What is considered to be Budget?

tclaw12 says... #2

I've always felt like $100 is budget, though as a Modern player, I'd probably consider $250 budget.

The average cost of the decks I own is ~$1000, though many of the cards I use in multiple decks.

July 9, 2015 2:03 a.m.

I always considered budget to be subjective everyone has a different budget but to be significantly cheaper than say a top tier deck in a format is probably a general usage of the term budget. My average deck costs probably about 400 dollars but i trade alot so i dont just buy all the cards

July 9, 2015 2:04 a.m.

SoggyGecko says... #4

I say depends on the format. For modern, $200 is pretty budget. For legacy, about $400 is budget. It's also up to what the person thinks is budget.

July 9, 2015 2:10 a.m.

NoviceMagician says... #5

It depends on how you look at it, and there are two ways you can look at it.

First Way - Subjective.

As EmblemMan noted, it depends on your own personnel budget. For example, someone like you and me (poor XD), $10-$20 would be considered a normal budget. But for someone who is more of a tournament player, and has more monies, budget is usually $100 and up. This would explain why you see those budget decks sometimes that are more than $200, becasue the people who made them have that specific budget.

Second Way - Around the site.

Around the site, if a deck costs $25 or less (sometimes even $30 or less), it can usually be marked by the terms: hyperbudget, ultra budget, super budget, extreme budget, etc. Or more often, it's marked with its price in parenthesis, like A Day at the Arena. ($10 Aggro). More common than those decks however, any deck that costs between $30-$100 is usually considered budget, at least from what I've observed here on T/O. Any deck that is more than $100, is probably that person's specific budget.

As for the prices of my decks: Here on T/O, my decks usually range from $10-$60. In real life however, besides my competitve Bogles and competitive Mill, my decks are worth about $10-$20.

If budget decks are to your liking, I suggest checking out some of my decks, and some of Sagarys's decks. We both build budget, along with plenty of other users. Oh, and I take custom budget deck requests if you are ever interested in that.

Let me know if you ever need anything. ;)

July 9, 2015 2:21 a.m.

jasz says... #6

as a modern player i feel like the best thing to do is acquiring your land base, from there you can make a lot of builds "budget" you don't have to play goyfs and faries to win, but you do have to play good lands if you want any chance. a lot of playable and/or good cards are pretty affordable especially if you play to the fringe side of the format, good standard is never budget because it changes so frequently imo.

July 9, 2015 3:40 a.m.

JexInfinite says... #7

A budget deck is when you're getting a strictly worse deck than you could due to financial restraints.

July 9, 2015 5:40 a.m.

Epochalyptik says... #8

Please read the forum descriptions before posting. The TappedOut forum is for site-related posts. Moved.

July 9, 2015 7:13 a.m.

Putrefy says... #9

what JexInfinite said. Budget would be e.g. if you replace Tarmogoyf with Putrid Leech or Liliana of the Veil with Liliana of the Dark Realms

July 9, 2015 7:40 a.m.

IcyLightning says... #10

Epochalyptik I specifically posted in TappedOut forum because this applies to TappedOut users, it was a question regarding the Budget hub as related to the site, not what the entire meta of MTG considers budget.

Also thanks for all the feedback. I certainly believe that what is considered to be budget is relative to each user. I just wanted a better understanding if there was an understood threshold considered budget or not.

JexInfinite and Putrefy yeah that definitely applies, its pretty sad to me that to be competitive in a card game you need to have some major cash ready to invest, whereas in poker or chess or even something like video games you're investment is essentially one time and you're ability to play competitively is left to player skill, not the amount of money you can throw into it.

July 9, 2015 11:26 a.m.

JexInfinite says... #11

IcyLightning I'd say that money plays almost no factor in how well you will do. Obviously, you need a deck, but you can always play Grixis Delver and do just as well as if you were playing Jund. The cost of a deck doesn't determine the skill of the pilot or how the deck is placed in the meta.

