Sometimes, being in the thick of the tournament scene make you get blinders to the rest of the world going on around you. So tonight I just got a real eye-opener. This might run a little long, sorry if I rant.
My daughter is 7, and she's really shown an interest in playing games with me. After months of telling her she needed better math skills to play the Pokemon TCG, she progressed enough for me to stab at it. I picked up a cheap two-person set. She picked up on the rules right away (I haven't played it since 2001), and most important, she really enjoyed spending time with me.
I went to my LGS tonight for FNM. I busted my prize packs, and there's a Gideon I didn't need. I traded it in and grabbed a bunch of Pokemon packs for my daughter. Inside the pack was a code. I went home, turned on Pokemon Online, put in the code, she got an online pack to go with her real one. She also got a theme deck, a bunch of rares, and 5 packs to get her started. The game moved flawlessly and it has an attractive GUI.
That one Gideon bought my daughter 4 packs of real cards, 4 packs of Online cards. Plus the 5 packs and the theme deck she got free. Wizards wants me to buy my cards twice, in two secondary markets they don't control. They attract new players through a poorly built Steam game that only sorta-kinda emulates real Magic. Players get there and find the best decks in the room are hundreds of dollars (God forbid they come on Modern night). Your store determines the prize support ranging from only Top 8 to everyone gets a pack, to store credit. Wizards is kind enough to hook you up with 1 foil for Top 4 of an uncommon that may or may not see play in the format it's in. High-demand reprints like Modern Masters are printed in low supply and mixed with a lot of chaff no one ever asked for.
I'm not saying Magic is bad or Wizards is trying to kill the game, nothing like that. I just haven't been to any big-box store lately and not seen/heard of every other CCG in the world putting out tins of in-demand reprints, or finding new ways to add value in the online space. While these games have been trying to claw their way into a crowded market over the years, this is what Wizards gave us:
- Discontinued Magic Player Rewards
- Switched to an MTGO client every beta tester said was not up to snuff
- Started printing low-cost staples at mythic (Voice, Warden, etc.)
- Discontinued Gateway promos/league
- Let Legacy die rather than abolish a foolish promise
- A 3-year trend of watering down the standard pool, making sets that are top-heavy with almost all value in 2-4 mythics
- Released not one, but 2 Modern Masters sets with dramatically reduced availability and a mixed-bag of needed reprints vs. 3/4 chaff
- Let SCG run willy-nilly as the price-setter of the secondary market, driving up pricing through buy-outs and generally harming the ability to attract new people to formats
- Removed mythic Pre-Release foils (finally going back on this...by turning it into a lottery)
I've complained about some of these topics before, but it didn't leave such a bad taste in my mouth until now. Taking a step back made me realize at some point after I started loving Magic, Magic stopped loving me. I have to pay for every little thing I want to do with their game, and the pricing is absurd. I used to get all sorts of rewards and thanks for playing, and 'get psyched for the next set, here's the pre-release foil bomb!' and packs felt worth opening. Now I take 5 prize packs and leave 50 cards on the table for anyone who wants it, and throw the rest in a binder with the other 30-40 cards I've cracked that no one wants.
So, rant over. I have my decks for the format I play in, maybe I'll just start playing for store credit and add to my daughter's new collection.
Yeah, I'm currently on hiatus from magic. MODO, while servicable, is constantly frustrating and you have to commit consecutive hours to it. Modern is a huge money sink, and you're usually stuck with one deck because they cost like $500min each, not to mention the ban list often makes or breaks whatever deck you're playing. Standard is dominated by expensive mythics at the moment, and I'm a bit tired of the bad removal-high threat draft environment . I only really enjoy EDH these days, and it's hard to assemble a playgroup for that sometimes where I live.
Past few sets have been really discouraging too. Commander has some nice new cards but the decks are full of recent standard penny bin chaff. BFZ is somehow worse than Theros. I've just dumped my standard cards and have a bunch of fetches put away in case things get better in the next couple sets. I've upped self-studying, been busying myself with other more constructive hobbies and social commitments and haven't batted an eyelid. I do think this trend continues I might just cash out.
Currently, I have a few Modern decks, a Legacy deck, a couple of EDH decks, and... well, that's it.
And there's very little coming out these days for *any* of them, or for any deck I might otherwise have wanted to build - and Modern Masters (15 inc.) in particular has been, as you say, fail.
I agree with everything you have to say. I will still play the game, *BUT* WotC could be doing so much more to, for example, attract new players, encourage players to try other formats, and yeah, to get my money...
edit: I also play some Limited - however, that watering down you mentioned really turns me off. I like strong sets, and I cannot lie. Also, Magic Online is a joke.
It's kinda depressing. I even checked out the tournament scene for that Pokemon CCG. There were like 6 'for beginners' threads, and every one of them said 'just go buy 4 copies of this theme deck, you'll have a playset of almost every staple card you need'. I was blown away. You mean I'm giving my money to the company that makes the product and not some 3rd party that tells me to buy singles at a rate that goes up based on whether the card saw play last Saturday or not? AND I can use them online, too?
If you listen to most people in the 'Price Discussion' threads on here, you'd hear a model like this would destroy the game and the company would go out of business.
I do get what you mean about well I have the decks I have for the formats I play and I just don't need anything right now.. no need to trade for anything and the prizes... Meh i don't really want them. I like playing and I like winning but I don't need more cards.
I have never played magic online.. I have free video games I could be playing instead.
I am stuck with my modern deck, I am stuck with a stardard deck.. although with less than the maxium number of jaces. There just isn't really an easy way to move between decks.
I play limited and I really enjoy battle for zendikar limited is really quite good.
They need to water down things to prevent power creep it was just that Khans and origins just have too much power then Zendi just gave everyone perfect mana removing that last barrier to playing all the best spells from Khans.
I think things will be fine with rotation in standard.
As for modern masters, not having serum visions pissed me off so much, just print the damn commons and uncommon staples. I get that rares can't be printed too much to prevent pissing off collectors but these commons uncommons are required to make the format work.
Yeah I just completely cut out of standard a little over a week ago. This game is just too expensive and pokemon is a great example of why a card game does not need to be ungodly expensive, it's just too bad the demographics for pokemon and yugioh are not suited for people in their 20s. My lgs owner refuses to do yugioh tournaments even though theres a demand for it because at his first store the kids were just too rowdy, stealing and arguing and getting in fights with each other.
Now I've sold everything but a 100% complete modern deck, a commander deck, and a force of will deck. The money I'm accumulating is startling, all those little purchases, even stuff like commons and uncommons really adds up. I haven't bought a booster pack in years because they're frankly a complete waste of money and wizards knows that, and I'm still saving a ton of money just having a completed eternal format deck.
I agree wizards just doesn't give us any value for playing the game and uses mtgo to double dip into players' purses.
SethX, you nailed it. WOTC has taken a big part of the player base (and their financial limits) for granted.
Personally, I'd love to just keep my modern deck and stop throwing money in the standard money pit, but my lgs can't/won't run sanctioned modern events, only standard. This is mostly because a lot of local players started recently and can't afford to buy into their first modern deck.
Perhaps that's the strategy behind WOTC's crappy reprint MO...keep a certain portion of players stuck in standard so they keep buying booster boxes to pull overpriced mythics. Modern Masters 2 really did disappoint--I busted like 3 packs at $10/each and got basically no value.
I was actually a bit of an apologist for WOTC until this lastest set, but they really annoyed me:
- Almost all of the constructed playability concentrated in a couple of mythics that are build-around 4-ofs.
- Expedition lottery...finally they put something people really would like in the BFZ packs, but actually found a way to make them harder to get than the chase mythics in the set. Would it have been so horrible to print them as foil rares or whatever to make a few show up every booster box? They would still be worth a lot and a joy to pull, but at least they'd be attainable. In fact, if you had a reasonable chance at pulling a few, they'd likely sell MORE boxes.
