Opinions on foiled cards
- Do you seek them?
- Do you avoid them?
- Do you tolerate them?
- Do they really bend that bad?
I’m not sure if this is still the case, but it used to be that if you had any foils in your deck and took it to a tournament, you had to either foil the entire deck, or replace all foils with non-foils. This became problematic for cards that were only available as foil, like M19 Nexus of Fate (from what I remember).
Personally, I only play casually anymore. Foils don’t matter to me at all. If a card is foil, then it’s foil. If it isn’t, then it isn’t. I only care about its playability.
Some foils do bend really badly, but I’ve been fortunate enough not to run into that problem yet.
I like foils if I have them, but I don’t really go out of my way to chase them. I double sleeve my commander decks, so most curling isn’t an issue, but some cards out there are really bad. I’ve had them curl immediately upon opening a pack.
If I’m buying a card for a deck, I’ll probably go foil or special art, but it depends on the price. I play casually with friends, so it’s more to show off cool cards with them.
Bending immediately sounds quite extreme…
Special arts are indeed a nice non-curly option for a flashy card. (Until that’s a foil too ^^ )
Yeah, it wasn’t all of them but a few blocks when I played standard did that. Sometime between Khans of Tarkir and an Ixilan block. You could open a pack and before the foil hit the table, it would start curling. Some cards you could put down and watch it curl. It was a really bad time for foils and there has been a lot of improvement.
I really dig alt and special art a lot. I have a gorgeous Obzedat, Ghost Council that was painted on by an artist, I got it at a Vegas Magic con for my Ob deck. I’d probably drop a little more for one of those over a foil if I’m buying singles.
I dislike using them inside my decks because of how often they curl. However for my Commander I will often try to spend the extra money for an extra shiny card since they almost never get shuffled into the deck
However I am a little disappointed how often the foiling is just not that impressive. Coming from playing Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid I do miss their more bombastic foil cards
Avoid when possible. In general, I like their special artwork less than the original. Yes they’re shiney, but somehow less colorful. Also mildly harder to read. And yes, the curling issue.
