Due to "reasons", MtG cards will be soulbound to you once you open a booster. To build a deck, more boosters must be open by you. In this scenario, will you still play MtG?
Maybe. I've always wanted to have 1 game where me and my friends only obtain cards/figures from boosters and such. Being able to buy singles just takes a lot of the excitement out of it sometimes.
But...I'm not sure magic the gathering would be the game I'd want to do this with. I don't have a ton of money to work with when it comes to this game...so when I plunk down a chunk of cash, I'm glad I can do it and get precisely what I want to build the decks I'm building...instead of buying a bunch of random cards and only hoping to get what I want.
It'd force me to play decks that I might not want to play, simply because I don't pull cards for the kinds of decks I enjoy the most...and that could very easily get me to the point where I'd get sick of this game.
It also opens the opportunity for my friends/opponents who have far more cash than I do, to just go over the top of me and buy their way into decks that would just destroy me. Where as being able to buy singles, I'm able to stay competitive.
So after thinking about it for a few minutes...I'm going to say no. I would probably not enjoy magic if I couldn't buy/trade for the singles I want.
Due to "reasons", MtG cards will be soulbound to you once you open a booster. To build a deck, more boosters must be open by you. In this scenario, will you still play MtG?
What about you Casual Deck? What are your thoughts on this?
Let me relate this to watching a movie:
To play MtG without any secondary value i will evaluate solely on the game experience. Hopefully WotC will focus on player experience too. Imagine to build a soulbound personal cube to draft is not that bad. Maybe a budget of $10 weekly for a draft? After all, it should have similar experience & duration as a movie.
We dont sell our movie ticket stubs after the movie right?
I'd play MTG if we could only buy boosters and booster boxes. The caveat is that WoTC would need to do Modern Masters reprints just like they do normal set prints: 36 boosters, MSRP 90 usd, and have a spread of cards that actually is on par with Modern Masters 1 done on a print run as good as a main set. These last two MM reprint sets were equal parts horrible thanks to various reasons.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Currently, Magic is pay-to-win from the perspective of people on very tight budgets, but the pay cap is relatively low. A couple hundred dollars is the most you can spend on a top-tier Standard deck, with the rate marginally higher for Modern or Legacy, which means that somebody can't simply throw money at the game until they win. This is a good thing.
In a theoretical world where card may only be acquired by boosters, the pay cap gets MUCH higher. Take Jace, Vryn's Prodigy: At $70 a pop, a playset runs you $280. This is a barrier for some players, to be sure. But given mythics being in 1/8 of boosters, Jace being one of 17 mythics in Origins, and 36 boosters being in each booster box, that's just over a 25% chance of Jace per box of origins, or 16 boxes needed on average to get a playset.
Inevitably, people WILL pay that much for a competitive deck, leaving behind anyone with less expendable income. That would be terrible for the game. No, I would not play.
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Formerly Angrypossum over at the now-defunct WotC forums.
This is how Magic is for me. Cards are only available in boosters. I don't pay other people to sort through packs for me and give me specific cards. You play with what you pull. If Wizards wanted it differently they'd have a singles store online.
Depends on the resulting cost of the boosters. If prices remained the exact same...then no, I'd probably be done buying any new cards. But if the cost of boosters tanked as a result then I'd still play.
I wouldn't play if that was the case. I'm more of an EDH/Commander player who decks utilize cards from all sorts of blocks/sets. As such only a handful of cards have any true value to me because I place value on them due to their usefulness and my own strategic preferences. As such it would be a waste of time and money if I'm paying for loads and loads of boosters and I only care about 5-15 cards at most.
Also, I think this would hurt a lot of players and the MtG economy. Many players know what they want and are willing to save up money to get the right things they need to play the game the way they want. Remove that and the game loses it's appeal. If you would be forced to wait save up a crap-ton of money just to buy a lot of boosters just so you even have a chance, not a guarantee, to get what you want/need, it feel like a major wast of money. Also, what happens if you get into MtG and the cards you want are from previous sets that aren't in stores (real world or online) anymore?