If someone has a cheap deck (e.g. Lantern shenanigans) and doesn't require any money to upgrade it, it's not a budget deck, just a cheap one.

July 9, 2015 11:43 a.m.

Epochalyptik says... #12

Anything posted in the forums is necessarily related TappedOut to users somehow. That alone is not sufficient justification for using the TappedOut forum, neither is it the purpose of that forum.

That aside, the original post didn't mention the hubs at all, and the discussion has not included them.

Budget itself is an interesting discussion. Some people consider it subjectively based on what is or isn't expensive to them and their situation. Others view it in terms relative to the community. For example, you'd probably find that people generally consider $50 or less to be budget, and that actual ranges vary by format. For example, $100 might be middle of the road for some Standard decks, but low for Modern and very low for Legacy based on a survey of decks in the meta.

July 9, 2015 12:34 p.m.

IcyLightning says... #13

JexInfinite This is definitely a topic for another forum, and Epochalyptik I'll be sure to more adequately read descriptions next time

July 9, 2015 2:05 p.m.

Putrefy says... #14

@ IcyLightning your logic here is flawed. MTG is not a pure skill/luck-game like Chess or Poker. It is a Collectible Trading Card Game. If it were like poker every card would be available at any stage throughout the game. However since it's also collectible you have to give the players some kind of incentive to buy your product. In that case: rare cards. The more powerful those rare cards are, the more they're sought after and become less and less available and thus expensive.

Let's take this example: Imagine you would be allowed to play a total of 4 Queens in Chess, every single player would want to do so.However Queens were only released 20 years back and are not "printed" anymore. You're only allowed to use Queens from 1 manufacturer (in that case Chessmasters of the Coast). So everyone wants to have 4 Queens and suddenly Queens become expensive. And there are also those 2.000 super rare Queens with a little misprint to their face, you totally need at least 1 of them...

Moreover even competitive online-games like CS:GO have a secondary market. You can buy some nice visual modifications for your guns and knifes. Some skins are multi-100$. You don't need them to play the game ofc, but to show off you want some ;)

July 9, 2015 2:29 p.m. Edited.

IcyLightning says... #15

Putrefy my logic isn't flawed, you're interpreting my comparison incorrectly. What I'm saying is that in a competitive game of any sort, the most basic level of competition is that everyone be on equal footing. With Chess, it is 100% player skill. Poker incorporates an element of luck, but everyone is playing with the same cards. I used these as the basic level of games, provided you have the pieces to play, anybody can pick up the game relatively easily and play, even if they suck to start, they have the same potential to win as everyone else playing the game.

If people in Counterstrike or League of Legends or Starcraft or any other competitive multiplayer game want to spend money on cosmetic items that do not give them a distinct advantage over people that do not wish to buy those items, I have no problem with it.

With something like Magic, price is added into the equation as a factor for potential to win. If playing limited or draft, then everyone is placed on the same playing field as they have access to the same pool of cards with the same price. But in Standard, Modern, or EDH, a player's ability to play at a non-casual competitive level even something like FNM is infringed upon by that player's budget. Is Magic a collectible card game? Yes. Do I think that everyone should have access to a Alpha Edition Mint condition Black Lotus for $5? No. Because that card is a collectible. Its value is inherent in its rarity. I don't have a problem with people that want to buy a limited edition, a novelty, a collectible. That's up to them. I however find it extremely unfair that to play even standard or modern on a semi-competitive level you need money. Could you make a rogue $10 and do well? Yeah for sure, if you have the skill, you can do well in anything. You could run all basic lands, use common cards that are all ten cents, and try your best. But you're at a distinct disadvantage compared to someone that is running a deck with a land base that costs $40 full of Temples and fetch lands, and that's just the land. So no matter how good you are, you're never going to be playing as well as you could be, because you could be even better with a more expensive deck.

