Looks like Europeans are getting scammed to pay much more than the $ equivalent, so that might stop me from making any further purchases. I haven't broken my currency switch though, have paid $ through Paypal.

Regarding the optimal way of using my 2,500 gems, it's going to be Draft in two weeks. Some simple math tells me that's higher value than Sealed. I only lose out on "Tempo" for I don't get those GRN cards now but in week 3 so my collection is weaker than that of Sealed players. Buying packs directly might be an alternative to get more wildcards.

I hate how bad the preconstructed decks are. Back when I played Hearthstone, before I had a good collection I'd just play arena, but here I don't have nearly enough gold to draft and one can't really go infinite in draft anyway. In the meantime it's just a crapshoot of throwing bad decks at other bad decks (some of which are clearly better than mine, too).

It was a grind getting to five wins, I don't think I'll play more (or much) until I have some decent cards.

Welcome to the F2P-world. Remember our discussions about the Red Black "Starter" deck that was possible with the Kaladesh freebies? You've been spoiled by this monster

With an actual F2P pre-con deck you can't expect better than 50% W/L. In fact, you have to expect less because you play $$-decks in between pre-con opponents. You can only hope that F2P-players as a whole are a much bigger group and that $$-players will gain rank faster than you so that you ultimately face mostly your own ilk.

I don't think you can solve your issue by not playing. You need to grind for your daily gold, whether you draw that line after 4 wins or 11 wins or even the full 15, but you're not going to draft in two weeks without that.

I'm currently bronze so I don't think it's a rank matter. Also preconstructed deck vs. preconstructed deck is silly and unfun and still a crapshoot. The first win is worth 250g, the next two like 100g; after that it drops quickly to 50g and 25g. I'll probably just get 5 wins a day and stop.

Maybe I'll use some common and uncommon wildcards, after all I had more of them than I knew what to do with before the wipe. Question though is, on what?

TBH, I think it's too early to blow WCs yet. Just run the deck you're handed, modify some of them (I definitely did modify the WB deck I was handed to start with) and hope it carries you through the early days in Bronze.

Just had my first win of Bronze as well btw: Opponent on a fairly teched-out version of Golgari Midrange (multiple Doom Whisperers and Vraskas), yet the last Skymarch Bloodletter was one too many

To wrap this up: According to Paypal, I've paid 5.28 euros for the $5 one-time-packet. Question for you US guys, did you get that for only $5 or did you have to pay tax on top of that, too?

That about seems right. Also European, I paid about that amount as well (5,94 US-$, that should be around the ballpark of 5,28€).

I also think I have an idea where that tax comes from, unfortunately I'm not 100% sure. My thought: The tax sum is 0,95$, which is 19% of the advertised price (4,99$). If you're living in Germany (like myself), 19% should ring a bell.

Yeah, I'm familiar with VAT, part of my job

German too, btw.

I spenr 100$ back when they weren't charging tax and actually got a decent exchange rate.
The VAT in Portugal is 23% so I doubt I'll spend any more real money on the game.
The idea was to ease the initial grind post-wipe and that's exactly were I'm at right now. I've got a decent pretty much complete deck to grind for the next weeks.

Crazy move to just increase prices that much. Now we'll get an everlasting discussion if it's ok that early birds got more gems for their money.

And btw, don't be me and waste 4 wildcards on Rats to play Singleton. Win and fun rates are abysmal. In 9 games, I won 3, though I was on the draw 8 times. Getting better than that with my Selesnya starter

Not charging tax was kind of illegal, but I'm not complaining... Guess they forgot that foreign players abide by different laws and taxes than in the states.

Well, if you "forget" to charge VAT here, you get to pay it anyway for it gets subtracted from the money you got. We have 19% in Germany for most stuff and if a company sells something that requires VAT for 100, it doesn't matter how they label it on the receipt. They will pay 100 / 119 x 19 = 15.97. And the authorities are not cool with anything involving VAT for VAT manipulation costs billions each year.

However, back to the topic. I got myself another 11 wins today and call it a day. I've found something to look forward to: It'll be back into the pond on tuesday at the latest, when I get the Merfolk pre-con. In case you don't know, we get one dual-colored pre-con per day after the first. The order is random and the decks feature the non-GRN color pairs.

