General CBS

I started with Coldsnap. After picking out cards I liked from my friends' boxes, they gave me 5 boosters, one from each of the most recent sets. I opened up a pack of Dissension first, and got a Rumbling Slum. Made a green/red deck that was primarily Kamigawa snakes led by a playset of Sosuke, Son of Seshiro I found across my friends' old cards. Then I got the Aurochs preconstructed deck as my secondary deck, and used my Panglacial Wurm in it, a card that's still in my cube!
 
The first deck I ever got was the original Rakdos pre-con.

And now, my preference is pretty much just Temur-and-subsets-thereof. Screw Orzhov, all my homies hate Orzhov.
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
So I bought this Kavu tribal deck initially, but the real gleam in my eye was this one:

Creatures (23)
Forcemage Advocate
Ironshell Beetle
Phantom Nantuko
Phantom Tiger
Phantom Centaur
Benevolent Bodyguard
Patrol Hound
Phantom Nomad
Hallowed Healer
Battlewise Aven
Blessed Orator
Phantom Flock

Noncreatures (11)
Exoskeletal Armor
Elephant Guide
Seton's Desire
Guided Strike
Strength of Isolation
Spirit Flare
Second Thoughts
Mirari's Wake

Lands (26)
12 Forest
12 Plains
Krosan Verge
Nantuko Monastery

Man phantom creatures that just can't take damage? how do you even beat that? :D
 
Man, these stories are awesome and it makes me really miss these old theme decks.

My first 60-card deck (for some reason the core set decks only had 40) was Dimir Intrigues in ravnica. It had, alongside other mill card like Belltower Sphinx and Psychic Drain also three copies of Vedalken Entrancer. This guy made me fall in love with a glacially slow mill strategy. For quite some time I wouldn't even attack with my creatures, even if it would've been a totally free attack, except when I got my legend, Szadek, Lord of Secrets :D
 
In 5 years some random dude:

“My first set was War of the Spark. Man Bolas was evil. When I heard his voiceline, I was sold on this game. It was back when there was only Standard games on Arena”
"Crazy to think that was 3 Ravnicas ago. I'm so glad Nicol Bolas became a good guy in Return to Fortnitca: Battle Royale II :)"
 
Man, these stories are awesome and it makes me really miss these old theme decks.
I remember when preconstructed decks came out during Tempest block. We picked them up, looked at the power level and decided that this would surely kill Magic…
Actually I might still have that Spike deck somewhere. Does anyone remember Spikes?
 
Back in ~2008 you could find cases of 12 pre-constructed decks from Ravnica on eBay for like, $30-40 USD? So my friends and I bought a few cases and brought them to Scout camp and sold them to kids who got spending money from their parents for the camp shop and such for $10 each, making around $400 in profit across the four of us sales guys and bought booster boxes of Shadowmoor to draft with it. We taught everyone how to play and so the fomo was insane, everyone wanted to get in on it. Since it was at that Scout camp that I had learned how to play just two years earlier, it only seemed right!

You could tell from the prices that, unless they messed up and included Top, no one wanted those precons, but I still loved them a lot, they felt a lot more formative and interesting than the theme boosters possibly could today. EDH precons still have that level of resonance, but they don't come with a flavorful printed guide to the deck these days IIRC, and that was one of my favorite parts. RIP to the $20 commander precons btw, those were a great idea for the few sets they had them.
 
I loved these theme decks during the first few years, before I started to switch to single buying. I had two from 9th, 6 from the og ravnica block, oe from coldsnap, one from time spiral and one from 10th. I didn't care wether the cards were worth something, for me they were.
 
In 5 years some random dude:

“My first set was War of the Spark. Man Bolas was evil. When I heard his voiceline, I was sold on this game. It was back when there was only Standard games on Arena”
In this era, Arena will have been dead for several years. The only format supported by Wizards of the Coast will be paper Showcase Commander, where the only legal cards are ones printed with Showcase Frames. The Cube community will be all but dead, destroyed during the great reserved list wars of 2025. The few survivors will huddle on private discord servers, sharing Cube lists only through Xcel spreadsheets like during the Cube stone age.

However, there is hope. The Balduvian Trading Post forum has finally completed its great work, and is ready to reveal itself to lead what remains of the Cube community in a great war against WOTC executives. The goal is simple: wrest control of Magic from Hasbro shareholders and people who play exclusively commander, free Mark Rosewater from the Oubliette, and crown him emperor of mankind. Who will win? Only time will tell...
 
In amidst all that chaos, Wizards of the Coast announces....

Magic: the Gathering Arena 2.0!!!!

"It's time to (make money and) give the players what they want." -- Mark Rosewater
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
In amidst all that chaos, Wizards of the Coast announces....

Magic: the Gathering Arena 2.0!!!!

"It's time to (make money and) give the players what they want." -- Mark Rosewater
"We regret to inform you that your collection in Arena 1.0 can not be transferred to Arena 2.0. We really tried to make it work, but unfortunately couldn't find a way to do so. As a compensation, every new user in Arena 2.0 can claim 3 packs of our newest set: Bowser's Dungeon."
 
A lot of you know I don't like tokens. Searching through a box of random tokens just to find the couple you need is annoying.

Cast a spell. "Who has the tokens?" "Ok, one sec." "Found a Zombie. Ok, go."

It's not that much extra work, but a normal card is zero extra work.

That leads me to this question: Why should I not cut all my token producers? I looked through my list and there's a lot of nice cards, but I feel like I could replace them with other nice cards that don't make tokens.
 
A lot of you know I don't like tokens. Searching through a box of random tokens just to find the couple you need is annoying.

Cast a spell. "Who has the tokens?" "Ok, one sec." "Found a Zombie. Ok, go."

It's not that much extra work, but a normal card is zero extra work.

That leads me to this question: Why should I not cut all my token producers? I looked through my list and there's a lot of nice cards, but I feel like I could replace them with other nice cards that don't make tokens.
Why don’t you get tokens you can write upon? The ones which you can erase easily afterwards.
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
A lot of you know I don't like tokens. Searching through a box of random tokens just to find the couple you need is annoying.

Cast a spell. "Who has the tokens?" "Ok, one sec." "Found a Zombie. Ok, go."

It's not that much extra work, but a normal card is zero extra work.

That leads me to this question: Why should I not cut all my token producers? I looked through my list and there's a lot of nice cards, but I feel like I could replace them with other nice cards that don't make tokens.
I think you of all people could try the more reasonable test case: cut everything that doesn't produce a 2/2 zombie

Now I've got a weird spread of tokens. I just encourage people to grab the tokens they'll need during deckbuilding, and I play fast enough to help people when they've forgotten one or two
 
Reduction in tokens is something I promote before even considering messiness of the actual play experience. I think overall you will find it beneficial, but do agree with keeping the 2/2 zombies
 
I think you of all people could try the more reasonable test case: cut everything that doesn't produce a 2/2 zombie

Now I've got a weird spread of tokens. I just encourage people to grab the tokens they'll need during deckbuilding, and I play fast enough to help people when they've forgotten one or two
Found the guy who forces mono red
 
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