Magic has become a victim of its own success. The popularity of the game and the necessity of the secondary market has driven the cost of entry to the game sky high, and there are simply far too many players for Wizards to care about what they are giving to the public as bonuses or perks. There's too much money to be made by making the things people want harder to get. Mass reprints aren't valuable.
The popularity of the game also makes reprints more complicated. The reprints that are made have to be mixed in to products designed for everyone. It used to be they only had to design for eternal. Then they had to design for eternal and standard. Then Limited, different layers of eternal formats, different layers of non-eternal constructed, EDH, more. Wizards uses sets like Modern Masters to try to appeal to limited players and also push some modern reprints. They use the commander decks to both reprint needed cards for that format and create new cards for it. But there aren't enough of these support sets to keep prices low. And then every standard set has to shape the standard environment, it has to make limited players happy, it has to play well with whatever sets it will be drafted with, it has to have reprints that stimulate modern, it has to have new cards for modern, maybe some miracle it will affect the eternal formats. There are simply too many formats Wizards has to take care of.
Either the game will continue to grow and people will continue to pay these prices, or it will start to fall off and then Wizards will start reprinting staples in intro decks like other TCGs do.
The upcoming GP in my city is gonna be OGW-BFZ sealed.
$60 for six boosters and a promo card they haven't revealed yet but I suspect will be Voice of Resurgence.
Prize is top 32 from $10,000-$250 in prize for two days of perfect gameplay, extreme luck at opening good product and the good faith that no one is cheating.
With that money I can play 8 4-Man EDH tables.
Prize is $13-$52 per table depending on how many players you beat for 8-12 hours of playing a deck you love in a format you enjoy.
WotC, in my opinion. Is loosing sight of what fun means.
No matter what WotC does, as long as their profits remain great, the message they are receiving is "Lets continue this trend as we are making money."
I aint too happy with WotC's policies too. If you are unhappy, show it to WotC via your spending. Otherwise it is all noise.
So you may constantly experience $1000 standard deck, $100 Jace etc.
Lackluster MM at $10.
I'm not sure on some of the finer points of the Pokemon rules, but I don't understand how one could consistently win turn 1.
Crobat G, as a basic, he's used for his power to add 10 damage whenever he's played from a trainers hand.
Uxie, as a staple draw card in most decks, Uxie is suited here due to enabling you to draw until you have a hand of 7 cards.
Sableye, Start with Sableye as your active and you go first. Can KO any Pokemon under 50 HP
Trainers are the lifeblood of the deck now, all of these are regular trainers apart from one which I will start with.
Seeker, a Supporter rather than a simple Trainer meaning you can only play 1 per turn but it allows you to force your opponent to pick up one of their benched pokemon as well as causing you to do the same.
Expert Belt, an attachable trainer which provides an extra 20HP and +20 damage to the active pokemon.
PokeTurn+, a card with 2 effects. If you play a single one, you draw one card, but if you play 2 at the same time you are allowed to search your deck for any 2 cards.
PokeBlower+, again has 2 effects. If just 1 is played then you flip a coin and place 10 damage on one of your opponents pokemon if heads, if you play 2 then you can switch their active pokemon with a benched one.
PokeTurn, a card that let's you pick up a SP pokemon (such as Crobat G)
Super Scoop Up, you flip a coin and if you get heads you can pick up one of your pokemon and return it to your hand.
Victory Medal, you flip 2 coins and if 1's heads then you draw a card but if they're both heads then you can search your deck for 1 card.
Alph Lithograph, you need the 4th version of this card (from the HGSS: Triumphant expansion) as it allows you to look at your face down prizes.
Dusk Ball, allows you to take any 1 pokemon from the last 7 cards of your deck (if there are any).
Quick Ball, allows you to flip cards off the top of your deck and take the 1st one you find.
Dual Ball, you flip 2 coins and can search for 1 basic pokemon per heads.
Junk Arm, a card that forces you to discard 2 from you hand but allows you to return one trainer from your discard to your hand.
Basically you start with Sableye, who makes you go first no matter what. You play Crobat G (who's a basic, because reasons) mark an opponents Pokemon for 10 Damage. Search for more Crobats, play them. Return Crobat, likely KO one Pokemon. Play Seeker, causing you and your opponent to return a Pokemon. Play more Crobats, bounce more Crobats and then eventually put an Expert Belt on Sableye, a Special Dark Energy and hardcore super KO your opponents active.
Unless they were super lucky and started with a full bench they likely just lost the game here by you bouncing one Pokemon, KOing one on the Bench and then Koing their active.
At the time you only lost to your mirror and only if they won the coin flip.
Needless to say it was worse than the Caw-Blade era for Magic.
tbh, I'm enjoying the game a lot now. I've recently started playing at tournaments within the past year and I've been having the most fun I've ever had with Magic. Probably because I love the competitive aspect of big tournaments and I also enjoy trying to become a better player. Plus I've also met some great friends by going to tournaments
I get where OP is coming from though, so i guess it's a matter of difference in opinion
I love the game and have played on and off for 20 years... It's still good, but the fact that people play standard is baffling. Personally, I keep around:
- A few Tier 1 and 2 modern decks
- A few Tier 1 and 2 legacy decks
- six intro-type decks for teaching newbies (they cost a combined $40)
- A peasant cube (made of real cards)
- An in-process powered cube (made 100% of proxies)
- A full set of Commander 2013 decks (I might sell these, to be honest)
I've been selling off underused $5-20 cards to flesh out what I need to optimize my existing modern/legacy stuff, and I MIGHT build a couple more modern decks (like mono-red burn or mono-green stompy) to loan to my kids, but that's it. I'll probably never play standard again, although I do keep an eye out for new cards for my existing decks with each set... anything modern/legacy playable tends to be super expensive at first, but drops to something reasonable once they rotate out of standard.
What's wrong with playing standard? What's wrong with playing with and enjoying new sets of cards as they come out? Hell, where's the fun in looking at a new set, picking out one card that set that you might use in an existing deck, and ignoring all the rest. You ignore 99% of everything that comes out, and think that you're the one Wizards is supposed to cater to?
Hell, I can't even play Modern right now- I don't have the collected base for it- everything I have is either too old (and my old stuff is way too horrible for Legacy), so Standards all I got. I figure in a few years I'll have enough to make a coherent neoModern deck. But those higher formats are strictly rewards for players who have managed to be collecting longer.
Peace, bro... I misspoke.
Nothing whatsoever is wrong with playing standard if that's what you like. I don't play enough to justify the cost, and I honestly find it a bit boring, but that's subjective. Yes, a standard deck is cheaper than a modern deck, but once you've got a couple modern decks, they are very cheap to maintain compared to standard.
I do NOT think Wizards should cater to any one group more than others, although I suspect if they supported modern and legacy more (by providing enough reprints to make them affordable to more people), they would find a lot of people buying product to enter those formats. It wouldn't help me personally much... I've got my duals/fetches/shocks and goyfs/lilis/snappy/cryptic, ect. And while I have been playing a long time, the majority of my money cards I've acquired over the last 3 years. I'm definitely not one of those guys that got in early and is sitting on dozens of beta moxes and duals (though I now wish I'd sucked it up and bought a set of power & duals back when I could have got the whole shebang for about a grand).
Fair enough.
And honestly, if they did want to make the game more accessable- cheapen the mana base. The problem with that is that it's going to lead to a ton of screaming from everyone who's ever dropped $80 on a Scalding Tarn, but at the same time, the idea you need that much for freaking mana is ridiculous.
I'm not entirely fussed about it. I'm the kind of guy who'd happily play Rugged Highlands and enjoy his point of life. But I suppose it'd be nice occasionally to not have to wait a turn to use a dual land once in a while.
Bull*****. The player may understand how to win, but simply can't because the correct answer costs hundreds of dollars, and just get frustrated and want to quit. No amount of affirmative action is going to make Grizzly Bears beat Tarmogoyf.