I agree with the OP. As a customer I'm feeling increasingly mistreated. The expeditions are a recent, horrible example of this. BFZ is basically expedition lottery or, in other words: You have to hope to open a card that is NOT actually in the BFZ set if you want to have a chance of pulling something decent.
Heh, I think this is all extremely funny (in a very sad way). I live in Brazil, and Magic here is much more expensive than it is in the US, but I will get there, first let me tell you a story.
The first TCG I played was, in fact, Magic, back in 2002, when Onslaught was coming out. At that time I barely had any money to buy cards, and boosters were supposedly cheap (they were R$ 9,00). "R$" is the brazilian currency, named "reais". Back then, my family couldn't afford to buy the expensive boosters as some of my friends' families, so I always played casual kitchen table magic with the worst deck of my group, but I didn't even complain, I was somewhat happy because I enjoyed the idea of the game and I rejoiced everytime I openened a rare that I considered good. I still remember the feeling when I openened a Raven Guild Master. I was looking at the card barely believing it (TEN CARD FROM THE TOP? AND HE COSTS ONLY 3?). My magic evaluation skills weren't top notch at the time, if it wasn't clear. But anyway, my friends who played the game stopped and so did I. I want to point out that, at the time, one of the most expensive cards that I remember was Oblivion Stone, from Mirrodin. It costed something around R$ 30,00 if I recall correctly. Needless to say I found that price completely and utterly absurd (three whole boosters? No card is worth that much).
Well, fast-forward some years and I was playing Pokemon TCG at my school. I had found another card game that I loved, based on a universe that I also loved at the time. I played a lot of pokemon and, differently from Magic, I tried to make a good pokemon deck. Now, two things are important here: I never played pokemon at competitive level, so I tried to build a 'good casual deck', if there is such a thing. Pokemon boosters were more expensive than Magic ones, and I missed how 'cheap' Magic used to be (Pokemon boosters were something around R$ 12,00). Alright, the fever of playing pokemon passed and I too abandoned that card game. Note that I had a deck that I was particularly happy with (it was a green deck with the theme of giving my opponent's pokemon special conditions, and the heart of the deck was Crobat), and the deck wasn't expensive too build. Not at all actually, I just bought a deck, traded some cards with my friends and bought some boosters. Alright, fast-forward.
I saw a little bit of Magic back in Lorwyn and even bought a merfolk deck to play with my friends, but honestly the game was not as appealing as it used to be. Alright, after some time a friend of mine that I had for a while shows up with a Magic deck to play with my old friends, and suddenly the fever was back. I had a lot of technical misconceptions at the time ('slivers are the strongest deck', 'mill is a viable strategy', etc.). And this friend helped me out giving me some tips. The desire to play was fleeting still, and I didn't care much until visiting the US in 2011 with this friend of mine and we both finding a Magic Store back in California. The first thing I was surprised is how cheap Magic was in the US (yes, you complain about prices in there? Wait until the end of my story). 3 and half dolars for a booster pack? That is ridiculously cheap, for my brazilian standards. It was mirrodin besieged time and we bought decks and played with each other. Well, when we came back I wasn't in the mood to keep playing, but he was invested and so he presented me to the previous Magic collection, before Scars, and that was Innistrad. I got hyped, I loved Innistrad, and with this friend of mine I started watching tournaments and getting 'seriously' invested in the game, I even built a werewolf deck (one of my last casual decks, that I will always keep close to my heart).
Finally, the Commander fever came. And let me tell you, for someone that played this game in multiple points in his life I can safely admit that Commander was the best thing that happened to this game. It is a mix of casual, competitive and eternal magic that I felt the game lacked for a long the time. I am 100% sure that if I didn't find Commander, I would have abandoned the game again. "Why?" you ask. Simple: MAGIC IS TOO GODDAMN EXPENSIVE. When I had my werewolf deck I couldn't afford having the best werewolf card, huntmaster of the fells, because every single copy was R$50,00 (for someone that found R$30,00 for an oblivion stone absurd, imagine R$50,00 for a huntmaster). Slowly, as I played more and more commander, I started to realize how absurdly expensive this game was, and now, in the current standard, it is even more so. Jace, vryn's prodigy is 80 bucks in the US? Cute. Here is R$220,00. Do you have any idea how much money that is? You could do the monthly shopping fo your house with this money, especially if you live alone. Commander staples are expensive as well. Up until today most of my decks are all monocolored. One of the reasons for that is that I can't afford fecthlands + old duals. A tundra is R$600,00 at best, probably it will be something around R$700,00. And commander is a singleton format! But I simply can't afford, so when I play Duel Commander (also known as french, the competitive version of commander where you play tournaments, very popular here in Brazil) I have to play with monocolored decks without fetches.
Anyway, the net result is that the barrier to enter magic is TOO DAMN HIGH. And no, it is not a matter of complexity as Mark Rosewater usually likes to say, it is a matter of MONEY. How can you convince someone to join a game saying: hey, you could play this game, there is a nice competitive scene, it will only cost you first more than R$ 2000,00 to have a good deck (price of a very decent computer). Who is up to that? Sure, you can 'start' with a budget deck, you can never leave casual, but even the booster packs are expensive. I bull***** you not, a BFZ box is currently sitting at R$ 450,00 and that is because of a BLACK FRIDAY promotion. Before that it was up to R$600,00. If even the cheapest way to get in touch with the game is expensive (a booster is currently costing almost R$15,00), people will never join it. Magic already is an upper middle class game here in Brazil (unless you are a dealer and have a lot of expensive cards because you live of Magic, not because you have tons of money). I predict it will become even more so if the game keeps growing with so little reprints.
The irony that makes this story so funny? Pokemon is now much cheaper than MTG. Some years back then they found a national distributor and now a booster pack costs R$5,40. Of course, the pack has less cards, but you can still open that nice rare or buy a significative number of packs without being stripped naked. And also, as OP said, the decks actually have good cards and are very affordable (R$26,00). Very different from Magic Clash Packs, that costed something around R$120,00 here. Anyway, disappoiting, very disappoiting. Magic is, in my opinion, the best card game when it comes to rules and how to play it. But the price, oh the price. Completely absurd.
Would you like to read Commander stories? Check my latest stories, coming from Lorwyn and Innistrad: Ghoulcaller Gisa and Doran, The Siege Tower! If you like my writing, ask me to write something for your commander as well!
Dang, sir. I knew Wizards did a horrible job with some of their international markets, but I had no idea it was that bad. Thanks for sharing that perspective.
I have some nice cards but I play on a bit of a budget since my income isn't all that great. Magic is designed such that you never get ahead, they want to keep you on a treadmill of constantly buying standard packs. The normal player can never build a competitive deck if they play the game as designed by Wizards and Standard itself is a very bad thing to play. About two years ago I moved to Modern as my primary format and stopped buying packs (the last packs I bought were Theros). Instead I focused on Modern singles. That allowed me to build several good decks and now I have about 15 Modern decks I can pick from each week after acquiring a manabase and staples like Snap/Cryptic/Hierarch.
Since then I've actually started setting my sights on Legacy. I've had a Legacy Burn deck for about 6 years now but it's only been in the past year I was able to build something else. Now I have 2 "good" Legacy decks completely non proxy (Nic Fit, Burn) and using the best cards. I have more Modern decks than I can list. And the price of this? I can't really play Standard anymore. When you consider that I can instead play Legacy/Modern events every week rather than Standard that's not much of a drawback.
No one should focus on Standard. It's expensive, the format is miserable, and there's no long term value. If you're going to be dumping money into a collectible game, you should always be building up to something bigger so that your position improves over time. If you play Standard that's just not going to be true. Come rotation you're going to lose 90% of everything you spend.
yeah standard is just a money pit when you can buy 5 booster boxes and still not have enough playsets for a strong competitive deck. those decks start at about $600 and if you need to fine-tune weekly for your local meta, think its more like 800.
you have to have a fun reason to play magic. tournaments are fun but the cost in any format is prohibitive.
