Hi Guys, how fast do you guys assemble a competitive deck and how much money do you spend it on?

Of course it's easier if you have a good White/Red deck to assemble a Boros deck, or like in my case going from green stomp to golgari (especially that golgari has a lot of uncommons in it). I still lack some dual lands though as I prefer to spend the Rare WCs on the needed threats/plays than lands.

I think that the overall card acquisition rate is quite fine for F2P, but assembling a new deck takes AGES. I really would like to try some control (Jeskai in particular) and Boros Angels with Tocatli, but damn, I would need like 30-40 rare+mythic wildcards. Counting that I get all the needed cards 1 a day it would still take me more than a month to assemble a deck like this...

Of course I have a lot of **** rares and mythics which I can't do anything about. They should finally give us the ability to recraft the unneeded cards, change wildcard tiers etc.

Your thoughts?

ouf... i'm glad I bought two new games this week i think

My thoughts?

If you are F2P or a $5-whore you need to be open to a larger variety of decks and play the one that you happen to get through actual card rewards (as in non-wildcards).

That approach means you play a cheap deck to grind for daily gold and play a lot of Limited for a change of pace whenever you can afford it.

If you're deadset on one specific deck that you need to play, you must not play Limited but rather spend all your grinded gold on boosters to get wildcards. You acquire them at a rate of 5:1 (1 booster provides 16.67% progress to a guaranteed rare wildcard and a 4% chance to transform the included rare into a wildcard). So if you need 40 Rares, you need 200 boosters, which are 200k gold so expect to play half a year for that.

5$ whore?

I just sold 4 revised dual lands I never use anymore (no IRL magic players where I live) and pumped part of that into the game, that also works (and I have plenty left)
Currently I have about 4-5 competetive decks finished, which makes the game a lot of fun since you can swap when you get bored of 1 type of deck.

Ok, I spent like 30$ on the game. 5$ starter and 20$ on crystals for sealed which was a good investment. How much would I have to spend to have 2-3 complete decks in 5 colors. So jeskai and golgari lets say.

Btw. Calling people whores for not wanting / not having money to spend on a game is extremely lame.

I spend more than I thought I was going to spend in the first place. Adding up I have put something around $230 and thats a lot... buuuuuut I have Jeskai control, Izzet Control, Boros Angels, the Abzan Pile -without all the dual lands- and the Golgari pile with about 60% dual lands. I´m currently working on the Pheonix deck and I could build suboptimal Grixis control, Esper Control, Selensya Tokens, Boros Tokens, Green Stompy, and some other jank here and there.
I have been playing non stop CCB03 and the rewards are very high, I´m drafting once or twice a week with the coins I earn on the events and I have something like 2k gems left for Dom.

I have played this game on a daily basis for the quests since I joined the Beta and I think I complete about half of a CCB03 run a day. I'm not planning spending another dime on the game coz basically I think that I can own all the playable cards within this sets life spam.

Oh please, don't take those jokes seriously
I've only spent those $5 like many others and we're much closer to the F2P crowd than to the guys who put in real cash so far. Thus I grouped and nicknamed these players.

I've whored out a little and spent $25 so far. Good investment to get me going in Limited. Now for that reacharound.

I did the math and I am about in the same range with similar decks. Jeskai, Golgari, Boros, Selensya, Mono Red, Izzet, Mono Green and a few oddball things I tried out are all basically complete decks. I have spent some rares/mythics on ideas that went nowhere, so I have maybe 15-20% of my rares that are not things someone would normally buy.

It is at the point of diminishing returns though. I will be very happy if/when the change the system so you can no longer get duplicates. As is, a pack is as likely to be a duplicate as not. Not a great return.

I spent 100$ in the closed beta and not a cent more.
I went all-in boros initially including a full set of lands.
Then I've been investing in izzet and mono-red and those decks are nearly complete.
I'm using most of my WCs on lands ATM, because that will give me freedom to brew whatever other jank I randomly squire.

What do you spend the gems on? Limited only or mixed with packs?

I bought a GRN bundle and a DOM bundle and the leftover 2000 gems did a sealed event which was a bust, due to bad rares (4 lands) and losing 2 games to time-out issues.
I have 600 gold ATM and I haven't done draft since open beta started. I did farm singleton a great deal, which gave me loads of random rares.

Spent 5$. And yeah, actually building new deck takes ages. I have semi-functional Golgari and Izzet decks; just got the Vault for the first time since OB, haven't quite decided what to spend the newly aquired wildcards on just yet (I do have a ton of options for them, though).

My rules of thumb for budget decks:
- Don't play more than 2 colours. It's just not worth it to have terrible mana because 8 out of your 16 dual lands have to be Guildgates/tapped duals (and 4 more have to be Evolving Wilds), and most rare WCs are better spent on actual cards than lands early on.
- Prioritize cards that are good in multiple decks/archetypes; especially if the format is new and you're not sure yet what will prevail. Monocolour > dual colour.
- Don't go overboard crafting playsets early on; diversify your crafts. This way you can open more rares to fit your deck and aren't as screwed if the card you crafted the playset of ends up sucking balls.
- Draft. Draft, draft draft. If you're not good at it yet, get good.

I had spent $105 in the closed beta, which was reimbursed as gems when they wiped.

I spent about $40 of that on extra packs and that got me a truly competitive deck (sans some dual lands which I acquired over time and through Sealed and draft).

So basically, $45 ($5 being the starter pack thing) is a good launch point.

you should add, "also, i could buy any of you"

Ouch. I've spent like $400. I've got about 6 tournament ready decks.

Well yeah, that way works, too.

I ain’t got time to grind.