I'm new to paper magic. I haven't been playing since Alpha, or the 4th set, or even the 14th set. I missed out on Zendikar and Innistrad. Hell I missed out on Return to Ravnica. Those cards and boosters and boxes are now more expensive then when they were in rotation. Is that wrong? No, they're older cards, not being printed anymore. And they're collectible. I don't know much about Wizards of the Coast as a business, what kind of model they run, how they do business, the general consumer's perception of them... but I can say this. Wizards makes it extraordinarily difficult for anyone to jump into Magic and play any format beyond standard or drafts, which really kind of sucks because that means that close to 2 decades worth of good cards are virtually unplayable unless I really want to shell out cash. Are the commons cheap? Yeah of course. Will I ever get a Tarmogoyf? Nope. Am I necessarily angry with WOTC? No, they're running a business, they want to make money.

I think the key thing is this. You can either have a collectible trading card game, or a competitive trading card game. Because for the vast majority of people who only play casually, the option to play competitively is not there. There is a cash threshold required to play at that level.

July 9, 2015 5:23 p.m.

IcyLightning says... #16

My god what a rant. If you want to keep this conversation going, I'm all for it, but let's start a different thread since we've already divulged off topic enough.

July 9, 2015 5:24 p.m.

Epochalyptik says... #17

The last paragraph of post 14 is so flagrantly wrong in every dimension that it shouldn't have occurred to you to write it.

Also, before we go any further, I should point out that WOTC doesn't make money from the secondary market. WOTC doesn't set the prices of singles and then collect money from high barriers to entry. The secondary market is a supply-demand system run between players and stores. WOTC has indirect control in that they control the initial supply, but that's about it.

Now, let's return to the aforementioned paragraph. Being a collectible game does not preclude Magic from being a competitive game. Competition between players as a measure of some degree of skill is the foundation of competitive events. You don't just inexplicably win if you pay more money than your opponent. That's not how this game works. Sure, having better cards gives you some degree of advantage, but that doesn't negate skill. The issue is that you assume a game can either measure only skill or it can't measure skill at all.

Further, it's wrong to assume that playing casually means playing without investing any money. Why you play is not the sole determinate of how much you spend, nor is the reverse true. You can say that a certain subset of casual players is unlikely to play competitively because they perceive a cost to do so that's greater than what they are willing to pay, but you cannot generalize more than that.

Also, you are not required to bring an expensive deck to a competitive event. There's no cash requirement apart from the entry fee.

July 9, 2015 5:47 p.m.

IcyLightning says... #18

Firstly, you're right, I generalized a casual players as a whole based on my own perception of the game and the people playing. I have a fairly limited view first hand. I play with friends that I was friends with before Magic, and we began playing Magic for fun. This is to say, we are all in the exact same position both with regards to both finance and experience of the game. I don't really have any interest in pursuing this competitively, even if I could do so with any real hope of winning without a monetary investment, I probably would not attend tournaments simply because I'm not really interested in playing in a non-casual setting where a judge presides over the game, there are time limits, and I can't drink a beer while joking about how my friend is getting mana screwed. That being said, I feel as a new player that if I wanted to do so, I would have to shell out at least $100 or so dollars to have a deck that I felt I could win with at a local FNM. That to me, as I sure it is to a lot of other new players, if a pretty big barrier. Magic is not the most welcoming game to get into. There is a pretty steep learning curve, and while a lot of players I've met are more then helpful and courteous to new players, the game itself is not.

I'm not claiming that money is the deciding factor of winning in Magic, because it very clearly is not, skill is. This is a wonderfully complex game, and to do well requires skill. I am claiming however, is that if two players of equal skill play a game, the one with the superior deck wins. This is fine, as it is part of the game. Deckbuilding makes Magic what it is. Not luck, not skill, but the ability to look a huge pile of cards that are all different and see a certain way of playing them that someone else has not. The problem with this is that the pool of cards that a player has access to is directly limited by monetary investment. Should two players of equal skill have a match, but one player invested $150 while the other is playing with a deck that is worth $15, the player with the more expensive deck wins 8 out of 10. Can a cheap deck win? Yes. Does spending money mean you win? No. Does spending money give you a better deck then if you were limited by budget? Yes. And that is the problem I have with competitive Magic, because yes, you can theoretically do well with a rogue ultra budget deck... but the chances are that despite you're best efforts, the more expensive decks will win, assuming of course that everyone is of equal skill.