EDH is probably the best way to have a long term good time with mtg. kitchen table magic too. FNM (here) is not cheap either if you want to win half your games.
I remember Hatred and suicide black costing under 300. many staple uncommon and commons. Urza block decks also were easy to build cheaply just from a couple booster boxes and they could hang with T1 decks.
But I'm not hear to cry about the cost.
wizards needs to enhance the player experience. little perks, that are cheap like artwork, promo cards instead of mythic rarity at that slot. work with LGS to provide great prizes at no cost to the lgs.
also they should recognize that legacy are the hardcore players with the largest collections, the people that are loyal to the game since forever. alienate them and watch the the slow demise of the game
I sold out recently except 5 pauper decks for casual pick-up play. This game is cool, and I really do enjoy playing, but the financial demands of "competitive play" are just silly.
When I think about non-MtG-playing friends hearing how much money I had tied up in this game, I still feel like a giant sucker, and that was even without buying into Tier 1 decks or Eternal formats.
And when I think about how bad MtG online is from everything I've seen, I can't fathom sinking money into that.
Hang on, Pokemon Online lets matches your physical collection? I always assumed that was simply impossible to make work for a TCG...
MTGO is pretty awful, which has to be a blow to WotC's bottom line. It is demoralizing to see them simply not care enough to move it into the modern era. I mean, I'm a frequent player of the paper game and would certainly enjoy playing online if it was more attractive, but it simply isn't. Instead, I use Cockatrice.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Formerly Angrypossum over at the now-defunct WotC forums.
So much of what I see when people complain is, I suspect, a result of the nature of consumers. I think that number of 18-24 year olds that really care about the game of Magic is vastly larger than the proportionally equal group of players of the same age who care about Pokemon (at least in the U.S.), and I don't think that is simply a result of the more "childish" art of Pokemon. People may not always be conscious of it but most people care more about acquiring things that are exclusive and may have some perceived value to others. WotC is simply responding to that. LCGs, for example, can't hold a candle to the number of players that play Magic, and chasing the next fun thing is part of that. Wizards believes that cards having some exchange value is good for the game.
Azadan mentions that magic is designed such that you never get ahead, but most luxury products are. No company who sells things to you that you don't need wants you to ever feel like you've bought enough, because if you do you stop buying. Some ideal is always just out of reach.
Whether I am right or not about the consumer psychology, the fact of the matter is that if this game was not delivering enough value to those who play it then those players would not keep spending money on it. Gideon would not be a $40 card (or whatever it is) if there were not lots of people buying them for that price every day. The person that says magic is getting too expensive and actually behaves that way is the vast minority of players. Sure, there are lots of people that complain, but a good portion of them are in fact lying to themselves when they do because they turn around and buy a $160 playset of Gideon, thus proving that the card is indeed that valuable to them. I don't, because it is not worth that much to me, but I did acquire one of my JVP at the equivalent of $45 because finishing my playset so I could play them was worth that much to me (it is also my limit for a single card).
If MTG does not give you the entertainment value that is equal to or greater than the amount of money that you put into it, then stop playing and stop buying. If you represent the majority then enough people will do so such that wizards will feel it and the game will change. Their shareholders will demand it. Prove yourself right, because millions of people prove wizards right every day. Why shouldn't they keep doing what they know people want?
Heh, I think this is all extremely funny (in a very sad way). I live in Brazil, and Magic here is much more expensive than it is in the US, but I will get there, first let me tell you a story.
The first TCG I played was, in fact, Magic, back in 2002, when Onslaught was coming out. At that time I barely had any money to buy cards, and boosters were supposedly cheap (they were R$ 9,00). "R$" is the brazilian currency, named "reais". Back then, my family couldn't afford to buy the expensive boosters as some of my friends' families, so I always played casual kitchen table magic with the worst deck of my group, but I didn't even complain, I was somewhat happy because I enjoyed the idea of the game and I rejoiced everytime I openened a rare that I considered good. I still remember the feeling when I openened a Raven Guild Master. I was looking at the card barely believing it (TEN CARD FROM THE TOP? AND HE COSTS ONLY 3?). My magic evaluation skills weren't top notch at the time, if it wasn't clear. But anyway, my friends who played the game stopped and so did I. I want to point out that, at the time, one of the most expensive cards that I remember was Oblivion Stone, from Mirrodin. It costed something around R$ 30,00 if I recall correctly. Needless to say I found that price completely and utterly absurd (three whole boosters? No card is worth that much).
Well, fast-forward some years and I was playing Pokemon TCG at my school. I had found another card game that I loved, based on a universe that I also loved at the time. I played a lot of pokemon and, differently from Magic, I tried to make a good pokemon deck. Now, two things are important here: I never played pokemon at competitive level, so I tried to build a 'good casual deck', if there is such a thing. Pokemon boosters were more expensive than Magic ones, and I missed how 'cheap' Magic used to be (Pokemon boosters were something around R$ 12,00). Alright, the fever of playing pokemon passed and I too abandoned that card game. Note that I had a deck that I was particularly happy with (it was a green deck with the theme of giving my opponent's pokemon special conditions, and the heart of the deck was Crobat), and the deck wasn't expensive too build. Not at all actually, I just bought a deck, traded some cards with my friends and bought some boosters. Alright, fast-forward.
I saw a little bit of Magic back in Lorwyn and even bought a merfolk deck to play with my friends, but honestly the game was not as appealing as it used to be. Alright, after some time a friend of mine that I had for a while shows up with a Magic deck to play with my old friends, and suddenly the fever was back. I had a lot of technical misconceptions at the time ('slivers are the strongest deck', 'mill is a viable strategy', etc.). And this friend helped me out giving me some tips. The desire to play was fleeting still, and I didn't care much until visiting the US in 2011 with this friend of mine and we both finding a Magic Store back in California. The first thing I was surprised is how cheap Magic was in the US (yes, you complain about prices in there? Wait until the end of my story). 3 and half dolars for a booster pack? That is ridiculously cheap, for my brazilian standards. It was mirrodin besieged time and we bought decks and played with each other. Well, when we came back I wasn't in the mood to keep playing, but he was invested and so he presented me to the previous Magic collection, before Scars, and that was Innistrad. I got hyped, I loved Innistrad, and with this friend of mine I started watching tournaments and getting 'seriously' invested in the game, I even built a werewolf deck (one of my last casual decks, that I will always keep close to my heart).
Finally, the Commander fever came. And let me tell you, for someone that played this game in multiple points in his life I can safely admit that Commander was the best thing that happened to this game. It is a mix of casual, competitive and eternal magic that I felt the game lacked for a long the time. I am 100% sure that if I didn't find Commander, I would have abandoned the game again. "Why?" you ask. Simple: MAGIC IS TOO GODDAMN EXPENSIVE. When I had my werewolf deck I couldn't afford having the best werewolf card, huntmaster of the fells, because every single copy was R$50,00 (for someone that found R$30,00 for an oblivion stone absurd, imagine R$50,00 for a huntmaster). Slowly, as I played more and more commander, I started to realize how absurdly expensive this game was, and now, in the current standard, it is even more so. Jace, vryn's prodigy is 80 bucks in the US? Cute. Here is R$220,00. Do you have any idea how much money that is? You could do the monthly shopping fo your house with this money, especially if you live alone. Commander staples are expensive as well. Up until today most of my decks are all monocolored. One of the reasons for that is that I can't afford fecthlands + old duals. A tundra is R$600,00 at best, probably it will be something around R$700,00. And commander is a singleton format! But I simply can't afford, so when I play Duel Commander (also known as french, the competitive version of commander where you play tournaments, very popular here in Brazil) I have to play with monocolored decks without fetches.