This sounds like a magic league we used to do at an old card shop. New set comes out, everyone builds a sealed deck out of 6 packs, add a pack every week, add extra packs for doing well. Keep your pool so no trading with them during the league.
Edit: to answer the question, probably not if I could never aquire cools card I wanted only out of random boosters.
Kinda sounds like you're preaching here. You do realise that Wizards is a corporation, right? That they intend nothing more than to make money off us?
They are not God. They are not benevolent. They produce something that we can enjoy or not, and as long as their revenue stays high, they don't really care if you buy boosters or let SCG open them for you and THEN buy the singles...
From the beginning of Magic, the packaging style of the cards was intended to be part of how the game works, an element of the fun/collectible aspect of it. Players would play with the cards that they were lucky enough to find in their booster packs. Buying singles kills that entire aspect of the game.
I understand that constructing the best deck possible and purchasing singles to physically build it is a legitimate thing as well, but there's no denying that even without cards you open yourself being magically "soulbound" to you, there's a difference between possessing a highly collectible card that you cracked yourself vs. having the same card because you bought it as a single.
Kinda sounds like you're preaching here. You do realise that Wizards is a corporation, right? That they intend nothing more than to make money off us?
They are not God. They are not benevolent. They produce something that we can enjoy or not, and as long as their revenue stays high, they don't really care if you buy boosters or let SCG open them for you and THEN buy the singles...
From the beginning of Magic, the packaging style of the cards was intended to be part of how the game works, an element of the fun/collectible aspect of it. Players would play with the cards that they were lucky enough to find in their booster packs. Buying singles kills that entire aspect of the game.
I understand that constructing the best deck possible and purchasing singles to physically build it is a legitimate thing as well, but there's no denying that even without cards you open yourself being magically "soulbound" to you, there's a difference between possessing a highly collectible card that you cracked yourself vs. having the same card because you bought it as a single.
That's not true. Plenty of people can and do deny that there's any difference at all; cards are entirely fungible to many players. What's true is that you feel that way, and there's nothing wrong with that.
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Ignoring any economic effects of this change, (i.e., pretending that the net cost remains the same) I'd certainly still draft, which is most of what I do anyway. I wouldn't touch a sanctioned constructed format with a ten-foot pole in this hypothetical.
It's hard to say about Commander... I might still want to play to have something to do with my favorite cards from the collection I'd build from drafting. That my decks would be much worse isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, since that would be true for most other players as well. But would it be too frustrating to be unable to build a Commander deck I really, really want to, but would never realistically be able to get the cards for? I'm not sure.
Are they still making Commander precons, duel decks, etc.? If so, I'm probably still playing Commander in addition to draft.
This is the majority of how I play. I play a lot of Limited and feed my EDH decks with the cards opened there, plus some sparse trading. I slowly accumulate wishlists for singles and occasionally buy a chunk, but generally it isn't anything I really need, just older stuff to fill out a theme. I like to have varied Limited formats, plus the occasional pauper or something like that. Basically whatever I can do without interacting with the secondary market.
Due to "reasons", MtG cards will be soulbound to you once you open a booster. To build a deck, more boosters must be open by you. In this scenario, will you still play MtG?
So it's like a permanent Sealed league where you can buy into more packs to give yourself a better chance?
I'm not a fan of Sealed, but I'd probably suck it up.
Kinda sounds like you're preaching here. You do realise that Wizards is a corporation, right? That they intend nothing more than to make money off us?
They are not God. They are not benevolent. They produce something that we can enjoy or not, and as long as their revenue stays high, they don't really care if you buy boosters or let SCG open them for you and THEN buy the singles...
From the beginning of Magic, the packaging style of the cards was intended to be part of how the game works, an element of the fun/collectible aspect of it. Players would play with the cards that they were lucky enough to find in their booster packs. Buying singles kills that entire aspect of the game.