I was unaware that Tarmogoyf is in Standard.
Gideon / Jace / Ojutai / etc. The cards change, the financial impact remains the same. When you need to start jamming playsets of the most expensive cards in the format just to stand a reasonable chance, the person who just recently started isn't going to be terribly thrilled at the prospect of needing to spend hundreds of dollars on them.
But that aside, the fact that you are making that snarky reply means that you are aware what I am saying is true, and now you're just trying to argue to what degree.
All of those can be dealt with cheaply. Gideon with a Stasis Snare (you'd have to wait for him to use his creature ability, of course). Jace with a Wild slash. Ojutai would trade with a Shivan. Again, no strategy is invincible. Would it be tougher to win with cheaper cards? Absolutely- the cards that are more expensive are that because they help you win better. But its not impossible, skill is still heavily involved.
Hell, I bet if you were to give a top level magic player a common/uncommon playset from any Standard set and told him to make a deck with just that, he still build one that would destroy you or I.
You are either off the rails insane or outright lying if you really believe that. You can't just play a deck with a bunch of cheap situational removal, hope to draw the right one for the right deck at the right time, and then lose because you spent all your time trying to react to your opponent instead of trying to advance your board state. And that's not even counting on the myriad of discard spells, counterspells, and recursion engines you are going to have to somehow magically address with removal spells that are all narrow / overcosted.
If by "tougher" you mean "impossible 90% of the time", then yea, I suppose you could do it and just lose 9/10 times. This is what I meant before; your bad commons and uncommons are not going to beat decks chock full of expensive rares and mythics that are just OBJECTIVELY MUCH BETTER.
The line between genius and insane is a fine one. But I do occasionally find it a difficult one to cross.
I'm not entirely advocating that someone play a deck of strictly commons/uncommons. That wouldn't even work in limited, much less constructed. But you don't need $30 rare playsets to have a good deck that can win. There's plenty of nice cheap, usable rares out there to use. Mantis Rider's running a little over a buck, and that card is a right pain in the neck, especially in the early game. Crackling Doom's running about $2. $1.50 for a Whisperwood Elemental. All those cards (and plenty others) can be right down painful in the right hands. Are they going to win the Pro Tour? No. Can a deck that properly utilizes them and other smartly budgeted cards be competitive on Friday Nights? Absolutely.
Gideon / Jace / Ojutai / etc. The cards change, the financial impact remains the same. When you need to start jamming playsets of the most expensive cards in the format just to stand a reasonable chance, the person who just recently started isn't going to be terribly thrilled at the prospect of needing to spend hundreds of dollars on them.
But that aside, the fact that you are making that snarky reply means that you are aware what I am saying is true, and now you're just trying to argue to what degree.
All of those can be dealt with cheaply. Gideon with a Stasis Snare (you'd have to wait for him to use his creature ability, of course). Jace with a Wild slash. Ojutai would trade with a Shivan. Again, no strategy is invincible. Would it be tougher to win with cheaper cards? Absolutely- the cards that are more expensive are that because they help you win better. But its not impossible, skill is still heavily involved.
Hell, I bet if you were to give a top level magic player a common/uncommon playset from any Standard set and told him to make a deck with just that, he still build one that would destroy you or I.
You are either off the rails insane or outright lying if you really believe that. You can't just play a deck with a bunch of cheap situational removal, hope to draw the right one for the right deck at the right time, and then lose because you spent all your time trying to react to your opponent instead of trying to advance your board state. And that's not even counting on the myriad of discard spells, counterspells, and recursion engines you are going to have to somehow magically address with removal spells that are all narrow / overcosted.
If by "tougher" you mean "impossible 90% of the time", then yea, I suppose you could do it and just lose 9/10 times. This is what I meant before; your bad commons and uncommons are not going to beat decks chock full of expensive rares and mythics that are just OBJECTIVELY MUCH BETTER.
The line between genius and insane is a fine one. But I do occasionally find it a difficult one to cross.
I'm not entirely advocating that someone play a deck of strictly commons/uncommons. That wouldn't even work in limited, much less constructed. But you don't need $30 rare playsets to have a good deck that can win. There's plenty of nice cheap, usable rares out there to use. Mantis Rider's running a little over a buck, and that card is a right pain in the neck, especially in the early game. Crackling Doom's running about $2. $1.50 for a Whisperwood Elemental. All those cards (and plenty others) can be right down painful in the right hands. Are they going to win the Pro Tour? No. Can a deck that properly utilizes them and other smartly budgeted cards be competitive on Friday Nights? Absolutely.
And all of those cards require at least 8 fetchlands that are 20$ each with a bunch of 5-10$ dual lands to find. And those decks would still lose at FNMs to people playing real decks. My LGS has quite a high number of people who always play top tier competitive decks. The person you are describing would be completely destroyed.
You might for the Mantis riders, but Crackling Doom is best used in the mid-late game, where you should have the mana you need no matter what. And Whisperwood is Monogreen. No fetching needed, unless you want to ramp. Not every deck needs a $200 mana base.
And I love the sneering elitism here that somehow cheaper cards don't make a deck "real"
I have come to accept that what I want out of the game does not align with how Wizards designs the game: to sell as many packs as possible. The number of packs that one would have to open to obtain a play set of each new set is laughably absurd.
Standard has always been a treadmill with two hands reaching into your pocket.
Recently, it seems like the treadmill has gotten a little bit steeper so that those hands have a better angle and can reach a little deeper.
New world order sucked when it was introduced and still sucks.
Mythic rares are a cash grab. (Yes some prior sets had rares with the same frequency. That doesn't make it healthy for the player base.)
There are times in the past when standard has been an interesting format. It is not currently, in my opinion, and hasn't been for several years.
The as-fan of cards with constructed potential has fallen a lot. It seems correlated with new world order - and its corresponding suckyness. BFZ is particularly egregious.
Limited is fun, but limited chaff is just unnecessary. Modern masters was awesome without most of it. Commons and uncommons cube is a blast and has no chaff. Regular cubes once again have a myriad of playable cards without chaff, but feel more like constructed.
I am rather price sensitive and vote with my wallet. If everyone could get a playset of every set for a $200/year subscription Wizards would be getting a lot more of my money than they are currently. I don't trade much, and I don't collect so the whole card lottery is just a barrier to me playing the game. I think that if the lottery was removed then a lot of the negative incentives that seem to be dragging down the game design would be removed.
I am rather surprised that Wizards had not attempted to sell a cube set in paper as I think that there are a lot of players who either won't touch MTGO, or won't spend money on digital objects.
No matter what WotC does, as long as their profits remain great, the message they are receiving is "Lets continue this trend as we are making money."
I aint too happy with WotC's policies too. If you are unhappy, show it to WotC via your spending. Otherwise it is all noise.
So you may constantly experience $1000 standard deck, $100 Jace etc.
Lackluster MM at $10.
This argument is utterly falacious and I'm tired of seeing it. It's either complete ignorance of the distribution chain, or just another excuse taken as truth.
You cannot vote with your wallet if you expect to have a place dedicated to play and buy MtG because we're not the primary consumer, we're tertiary at best.
The primary consumer is distributors, they take orders from stores who are the secondary consumer.
To make WotC feel out discontent by "voting with your wallet" we have to bankrupt our LGS so that the distributor doesn't buy as many cards from WotC and they see a drop in their assets.
Good luck playing anything other than kitchen table magic once have no LGS. Better luck having to fly to L.A. or N.Y. for a tournament once you bankrupt enough stores for Hasbro to notice.
You are either off the rails insane or outright lying if you really believe that. You can't just play a deck with a bunch of cheap situational removal, hope to draw the right one for the right deck at the right time, and then lose because you spent all your time trying to react to your opponent instead of trying to advance your board state. And that's not even counting on the myriad of discard spells, counterspells, and recursion engines you are going to have to somehow magically address with removal spells that are all narrow / overcosted.
