Werds kids,

Day 2 of my write everyday and it is 11:54 Pm and i have a lot more to say then 6 mins will allow. But i want to talk about Magic Online aka Modo, it seems to be a hot topic at the moment. Not as hot as say ladies playing Magic which i am pro-more magic players. I don’t care if you have a vagina or not or are in the process of getting one if you dig Magic then play! Tell any haters to go to hell, and that includes me if i say something offensive. Was that more white privilege then i should have let out of the bag at one time? Nah….

No today i wanted to talk about me and Magic Online. Back in the day (Rav Block) i had my Modo account and i was rocking games. I was lucky enough to run into a few writers at the time and got a few brews written up by them and felt like a brew master. It was sweet. I was up all night playing Magic. Drafting/Constructed it didn’t matter i needed the fix. My constructed decks i was into were cheep to build and stole games off people with strange cards that no one else played. And 8 mans filled with ease. Life was good.

Then i got too deep. I was drafting more times a day then i could afford. But i was on the brink of going infinite, or at least i convinced myself that i was. But at the end of the night, selling to the bots, i was always a little short of the next fix. It was an addiction. About that time i decided that i needed to cut back and that is when i took a break. I switched to DDo. Another game i love (anther addiction) but had a fixed cost each month.

I saved money and fell off the planet to my “real life” friends. Now that i am not 100% locked in  DDo i can do things but my “real life” pals have a life and it is hard to break back in.

Now i want to play online again, if i work a draft or two in to the budget each month i could make things happen. But that is not the way to play online if you have the goal of breaking even or better. Now if i had the spare money to invest in both paper and Modo i would do so in an heart beat. And i might do a kickstarter or something i don’t know. If my schedule shifts the way i think it will here real soon i hope to have more time to stream different games and Modo would be a game i would want to stream for sure.

And while Modo, is great and i like it a lot in theory anyway i can’t give up paper Magic. At least not yet. If you listen to my tiny house podcast, i do with Tobril, TalkTiny2Me.com; I have said how my plan to get the tiny house going when the time comes is to cash out my paper collection at least the big dollar items. I can’t cash out my modo account and expect to build a house or even make a real dent in that cost. But my paper collection….. Maybe? The other day Tobril and i were talking about selling off his old games and whatnot and we started to talk about the value of some of his cards. And you know what he has 8 Force of Wills extra AT LEAST! Force is a little over a 100 bill right now. He has at least a thousand dollars in about 8-9 cards. You can’t expect to do that with Modo.

There are numerous good reasons to play Modo. The newest CONSTRUCTED RESOURCES, did a great job of outlining the pros and cons of doing so. But for me it would be a play both with paper and on Modo. I couldn’t just move to Modo 100%, it wouldn’t make sense for me with the way physical cards are being handled in the secondary markets. There is just too much free value in having those actual cards.

Also to their list i want to add a few things:

• You can’t really sit down at the kitchen table with a few friends/family and play Modo over a few drinks and have a party. There will always be a box physical decks at my house that we can whip out at with but a moments notice. In my case i keep all the pre-made theme decks we buy together to battle when people don’t have a deck to play.
• I can play with out power or an internet connection. Laugh but there has been more time in my life with out the internet then with it. And i know how easy it is for power to go down. A winter or two back some members of my family were with out power at their house for 2 weeks do to a bad ice storm. I live in Kansas shit happens here.
• If Modo is so cheep to buy into how can you expect to cash out at a good rate?
• And with physical cards i personally see generous people. A while back a local player won a win a box. And he sat down and opened said box while hanging out at the shop. He gave everyone his his circle at the time a pack to open to celebrate his victory. Then he gave away any of the cards he didn’t need for his collection (any card not just low value cards) to those that did have a use for those cards. That level of generosity is hard to come by in a digital only world. And that is not the only time i have seen one of our local players do something like that.

To any of my local magic players that read this far, i know some of you are thinking about the switch and if you are doing so please do not cash out of the physical cards completely. Keep your playsets or least the land base for any format/s you enjoy. Sure there are online events, but how often do you feel like playing away from the computer? There is a large group of people “fighting” to play Magic and be treated like any other player. See how i rounding back to the ladies playing Magic. Smooth. If you ask anyone that “quits” Magic and cashes out then comes back what their biggest Magic regret is I 100% know they will say is cashing out. Just sit on those cards. Maybe pair down. Sell things like extra copies or things that you feel will have a low rebuy in cost if you decide to return. For a minimum of at least for 2 years. After that if Modo is 100% all you need then God bless.

For me it is paper first.

<3s