Anyway, the net result is that the barrier to enter magic is TOO DAMN HIGH. And no, it is not a matter of complexity as Mark Rosewater usually likes to say, it is a matter of MONEY. How can you convince someone to join a game saying: hey, you could play this game, there is a nice competitive scene, it will only cost you first more than R$ 2000,00 to have a good deck (price of a very decent computer). Who is up to that? Sure, you can 'start' with a budget deck, you can never leave casual, but even the booster packs are expensive. I bull***** you not, a BFZ box is currently sitting at R$ 450,00 and that is because of a BLACK FRIDAY promotion. Before that it was up to R$600,00. If even the cheapest way to get in touch with the game is expensive (a booster is currently costing almost R$15,00), people will never join it. Magic already is an upper middle class game here in Brazil (unless you are a dealer and have a lot of expensive cards because you live of Magic, not because you have tons of money). I predict it will become even more so if the game keeps growing with so little reprints.
The irony that makes this story so funny? Pokemon is now much cheaper than MTG. Some years back then they found a national distributor and now a booster pack costs R$5,40. Of course, the pack has less cards, but you can still open that nice rare or buy a significative number of packs without being stripped naked. And also, as OP said, the decks actually have good cards and are very affordable (R$26,00). Very different from Magic Clash Packs, that costed something around R$120,00 here. Anyway, disappoiting, very disappoiting. Magic is, in my opinion, the best card game when it comes to rules and how to play it. But the price, oh the price. Completely absurd.
You can't blame Wizards for the ridiculous import tax in Brazil though...
I get it, magic is expensive. I live in Sweden and a booster costs ~34-35 SEK, that's about R 15 or 3,8 USD.
Also, you don't need that Tundra to play a two color deck, you only really "need" ABUR duals if you're running 3+ colors.
Fun fact, the cheapest NM Tundra I could find in Sweden was 1400SEK=R 616=160usd, which is actually cheaper than what they go for in the great ol' US of A. If I were willing to buy from anywhere in Europe I could find a Tundra in near mint condition for 125eur=509R though, that's roughly 60usd less than the free US market due to what I like to call the SCG/CFB tax on legacy staples. So sealed product may be more expensive than in the states, but we get discounts on the third market, so don't just go whining about how bad you have it since you don't live in the US. If a piece of cardboard is worth the price however, well that's up to you and please, vote with your wallet. WotC won't change anything if you keep buying from then and only complain on forums.
Side note: I recently sold out of legacy, keeping only 1x of the duals I had for French and multiplayer EDH. (and kept all my fetches)
EDIT: Forgot about the booster boxes. In Sweden they cost about 900-1000 sek for the first few months, after that they occasionally go for 800 of it was a set that didn't sell too well (i.e. Born of the Gods).
900sek=102usd=396real
Dang, sir. I knew Wizards did a horrible job with some of their international markets, but I had no idea it was that bad. Thanks for sharing that perspective.
That's not on wizards though, it's the import taxes that more or less get added directly on top of the MSRP. "Better to let the customer take the hit than us"
A little background on me, for it's worth: I used to play Pokemon: TCG competitively. I was number 7 in the world at one point in the old DCI rankings when Wizards had the publishing rights. I tried playing Magic back then, but all the 'cool' 16-20 year olds wouldn't teach me, and so when Pokemon became boring as I reached my tweens, I ended up leaving TCG's.
I've been playing Magic since RTR block, and it was easier to get back into it. I had some competitive highs (IQ top 8's, PPTQ wins, etc), and Game Day wins, and just the usual, 'getting there' feelings. Not only were people friendlier this time around, but I also have a steady income (as opposed to when I was 12), although it took several sets before I decided to buy-into a top tier deck.
With the introduction of a rarity-value heavy set (BFZ) and the cutting down of local, mid-tier tournaments (anything from IQ's, to PTQ's/PPTQ's, and even the Open Series and their side events), it's hard to really want to play competitively (I understand I'm bundling in SCG with Wizards, but let's be honest- SCG's decisions are all guided by whatever WOTC wants of them).
I feel that Khans was such a great block because almost any deck was playable, and the cost efficiency was on your side. It was also an easy way to get into modern. Magic, however, is now at its most expensive point in recent history.
If you're prized out, however, not only does the competitive-yearnings go out, but the overall interest in the game. When I was climbing my way up the DCI chart for Pokemon, I was buying all of my cards through winnings (boosters). For Magic, that's less feasible, and has become even less feasible now.
I believe that the key to keeping the consumer base happy will always be prize-outs. Other competitive games ask very little when it comes to 'buying-in' and their prize-outs and celebrity status tend to be greater. WOTC, on the other hand, has made an already niche game very elitist to a privileged few at a crucial time when a free to play game (Hearthstone) is becoming all the rage.
What's the long-term hope here? It seems like WOTC is admitting defeat through their stabilization mentality: let's get the most money we can now before Hearthstone bankrupts us. I know that's hyperbolic, but isn't it just a matter of time that competitive players will choose to go with a more profitable route? (I understand that there's the casual fanbase, but does the casual fanbase care about owning the rarer cards either? Not often- you don't see them shelling out $500 for a playset of Goyfs)
I'd argue that the keys to continued growth are powered-up sets and accessibility to the game (including more mid-tier tournaments, the kind of tournaments available to individuals wanting to travel for Grand Prixs but not quite there yet).
You can't blame Wizards for the ridiculous import tax in Brazil though...
Some of the things you said are true. That said, let's clarify some things:
- I was complaning about the price of Magic cards in general and the effect they have in bringing people to the game. It is worse here in Brazil than it is in the US, but it would be true for any part of the world, and that is a mistake of Wizards. While some people might say 'players control the market', that is not actually true. Some players are willing to pay a hefty price to pay the game, because they can, yes. But a lot more potential players don't join the game because the prices are abusive. If the prices were pushed down with, say, meaningful reprints, then there could be a way for more people to join the game and for it to thrive.
- The booster price is actually more or less 'fair' when you make the conversion: MSRP 3,99 x 3,8 ~ 15 reais, so it is not a matter of importation tax. That is not the point. The point is that 15 reais here in Brazil is worth more than 4 dollars in the USA. That is because imported things here are usually expensive, salaries in general aren't that great, people can't afford to pay 15 reais in a booster as someone can afford to pay 4 dollars in one. That is where the difference exists. And while Wizards isn't guilty for the current crisis in brazilian economy that drove the price of the dolar up (and of things like magic cards as consequence), Wizards is guilty of not making meaningful, accessible reprints for everyone to play. A FNM card that would be actually meaningful for the game, good playables that are not only on mythic slots, etc. That Wizards can control. That would reduce the price of cards in the US and here. That is my point.
- I'm not whinning, I was telling my story and agreeing with OP. I mostly buy singles for my commander decks, and usually with a good break between them. Once in a year I indulge myself in buying one booster box (it didn't happen this year) and play one pre-release event. That is the best that I can afford without feeling robbed, and I only buy boxes from sets that I like, and only play prereleases from sets I like. And sorry, but if you want to play competitive french EDH you will need expensive cards such as fetchlands and good duals. Even if you are not playing ABUR duals, the fetchlands alone are pretty expensive, and that only when it comes to bi-colored decks. If you want to play competitive tri-colored then you will need ABUR duals on top of the fetch lands. Hence, I play mono-colored, but I'm really not unhappy about it, I like my mono-colored decks.
Would you like to read Commander stories? Check my latest stories, coming from Lorwyn and Innistrad: Ghoulcaller Gisa and Doran, The Siege Tower! If you like my writing, ask me to write something for your commander as well!
So...quit playing Magic and go play Pokemon? Vote with your wallet?
These kind of people always stink to me like they actually want the game to die.
Anyway onto constructive comments.