If by "tougher" you mean "impossible 90% of the time", then yea, I suppose you could do it and just lose 9/10 times. This is what I meant before; your bad commons and uncommons are not going to beat decks chock full of expensive rares and mythics that are just OBJECTIVELY MUCH BETTER.
The line between genius and insane is a fine one. But I do occasionally find it a difficult one to cross.
I'm not entirely advocating that someone play a deck of strictly commons/uncommons. That wouldn't even work in limited, much less constructed. But you don't need $30 rare playsets to have a good deck that can win. There's plenty of nice cheap, usable rares out there to use. Mantis Rider's running a little over a buck, and that card is a right pain in the neck, especially in the early game. Crackling Doom's running about $2. $1.50 for a Whisperwood Elemental. All those cards (and plenty others) can be right down painful in the right hands. Are they going to win the Pro Tour? No. Can a deck that properly utilizes them and other smartly budgeted cards be competitive on Friday Nights? Absolutely.
And all of those cards require at least 8 fetchlands that are 20$ each with a bunch of 5-10$ dual lands to find. And those decks would still lose at FNMs to people playing real decks. My LGS has quite a high number of people who always play top tier competitive decks. The person you are describing would be completely destroyed.
You might for the Mantis riders, but Crackling Doom is best used in the mid-late game, where you should have the mana you need no matter what. And Whisperwood is Monogreen. No fetching needed, unless you want to ramp. Not every deck needs a $200 mana base.
And I love the sneering elitism here that somehow cheaper cards don't make a deck "real"
It's not elitism; a "real" deck is one that can win with a decent amount of consistency versus the other popular decks in the meta. What you are proposing will not remotely achieve that. I'm not in the business of trying to sell false hopes and dreams to new players of crushing all the expensive decks with something that costs 20$. It's just not going to happen.
Never once did I propose that you're going to have a deck that crushes all the expensive decks for $20. Nor did I even suggest you could make a deck that would win most of the time. I'm talking decks that can put up a decent fight and maybe even get a win or two over those decks.
And you forget the nature of FNM events- the Swiss format actually helps these people. So they draw super megadeck in Round 1. Lose quickly the first game, then maybe put up a bit of a fight before losing game 2. THen they draw another good deck that just had some bad luck for Round 2. Maybe he guts out a win in one game, but loses the other two. Now to Round 3- they're 0-2, and they're matched up with fellow 0-2'ers. Now they're facing decks that are more comparable, and have truly close 50/50 matches- or even end up against an inferior deck. They can win those, and match up with another comparable deck in Round 4 (and 5, if possible). All the while they're gaining experience and learning, and slowly increasing their cardpool, and getting at the very least some tradebaits that they can flip for those high caliber cards.
I get that we live in a society of instant gratification and win now and all that, but Magic doesn't have to be that way. You dont have to go 5-0 in FNM for the night to be a success. Hell, you don't even have to finish in the prize pool, or even go .500. And all the while, there should be at least several players on hand at your LGS that can give them pointers, suggest cards they can use that work (someone tipped me off on Conduit of Ruin (a fairly affordable rare) for my deck, and it improved it leaps and bounds), and give them overall feedback so that they can improve.
This argument is utterly falacious and I'm tired of seeing it. It's either complete ignorance of the distribution chain, or just another excuse taken as truth.
You cannot vote with your wallet if you expect to have a place dedicated to play and buy MtG because we're not the primary consumer, we're tertiary at best.
The primary consumer is distributors, they take orders from stores who are the secondary consumer.
To make WotC feel out discontent by "voting with your wallet" we have to bankrupt our LGS so that the distributor doesn't buy as many cards from WotC and they see a drop in their assets.
Good luck playing anything other than kitchen table magic once have no LGS. Better luck having to fly to L.A. or N.Y. for a tournament once you bankrupt enough stores for Hasbro to notice.
Correct me if I am wrong. In a supply chain, we are the consumers while LGSs are the suppliers and distributors are distributors.
Why will I play MTG when WotC is actively driving me away?
Why cant I discontinue my financial support for a product?
Are LGSs having a successful business model with only MTG products?
You are not making sense!
I dont wish to argue with how warped your logic seems to me. If you wish to continue to be a slave to WotC, please continue.
But bottom line, I am investing my money on a product which will enrich my experiences. If I am the minority, my lack of financial support does not matter. If I am the majority, WotC will have to listen if they want our money.
I aint destroying LGSs, I want WotC to know and improve on what the majority wants. In the long run, LGSs will only benefit from happier consumers.
And you expect the LGS to survive Hasbro losing enough money to realize something is wrong?
You're the one who doesn't get it. If you get your cards and play the game at a LGS, and stop doing it because you disagree with Hasbro, the first one who will feel it is the store. The most likely outcome is your store will stop having MtG events and then stop stocking MtG product, if it subsists on other games. Or to just go down if it doesn't.
Then you don't have a place to play the cards you actually liked, all because you didn't enjoy the current state of the game and took the most stupid and egocentric line of action.
Boycotting a product requires a manifesto, a dialogue with the company so they understand why you are gathering people to boycott, THEN collectively ceasing your support of the company until they change.
"Voting with your wallet" in the multinational scale is like telling a mall cop the government is evil and expecting Obama to feel it.
And you expect the LGS to survive Hasbro losing enough money to realize something is wrong?
You're the one who doesn't get it. If you get your cards and play the game at a LGS, and stop doing it because you disagree with Hasbro, the first one who will feel it is the store. The most likely outcome is your store will stop having MtG events and then stop stocking MtG product, if it subsists on other games. Or to just go down if it doesn't.
Then you don't have a place to play the cards you actually liked, all because you didn't enjoy the current state of the game and took the most stupid and egocentric line of action.
Boycotting a product requires a manifesto, a dialogue with the company so they understand why you are gathering people to boycott, THEN collectively ceasing your support of the company until they change.
"Voting with your wallet" in the multinational scale is like telling a mall cop the government is evil and expecting Obama to feel it.
You are right!
I have no idea why you are invested in the defense of LGS.
I wondered what happened to all the previous petitions sent to WotC too.
Lets just religiously support all of WotC policies and products so LGSs can survive cos obviously MTG is the only income source for all successful LGSs.
Or you know we could all get a petition to have 'someone' fired from the design/development team and then have it sent to Hasbro (Not wizards). I have sent emails to wizards and have never had a reply.
And honestly, if they did want to make the game more accessable- cheapen the mana base. The problem with that is that it's going to lead to a ton of screaming from everyone who's ever dropped $80 on a Scalding Tarn, but at the same time, the idea you need that much for freaking mana is ridiculous.
I'm not entirely fussed about it. I'm the kind of guy who'd happily play Rugged Highlands and enjoy his point of life. But I suppose it'd be nice occasionally to not have to wait a turn to use a dual land once in a while.
It depends on the format you're playing. In Modern and Legacy lands coming into play tapped need a huge upside to be tournament viable. Deck construction is also a lot different between duals and fetches. With a 10 fetch, 5 basic, 5 shock, 2 other land manabase you've got 49 mana symbols in your 22 lands but 22 dual lands only has 44 mana symbols with no out to something like Blood Moon, and to say nothing about cipt status. You might be happy playing Rugged Highland and budget decks but a lot of people want to play the actual game with actual cards that are meant for constructed play, where they have a chance against the field. Building to beat a specific deck is trivial, building to have a close to 50/50 match against 30 different decks isn't.
You might for the Mantis riders, but Crackling Doom is best used in the mid-late game, where you should have the mana you need no matter what. And Whisperwood is Monogreen. No fetching needed, unless you want to ramp. Not every deck needs a $200 mana base.
