, you will never earn any significant income. Think about the greater trends. Which cards will be in demand during the summer? Get them now!
  14. "I would not pre-pay. I would invest instead and let the investments cover it." - Dave Ramsey This one is simple to interpret. Don't borrow money to spend on MTGO cards. That would be insane. 
 15. "The four most dangerous words in investing are: 'this time it's different.'" - Sir John Templeton It is never different. Unless its about Mutavault that actually broke records that Thragtusk had just set. Having said that, it is very seldom different. How high can a Mythic spike during its Standard life? Another popular Mythic will not probably ever be more expensive than last year's popular Mythic? Look at history of card prices and learn from it.
16. "Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing." - Warren Buffett Investopedia says it well: "In the beginning, diversification is relevant. Once you've gotten your feet wet and have confidence in your investments, you can adjust your portfolio accordingly and make bigger bets." I still diversify. I probably diversify too much.
17. "You get recessions, you have stock market declines. If you don't understand that's going to happen, then you're not ready, you won't do well in the markets." - Peter Lynch Make sure you have the tickets when card prices drop, because that is the time to invest! I find these exercises very useful. Going through a list like this makes me think about what I am actually doing instead of just doing it. MTGO Finance is hard and requires a lot of thought. Be sure to spend some time thinking about it every day. Don't let it become routine. If you do, your edge will be gone.

Duel Deck: Jace vs Vraska

On March 14, 2014,  Duel Decks: Jace vs. Vraska will be released. It is going to cost 19.99 USD. For this price we will get title planswalkers - Jace, Architect of Thought and Vraska the Unseen plus Remand and 117 other not worth mentioning cards. However, full decklists you may find here.