Regarding the international standing on the game, yes Brazil is absolutely bananas with their taxes, but it's not only taxes and some of the problem actually IS WotC.
In Mexico there are two distributors, one of them is a store that doesn't sell to the stores they don't get along with. The other plays the monopoly game, since it's competition isn't even trying to compete, and undercuts the allocation so that stores have to buy the remaining product from it's sub-distributors at an increased price leaving us with $4.50 boosters and $110 boxes.
It's not much more expensive, but it gets worse: Special product like Duel Decks, Clack Packs, Commander and Modern Masters is a single-time, single-allocation deal unless the LGS in question has unofficial distributors which gotta be shady about if because most American stores refuse to ship sealed product to Mexico. And this all ends with product being severely overpriced and singles being impossible to get, hell, There's gotta be less Toxic Deluges in all of Mexico than there are in a single city in the USA.
As if that wasn't bad enough, most local stores sell at SCG prices because that's the only way they can make profit with their mediocre stock.
Two friends on the business have contacted WotC about distribution and been made to chase their tails for months to ultimately be told to ask the large distrubutor for sub-distribution. A local boutique franchise has also contacted Hasbro for MtG allocation and been denied. Wal-Mart Mexico doesn't sell MtG and neither do local Hasbro distributors.
It's almost like they don't want us to play the game.
On the topic of how this has personally affected me, I'm going through some magic-depression syndrome of sorts.
I've been playing for 16 years, almost half as long as I've been alive. This is MY hobby, the thing I like doing most with my free time and I have never felt happy playing standard despite how much I loved Odyssey-Mirrodin, Ravnica-Shadowmoor and Innistrad-Gatecrash. Ultimatedly it doesn't matter if you made an awesome rogue deck you're proud of, or are the cream of the crop playing the current enviroment's Tier 1 deck. It's gone in a couple months and nobody wants to play you using that deck anymore.
Legacy has always been my true love, but it's a very barren format, specially outside of the US/Western-Europe. The biggest Legacy tournament there's ever been in my city was 52 people, and it keeps getting harder to run even small friendly events because stores don't care. Now SCG is jumping ship on the format and it's like stores have been given permission to oficially tell us to **** off forever.
Then there's Modern and for the past two years I've had a lot of fun actually playing a deck to the point of mastery and competing at high-level, high-power magick with lots of people who are mid-way between the lifeless, funless competitiveness of standard players and the "I'm too old to sit here for 8 hours and not try to have the most fun I can" of Legacy guys. Played a lot of tournaments, won hordes of prizes and pretty much loved it. Then what seems now like an over-extended season designed to sell backlogged Tarmogoyfs ended and I have to wait at least a year to play again because there is absolutely zero incentive for stores to run Modern events instead of the format that sells overprized expedition-lottery tickets. Modern players don't absolutely need $40 Gideons or $80 Jaces either and these are the only pull most stores have as prize bait thanks to our wonderful distribution.
Right now I'm selling all the stuff I accumulated for future Modern decks and turning it into EDH staples. It's rekindled my love for what truly is the best casual magic experience you can have. But it's also made me question if spending near $2500 in two Modern decks to only be able to play for 3 motnhs and then be forcefully swept under the rug as if LGS' supporting anything other than standard is a shameful obligation, was actually worth it.
I was kinda gearing up to argue against you for comparing a extremely small, casual example of Pokemon against the entirety of Magic, but to be honest I don't have as much fight in me as I thought. I gotta agree, WotC has been a bit terrible lately.
I'm an avid collector of the game. Playing since Masques Block, I have every expansion since Arabian Nights (Beta's kind-of a long-term project...) and every promo - up to a point. A few years ago, I dropped out of competitive Magic to focus on collecting, and played Commander and draft exclusively. I'm a completionist - I want one copy of everything.
Then Force of Will hit. WotC actively printed a hyper-rare, hyper desirable card that can't be had for less than $600. Power 9 is one thing; this was a brand-new, REPRINT card that goes for AAA pricing, well beyond what I could justify. It was soon followed by Elesh Norn. Since then, Judge promos have started out at around $100 when it used to be $30 and few stray much lower. After much agonising, I decided to not go for Judge promos. Better to have none than a few with loads of gaps I could never fill.
Then Modern Masters hit. MM1 wasn't too bad, but MM2 values were so woefully skewed towards high-value mythics that, again, I couldn't justify third copies of 'Goyf, Bob when their prices weren't being affected at all. So I skipped MM2 and, for good measure, broke up my part-complete MM1. That's fine, they were reprint sets, even though I had every core set I convinced myself my collection could survive.
Then Khans hit. Forty prerelease promos. Alt-art precon foils. I dropped out of collecting promos entirely.
Then Zendikar. Not only was EVERY rare and mythic available as a promo (and as an EDH player, bling is important to me), making collecting the regular set kinda pathetic, but the Expedition cards straddle the line between actual set and promo. And those prices are beyond mentioning.
As it stands WotC have killed my interest in collecting their game by making it nightmarishly difficult, through the sheer number of promos, the engineered prices of the higher-end ones, and the ineffective reprinting of high-demand old cards. I've capped it at Khans, the final old-style block.
Wow, dude. I could have written your post. I'm a psychotic completionist with a special fancy for promos. I feel your pain, man. I opted out of Judge Foils for the same reasons, then Khans broke my heart, and Zendikar can get bent. I still love my FNM cards and MPR's, Gateway, older prereleases and launch cards, so I'm refocusing myself on filling in those missing holes.
But yeah, I thought I'd be alone in complaining about it, which is why I didn't mention it. I'm actually really annoyed by their new stance on promos. There's no alternate artwork, they're literally stamping a regular foil with a date for every rare in the set? Screw that. Now there's even less desire to play in store events like prereleases and launch weekend. At least I have Game Day, for now...
I didn't even bother with promos after Khans because, yeah, there's notthing promo about the same card, same art, just foil and with a date stamp for $20 more.
No dude, just no.
I got Ulamog in my pre-release pool, sold it as soon as it ended for a ridiculous $80. Now it's half that at most and why wouldn't it be? There's literally notthing special or unique about it unlike the pre-release Emrakul or the GP Griselbrand which may be cheaper than the regular foil, but at least are attractive and unique enough to make you want to have BOTH the foil and the promo.
A date stamp? Meh.
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My daughter is 7, and she's really shown an interest in playing games with me. After months of telling her she needed better math skills to play the Pokemon TCG, she progressed enough for me to stab at it. I picked up a cheap two-person set. She picked up on the rules right away (I haven't played it since 2001), and most important, she really enjoyed spending time with me.
I went to my LGS tonight for FNM. I busted my prize packs, and there's a Gideon I didn't need. I traded it in and grabbed a bunch of Pokemon packs for my daughter. Inside the pack was a code. I went home, turned on Pokemon Online, put in the code, she got an online pack to go with her real one. She also got a theme deck, a bunch of rares, and 5 packs to get her started. The game moved flawlessly and it has an attractive GUI.
That one Gideon bought my daughter 4 packs of real cards, 4 packs of Online cards. Plus the 5 packs and the theme deck she got free. Wizards wants me to buy my cards twice, in two secondary markets they don't control. They attract new players through a poorly built Steam game that only sorta-kinda emulates real Magic. Players get there and find the best decks in the room are hundreds of dollars (God forbid they come on Modern night). Your store determines the prize support ranging from only Top 8 to everyone gets a pack, to store credit. Wizards is kind enough to hook you up with 1 foil for Top 4 of an uncommon that may or may not see play in the format it's in. High-demand reprints like Modern Masters are printed in low supply and mixed with a lot of chaff no one ever asked for.