And I love the sneering elitism here that somehow cheaper cards don't make a deck "real"
Then you don't understand manabases. Crackling Doom needs 10 of each mana source and if you're pairing it with something like Mantis Rider you can up that a bit. Whisperwood is double green which means you need a proper set of dual lands unless you want to play mono green which isn't a winning strategy.
Never once did I propose that you're going to have a deck that crushes all the expensive decks for $20. Nor did I even suggest you could make a deck that would win most of the time. I'm talking decks that can put up a decent fight and maybe even get a win or two over those decks.
And you forget the nature of FNM events- the Swiss format actually helps these people. So they draw super megadeck in Round 1. Lose quickly the first game, then maybe put up a bit of a fight before losing game 2. THen they draw another good deck that just had some bad luck for Round 2. Maybe he guts out a win in one game, but loses the other two. Now to Round 3- they're 0-2, and they're matched up with fellow 0-2'ers. Now they're facing decks that are more comparable, and have truly close 50/50 matches- or even end up against an inferior deck. They can win those, and match up with another comparable deck in Round 4 (and 5, if possible). All the while they're gaining experience and learning, and slowly increasing their cardpool, and getting at the very least some tradebaits that they can flip for those high caliber cards.
I get that we live in a society of instant gratification and win now and all that, but Magic doesn't have to be that way. You dont have to go 5-0 in FNM for the night to be a success. Hell, you don't even have to finish in the prize pool, or even go .500. And all the while, there should be at least several players on hand at your LGS that can give them pointers, suggest cards they can use that work (someone tipped me off on Conduit of Ruin (a fairly affordable rare) for my deck, and it improved it leaps and bounds), and give them overall feedback so that they can improve.
Actually, you do have to go 5-0 at an FNM if you wish to play the game on a budget. Prizes in FNM's and every other tournament are very top heavy, a 5-0, 0-5, 0-5 is better than a 2-3, 2-3, 1-2. If budget is a concern your number one cost is tournament entry fees and you have to make those back. If you aren't making back the cost of your entry fee you're better off playing the game by skipping the tournament and putting the money towards better cards until you can make your entry fee back.
This becomes very problematic in standard where all of your purchases face a 90% drop in value after 18 months and you only have 6 months inbetween meta changes. If it takes you 2 months to assemble a deck you've already lost 1/3 of the playtime with that deck.
Supporting eternal formats makes them more money in the short run - the only way to make more money with eternal formats in the long run is to resort to power creep, which in game design is undoubtedly the first stepping stone to the decay of a game.
Yes, there's lots more money to be made when the support for eternal formats start rushing in, causing massive booster sales and price drops. But once that settles down, what happens? When everyone has their Tarmogoyfs and ABUR Duals and are playing the game happily, what can Wizards produce to sell boosters that will generate sales as much as when the reprints started rushing in (because as a business you need to maintain more or less an increasing profit)? They need to make cards more powerful than what is existing to sell boosters - they need to make the cards everyone has redundant in comparison to the new ones so you gave to buy them. Either that or ban all those cards and functionally reprint them so you have to buy boosters. Either way, players aren't going to be happy.
Wizards is very aware of this and that is why they prefer to stick to scaling down power and concentrating on rotating formats, because that makes consistent money across the years for financial reports. When sales drop, all they have to do is put in some gimmick (cough*expeditions*cough) and it will boost sales. That is pretty much all the data they want, the projections for increasing profits over the next decade without resorting to decaying the game.
Yes, it's a blunt statement, but I'm pretty sure this is the truth.
I disagree supporting eternal formats will lead to less profits and power creep long term. One thing you are forgetting is growth in the game. If you reprint eternal staples, then more people who play now will have access to cards, but new players will also buy-in to said formats. When these players buy-in they will likely entice their friends to buy-in as well. Power creep can be avoided by being smart, being creative with new cards and applying the ban hammer from time to time.
Also, I am a fairly new Magic player (started playing in October 2014). So far I have purchased hundreds of dollars in singles (a large portion of money spent on pricey eternal cards), one commander precon (monoblack 2014), one Morningtide booster pack and four Origins booster packs from a friend to draft with a group of friends. I've also won and received booster packs by purchasing over a specified $$ amount of singles. Aside from a foil Sigil Tracer from the Morningtide booster pack all the boosters I have cracked contained garbage. With cracking boosters on par with gambling I doubt I'll ever purchase boosters on par with how many singles I purchase and I'll likely continue to purchase virtually zero boosters unless said boosters start to contain eternal reprints or eternal relevant cards (translation: WOTC receives (and will continue to receive) virtually zero money from me). However, if WOTC wants my money they can start reprinting eternal staples and eternal relevant cards. While I may be alone here, I think there are many who would join me in buying more from WOTC if they started doing this.
I'm going to continue being brutally blunt here, so don't take offense.
The process you described here would work, yes, but it works at a greater profit and lesser design cost if applied to rotating formats than non-rotating ones. It's easy to say "being smart, being creative with new cards", but the designers will tell you the design space without resorting to power creep is actually a lot lower. Non-rotating formats essentially disable the "lower power level" option they can use (personally I also think they overused it now, but that's another point), which means Power Creep would eventually be the only option left (other than the insanely-fast ban hammer, which is technically rotation under a different name).
Yes, if put in a bluntly-stated situation, they'll rather "lose" the enfranchised players who are "disillusioned" with how Standard really works, because if they try to cater to that group (which includes you and me), they would need to resort to Power Creep eventually. Despite all our complaints here, they have already proven attracting new players to the Standard "trap" is more profitable, because new players would advertise the game as effectively as enfranchised players (in fact, maybe even better since they aren't disillusioned yet).
"We will spend more if you reprint eternal staples" isn't convincing to them when they know "design decay*" is a price to pay for that, plus "the amount new players we attract spend is pretty much the same, except without the "design decay" cost involved."
*Reminder that to them "design decay" means power creep, but to us it has the opposite meaning (powering down), which is why we see design as bad now but they don't.
Supporting eternal formats makes them more money in the short run - the only way to make more money with eternal formats in the long run is to resort to power creep, which in game design is undoubtedly the first stepping stone to the decay of a game.
Yes, there's lots more money to be made when the support for eternal formats start rushing in, causing massive booster sales and price drops. But once that settles down, what happens? When everyone has their Tarmogoyfs and ABUR Duals and are playing the game happily, what can Wizards produce to sell boosters that will generate sales as much as when the reprints started rushing in (because as a business you need to maintain more or less an increasing profit)? They need to make cards more powerful than what is existing to sell boosters - they need to make the cards everyone has redundant in comparison to the new ones so you gave to buy them. Either that or ban all those cards and functionally reprint them so you have to buy boosters. Either way, players aren't going to be happy.
Wizards is very aware of this and that is why they prefer to stick to scaling down power and concentrating on rotating formats, because that makes consistent money across the years for financial reports. When sales drop, all they have to do is put in some gimmick (cough*expeditions*cough) and it will boost sales. That is pretty much all the data they want, the projections for increasing profits over the next decade without resorting to decaying the game.
Yes, it's a blunt statement, but I'm pretty sure this is the truth.
I disagree supporting eternal formats will lead to less profits and power creep long term. One thing you are forgetting is growth in the game. If you reprint eternal staples, then more people who play now will have access to cards, but new players will also buy-in to said formats. When these players buy-in they will likely entice their friends to buy-in as well. Power creep can be avoided by being smart, being creative with new cards and applying the ban hammer from time to time.
Also, I am a fairly new Magic player (started playing in October 2014). So far I have purchased hundreds of dollars in singles (a large portion of money spent on pricey eternal cards), one commander precon (monoblack 2014), one Morningtide booster pack and four Origins booster packs from a friend to draft with a group of friends. I've also won and received booster packs by purchasing over a specified $$ amount of singles. Aside from a foil Sigil Tracer from the Morningtide booster pack all the boosters I have cracked contained garbage. With cracking boosters on par with gambling I doubt I'll ever purchase boosters on par with how many singles I purchase and I'll likely continue to purchase virtually zero boosters unless said boosters start to contain eternal reprints or eternal relevant cards (translation: WOTC receives (and will continue to receive) virtually zero money from me). However, if WOTC wants my money they can start reprinting eternal staples and eternal relevant cards. While I may be alone here, I think there are many who would join me in buying more from WOTC if they started doing this.