And in regards to WOTC, yes you're right they do not have direct control over card prices. I understand that. They do however have direct control over supply, which influences card prices. Take the recent Modern Masters 2015 set. It retailed at $10 for a booster pack. Understandable, since the potential for value within each pack of cards was pretty good. just imagine getting a foil Tarmogoyf! Plus, the set was released in limited release, so its even more exclusive, and therefore, expensive, since let's not forget that this is a Collectible trading card game after all. Except... WOTC could have expanded release, printed more cards, made them less rare... which would have almost universally driven down prices. I'm going to guess that every time a card is reprinted in a new set, the original loses some of its value. This would make approaching formats such as Modern, EDH, even Legacy or Vintage much easier and cheaper to new players. But WOTC did not. Instead they artificially drove up prices with such sets. Do they directly reap profits from it? No I doubt it, but it certainly generates revenue from other points of view. They create artificial scarcity. They could print however many cards they wanted, but they won't because then they'd be out of business. Do I fault them? No, they are a business first and foremost. Their goal is profits. But neither am I going to just blindly accept the business practice.

July 9, 2015 10:01 p.m.

Epochalyptik says... #19

A lot of people are very fond of making the $100 to $1000 deck comparison (or some variation thereof), but the fact of the matter is that the game is much more complex than that. You also have to factor in the natures of the decks being played. If a $100 aggro deck goes up against a $1000 control deck, the aggro deck actually stands quite a strong chance of winning due to the nature of deck archetypes.

And conversely, a $1000 combo deck does stand a good chance of beating a $100 aggro deck.

When you're talking about budget as an influence on game outcomes, you really need to be careful not to overrepresent it at the expense of other factors. Sure, budget plays a role, but it's not a choice between "pay or lose" or even between money invested and skill possessed.

And WOTC obviously creates scarcity as part of the design of their collectible product. The extent to which they facilitate that scarcity is another matter; once again, we're not dealing with matters of "yes or no?" but rather matters of "how much?"

WOTC releases things like Modern Masters in limited runs precisely because they don't want to tank the market. And the reason for that is twofold.

First, they risk disenfranchising invested players. What happens if a large portion of your competitive player base spend hundreds each on getting fetches and Goyfs to take part in your events and you suddenly make a reprint decision that takes that investment from $2000 to $200? You have a lot of very pissed off customers. And anyone who makes the argument that the previously-excluded "budget" players can simply take their place doesn't understand how product loyalty works. The Reserved List came from exactly that kind of move back when Magic was still new on the scene. WOTC reprinted a bunch of cards with such volume that the market tanked and they had collectors lined up around the block to piss through their mail slot. They've burned their fingers once before, and they're none too eager to do it again (even if they have a much better understanding of their own game now, having seen it develop for over 20 years).

Second, maintaining some supply deficit ensures the sale of future product. That's just basic S&D economics.

WOTC has to calculate their moves in order to help alleviate some of the supply deficit without crashing the market, disenfranchising players, or shorting themselves on future possibilities. And the effort they've made in the last four years to carefully reprint select high-profile staples in blocks and in Modern Masters is commendable regardless of whether you think it goes far enough.

The issue really is more complex than you give it credit for. I understand that you probably don't mean to oversimplify the matter knowing that it's this complex, but that's exactly what you keep doing. There is no silver bullet solution here.

July 9, 2015 10:26 p.m.

Putrefy says... #20

@IcyLightning you really try hard to coat your whining with a wall of text. However in the end it boils down to: "mimimi I cannot afford Tarmogoyf, fix plz, wizards suck."

I really have no desire to drive this "discussion" any further as it is meaningless. Epoch already pointed out: a 100$ budget deck can easily beat a 1000$ control deck.