I'm not saying Magic is bad or Wizards is trying to kill the game, nothing like that. I just haven't been to any big-box store lately and not seen/heard of every other CCG in the world putting out tins of in-demand reprints, or finding new ways to add value in the online space. While these games have been trying to claw their way into a crowded market over the years, this is what Wizards gave us:
- Discontinued Magic Player Rewards
- Switched to an MTGO client every beta tester said was not up to snuff
- Started printing low-cost staples at mythic (Voice, Warden, etc.)
- Discontinued Gateway promos/league
- Let Legacy die rather than abolish a foolish promise
- A 3-year trend of watering down the standard pool, making sets that are top-heavy with almost all value in 2-4 mythics
- Released not one, but 2 Modern Masters sets with dramatically reduced availability and a mixed-bag of needed reprints vs. 3/4 chaff
- Let SCG run willy-nilly as the price-setter of the secondary market, driving up pricing through buy-outs and generally harming the ability to attract new people to formats
- Removed mythic Pre-Release foils (finally going back on this...by turning it into a lottery)
I've complained about some of these topics before, but it didn't leave such a bad taste in my mouth until now. Taking a step back made me realize at some point after I started loving Magic, Magic stopped loving me. I have to pay for every little thing I want to do with their game, and the pricing is absurd. I used to get all sorts of rewards and thanks for playing, and 'get psyched for the next set, here's the pre-release foil bomb!' and packs felt worth opening. Now I take 5 prize packs and leave 50 cards on the table for anyone who wants it, and throw the rest in a binder with the other 30-40 cards I've cracked that no one wants.
So, rant over. I have my decks for the format I play in, maybe I'll just start playing for store credit and add to my daughter's new collection.
Past few sets have been really discouraging too. Commander has some nice new cards but the decks are full of recent standard penny bin chaff. BFZ is somehow worse than Theros. I've just dumped my standard cards and have a bunch of fetches put away in case things get better in the next couple sets. I've upped self-studying, been busying myself with other more constructive hobbies and social commitments and haven't batted an eyelid. I do think this trend continues I might just cash out.
Currently, I have a few Modern decks, a Legacy deck, a couple of EDH decks, and... well, that's it.
And there's very little coming out these days for *any* of them, or for any deck I might otherwise have wanted to build - and Modern Masters (15 inc.) in particular has been, as you say, fail.
I agree with everything you have to say. I will still play the game, *BUT* WotC could be doing so much more to, for example, attract new players, encourage players to try other formats, and yeah, to get my money...
edit: I also play some Limited - however, that watering down you mentioned really turns me off. I like strong sets, and I cannot lie. Also, Magic Online is a joke.
If you listen to most people in the 'Price Discussion' threads on here, you'd hear a model like this would destroy the game and the company would go out of business.
I have never played magic online.. I have free video games I could be playing instead.
I am stuck with my modern deck, I am stuck with a stardard deck.. although with less than the maxium number of jaces. There just isn't really an easy way to move between decks.
I play limited and I really enjoy battle for zendikar limited is really quite good.
They need to water down things to prevent power creep it was just that Khans and origins just have too much power then Zendi just gave everyone perfect mana removing that last barrier to playing all the best spells from Khans.
I think things will be fine with rotation in standard.
As for modern masters, not having serum visions pissed me off so much, just print the damn commons and uncommon staples. I get that rares can't be printed too much to prevent pissing off collectors but these commons uncommons are required to make the format work.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
It is interesting that the Pokemon team at wizards does so much better integrating their online features than the magic team.
Now I've sold everything but a 100% complete modern deck, a commander deck, and a force of will deck. The money I'm accumulating is startling, all those little purchases, even stuff like commons and uncommons really adds up. I haven't bought a booster pack in years because they're frankly a complete waste of money and wizards knows that, and I'm still saving a ton of money just having a completed eternal format deck.
I agree wizards just doesn't give us any value for playing the game and uses mtgo to double dip into players' purses.
Personally, I'd love to just keep my modern deck and stop throwing money in the standard money pit, but my lgs can't/won't run sanctioned modern events, only standard. This is mostly because a lot of local players started recently and can't afford to buy into their first modern deck.
Perhaps that's the strategy behind WOTC's crappy reprint MO...keep a certain portion of players stuck in standard so they keep buying booster boxes to pull overpriced mythics. Modern Masters 2 really did disappoint--I busted like 3 packs at $10/each and got basically no value.
I was actually a bit of an apologist for WOTC until this lastest set, but they really annoyed me:
- Almost all of the constructed playability concentrated in a couple of mythics that are build-around 4-ofs.
- Expedition lottery...finally they put something people really would like in the BFZ packs, but actually found a way to make them harder to get than the chase mythics in the set. Would it have been so horrible to print them as foil rares or whatever to make a few show up every booster box? They would still be worth a lot and a joy to pull, but at least they'd be attainable. In fact, if you had a reasonable chance at pulling a few, they'd likely sell MORE boxes.
The first TCG I played was, in fact, Magic, back in 2002, when Onslaught was coming out. At that time I barely had any money to buy cards, and boosters were supposedly cheap (they were R$ 9,00). "R$" is the brazilian currency, named "reais". Back then, my family couldn't afford to buy the expensive boosters as some of my friends' families, so I always played casual kitchen table magic with the worst deck of my group, but I didn't even complain, I was somewhat happy because I enjoyed the idea of the game and I rejoiced everytime I openened a rare that I considered good. I still remember the feeling when I openened a Raven Guild Master. I was looking at the card barely believing it (TEN CARD FROM THE TOP? AND HE COSTS ONLY 3?). My magic evaluation skills weren't top notch at the time, if it wasn't clear. But anyway, my friends who played the game stopped and so did I. I want to point out that, at the time, one of the most expensive cards that I remember was Oblivion Stone, from Mirrodin. It costed something around R$ 30,00 if I recall correctly. Needless to say I found that price completely and utterly absurd (three whole boosters? No card is worth that much).
Well, fast-forward some years and I was playing Pokemon TCG at my school. I had found another card game that I loved, based on a universe that I also loved at the time. I played a lot of pokemon and, differently from Magic, I tried to make a good pokemon deck. Now, two things are important here: I never played pokemon at competitive level, so I tried to build a 'good casual deck', if there is such a thing. Pokemon boosters were more expensive than Magic ones, and I missed how 'cheap' Magic used to be (Pokemon boosters were something around R$ 12,00). Alright, the fever of playing pokemon passed and I too abandoned that card game. Note that I had a deck that I was particularly happy with (it was a green deck with the theme of giving my opponent's pokemon special conditions, and the heart of the deck was Crobat), and the deck wasn't expensive too build. Not at all actually, I just bought a deck, traded some cards with my friends and bought some boosters. Alright, fast-forward.
I saw a little bit of Magic back in Lorwyn and even bought a merfolk deck to play with my friends, but honestly the game was not as appealing as it used to be. Alright, after some time a friend of mine that I had for a while shows up with a Magic deck to play with my old friends, and suddenly the fever was back. I had a lot of technical misconceptions at the time ('slivers are the strongest deck', 'mill is a viable strategy', etc.). And this friend helped me out giving me some tips. The desire to play was fleeting still, and I didn't care much until visiting the US in 2011 with this friend of mine and we both finding a Magic Store back in California. The first thing I was surprised is how cheap Magic was in the US (yes, you complain about prices in there? Wait until the end of my story). 3 and half dolars for a booster pack? That is ridiculously cheap, for my brazilian standards. It was mirrodin besieged time and we bought decks and played with each other. Well, when we came back I wasn't in the mood to keep playing, but he was invested and so he presented me to the previous Magic collection, before Scars, and that was Innistrad. I got hyped, I loved Innistrad, and with this friend of mine I started watching tournaments and getting 'seriously' invested in the game, I even built a werewolf deck (one of my last casual decks, that I will always keep close to my heart).
