Board 8 > Magic: the Gathering Topic: Assemble X+1 Contraptions

(+) Yeah! (+)

Even my hiatus couldn't stop me from drafting Unstable, and I can safely say this is the most fun I've had playing Magic in years.

Unlike the other Un-sets, which were jokeboxes with Magic attached, Unstable feels like a real, honest-to-God Magic set with clean design, clever synergy, and neat, well thought out mechanics. And it's also a wonderful jokebox, too. I mean, it gave us an acknowledgement of a 20-year-old meme in the form of Crow Storm, even giving us foil Storm Crow tokens (though real men use 7th edition foils).

One thing I adore besides the gorgeous John Avon lands is the foil tokens. Dear lord, many of those tokens are beautiful, and I've been actively trading for them. The nice thing about buying a box of this set is that you are guaranteed to get your money back in the basics alone. The fact that you get to have the great 1-2 drafts of your recent memory is icing. Delicious, hilarious icing.

Highlights from my couple of drafts:

- One of my buddies opening Spike, Tournament Grinder, after which I hand him my Cube and tell him to bring it back in one piece.

- Announcing Slaying Mantis with a wrestling intro, only for it to miss every single opposing creature.

- Swinging for exacties, only for some guy to high-five my opponent and let them both gain one life

- My opponent not realizing the interaction of hitting me with my own guy while I still retained control of the Sword of Dungeons and Dragons attached to said guy. (Granted, this happens in real Magic too.)

- Someone kept flickering a few of her creatures while she had an Augment creature that let her keep rolling dice to put +1/+1 counters on her guy. It ended up being something like a 40/41.

- Seeing someone win with the dice-rolling alternate victory card.

- Watching a guy try to stack his 9 contraption triggers optimally for three minutes.

- An opponent made a secret agreement with a couple other players before the draft even began that if one of them got a Kindslaver, each of them would play it optimally for each other if given the chance.

If you haven't gotten to draft it yet, just do it. It's an amazing experience.
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I want to draft unstable once, but beyond that have no real interest beyond getting some of the basics for my cube
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Drafted it last night. Was great! We did 5 player FFA with it.
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Oh Jesus Christ. I need highlights!
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Ok, some of the stuff I remember:

-The Red Green Legendary dice-thrower coming into play, and dropping 6 dice onto the battlefield, and every single one missed. The guy tried to pump his creature first, then gave up after the first try, and I had 4 creatures in play, so he did 5 in a row at me, and missed them all.

-Attacking with a 1/1 Hangman, and suddenly the guy who didn't block took 8 damage from it. It did end up dying during my next attack though. I chose the word "Rancher".

-Being so excited that I finally rolled doubles to Get Out of Jail and free one of my creatures (after like 4 turns), and then a guy just taps his blue wall and makes me re-roll one of the dice :(

-Seeing a creature that had Triple-Strike, Horsemanship, and Lifelink (person died before they got to connect with it though lol)

-Surviving a lethal combat solely because of an Entirely Normal Armchair that had been under lands for 3 turns.

-People being so annoyed at the black 2/1 creature that only has flying when you are holding it, because it turns out almost nothing in the set flies.

-A guy who kept casting creatures where you rolled to put +1/+1 counters on it equal to dice roll, and literally every time he rolled a 1. Actually every time.

-The followup, a guy who didn't play anything all game with dice rolling, casted his only card that said to roll a dice for an opponent to lose life equal to it, targeted the guy who always rolled 1s, and rolled a 6.

We only played 1 game, and we each drafted 4-packs.
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Oh man, I forgot about Hangman. Some guy looked up random microbiology words every game. It was brilliant and probably infuriating.
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Anyone know if Unstable is having a limited print run? I need to know if I should stock up.
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Playing a draft tomorrow. Looking forward to it.
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Maro has said it would be unlimited.

http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/165140471823/is-unstable-a-limited-print-run-and-if-so-how

This is from a few months ago, but I assume it still applies.
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Ya done good, MaRo.

(I love that when I type ya in my phone the first autocomplete option is Yawgmoth.)
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Drafted Unstable once over the weekend. Got to the store late so we could only do a four person draft, but it was still pretty fun. I ended up going black/red/blue but my deck didn't have many shenanigans in it. However it was pretty awesome cause I had the "graveyard creatures can attack and block" card and one of my opponents tried to mill me.

Plus I had that armchair and managed to sneak it onto the battlefield even when my opponent had X in my hand. That was amazing and saved me from a lethal swing.

Hoping to get a box and draft it sometime. Was fun and the lands/tokens are awesome.
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Some Rivals promos were shared on the mothership. Silvergill Adept is in the set.

I'm also realizing that I don't think I've played a single game of Magic in about two months.
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Same. The last game I played was round 1 of the midnight Ixalan prerelease. I won, waited 20 minutes for round 2, decided I wasn't actually enjoying myself and would be better off sleeping, and that's where it ended.

Iconic Masters seemed good but I just didn't feel the enthusiasm to fire up Magic Online. Kinda regretted that.
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Everyone I know said Iconic was the epitome of mediocrity.
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I actually sold out of MTGO a few weeks ago. I never used it aside from a draft once in a great while, and the stuff on there is never really going to appreciate in value. Got $200 for a pretty modest collection, which was pretty surprising. Thought I would get maybe half that.
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I got a foil Mana Drain out of Iconic that I promptly traded for a LotV, Misty Rainforest, and a playset of Mishra Baubles.

Unstable Sealed was a blast. My only gripes were I built a relatively boring contraption value deck and the time I faced my friend who had the subgame package he didn't play a single subgame card.
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what's the best site or method to sell bulk?

deckbox says my collection would theoretically be worth about $850 in lightly played condition, and i'm tired of storing it. prefer limited events, and were i to dip back into limited environments i'd rather just pay cash for singles than try to trade.

i assume i'd only realistically be able to get maybe half price no matter where i go, but it's worth getting something, at least

i have a newbie friend that would take whatever i can't sell, at least. but that almost feels like passing on a curse
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I'd try to find a local store to sell your stuff to, you're more likely to get a better rate there than selling to one of the big websites.
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You could also try selling just your most expensive cards. Curious what they are.
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nothing too crazy. top of the list are some eventide lands, and some stuff that lives in a couple modern decks.

also for some reason i bought a playset of BFZ and amonkhet duals on a whim because they were underpriced

https://deckbox.org/sets/1754217?s=i&o=d#

i've found that local stores tend to have extremely small buylists based on their websites, but i guess i haven't actually asked anyone to check
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it's less about the money and more about moving everything away from me in a satisfying manner

if i just sell the 'good stuff' i'll still have a bunch of cards taking up space, which i guess i could donate or something
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Stores will sometimes just buy collections, regardless of their stated buylists. I'd give them a call and check.
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and yeah, that's right, i scanned in every single card i owned about six months ago

Stores will sometimes just buy collections, regardless of their stated buylists. I'd give them a call and check.

thanks, will give that a shot. in retrospect much of the collection's "value" is tied up in worthless cards listed as 10 cents
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