I still stand true to my statement: either suck it up and spend the money or don't. But then stop the whining and deal with it.

July 10, 2015 2:58 a.m.

jasz says... #21

if you just want to play casually with your friends go to a local shop and buy some of their chaff boxes of random cards and just build or cube with your friends and acquire good stuff here and there, the game can be enjoyed on many levels only the people that are trying to be competitive because they enjoy being competitive are really shelling out for the fetches and goyfs, i can have more fun playing junky commander decks than modern sometimes and i have 40$ dollar commander decks and modern decks worth a few hundred which i have acquired piecemeal over time that play well in my local meta, don't play magic because you can't drop the cash, play it because its a fun game to play with your friends. also i feel like few people get into magic and suddenly drop several hundred dollars at once it is a collectible thing and it takes a while/money to get a great collection

July 10, 2015 3:25 a.m.

buildingadeck says... #22

I remember one FNM when I played a mono-U tempo deck that took second just before FRF was released. The total deck value was $40, and that was only because I had chance drawn 2 Polluted Delta from boosters. I only lost to UB control. In general, if you build a deck and know it inside and out and how to board and play against most match ups, you will do well. Pretty much, Epoch is right, but I will say this: it can seem frustratingly impossible to accrue the cards to build a good modern deck, but if you play a couple Modern Masters drafts, you can get a decent start on cards that you can get 2-2 nights at modern FNM's. You will then slowly gain value from packs to trade for cards (or simply draw them from packs) to get what you need.

For instance, I'm working on building U-Tron right now, and with the skyrocket in Oblivion Stone's price, I had to figure out how to get it cheaply. Solution? A couple months ago, I pulled an Eidolon of the Great Revel, whose value is actually greater than O-Stone's. You never know which cards will jump or drop, so try to buy low or to trade for most of what you need.

July 10, 2015 5:33 a.m.

Boza says... #23

Chiming in - you are right that competitive magic is an expensive endeavor, since the best cards cost a lot of dough. But that is negated by several factors:

1/ You choose your own level of financial commitment to the game. That is very unique to Magic. For example, Cube drafting - you can do cubing with power 9 cards or you can do cubing with jank rares for basically 50 cents per card. The amount of fun extracted from these activities is entirely subjective, so may get more than what you pay for. Heck, if you are not playing in a tournament, you can play for the cost of paper and ink and print proxies.

2/ Lack of an expiration date - with the exception of standard, you can get 1 deck and play it however long you want. This makes big investments in competitive cards much less impactful on your wallet. Though this is true for most cardboard-based entertainment, it is a lot more emphasized in Magic than say a tabletop game, as Magic is much less likely to rotate out of popularity.

3/ Stuff that is better quality than comparative stuff costs more.

Tournament staples vs draft fillers. 10 year old cars vs brand new cars. Coffee from the office machine vs Starbucks. Walmart stuff vs organic food.

This quality premium is more a fact of life than a detriment of Magic as a game. Yet again, you have the choice over which to get, however, while most of these comparisons are than is better in almost every way than their inferior counterparts (except in price), in Magic every card is subjectively better than one or the other, allowing for varying your experiences and actually minimizing financial impact.

tl;dr Magic is actually as cheap or expensive as you want it to be as long as you don't play in tournaments.

For the best of both worlds, I suggest going into Pauper - an Eternal format that has incredible variety and complexity and even varied metagame, where tier 1 decks cost around $30.

July 10, 2015 6:09 a.m.

__fense says... #24

I've found that because so many people are willing to trade cards, Magic is pretty easy to get access to the better cards from what you have. Even if you only buy packs or only play limited, you'll acquire enough value to trade for older cards that you 'missed'. Try to trade Origins rares to Standard players for good Theros cards that are about to rotate out. Then wait a few months and trade the Theros cards for things like shocklands that people have sitting around. A Tarmogoyf isn't that hard to trade for if you've got $150 in good cards, and while Wizards isn't going to keep printing tons of Goyfs, they will keep printing good cards. Some of it is patience, some of it is figuring out what the next big modern deck is before it gets super popular, and some of it is knowing how much the cards are actually worth and trading for cards when they are at their lowest and trading away cards at their highest. You really don't need to lay down tons of money to get most of the good cards (you would for stuff like the power 9 and the original duals), just play with the cards you have, and be open to trading for the cards you want.

