Hello everyone! I am looking for some advice. I wish to play paper vintage and make the most out of Eternal Weekends (which will by my only weekend of the year traveling for events starting in 2020). This means that I need to purchase cards toward those decks. I play a decent amount of Vintage on MTGO and love the format, but want to make the most and play it in paper.

This leads me to deck choice. I’m thinking about dredge, since bazaars are obviously much cheaper than the rest of the expensive power pieces. Is it reasonable to play dredge in the years coming? And do we think dredge will always be a meta game staple in vintage? My other big fear is purchasing these bazaars and then have dredge be unplayable.

Leads me to last question, purchasing these pieces. Should i purchase these pieces at events from dealers or try to go online (like SCG, CFB, CardKingdom) to get these peices, and what is a realistic price to pay for bazaars in HP condition?

Thanks ahead of time and I hope to see everyone at Eternal weekend 2020!!

I thought Grave Troll was going to be a big hinderence to Dredge but even @Smmenen played it this year at EW. I THINK it is a safe choice.

I have a line on a set of Bazaars but I think it is more a finance question - if you buy the power you also need to buy shops or duals and forces and fetches. Its more a matter of how you feel you can best justifu yourself.

Thank you for the reply! I am fortunate to have a full set of duals/fetches, so the extras aren’t a major concern for me.

The real concern is purchasing the more expensive pieces of power. I go back and forth on what to buy. If i save longer and purchase the moxes/lotus, it will open the opportunity to play more decks. But the bazaars will be cheaer and its for 1 tournament a year.

I’m leaning towards the bazaars because I do enjoy playing dredge, have played it online for a while. I’m so torn!!

I have never had a regret owning bazaars. I bought them to play Dragon and occasionally I’ll still build Dragon. They are in survival and lands. You can play rogue decks like replenish as well. Dredge won’t ever die in Vintage. Mastering the deck is extremely hard but the deck is always viable.

You sure you want to play dredge all day? As part of a vacation?

The question again comes down to money: $4,000 USD for Bazaars, or $18,000 USD for a Set of power? Thankfully Reserved list cards are starting to drop.

The next question, without getting into finances, is what @nedleeds said - do you want to play Dredge, even if it's the worst deck, or do you want to have different options?

Also, you could buy the bazaars now, the power later, and have the option for both, OR for Survival.

Buy a lotus. Then moxen. The next choice is yours. Blue or Shops?? If you play dredge all day, you have found a quick way to trade in your bazaars towards a lotus at the end of it. Dredge is not for everyone. And the stares from your opponent when you have a starting hand of 7 AND a Bazaar is awkward. They will continue to be awkward until you trade the Bazaars towards a lotus.

Tbh, I don’t know if buying RL stuff is good or not. That’s for speculators and such. If you have all the Duals, not all 40 are used in Vintage. Maybe consider trading some of those towards some power. I would rather have a sapphire and Ancestral as my only power playing Jeskai than having 4 Bazaars. But that’s just me. Maybe I am the minority. I hope that you can make the right decision for your situation. Best of luck.

Prices for vintage cards are currently going down, and are likely to continue doing so in the near to mid future, so I would wait until the prices bottom out before buying into the format.
Another factor you might want to consider before taking the plunge is that the paper vintage scene is nowhere near as dynamic as Vintage on MTGO, you'll be lucky if you get to sleeve up paper vintage once a month, depending on where you live.
Are you willing to invest a significant amount of money into a hobby you'll only get to enjoy once or twice a month in small events and only once or twice a year in "high-profile" events?

As far as Dredge, there will always be a Bazaar of Baghdad deck in the format and even if something obsoletes dredge, it will be a better bazaar deck (like dragon was the BoB deck of choice before the dredge mechanic).
No amount of WOTC printing backbone breaking hate has been able to push Dredge completely out of the meta so far (see Ravenous Trap, Leyline, Rest in Peace, Containment Priest, Grafdigger's Cage... etc). Even when it is not the best-positioned deck and is being gunned for, it is still incredibly resilient and has inherent strengths against many archetypes.
It has existed for over 10 years and has been forcing vintage players to pack 6-8 graveyard hate in their sideboards to have a fighting chance ever since.
In fact, it just got a retooling with MH which even led to it getting its first card restricted due to unprecedented metagame shares, so it's about as good as it's ever been right now.
There is also already another competitive bazaar archetype in Survival, so even if dredge becomes horrendous or if you want to play something different you always have that option.

The biggest threat to Bazaar decks is a restriction, and i don't think it's likely since we have several archetypes that use it - unless something really unforeseeable, it's likely better to restrict around it (imp if dredge actually became broken broken and not regular broken, hollow one if either dredge or survival became a problem, etc)

The financial aspect is too personal for us to guess, i think. You gotta analyze and decide if you have the $4K to spend, or if you can spring for $8k and do something else, or if you want to play an unpowered deck and save many thousands.

You can build a vintage dredge deck for only a nominal amount after you own Bazaars. You really want Lotus and Moxes in Survival but it's easy to branch out into that deck next if you play nonblue (easy is a relative term of course, i just mean it's next step up in terms of how many pieces of power). You coulllld play without the fast mana, haha.

Prices are getting to be to their lowest point of the year with holidays, and they're more likely to rebound or spike than to stay depressed. They certainly won't be their prices they were 2 years ago, or 5 years ago. Prices tend to creep up or spike entering spring.

The alternative to buying Bazaars is to pick up Ancestral and Time Walk and play maybe Jeskai Dreadhorde without fast mana? Or also a pyromancer or delver variant, any list that doesn't really lean on fast mana (like shops and oath for example, which i think are more unplayable without the 6 fast mana than Dreadhorde is without 2 or 3 fast mana).

You can also play Bazaars in a fastbond lands variant and rely on the Mox Diamonds, just play a non-prison version so you don't have to get shops.

Re: where to buy! Facebook is your best bet if you don't mind getting a grasp of it. Prices will always be under SCG/CK/CFB/TCG/Ebay. It's scary to buy from strangers but you can use paypal g&s. I buy and sell tons over FB for side income (i sold $9,958 in October, woot woot) and i could help you track down some pieces and check people's references or straight up 3rd party a sale for you to check for counterfeits. I've done it before and i 3rd party international trades frequently for overseas folks when they run out of luck finding US traders to ship to them.

Other than that, events is great so you can have the card in hand and can negotiate. Ebay auctions can sometimes go great. I have 100 saved searches (the max on the app) for high end cards so i see prices all day every day and sometimes people get lucky.

Always start with Lotus.

@nedleeds That is hilarious. Lotus was my last piece of power. I played for almost 10yrs without one. Now that I have had one for more than 10yrs I would never want to play Vintage without one.

@nedleeds said in Buying into paper Vintage:

Always start with Lotus.

Well it sure eases the pain of buying the moxes next, but it's the hardest to purchase up front. There was a beat up Lotus on ebay that just finished at auction for 4200 though, which is the same rough price of a set of Bazaars