1. Online play.
2. Play with real cards.
3. Collect sets to completion.
At first I thought I would collect sets to completion by buying packs, that I would play at a local store, and that I would play a little online.
I began to play Magic just as Avacyn Restored was coming out and decided to buy back within the ISD block. I also bought a 2012 deck builder's toolkit that covered the Scars of Mirrodin (SOM) block and M12. I bought fat packs for DKA and AVR but by that time the ISD fat pack was in the $60 range and I decided to opt out of it.
I proceded to buy ISD block packs at target and a booster box of repacks for each of the sets in the ISD block. That left me with a pile of junk: beginners, please beware of re-packs, sealed product is way, way better, and not much more money when it comes down to assembling a really nice deck, which is what we all want to do!
I paid $4 for a pack containing this card. Enough said. (Well, I paid $40 for the fat pack, still, sealed product is the only way to assemble a powerful deck economically).
I completed a couple of sealed online events and as I developed better decks I realized that most of the players I came across had planeswalkers. That's when I figured out that bots sold them for event tickets online. I first bought 2 ISD Garruks, and then pulled an M13 Garruk in a sealed event. That was the beginning of my planeswalker black green deck.
The next step was when I started adding up how many cards I had online for each set and was surprised to find out how many M12 cards I already had online. That's when I began to think of getting to M12 redemption (and I am a few cards away from it).
The plan now is to:
1. Play online and pull enough cards to only need to buy a few more for a redemption Online redemptions allow me to play online and complete the paper set at the same time.
2. Make up cubes with junk cards, nice pulls, and bargain planeswalkers as spice.