July 10, 2015 6:43 a.m.

IcyLightning says... #25

Alright I'm going to try to respond to everyone individually but some points made bleed through to other responses.

Epochalyptik I said in my own post that I felt I could do well with a $100 deck. I think a $100 deck could have great potential to win FNM's and be pretty competitive.

My quote from my post above "I feel as a new player that if I wanted to do so, I would have to shell out at least $100 or so dollars to have a deck that I felt I could win with at a local FNM. That to me, as I sure it is to a lot of other new players, is a pretty big barrier."

I'm not arguing that budget is the deciding factor in winning games. I'm not arguing that skill is beaten by money every time. I'm arguing that to new players the initial investment required to play at that level is steep.

And about WOTC, I understand fully that this is an extremely complex issue, nor do I pretend to understand the issue fully. They have to be doing something right because they've been in business for this long and are as far as I'm aware the most popular TCG out there. I'm not faulting their business practice nor necessarily complaining about it from an outside perspective. But wasn't Modern Masters supposed to be their set to support and include Modern as a Format and make it more approachable to new players? Modern Masters was awesome, for people that have been playing Magic for awhile and for collector's. For new player's... it was terrible. Why would you put $10 into a single booster when you could get 3 boosters of standard and build your base of cards from which to play? I bought a couple of packs of MM15 because I was swept up with all these great cards to get. I got an Apocalypse Hydra and a Daybreak Coronet so I actually made the value of packs back... but as a new player I kind of regret it because that $20 could have been spent on a lot of better things for decks. This was before I started using this site though and I learned the error of my ways, but how many players new to the game actually bought $10 packs? And of the people that did, how many were happy with the decision? I don't blame Wizard's, I don't fault anyone for buying boosters or boxes of it, I just wish that Wizard's made a greater effort to include newer players with older cards with a more approachable price.

Putrefy This barely even warrants a response. Not once have I complained or whined about cards, prices, or WOTC business practices. I'm simply stating how I, as a new player, feel in regards to trying to start playing Magic as more then just casually with friends. Would I turn down a foil Goyf? Hell no, but then who would? But its not a card that I find particularly exciting or have any interest in building a deck around. I'd much rather have something like a Baneslayer Angeland that's 1/15 the price.

jasz You're totally right. Magic is what you make it. I think I posted above about how I'd rather play at a dining room table with a couple of friends then at a sanctioned event with judges and timers, but that's just me. I'm discussing the option of playing at FNM for any new player and how I feel that there are a lot of barriers in the way that make it seem unapproachable, price of playing to me being the main reason.

buildingadeck, Boza, and __fense I'm going to address your posts together. For a player with a minimal card collection who is just starting to open packs, trades will be limited, and opening boosters in any number costs money. And yeah, getting into Modern is hard for a new player, its essentially what I've been discussing this whole time. The key thing is this, its slow. You slowly build up a card collection over time. For players that have been playing Magic for 10 years, they probably have the ability to play in most random formats besides like vintage at a competitive level without much additional investment except perhaps a single here or there, and the ability to simply buy whichever cards they want for standard or trade for them from their collection.

This is all that I'm saying. Magic to a new player is tough. It's tough to learn, it's tough to play, and for younger players, its probably tough to convince your parent that its worth $30 for little pieces of cardboard with some art on them.

As a new player, you're options of play are very limited. Will this change as you buy more cards? Of course, but when just starting out playing Magic is a serious money sink as a hobby.