Finally, the Commander fever came. And let me tell you, for someone that played this game in multiple points in his life I can safely admit that Commander was the best thing that happened to this game. It is a mix of casual, competitive and eternal magic that I felt the game lacked for a long the time. I am 100% sure that if I didn't find Commander, I would have abandoned the game again. "Why?" you ask. Simple: MAGIC IS TOO GODDAMN EXPENSIVE. When I had my werewolf deck I couldn't afford having the best werewolf card, huntmaster of the fells, because every single copy was R$50,00 (for someone that found R$30,00 for an oblivion stone absurd, imagine R$50,00 for a huntmaster). Slowly, as I played more and more commander, I started to realize how absurdly expensive this game was, and now, in the current standard, it is even more so. Jace, vryn's prodigy is 80 bucks in the US? Cute. Here is R$220,00. Do you have any idea how much money that is? You could do the monthly shopping fo your house with this money, especially if you live alone. Commander staples are expensive as well. Up until today most of my decks are all monocolored. One of the reasons for that is that I can't afford fecthlands + old duals. A tundra is R$600,00 at best, probably it will be something around R$700,00. And commander is a singleton format! But I simply can't afford, so when I play Duel Commander (also known as french, the competitive version of commander where you play tournaments, very popular here in Brazil) I have to play with monocolored decks without fetches.
Anyway, the net result is that the barrier to enter magic is TOO DAMN HIGH. And no, it is not a matter of complexity as Mark Rosewater usually likes to say, it is a matter of MONEY. How can you convince someone to join a game saying: hey, you could play this game, there is a nice competitive scene, it will only cost you first more than R$ 2000,00 to have a good deck (price of a very decent computer). Who is up to that? Sure, you can 'start' with a budget deck, you can never leave casual, but even the booster packs are expensive. I bull***** you not, a BFZ box is currently sitting at R$ 450,00 and that is because of a BLACK FRIDAY promotion. Before that it was up to R$600,00. If even the cheapest way to get in touch with the game is expensive (a booster is currently costing almost R$15,00), people will never join it. Magic already is an upper middle class game here in Brazil (unless you are a dealer and have a lot of expensive cards because you live of Magic, not because you have tons of money). I predict it will become even more so if the game keeps growing with so little reprints.
The irony that makes this story so funny? Pokemon is now much cheaper than MTG. Some years back then they found a national distributor and now a booster pack costs R$5,40. Of course, the pack has less cards, but you can still open that nice rare or buy a significative number of packs without being stripped naked. And also, as OP said, the decks actually have good cards and are very affordable (R$26,00). Very different from Magic Clash Packs, that costed something around R$120,00 here. Anyway, disappoiting, very disappoiting. Magic is, in my opinion, the best card game when it comes to rules and how to play it. But the price, oh the price. Completely absurd.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
Since then I've actually started setting my sights on Legacy. I've had a Legacy Burn deck for about 6 years now but it's only been in the past year I was able to build something else. Now I have 2 "good" Legacy decks completely non proxy (Nic Fit, Burn) and using the best cards. I have more Modern decks than I can list. And the price of this? I can't really play Standard anymore. When you consider that I can instead play Legacy/Modern events every week rather than Standard that's not much of a drawback.
No one should focus on Standard. It's expensive, the format is miserable, and there's no long term value. If you're going to be dumping money into a collectible game, you should always be building up to something bigger so that your position improves over time. If you play Standard that's just not going to be true. Come rotation you're going to lose 90% of everything you spend.
you have to have a fun reason to play magic. tournaments are fun but the cost in any format is prohibitive.
EDH is probably the best way to have a long term good time with mtg. kitchen table magic too. FNM (here) is not cheap either if you want to win half your games.
I remember Hatred and suicide black costing under 300. many staple uncommon and commons. Urza block decks also were easy to build cheaply just from a couple booster boxes and they could hang with T1 decks.
But I'm not hear to cry about the cost.
wizards needs to enhance the player experience. little perks, that are cheap like artwork, promo cards instead of mythic rarity at that slot. work with LGS to provide great prizes at no cost to the lgs.
also they should recognize that legacy are the hardcore players with the largest collections, the people that are loyal to the game since forever. alienate them and watch the the slow demise of the game
I sold out recently except 5 pauper decks for casual pick-up play. This game is cool, and I really do enjoy playing, but the financial demands of "competitive play" are just silly.
When I think about non-MtG-playing friends hearing how much money I had tied up in this game, I still feel like a giant sucker, and that was even without buying into Tier 1 decks or Eternal formats.
And when I think about how bad MtG online is from everything I've seen, I can't fathom sinking money into that.
MTGO is pretty awful, which has to be a blow to WotC's bottom line. It is demoralizing to see them simply not care enough to move it into the modern era. I mean, I'm a frequent player of the paper game and would certainly enjoy playing online if it was more attractive, but it simply isn't. Instead, I use Cockatrice.
Azadan mentions that magic is designed such that you never get ahead, but most luxury products are. No company who sells things to you that you don't need wants you to ever feel like you've bought enough, because if you do you stop buying. Some ideal is always just out of reach.
Whether I am right or not about the consumer psychology, the fact of the matter is that if this game was not delivering enough value to those who play it then those players would not keep spending money on it. Gideon would not be a $40 card (or whatever it is) if there were not lots of people buying them for that price every day. The person that says magic is getting too expensive and actually behaves that way is the vast minority of players. Sure, there are lots of people that complain, but a good portion of them are in fact lying to themselves when they do because they turn around and buy a $160 playset of Gideon, thus proving that the card is indeed that valuable to them. I don't, because it is not worth that much to me, but I did acquire one of my JVP at the equivalent of $45 because finishing my playset so I could play them was worth that much to me (it is also my limit for a single card).
If MTG does not give you the entertainment value that is equal to or greater than the amount of money that you put into it, then stop playing and stop buying. If you represent the majority then enough people will do so such that wizards will feel it and the game will change. Their shareholders will demand it. Prove yourself right, because millions of people prove wizards right every day. Why shouldn't they keep doing what they know people want?
Reprint Opt for Modern!!
FREE DIG THOROUGH TIME!
PLAY MORE ROUGE DECKS!
I get it, magic is expensive. I live in Sweden and a booster costs ~34-35 SEK, that's about R 15 or 3,8 USD.
Also, you don't need that Tundra to play a two color deck, you only really "need" ABUR duals if you're running 3+ colors.
Fun fact, the cheapest NM Tundra I could find in Sweden was 1400SEK=R 616=160usd, which is actually cheaper than what they go for in the great ol' US of A. If I were willing to buy from anywhere in Europe I could find a Tundra in near mint condition for 125eur=509R though, that's roughly 60usd less than the free US market due to what I like to call the SCG/CFB tax on legacy staples. So sealed product may be more expensive than in the states, but we get discounts on the third market, so don't just go whining about how bad you have it since you don't live in the US. If a piece of cardboard is worth the price however, well that's up to you and please, vote with your wallet. WotC won't change anything if you keep buying from then and only complain on forums.
Side note: I recently sold out of legacy, keeping only 1x of the duals I had for French and multiplayer EDH. (and kept all my fetches)
EDIT: Forgot about the booster boxes. In Sweden they cost about 900-1000 sek for the first few months, after that they occasionally go for 800 of it was a set that didn't sell too well (i.e. Born of the Gods).
900sek=102usd=396real
That's not on wizards though, it's the import taxes that more or less get added directly on top of the MSRP. "Better to let the customer take the hit than us"
I've been playing Magic since RTR block, and it was easier to get back into it. I had some competitive highs (IQ top 8's, PPTQ wins, etc), and Game Day wins, and just the usual, 'getting there' feelings. Not only were people friendlier this time around, but I also have a steady income (as opposed to when I was 12), although it took several sets before I decided to buy-into a top tier deck.