I'm going to continue being brutally blunt here, so don't take offense.
The process you described here would work, yes, but it works at a greater profit and lesser design cost if applied to rotating formats than non-rotating ones. It's easy to say "being smart, being creative with new cards", but the designers will tell you the design space without resorting to power creep is actually a lot lower. Non-rotating formats essentially disable the "lower power level" option they can use (personally I also think they overused it now, but that's another point), which means Power Creep would eventually be the only option left (other than the insanely-fast ban hammer, which is technically rotation under a different name).
Yes, if put in a bluntly-stated situation, they'll rather "lose" the enfranchised players who are "disillusioned" with how Standard really works, because if they try to cater to that group (which includes you and me), they would need to resort to Power Creep eventually. Despite all our complaints here, they have already proven attracting new players to the Standard "trap" is more profitable, because new players would advertise the game as effectively as enfranchised players (in fact, maybe even better since they aren't disillusioned yet).
"We will spend more if you reprint eternal staples" isn't convincing to them when they know "design decay*" is a price to pay for that, plus "the amount new players we attract spend is pretty much the same, except without the "design decay" cost involved."
*Reminder that to them "design decay" means power creep, but to us it has the opposite meaning (powering down), which is why we see design as bad now but they don't.
You seem really entrenched in your position. It is not a case of reprinting every eternal staple within a short period of time so the game collapses vs never reprinting eternal staples ever. Most people are just asking for more liberal reprints so the most expensive cards average $50 or so instead of hundreds of dollars (note this is just an example as some cards may be worth more obviously). Like any market it can't keep rising forever. Like housing, why do people always seem to think it is pretty much god given that prices will continually rise forever? People just want to be able to play legacy without needing to be part of the 1% or forgoing a downpayment on a house. Is that so difficult for you to understand? Also, didn't prices actually rise on many of the cards reprinted in the first Modern Masters? If so, what does that suggest? That the numbers of players entering the format grew perhaps? More people = More Money! The key then to avoiding reprints collapsing the format in a short period of time is reprinting staples in a set like Modern Masters (yet more liberally than Modern Masters 2, which largely sucked from what many people on this forum have been saying), but doing so in small batches until the price reaches something more reasonable on the secondary market and/or WOTC statistics show Modern (or whichever format the reprinted staples are in) no longer increasing in the number of players (or increasing at a more normal rate). Also, added benefits of reprinting staples for WOTC is zero design costs and guaranteed profits (WOTC knows a staple will sell). If they want to keep things unique and help maintain value of older cards WOTC could use new art on all reprinted staples. This would cost some money, but make collecting more enjoyable and desired. Once again the options are not only reprinting every eternal staple within a short period of time so the game collapses vs never reprinting eternal staples ever.
Like I stated in my original post I have never played Standard and hate cracking boosters as doing so is equivalent to a lottery. If WOTC fears losing people in Standard by reprinting eternal format staples they could make Standard better. This could be done by focusing more on the storyline (going new places instead of mostly old places with poorer cards (going old places with poorer cards only harms expectations and players long-term outlook on the game)), printing competitively playable cards more evenly at all rarity levels, reducing the price of booster packs (while carefully watching statistics of course as we know WOTC wants profit, but if the number of players keep increasing then this makes up for lost revenue from individual players) and offering reprints of eternal staples as prizes. Note these are just some examples I came up with in 30 seconds. I'm sure there are other ways to make Standard a more desirable format as well (Editing my post: Another option could be reprinting staples and hits when returning to old places. This wouldn't ruin Standard either since these cards would have been in the meta before and WOTC could use the new set to print new cards that impact the meta much easier alongside reprinted cards they already know made an impact. In addition, the other sets rotating with the returned to set would be different from the first time around. This means a new meta and not a stale format).
You seem really entrenched in your position. It is not a case of reprinting every eternal staple within a short period of time so the game collapses vs never reprinting eternal staples ever. Most people are just asking for more liberal reprints so the most expensive cards average $50 or so instead of hundreds of dollars (note this is just an example as some cards may be worth more obviously). Like any market it can't keep rising forever. Like housing, why do people always seem to think it is pretty much god given that prices will continually rise forever? People just want to be able to play legacy without needing to be part of the 1% or forgoing a downpayment on a house. Is that so difficult for you to understand? Also, didn't prices actually rise on many of the cards reprinted in the first Modern Masters? If so, what does that suggest? That the numbers of players entering the format grew perhaps? More people = More Money! The key then to avoiding reprints collapsing the format in a short period of time is reprinting staples in a set like Modern Masters (yet more liberally than Modern Masters 2, which largely sucked from what many people on this forum have been saying), but doing so in small batches until the price reaches something more reasonable on the secondary market and/or WOTC statistics show Modern (or whichever format the reprinted staples are in) no longer increasing in the number of players (or increasing at a more normal rate). Also, added benefits of reprinting staples for WOTC is zero design costs and guaranteed profits (WOTC knows a staple will sell). If they want to keep things unique and help maintain value of older cards WOTC could use new art on all reprinted staples. This would cost some money, but make collecting more enjoyable and desired. Once again the options are not only reprinting every eternal staple within a short period of time so the game collapses vs never reprinting eternal staples ever.
The secondary market prices and people wanting to play non-rotating formats at lower costs are the easiest parts to understand, which is why I didn't even mention them directly in the post, instead stating why Wizards are so cautious about balancing the popularity of formats because of the game decay that happens if non-rotating formats become the most popular format of the game.
Like I before said, the processes you described here (more people = more money) lasts longer in the Standard trap than in non-rotating formats without the threat of design decay to them.
Also, it's easy to say "When the prices reach more reasonable and Modern is no longer increasing in number of players (or at a normal rate)", but in reality, as the first Modern Masters has shown, that when prices go down (they did initially), all it does is escalate the number of players drastically (causing the prices to spike back up). Wizards is scared by the first Modern Masters to do this even more liberally because they're afraid the backlash will be even greater (basically put, escalate the number of players in non-rotating formats even more), which to them, is not a good thing (because of the reasons in the earlier post).
Basically put, a more liberal reprint doesn't actually decrease prices, because it will attract more attention to the format than Wizards would want. I'm saying Wizards doesn't want too much attention drawn to non-rotating formats, which is why they are so stingy with the reprints - that decision has nothing much to do with the Secondary Market from their point of view.
Yes, I'm entrenched in this position because as a player I would want what you state to happen, but since I'm arguing from the view of the other side, I guess I have to be extra-stubborn to not be swayed by my own player's desires, so if I were to take both point of views, Wizards have overdone the "scaling down the power", because if they didn't, the occasional reprint of staples in Standard sets would just solve the problem somewhat without drawing attention to the format itself (nice example will be Theros Thoughtseize). It isn't happening now because the root problem is Standard is too "weak" that Modern Staples simply become "Absolute" Standard Staples as well, which draws too much attention as well.
