4 ms·

You can print any card and paste on top of cheap cards, just to play with friends. Its nice to do this with the duel decks for casual fun. If you do this just t

You can print any card and paste on top of cheap cards, just to play with friends. Its nice to do this with the duel decks for casual fun. If you do this just to play with friends, DMCA never would discover. But of course you can't play tournaments doing this.

sturmeh 10y ago
The cost and effort of printing duel decks is never going to be less than just buying the product.
- gargarplex 10y ago
  Startup opportunity? Let people create their own card game, print their decks and have them mailed.
- lelandbatey 10y ago
  Eh, that's only true if you are cash rich and time poor. A booster box with 36 booster packs costs ~$100. At 15 cards per pack, that's 540 cards per box. The latest set has 249 cards, so a box will probably get you close to 2 of each card. But to be guaranteed to have all the cards you want, you may need to buy a second booster box and do some trading/purchasing of individual cards. Total cost is at minimum ~5¢ per card. But I can also just print 6 cards per page from my black and white laser printer at a cost of up to 8¢ per page, or about 1.3¢ per resulting card (plus cutting them out with scissors). And, this doesn't require an upfront payment of $150+. So no, I would not say the cost of just buying the product is lower.
  - klodolph 10y ago
    It's even worse if you consider rarity. A pack has one slot for rare cards, three slots for uncommon, etc. 1/8 of the time the rare card will be a "mythic rare". The latest set has 53 rares and 15 mythic rares, so the chance of having even one copy of a particular rare card in your box is 1-(1-1/53×7/8)^36 or 45%. For mythic rares the probability is only 1-(1-1/15×1/8)^36 or 26% that you'll even have one copy. Then consider the number of times you'll want a "playset" of a card, which means four copies. The only sane options I can see are: * Play limited formats * Play casual with proxies * Buy individual cards
  - Pinckney 10y ago
    Parent was referring to duel decks, which are a specific product. I agree with them: proxying a $10 deck is generally a waste of your time.
    - sqeaky 10y ago
      I don't think he meant the duel deck product, I think he just meant two decks to duel with.
emidln 10y ago
For testing I use an open-source program called Cockatrice (search google/github for it). It comes with a utility that can scrape the official wizards card db and then can connect to a multiplayer server. It doesn't support rules enforcement (it's a virtual tabletop), but it does work on Windows/Mac/Linux and gets out of your way enough to be excellent at testing with friends (particularly friends who may not live near you). Add in a voice chat client, and it's actually faster than playing with physical cards (shuffling is faster due to the computer doing it).
- duaneb 10y ago
  Yup, cockatrice is hands down the best way to try out a deck or play style for free. It's how I built all of mine before spending a dime!

sturmeh 10y ago

The cost and effort of printing duel decks is never going to be less than just buying the product.

gargarplex 10y ago
Startup opportunity? Let people create their own card game, print their decks and have them mailed.
lelandbatey 10y ago
Eh, that's only true if you are cash rich and time poor. A booster box with 36 booster packs costs ~$100. At 15 cards per pack, that's 540 cards per box. The latest set has 249 cards, so a box will probably get you close to 2 of each card. But to be guaranteed to have all the cards you want, you may need to buy a second booster box and do some trading/purchasing of individual cards. Total cost is at minimum ~5¢ per card. But I can also just print 6 cards per page from my black and white laser printer at a cost of up to 8¢ per page, or about 1.3¢ per resulting card (plus cutting them out with scissors). And, this doesn't require an upfront payment of $150+. So no, I would not say the cost of just buying the product is lower.
- klodolph 10y ago
  It's even worse if you consider rarity. A pack has one slot for rare cards, three slots for uncommon, etc. 1/8 of the time the rare card will be a "mythic rare". The latest set has 53 rares and 15 mythic rares, so the chance of having even one copy of a particular rare card in your box is 1-(1-1/53×7/8)^36 or 45%. For mythic rares the probability is only 1-(1-1/15×1/8)^36 or 26% that you'll even have one copy. Then consider the number of times you'll want a "playset" of a card, which means four copies. The only sane options I can see are: * Play limited formats * Play casual with proxies * Buy individual cards
- Pinckney 10y ago
  Parent was referring to duel decks, which are a specific product. I agree with them: proxying a $10 deck is generally a waste of your time.
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    I don't think he meant the duel deck product, I think he just meant two decks to duel with.

emidln 10y ago

For testing I use an open-source program called Cockatrice (search google/github for it). It comes with a utility that can scrape the official wizards card db and then can connect to a multiplayer server. It doesn't support rules enforcement (it's a virtual tabletop), but it does work on Windows/Mac/Linux and gets out of your way enough to be excellent at testing with friends (particularly friends who may not live near you). Add in a voice chat client, and it's actually faster than playing with physical cards (shuffling is faster due to the computer doing it).

duaneb 10y ago
Yup, cockatrice is hands down the best way to try out a deck or play style for free. It's how I built all of mine before spending a dime!