With the introduction of a rarity-value heavy set (BFZ) and the cutting down of local, mid-tier tournaments (anything from IQ's, to PTQ's/PPTQ's, and even the Open Series and their side events), it's hard to really want to play competitively (I understand I'm bundling in SCG with Wizards, but let's be honest- SCG's decisions are all guided by whatever WOTC wants of them).
I feel that Khans was such a great block because almost any deck was playable, and the cost efficiency was on your side. It was also an easy way to get into modern. Magic, however, is now at its most expensive point in recent history.
If you're prized out, however, not only does the competitive-yearnings go out, but the overall interest in the game. When I was climbing my way up the DCI chart for Pokemon, I was buying all of my cards through winnings (boosters). For Magic, that's less feasible, and has become even less feasible now.
I believe that the key to keeping the consumer base happy will always be prize-outs. Other competitive games ask very little when it comes to 'buying-in' and their prize-outs and celebrity status tend to be greater. WOTC, on the other hand, has made an already niche game very elitist to a privileged few at a crucial time when a free to play game (Hearthstone) is becoming all the rage.
What's the long-term hope here? It seems like WOTC is admitting defeat through their stabilization mentality: let's get the most money we can now before Hearthstone bankrupts us. I know that's hyperbolic, but isn't it just a matter of time that competitive players will choose to go with a more profitable route? (I understand that there's the casual fanbase, but does the casual fanbase care about owning the rarer cards either? Not often- you don't see them shelling out $500 for a playset of Goyfs)
I'd argue that the keys to continued growth are powered-up sets and accessibility to the game (including more mid-tier tournaments, the kind of tournaments available to individuals wanting to travel for Grand Prixs but not quite there yet).
- I was complaning about the price of Magic cards in general and the effect they have in bringing people to the game. It is worse here in Brazil than it is in the US, but it would be true for any part of the world, and that is a mistake of Wizards. While some people might say 'players control the market', that is not actually true. Some players are willing to pay a hefty price to pay the game, because they can, yes. But a lot more potential players don't join the game because the prices are abusive. If the prices were pushed down with, say, meaningful reprints, then there could be a way for more people to join the game and for it to thrive.
- The booster price is actually more or less 'fair' when you make the conversion: MSRP 3,99 x 3,8 ~ 15 reais, so it is not a matter of importation tax. That is not the point. The point is that 15 reais here in Brazil is worth more than 4 dollars in the USA. That is because imported things here are usually expensive, salaries in general aren't that great, people can't afford to pay 15 reais in a booster as someone can afford to pay 4 dollars in one. That is where the difference exists. And while Wizards isn't guilty for the current crisis in brazilian economy that drove the price of the dolar up (and of things like magic cards as consequence), Wizards is guilty of not making meaningful, accessible reprints for everyone to play. A FNM card that would be actually meaningful for the game, good playables that are not only on mythic slots, etc. That Wizards can control. That would reduce the price of cards in the US and here. That is my point.
- I'm not whinning, I was telling my story and agreeing with OP. I mostly buy singles for my commander decks, and usually with a good break between them. Once in a year I indulge myself in buying one booster box (it didn't happen this year) and play one pre-release event. That is the best that I can afford without feeling robbed, and I only buy boxes from sets that I like, and only play prereleases from sets I like. And sorry, but if you want to play competitive french EDH you will need expensive cards such as fetchlands and good duals. Even if you are not playing ABUR duals, the fetchlands alone are pretty expensive, and that only when it comes to bi-colored decks. If you want to play competitive tri-colored then you will need ABUR duals on top of the fetch lands. Hence, I play mono-colored, but I'm really not unhappy about it, I like my mono-colored decks.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
These kind of people always stink to me like they actually want the game to die.
Anyway onto constructive comments.
Regarding the international standing on the game, yes Brazil is absolutely bananas with their taxes, but it's not only taxes and some of the problem actually IS WotC.
In Mexico there are two distributors, one of them is a store that doesn't sell to the stores they don't get along with. The other plays the monopoly game, since it's competition isn't even trying to compete, and undercuts the allocation so that stores have to buy the remaining product from it's sub-distributors at an increased price leaving us with $4.50 boosters and $110 boxes.
It's not much more expensive, but it gets worse: Special product like Duel Decks, Clack Packs, Commander and Modern Masters is a single-time, single-allocation deal unless the LGS in question has unofficial distributors which gotta be shady about if because most American stores refuse to ship sealed product to Mexico. And this all ends with product being severely overpriced and singles being impossible to get, hell, There's gotta be less Toxic Deluges in all of Mexico than there are in a single city in the USA.
As if that wasn't bad enough, most local stores sell at SCG prices because that's the only way they can make profit with their mediocre stock.
Two friends on the business have contacted WotC about distribution and been made to chase their tails for months to ultimately be told to ask the large distrubutor for sub-distribution. A local boutique franchise has also contacted Hasbro for MtG allocation and been denied. Wal-Mart Mexico doesn't sell MtG and neither do local Hasbro distributors.
It's almost like they don't want us to play the game.
On the topic of how this has personally affected me, I'm going through some magic-depression syndrome of sorts.
I've been playing for 16 years, almost half as long as I've been alive. This is MY hobby, the thing I like doing most with my free time and I have never felt happy playing standard despite how much I loved Odyssey-Mirrodin, Ravnica-Shadowmoor and Innistrad-Gatecrash. Ultimatedly it doesn't matter if you made an awesome rogue deck you're proud of, or are the cream of the crop playing the current enviroment's Tier 1 deck. It's gone in a couple months and nobody wants to play you using that deck anymore.
Legacy has always been my true love, but it's a very barren format, specially outside of the US/Western-Europe. The biggest Legacy tournament there's ever been in my city was 52 people, and it keeps getting harder to run even small friendly events because stores don't care. Now SCG is jumping ship on the format and it's like stores have been given permission to oficially tell us to **** off forever.
Then there's Modern and for the past two years I've had a lot of fun actually playing a deck to the point of mastery and competing at high-level, high-power magick with lots of people who are mid-way between the lifeless, funless competitiveness of standard players and the "I'm too old to sit here for 8 hours and not try to have the most fun I can" of Legacy guys. Played a lot of tournaments, won hordes of prizes and pretty much loved it. Then what seems now like an over-extended season designed to sell backlogged Tarmogoyfs ended and I have to wait at least a year to play again because there is absolutely zero incentive for stores to run Modern events instead of the format that sells overprized expedition-lottery tickets. Modern players don't absolutely need $40 Gideons or $80 Jaces either and these are the only pull most stores have as prize bait thanks to our wonderful distribution.
Right now I'm selling all the stuff I accumulated for future Modern decks and turning it into EDH staples. It's rekindled my love for what truly is the best casual magic experience you can have. But it's also made me question if spending near $2500 in two Modern decks to only be able to play for 3 motnhs and then be forcefully swept under the rug as if LGS' supporting anything other than standard is a shameful obligation, was actually worth it.
Wow, dude. I could have written your post. I'm a psychotic completionist with a special fancy for promos. I feel your pain, man. I opted out of Judge Foils for the same reasons, then Khans broke my heart, and Zendikar can get bent. I still love my FNM cards and MPR's, Gateway, older prereleases and launch cards, so I'm refocusing myself on filling in those missing holes.
But yeah, I thought I'd be alone in complaining about it, which is why I didn't mention it. I'm actually really annoyed by their new stance on promos. There's no alternate artwork, they're literally stamping a regular foil with a date for every rare in the set? Screw that. Now there's even less desire to play in store events like prereleases and launch weekend. At least I have Game Day, for now...
No dude, just no.
I got Ulamog in my pre-release pool, sold it as soon as it ended for a ridiculous $80. Now it's half that at most and why wouldn't it be? There's literally notthing special or unique about it unlike the pre-release Emrakul or the GP Griselbrand which may be cheaper than the regular foil, but at least are attractive and unique enough to make you want to have BOTH the foil and the promo.
A date stamp? Meh.