You seem really entrenched in your position. It is not a case of reprinting every eternal staple within a short period of time so the game collapses vs never reprinting eternal staples ever. Most people are just asking for more liberal reprints so the most expensive cards average $50 or so instead of hundreds of dollars (note this is just an example as some cards may be worth more obviously). Like any market it can't keep rising forever. Like housing, why do people always seem to think it is pretty much god given that prices will continually rise forever? People just want to be able to play legacy without needing to be part of the 1% or forgoing a downpayment on a house. Is that so difficult for you to understand? Also, didn't prices actually rise on many of the cards reprinted in the first Modern Masters? If so, what does that suggest? That the numbers of players entering the format grew perhaps? More people = More Money! The key then to avoiding reprints collapsing the format in a short period of time is reprinting staples in a set like Modern Masters (yet more liberally than Modern Masters 2, which largely sucked from what many people on this forum have been saying), but doing so in small batches until the price reaches something more reasonable on the secondary market and/or WOTC statistics show Modern (or whichever format the reprinted staples are in) no longer increasing in the number of players (or increasing at a more normal rate). Also, added benefits of reprinting staples for WOTC is zero design costs and guaranteed profits (WOTC knows a staple will sell). If they want to keep things unique and help maintain value of older cards WOTC could use new art on all reprinted staples. This would cost some money, but make collecting more enjoyable and desired. Once again the options are not only reprinting every eternal staple within a short period of time so the game collapses vs never reprinting eternal staples ever.
The secondary market prices and people wanting to play non-rotating formats at lower costs are the easiest parts to understand, which is why I didn't even mention them directly in the post, instead stating why Wizards are so cautious about balancing the popularity of formats because of the game decay that happens if non-rotating formats become the most popular format of the game.
Like I before said, the processes you described here (more people = more money) lasts longer in the Standard trap than in non-rotating formats without the threat of design decay to them.
Also, it's easy to say "When the prices reach more reasonable and Modern is no longer increasing in number of players (or at a normal rate)", but in reality, as the first Modern Masters has shown, that when prices go down (they did initially), all it does is escalate the number of players drastically (causing the prices to spike back up). Wizards is scared by the first Modern Masters to do this even more liberally because they're afraid the backlash will be even greater (basically put, escalate the number of players in non-rotating formats even more), which to them, is not a good thing (because of the reasons in the earlier post).
Basically put, a more liberal reprint doesn't actually decrease prices, because it will attract more attention to the format than Wizards would want. I'm saying Wizards doesn't want too much attention drawn to non-rotating formats, which is why they are so stingy with the reprints - that decision has nothing much to do with the Secondary Market from their point of view.
Yes, I'm entrenched in this position because as a player I would want what you state to happen, but since I'm arguing from the view of the other side, I guess I have to be extra-stubborn to not be swayed by my own player's desires, so if I were to take both point of views, Wizards have overdone the "scaling down the power", because if they didn't, the occasional reprint of staples in Standard sets would just solve the problem somewhat without drawing attention to the format itself (nice example will be Theros Thoughtseize). It isn't happening now because the root problem is Standard is too "weak" that Modern Staples simply become "Absolute" Standard Staples as well, which draws too much attention as well.
As stated in my previous posts I think there is good reason to think reprints can be done while still increasing the player base and profits. You think there is good reason to believe the opposite. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Unfortunately WOTC likely will only change if the player base is loud enough and their pocketbooks are hit. I will continue to not purchase WOTC products and spend my money on the secondary market. In addition, I will continue to inform players and potential players about the bad financial deal they are receiving when purchasing new WOTC products and playing standard. Maybe one day WOTC will change. It doesn't look like today.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern:UB Taking Turns Modern:URW Madcap Experiment Pauper: MonoU Tempo Delver
The current state of the game is awful. I've been playing since the fall of 1994. Never has standard been so boring, regular cards so expensive and the game so completely unexciting. Gone are the days of constructed-playable cards for eternal formats in standard releases. Now we have New World Order, smaller sets, mythic rares, overpriced limited-print products that people actually want but can't buy... Refusing to ban eternal cards like Brainstorm due to the fear of an upper-class of rich elite players throwing a fit. Awful, lifeless CGI card art. All of it. All of it sucks.
If you screw your loyal, long-time players, you kill the game. It's as simple as that. Welcome to the death spiral. Enjoy your ride while you can.
The most fun I have with MTG now is Cube. Cube is my MTG sanctuary. Long live Cube.
As stated in my previous posts I think there is good reason to think reprints can be done while still increasing the player base and profits. You think there is good reason to believe the opposite. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Unfortunately WOTC likely will only change if the player base is loud enough and their pocketbooks are hit. I will continue to not purchase WOTC products and spend my money on the secondary market. In addition, I will continue to inform players and potential players about the bad financial deal they are receiving when purchasing new WOTC products and playing standard. Maybe one day WOTC will change. It doesn't look like today.
Actually I'm quite with agreement with your general idea - remember the original post you first quoted was a post in response to a drastic difference in profit numbers, which implied mass reprints (which we already more or less agreed will never happen). You quoted a lot of Modern Masters examples (not that I can blame you for it), which was going against "Wizards wants only a specific subset of player base to grow".
Definitely even from the other side of the argument there's no way to believe lesser profits are better, but the main point was Wizards sees the popularity of non-rotating formats as a threat to long-term profits because of remaining design space (remember power creep basically not allowed) - that is actually true, so while they don't mind being liberal about reprints, it's the presence of the format that they are more concerned about, which unfortunately reprints have a huge part of because of the attention we give to it. Modern Masters is literally the pinnacle of advertising a format they don't want to be too popular.
And honestly, if they did want to make the game more accessable- cheapen the mana base. The problem with that is that it's going to lead to a ton of screaming from everyone who's ever dropped $80 on a Scalding Tarn, but at the same time, the idea you need that much for freaking mana is ridiculous.
I'm not entirely fussed about it. I'm the kind of guy who'd happily play Rugged Highlands and enjoy his point of life. But I suppose it'd be nice occasionally to not have to wait a turn to use a dual land once in a while.
It depends on the format you're playing. In Modern and Legacy lands coming into play tapped need a huge upside to be tournament viable. Deck construction is also a lot different between duals and fetches. With a 10 fetch, 5 basic, 5 shock, 2 other land manabase you've got 49 mana symbols in your 22 lands but 22 dual lands only has 44 mana symbols with no out to something like Blood Moon, and to say nothing about cipt status. You might be happy playing Rugged Highland and budget decks but a lot of people want to play the actual game with actual cards that are meant for constructed play, where they have a chance against the field. Building to beat a specific deck is trivial, building to have a close to 50/50 match against 30 different decks isn't.
You might for the Mantis riders, but Crackling Doom is best used in the mid-late game, where you should have the mana you need no matter what. And Whisperwood is Monogreen. No fetching needed, unless you want to ramp. Not every deck needs a $200 mana base.
And I love the sneering elitism here that somehow cheaper cards don't make a deck "real"
Then you don't understand manabases. Crackling Doom needs 10 of each mana source and if you're pairing it with something like Mantis Rider you can up that a bit. Whisperwood is double green which means you need a proper set of dual lands unless you want to play mono green which isn't a winning strategy.
Never once did I propose that you're going to have a deck that crushes all the expensive decks for $20. Nor did I even suggest you could make a deck that would win most of the time. I'm talking decks that can put up a decent fight and maybe even get a win or two over those decks.
And you forget the nature of FNM events- the Swiss format actually helps these people. So they draw super megadeck in Round 1. Lose quickly the first game, then maybe put up a bit of a fight before losing game 2. THen they draw another good deck that just had some bad luck for Round 2. Maybe he guts out a win in one game, but loses the other two. Now to Round 3- they're 0-2, and they're matched up with fellow 0-2'ers. Now they're facing decks that are more comparable, and have truly close 50/50 matches- or even end up against an inferior deck. They can win those, and match up with another comparable deck in Round 4 (and 5, if possible). All the while they're gaining experience and learning, and slowly increasing their cardpool, and getting at the very least some tradebaits that they can flip for those high caliber cards.
I get that we live in a society of instant gratification and win now and all that, but Magic doesn't have to be that way. You dont have to go 5-0 in FNM for the night to be a success. Hell, you don't even have to finish in the prize pool, or even go .500. And all the while, there should be at least several players on hand at your LGS that can give them pointers, suggest cards they can use that work (someone tipped me off on Conduit of Ruin (a fairly affordable rare) for my deck, and it improved it leaps and bounds), and give them overall feedback so that they can improve.