Just been playing singleton, crappy rewards but it's so much better than playing precons. Used my starter wildcards to get - Vraska, Arguel's Blood Fast, Vraska's Contempt (then got another from the next precon, oops), Cast Down, Assassin's Trophy, Eldest Reborn and some other GB common/uncommons. I figure they'll all be useful anyway since I like those colours and if I get a few playable rares from singleton they'll have paid for themselves so to speak. So far I've snagged a little vraska, tezzeret, ripjaw raptor and i think a doom whisperer (unless we got on of those free?) as the highlights of my singleton winnings, also a resplendant angel but I have nothing in white to support it.

Been fun and a lot more interesting than throwing precons at people.

Yeah, been playing Golgari Singleton as well. I was lucky enough to pull two Assassin's Trophies and a Nullhide Ferox from some of my first packs (plus some other singleton playable rares like the black Tutor and Gruesome Menagerie). Since my third round of Sealed crapped out on me (2-3 with a 5-colour pile after going 5-3 and 6-3 respectively in the first two ones) I went ahead and crafted some stuff to put me into Golgari (Doom Whisperer, big Vraska, Journey to Eternity (I have a sacrifice sub-theme, and I think this could make some Constructed lists thanks to RAV Vraska), Woodland Cemetary, Jadelight Ranger and the troll came out of the rare/mythic WCs)

I think you're kidding but in case anyone is reading this and may be confused, this only works with split cards with fuse.

I built a goblins & dragons mono-red singleton deck (since I have 1 of each goblin and dragons looked like some sweet high-end cards.)
Been having a blast with it. 3-0 ATM, so I get at least a rare icr.

Thing with VAT is, you should only be paying your country's own tax if your actually importing something. What exactly am I importing when I buy "virtual" gems? Entertainment? I can't resell that...
For example, if I traveled to a VAT free country and made the purchase there, I wouldn't pay anything, even if I ended up using the gems when I'm back home.
What would make sense to me is to pay the VAT of the country where the physical company I'm buying from is located, like if I traveled there and bought it locally. And when it comes to intangible merchandise like in-game currencies... Well, I just can't fathom why it works like it does.
I guess it's all just due to protectionist laws to try and stop money from leaving your own country. But in today's globalised economy, does that even make sense? Should I open an off-shore account in the Cayman islands or something?

Holy crap. Just cleared a $740 paycheck and in about 5 minutes of bill paying I'm down to $200 to last the week. Sigh. No big gem purchases yet but I did break down and get my card information in the system and got the starter bundle. Next week I might break down and do the $100 deal. I don't see a way to be really competitive purely f2p. It worked out in closed beta because I was in it for a long time and they used to give the weekly packs and such and I had upwards of 30,000 gold at times saved from wins but of course not any more.

The singleton event is treating me quite well. I wasn't impressed by the ICR rewards to start, but they do add up. It's a shame you can't work towards a specific deck but among all the janky stuff I've had a surprising amount of playable and maybe playable rewards.

Granted I've put a lot of time into it the past day and there's been a great deal of junk but so far the highlights are: Legion's Landing, Resplendent Angel, 2 Tezzerets, Doom Whisperer, Dire Fleet Daredevil, Rekindling Pheonix, Multani, Niv Mizzet, Expansion/Explosion, small Vraska, Chromium, Sorcerous Spyglass, Overgrown Tomb and Sacred Foundry. Also picked up Trostani Discordant, Cameraderie and March of the Multitudes though I'm not sure how good those will be.

Now, I wouldn't have crafted all those personally, but some of them for sure, but it's nice to have them and it's quite a chunk of rare/mythic wildcards saved in the long run. Seems to be that if you're playing MTGA during the free singleton then that's the format you should be playing if you want to maximise your stuff

Well, Sealed is 2000 gems and you are guaranteed 9 packs and 200 gems back, so 1800 gem net of you instantly resign. So basically if you want GNR packs, Sealed is a zero risk play. You could instantly quit any time you don't start with some bombs.

Oh sorry I wasn't. I wasn't aware Fuse wasn't a default mode for split cards.

I was also wrong about getting only non-GRN-guilds as freebie pre-cons. That theory was just proven wrong to me when I got an Izzet deck.