I understand that constructing the best deck possible and purchasing singles to physically build it is a legitimate thing as well, but there's no denying that even without cards you open yourself being magically "soulbound" to you, there's a difference between possessing a highly collectible card that you cracked yourself vs. having the same card because you bought it as a single.
That was a design theory that was abandoned very early on. Based on my knowledge of that time period, they knew stuff like Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall were very strong, but it was expected that card rarity would be a mitigating factor in how powerful decks could get. This was quickly shown to not be the case, and the game has been overhauled since.
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Formerly Angrypossum over at the now-defunct WotC forums.
"If fetch lands are reprinted I really believe they will be in allied colors (aka Onslaught fetches). If the fetch lands are reprinted you better believe that we'll all be fetching up basics. This would lead me to believe that the set after THS may have a reprint as the temples can't be fetched but it's pure speculation." - posted 03/22/2014 proved correct during Khans spoiler season.
"The set releases for fall 2015 (Blood, Sweat and Tears) and fall 2016 (Lock, Stock and Barrel). One or both of those 2 blocks (I'm betting) are going to contain either Fetch reprints or (more likely) Filter reprints. Filter lands still need a reprint. They are getting pretty high up there and it's been longer than ZEN so it makes a little more sense that Filter lands would see print earlier that fetches." - posted 03/22/2014 proved incorrect about filters coming earlier than fetches, still pending on filters in Origins block.
Greenpeace will be up in arms against the massive waste of paper generated by this. They might as well make a money printing machine at WOTC instead and it would probably cost the world less...
If booster packs remained how they currently are (i.e. mostly filled with crap), then not a chance. If booster packs were better than Modern Masters in quality, then possibly, but still probably no. In life I only like to buy and own things I identify with. When I no longer identify with something I sell it, give it away, etc. One of the main reasons I like Magic is the fact I can create a deck with style and flavour I identify with. This would not be possible if I only had access to random cards. If I want random deck building fun, then I play cube. I've only ever pulled one non-basic land card from a booster pack I liked (a foil Sigil Tracer). Aside from that it has all been junk. Buying booster packs is like playing the lottery (i.e. guaranteed to end badly 99.999999999% of the time).
Kinda sounds like you're preaching here. You do realise that Wizards is a corporation, right? That they intend nothing more than to make money off us?
They are not God. They are not benevolent. They produce something that we can enjoy or not, and as long as their revenue stays high, they don't really care if you buy boosters or let SCG open them for you and THEN buy the singles...
Kinda sounds like you're preaching here. You do realise that Wizards is a corporation, right? That they intend nothing more than to make money off us?
They are not God. They are not benevolent. They produce something that we can enjoy or not, and as long as their revenue stays high, they don't really care if you buy boosters or let SCG open them for you and THEN buy the singles...
It's not Wizards, its Hasbro. Hasbro owns it and makes most of the huge decisions to increase their stock. MTG is there biggest money maker right now
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Forget the traders.
Due to "reasons", MtG cards will be soulbound to you once you open a booster. To build a deck, more boosters must be open by you. In this scenario, will you still play MtG?
But...I'm not sure magic the gathering would be the game I'd want to do this with. I don't have a ton of money to work with when it comes to this game...so when I plunk down a chunk of cash, I'm glad I can do it and get precisely what I want to build the decks I'm building...instead of buying a bunch of random cards and only hoping to get what I want.
It'd force me to play decks that I might not want to play, simply because I don't pull cards for the kinds of decks I enjoy the most...and that could very easily get me to the point where I'd get sick of this game.
It also opens the opportunity for my friends/opponents who have far more cash than I do, to just go over the top of me and buy their way into decks that would just destroy me. Where as being able to buy singles, I'm able to stay competitive.
So after thinking about it for a few minutes...I'm going to say no. I would probably not enjoy magic if I couldn't buy/trade for the singles I want.
To play MtG without any secondary value i will evaluate solely on the game experience. Hopefully WotC will focus on player experience too. Imagine to build a soulbound personal cube to draft is not that bad. Maybe a budget of $10 weekly for a draft? After all, it should have similar experience & duration as a movie.
