Magic on a budget How to get the most from the Magic hobby whilst keeping spending to a minimum An engaging hobby, for less than £100 a year, that’s less than £10 a month for a hell of a lot of fun. Hmmm, sounds good but when you apply that logic to Magic the Gathering it seems an impossible ideal. With boosters now priced at up to £3 and the rarest cards being in fact rarer than ever, it seems that to play Magic you’ve got to spend, spend, spend! In fact, that’s how I came to abandon the Magic Hobby back in 2002, I couldn’t keep it up with all this standard deck stuff and well, people simply spending more on cards and having a better deck. Then with the release of Champion of Kamigawa in 2004, I had an idea, one that would allow me to get involved again in the hobby with the minimum of expensive. In effect the idea is simple, there’s 3 releases for each block so in effect, this is all about building a deck purely focused on a single cycle. And to me this is a good idea, some cards are just getting too powerful to mix and its all fair and equal when you play someone with a mono edition deck. Effectively in the long run this method will give you your conception of the best possible deck from each cycle, which will be an impressive and interesting library of decks. What to buy…three times a year its simple, purchase the Fat Pack. There £20 each so that’s £60 for the entire year. What you’ll get are the complete set of novels, the complete card library, a set of life spinners, and a load of cards. Basically when the first fat pack comes out, read the novel get into the feel of the cycle and then look through the card catalogue, ignore what you actually have for now. Once you’ve decided on a general theme of what you want, look for a theme deck (£7) which has the colours you want, combined with the fat packs tournament pack, you’ll have plenty of lands and the basis of the deck you want to build. With the deck decided upon have a look through the cards you got in the fat pack and see if you have any that fit into the deck, if so great but if not do not worry. The next step is to find people and trade for the cards you want, this should be done primarily with the common and uncommon cards, but a rare for rare swap is always fine. Then it comes onto selling those rares you don’t want; someone somewhere will want it (especially if people are using this method). For each card you sell this way, it should generate enough money to buy another card you want, in effect being a long-winded trade. I use ebay for this method but there are plenty of other auction and sale sites out there Ultimately it’ll probably cost you a little bit more to get the exact cards you want but it should be no more than £10 a set to do this. When the next fat pack comes out simply repeat the process, refining your deck by identifying the cards you want, reading the novel for flavour etc. And again for the third instalment.  In the end you’ll have spent less than a £100, read a cool set of novels, have some nice life spinners, and have a special deck crafted especially for that edition. The only down side is you’ll have a pile of cards you’ll never use but, when does that not happen with magic? This is the way I now play and it enables me to continue an awesome hobby without any stressful expenditure. If you’re new to Magic or are having concerns with its costs, simply try this method out, it’s a lot of fun and keeps you playing! Article by Mike Brandon: February 2005