Actually, you do have to go 5-0 at an FNM if you wish to play the game on a budget. Prizes in FNM's and every other tournament are very top heavy, a 5-0, 0-5, 0-5 is better than a 2-3, 2-3, 1-2. If budget is a concern your number one cost is tournament entry fees and you have to make those back. If you aren't making back the cost of your entry fee you're better off playing the game by skipping the tournament and putting the money towards better cards until you can make your entry fee back.
This becomes very problematic in standard where all of your purchases face a 90% drop in value after 18 months and you only have 6 months inbetween meta changes. If it takes you 2 months to assemble a deck you've already lost 1/3 of the playtime with that deck.
1. Wow. So I'm not playing an actual game because the most expensive card in my manabase is Rugged Highlands. That is such amazing snobbishness its not funny. My deck is a 50/50 deck, which is the goal here, and never once have I lost because I used a Rugged Highlands instead of a Wooded Foothills/Cinder Glade. Which brings me to:
2. I find the concept of the pricey manabase extremely overrated. To be a GP winner, its absolutely necessary. To have a few good games at FNM? Its absolutely not necessary, and I know that from experience. Like, for crackling doom- optimally, you may need 10 of each color, but to cast it, you only need one, and there are plenty of ways to get yourself three colors that don't cost $30 a pop. Evolving Wilds, for one. Lifelands. Multidorks. Its a decent sized list. And while they aren't optimal, the goal here, AGAIN, is not complete optimization, but simply being serviceable. For Whisperwood Elemental, you need two forests and three whatevers. That's not hard to get into play, even if you're not playing monogreen. People love to overcomplicate stuff up the yin-yang, but in the end, it all boils down simply: it all taps for one mana. A Plains, a Mountain, and an Island pays for a Mantis Rider just as well as two Flooded Strand-fetched Prairie Streams and a Shivan Reef.
3. You're treating Magic like a gambling addict treats a Casino. You gotta go in making a profit or else the nights a complete failure! No its not. Its a $5 buy in for constructed, and that pays for a night of fun and social interaction, and far more cheaply than a night at a restaurant and a bar. Five bucks is a cost, not an investment, and going in expecting a return (espcially if you're playing a budget deck) is the height of foolishness. If you're on a budget, you have a $5 buy in, and maybe you can buy 1-2 boosters a week to help grow your collection and get tradebaits (or, y'know, actually get nice cards, cause that does actually happen), or conversely buy some cheap rares in lieu of the boosters. That's $10-15 a week. Hardly bank-breaking. But if you're going to FNM with the goal of earning a profit, then my god do I feel sorry for you.
so wizards doesn't want more modern players? or legacy or vintage... doesn't want any non rotating format to get too big. hmmm. only if standard booms will modern see any staple reprints? that just sounds like a dirty little secret.
it's sad that there's cards very playable in the eternal formats that will never be reprinted, left to disintegrate no matter what sleeves, or end up playing with toploaders lol or even just proxies. what is its what's left.
I like the idea of new arts on reprints. originals would stabilize, still collectible, and more fun playing for a larger player base. some which would still play standard or even take it up after learning to play with friends'/relatives' collections.
newness will always be more popular than antique, wizards need not worry legacy or the others will dominate the player base. plenty of people chase promos, foils, and other new mtg products to support the whole that is magic. why doesn't wotc see this?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
The popularity of the game also makes reprints more complicated. The reprints that are made have to be mixed in to products designed for everyone. It used to be they only had to design for eternal. Then they had to design for eternal and standard. Then Limited, different layers of eternal formats, different layers of non-eternal constructed, EDH, more. Wizards uses sets like Modern Masters to try to appeal to limited players and also push some modern reprints. They use the commander decks to both reprint needed cards for that format and create new cards for it. But there aren't enough of these support sets to keep prices low. And then every standard set has to shape the standard environment, it has to make limited players happy, it has to play well with whatever sets it will be drafted with, it has to have reprints that stimulate modern, it has to have new cards for modern, maybe some miracle it will affect the eternal formats. There are simply too many formats Wizards has to take care of.
Either the game will continue to grow and people will continue to pay these prices, or it will start to fall off and then Wizards will start reprinting staples in intro decks like other TCGs do.
$60 for six boosters and a promo card they haven't revealed yet but I suspect will be Voice of Resurgence.
Prize is top 32 from $10,000-$250 in prize for two days of perfect gameplay, extreme luck at opening good product and the good faith that no one is cheating.
With that money I can play 8 4-Man EDH tables.
Prize is $13-$52 per table depending on how many players you beat for 8-12 hours of playing a deck you love in a format you enjoy.
WotC, in my opinion. Is loosing sight of what fun means.
I aint too happy with WotC's policies too. If you are unhappy, show it to WotC via your spending. Otherwise it is all noise.
So you may constantly experience $1000 standard deck, $100 Jace etc.
Lackluster MM at $10.
Uxie, as a staple draw card in most decks, Uxie is suited here due to enabling you to draw until you have a hand of 7 cards.
Sableye, Start with Sableye as your active and you go first. Can KO any Pokemon under 50 HP
Trainers are the lifeblood of the deck now, all of these are regular trainers apart from one which I will start with.
Seeker, a Supporter rather than a simple Trainer meaning you can only play 1 per turn but it allows you to force your opponent to pick up one of their benched pokemon as well as causing you to do the same.
Expert Belt, an attachable trainer which provides an extra 20HP and +20 damage to the active pokemon.
PokeTurn+, a card with 2 effects. If you play a single one, you draw one card, but if you play 2 at the same time you are allowed to search your deck for any 2 cards.
PokeBlower+, again has 2 effects. If just 1 is played then you flip a coin and place 10 damage on one of your opponents pokemon if heads, if you play 2 then you can switch their active pokemon with a benched one.
PokeTurn, a card that let's you pick up a SP pokemon (such as Crobat G)
Super Scoop Up, you flip a coin and if you get heads you can pick up one of your pokemon and return it to your hand.
Victory Medal, you flip 2 coins and if 1's heads then you draw a card but if they're both heads then you can search your deck for 1 card.
Alph Lithograph, you need the 4th version of this card (from the HGSS: Triumphant expansion) as it allows you to look at your face down prizes.
Dusk Ball, allows you to take any 1 pokemon from the last 7 cards of your deck (if there are any).
Quick Ball, allows you to flip cards off the top of your deck and take the 1st one you find.
Dual Ball, you flip 2 coins and can search for 1 basic pokemon per heads.
Junk Arm, a card that forces you to discard 2 from you hand but allows you to return one trainer from your discard to your hand.
Basically you start with Sableye, who makes you go first no matter what. You play Crobat G (who's a basic, because reasons) mark an opponents Pokemon for 10 Damage. Search for more Crobats, play them. Return Crobat, likely KO one Pokemon. Play Seeker, causing you and your opponent to return a Pokemon. Play more Crobats, bounce more Crobats and then eventually put an Expert Belt on Sableye, a Special Dark Energy and hardcore super KO your opponents active.
Unless they were super lucky and started with a full bench they likely just lost the game here by you bouncing one Pokemon, KOing one on the Bench and then Koing their active.
At the time you only lost to your mirror and only if they won the coin flip.
Needless to say it was worse than the Caw-Blade era for Magic.
I get where OP is coming from though, so i guess it's a matter of difference in opinion
Fair enough.
And honestly, if they did want to make the game more accessable- cheapen the mana base. The problem with that is that it's going to lead to a ton of screaming from everyone who's ever dropped $80 on a Scalding Tarn, but at the same time, the idea you need that much for freaking mana is ridiculous.
I'm not entirely fussed about it. I'm the kind of guy who'd happily play Rugged Highlands and enjoy his point of life. But I suppose it'd be nice occasionally to not have to wait a turn to use a dual land once in a while.