We dont sell our movie ticket stubs after the movie right?
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
In a theoretical world where card may only be acquired by boosters, the pay cap gets MUCH higher. Take Jace, Vryn's Prodigy: At $70 a pop, a playset runs you $280. This is a barrier for some players, to be sure. But given mythics being in 1/8 of boosters, Jace being one of 17 mythics in Origins, and 36 boosters being in each booster box, that's just over a 25% chance of Jace per box of origins, or 16 boxes needed on average to get a playset.
Inevitably, people WILL pay that much for a competitive deck, leaving behind anyone with less expendable income. That would be terrible for the game. No, I would not play.
In order for me to play it, some combination of these three things will have to happen
Boosters will be reduced in price
Rarity will have to be flattened
Old sets will have to continue being in print.
OR
Magic becomes a LCG.
Also, I think this would hurt a lot of players and the MtG economy. Many players know what they want and are willing to save up money to get the right things they need to play the game the way they want. Remove that and the game loses it's appeal. If you would be forced to wait save up a crap-ton of money just to buy a lot of boosters just so you even have a chance, not a guarantee, to get what you want/need, it feel like a major wast of money. Also, what happens if you get into MtG and the cards you want are from previous sets that aren't in stores (real world or online) anymore?
Edit: to answer the question, probably not if I could never aquire cools card I wanted only out of random boosters.
From the beginning of Magic, the packaging style of the cards was intended to be part of how the game works, an element of the fun/collectible aspect of it. Players would play with the cards that they were lucky enough to find in their booster packs. Buying singles kills that entire aspect of the game.
I understand that constructing the best deck possible and purchasing singles to physically build it is a legitimate thing as well, but there's no denying that even without cards you open yourself being magically "soulbound" to you, there's a difference between possessing a highly collectible card that you cracked yourself vs. having the same card because you bought it as a single.
---
Ignoring any economic effects of this change, (i.e., pretending that the net cost remains the same) I'd certainly still draft, which is most of what I do anyway. I wouldn't touch a sanctioned constructed format with a ten-foot pole in this hypothetical.
It's hard to say about Commander... I might still want to play to have something to do with my favorite cards from the collection I'd build from drafting. That my decks would be much worse isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, since that would be true for most other players as well. But would it be too frustrating to be unable to build a Commander deck I really, really want to, but would never realistically be able to get the cards for? I'm not sure.
Are they still making Commander precons, duel decks, etc.? If so, I'm probably still playing Commander in addition to draft.
So it's like a permanent Sealed league where you can buy into more packs to give yourself a better chance?
I'm not a fan of Sealed, but I'd probably suck it up.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
That was a design theory that was abandoned very early on. Based on my knowledge of that time period, they knew stuff like Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall were very strong, but it was expected that card rarity would be a mitigating factor in how powerful decks could get. This was quickly shown to not be the case, and the game has been overhauled since.
"The set releases for fall 2015 (Blood, Sweat and Tears) and fall 2016 (Lock, Stock and Barrel). One or both of those 2 blocks (I'm betting) are going to contain either Fetch reprints or (more likely) Filter reprints. Filter lands still need a reprint. They are getting pretty high up there and it's been longer than ZEN so it makes a little more sense that Filter lands would see print earlier that fetches." - posted 03/22/2014 proved incorrect about filters coming earlier than fetches, still pending on filters in Origins block.
RETIRED - GAME SUCKS
Modern:
UUUMerfolksUUU
RGoblinsR
Ad Nauseam
BR 8 Racks RB
WUB Mill BUW
Legacy:
XOps! All splels! X
What I think of MaRo
Modern: URW Madcap Experiment
Pauper: MonoU Tempo Delver
My EDH Commanders:
Aminatou, The Fateshifter UBW
Azami, Lady of Scrolls U
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed B
Edric, Spymaster of Trest UG
Glissa, the Traitor BG
Arcum Dagsson U
It's not Wizards, its Hasbro. Hasbro owns it and makes most of the huge decisions to increase their stock. MTG is there biggest money maker right now