Yeah I could throw $100 into a deck and have a great chance of winning at FNM, but I'm not going to. As a new player, I'd rather have 10 $10 decks then 1 $100 because its more fun to play with friends and cycle through the decks. That's just me. And even then, $100 is a lot. Magic is far from being the only thing I spend money on. I attend college. I have daily expenses, I need to start saving for a new car. The money I do allot myself to spend is spent on going out with friends to movies or bars, buying a game for xbox that I will arguably spend more time playing since I have a lot of friends that play games but only a very few that play Magic.

So yes, a Casual new player could spend $100 and go to FNM and have an equal chance at winning as everyone else. But how many people do you think that are new to Magic really going to spend that much? That is what I am and have been saying. The initial investment required to play at a semi-competitive level within Magic is high to a new player.

July 10, 2015 6:47 p.m.

buildingadeck says... #26

IcyLightning: I have been playing Magic a little over a year now, and I almost have a U-Tron deck (~$250) assembled, mostly on trades. If you build a budget mono-red aggro deck for standard, do decently at FNM's and draw cards from boosters, you can accrue some better cards. Is it slow? Yeah, but it won't take you ten years for sure. When I started building Tron in March, I thought it would be daunting to get the cards together, but it has come together quite rapidly through trades made on this site. In the meantime, booster drafts, prereleases, and FNM's can be good ways to get a card base. Don't feel discouraged; it is possible to get the decks you want.

July 10, 2015 10:54 p.m.

Epochalyptik says... #27

You're still not understanding. $100 to $1000. $15 to $150. The concept is the same.

And yes, while you did say at one point that money was not the determinate factor, you also said the following:

Should two players of equal skill have a match, but one player invested $150 while the other is playing with a deck that is worth $15, the player with the more expensive deck wins 8 out of 10. Can a cheap deck win? Yes. Does spending money mean you win? No. Does spending money give you a better deck then if you were limited by budget? Yes. And that is the problem I have with competitive Magic, because yes, you can theoretically do well with a rogue ultra budget deck... but the chances are that despite you're best efforts, the more expensive decks will win, assuming of course that everyone is of equal skill.

That's an oversimplification of the situation. That's why I responded to your post in the way that I did. Let's look at my response:

When you're talking about budget as an influence on game outcomes, you really need to be careful not to overrepresent it at the expense of other factors. Sure, budget plays a role, but it's not a choice between "pay or lose" or even between money invested and skill possessed.

I'm cautioning you against overrepresenting the influence of monetary investment on the outcome of any given game. The excerpt from your post makes a very clear assertion that money is the "tiebreaker" when weighing the chances of a given player winning, and that is simply not true.

Regarding Modern Masters, you're once again missing the mark. As we've said, MMA was meant to make certain Modern staples more available and to increase interest in Modern as a whole. It succeeded at doing both of those things. A greater number of each of the reprinted staples is now in circulation, and being that they're recent reprints, they're available in more stores and in more players' binders. Further, MMA served as the step stool for many reasonably invested players looking to transition from Standard to Modern. It reintroduced enough cards to help them break into the format by buying boxes or playing Limited to augment their existing collections.

Yes, the price of some cards did rise, and yes, many of the cards did remain relatively high even if they fell, but MMA never promised to make everything cheap. You're evaluating the product based on a claim it never made for itself. Obviously you're going to find it insufficient if you're using a nonsensical metric. MMA didn't propose the idea that new players could buy a few boosters and be in like Flynn. You did. A new player obviously won't benefit from spending all of his or her starting money on a couple of packs of MMA or MM2. A player with a moderate starting collection will.

You focus too much on the things that don't matter and not enough on the concepts at play here. As I said at the beginning of the post, it's not about the example starting at $100 or $15. It's about the disparity between investments and the way that it influences games. Sure, if you want to go further, you can make arguments about theoretical "floors" for competitive investment, but that's not at all the point you made in return. You can make the argument that MMA didn't make it possible for a new player with no experience and no cards to break into Modern, but that's not a valuable point because it doesn't explore a promised or realistic goal.