The line between genius and insane is a fine one. But I do occasionally find it a difficult one to cross.
I'm not entirely advocating that someone play a deck of strictly commons/uncommons. That wouldn't even work in limited, much less constructed. But you don't need $30 rare playsets to have a good deck that can win. There's plenty of nice cheap, usable rares out there to use. Mantis Rider's running a little over a buck, and that card is a right pain in the neck, especially in the early game. Crackling Doom's running about $2. $1.50 for a Whisperwood Elemental. All those cards (and plenty others) can be right down painful in the right hands. Are they going to win the Pro Tour? No. Can a deck that properly utilizes them and other smartly budgeted cards be competitive on Friday Nights? Absolutely.
You might for the Mantis riders, but Crackling Doom is best used in the mid-late game, where you should have the mana you need no matter what. And Whisperwood is Monogreen. No fetching needed, unless you want to ramp. Not every deck needs a $200 mana base.
And I love the sneering elitism here that somehow cheaper cards don't make a deck "real"
I am rather price sensitive and vote with my wallet. If everyone could get a playset of every set for a $200/year subscription Wizards would be getting a lot more of my money than they are currently. I don't trade much, and I don't collect so the whole card lottery is just a barrier to me playing the game. I think that if the lottery was removed then a lot of the negative incentives that seem to be dragging down the game design would be removed.
I am rather surprised that Wizards had not attempted to sell a cube set in paper as I think that there are a lot of players who either won't touch MTGO, or won't spend money on digital objects.
This argument is utterly falacious and I'm tired of seeing it. It's either complete ignorance of the distribution chain, or just another excuse taken as truth.
You cannot vote with your wallet if you expect to have a place dedicated to play and buy MtG because we're not the primary consumer, we're tertiary at best.
The primary consumer is distributors, they take orders from stores who are the secondary consumer.
To make WotC feel out discontent by "voting with your wallet" we have to bankrupt our LGS so that the distributor doesn't buy as many cards from WotC and they see a drop in their assets.
Good luck playing anything other than kitchen table magic once have no LGS. Better luck having to fly to L.A. or N.Y. for a tournament once you bankrupt enough stores for Hasbro to notice.
Never once did I propose that you're going to have a deck that crushes all the expensive decks for $20. Nor did I even suggest you could make a deck that would win most of the time. I'm talking decks that can put up a decent fight and maybe even get a win or two over those decks.
And you forget the nature of FNM events- the Swiss format actually helps these people. So they draw super megadeck in Round 1. Lose quickly the first game, then maybe put up a bit of a fight before losing game 2. THen they draw another good deck that just had some bad luck for Round 2. Maybe he guts out a win in one game, but loses the other two. Now to Round 3- they're 0-2, and they're matched up with fellow 0-2'ers. Now they're facing decks that are more comparable, and have truly close 50/50 matches- or even end up against an inferior deck. They can win those, and match up with another comparable deck in Round 4 (and 5, if possible). All the while they're gaining experience and learning, and slowly increasing their cardpool, and getting at the very least some tradebaits that they can flip for those high caliber cards.
I get that we live in a society of instant gratification and win now and all that, but Magic doesn't have to be that way. You dont have to go 5-0 in FNM for the night to be a success. Hell, you don't even have to finish in the prize pool, or even go .500. And all the while, there should be at least several players on hand at your LGS that can give them pointers, suggest cards they can use that work (someone tipped me off on Conduit of Ruin (a fairly affordable rare) for my deck, and it improved it leaps and bounds), and give them overall feedback so that they can improve.
Correct me if I am wrong. In a supply chain, we are the consumers while LGSs are the suppliers and distributors are distributors.
Why will I play MTG when WotC is actively driving me away?
Why cant I discontinue my financial support for a product?
Are LGSs having a successful business model with only MTG products?
You are not making sense!
I dont wish to argue with how warped your logic seems to me. If you wish to continue to be a slave to WotC, please continue.
But bottom line, I am investing my money on a product which will enrich my experiences. If I am the minority, my lack of financial support does not matter. If I am the majority, WotC will have to listen if they want our money.
I aint destroying LGSs, I want WotC to know and improve on what the majority wants. In the long run, LGSs will only benefit from happier consumers.
You're the one who doesn't get it. If you get your cards and play the game at a LGS, and stop doing it because you disagree with Hasbro, the first one who will feel it is the store. The most likely outcome is your store will stop having MtG events and then stop stocking MtG product, if it subsists on other games. Or to just go down if it doesn't.
Then you don't have a place to play the cards you actually liked, all because you didn't enjoy the current state of the game and took the most stupid and egocentric line of action.
Boycotting a product requires a manifesto, a dialogue with the company so they understand why you are gathering people to boycott, THEN collectively ceasing your support of the company until they change.
"Voting with your wallet" in the multinational scale is like telling a mall cop the government is evil and expecting Obama to feel it.
You are right!
I have no idea why you are invested in the defense of LGS.
I wondered what happened to all the previous petitions sent to WotC too.
Lets just religiously support all of WotC policies and products so LGSs can survive cos obviously MTG is the only income source for all successful LGSs.
All previous petitions were ignored by WotC.
It depends on the format you're playing. In Modern and Legacy lands coming into play tapped need a huge upside to be tournament viable. Deck construction is also a lot different between duals and fetches. With a 10 fetch, 5 basic, 5 shock, 2 other land manabase you've got 49 mana symbols in your 22 lands but 22 dual lands only has 44 mana symbols with no out to something like Blood Moon, and to say nothing about cipt status. You might be happy playing Rugged Highland and budget decks but a lot of people want to play the actual game with actual cards that are meant for constructed play, where they have a chance against the field. Building to beat a specific deck is trivial, building to have a close to 50/50 match against 30 different decks isn't.
Then you don't understand manabases. Crackling Doom needs 10 of each mana source and if you're pairing it with something like Mantis Rider you can up that a bit. Whisperwood is double green which means you need a proper set of dual lands unless you want to play mono green which isn't a winning strategy.
Actually, you do have to go 5-0 at an FNM if you wish to play the game on a budget. Prizes in FNM's and every other tournament are very top heavy, a 5-0, 0-5, 0-5 is better than a 2-3, 2-3, 1-2. If budget is a concern your number one cost is tournament entry fees and you have to make those back. If you aren't making back the cost of your entry fee you're better off playing the game by skipping the tournament and putting the money towards better cards until you can make your entry fee back.
This becomes very problematic in standard where all of your purchases face a 90% drop in value after 18 months and you only have 6 months inbetween meta changes. If it takes you 2 months to assemble a deck you've already lost 1/3 of the playtime with that deck.
I'm going to continue being brutally blunt here, so don't take offense.
The process you described here would work, yes, but it works at a greater profit and lesser design cost if applied to rotating formats than non-rotating ones. It's easy to say "being smart, being creative with new cards", but the designers will tell you the design space without resorting to power creep is actually a lot lower. Non-rotating formats essentially disable the "lower power level" option they can use (personally I also think they overused it now, but that's another point), which means Power Creep would eventually be the only option left (other than the insanely-fast ban hammer, which is technically rotation under a different name).
Yes, if put in a bluntly-stated situation, they'll rather "lose" the enfranchised players who are "disillusioned" with how Standard really works, because if they try to cater to that group (which includes you and me), they would need to resort to Power Creep eventually. Despite all our complaints here, they have already proven attracting new players to the Standard "trap" is more profitable, because new players would advertise the game as effectively as enfranchised players (in fact, maybe even better since they aren't disillusioned yet).
"We will spend more if you reprint eternal staples" isn't convincing to them when they know "design decay*" is a price to pay for that, plus "the amount new players we attract spend is pretty much the same, except without the "design decay" cost involved."
*Reminder that to them "design decay" means power creep, but to us it has the opposite meaning (powering down), which is why we see design as bad now but they don't.
You seem really entrenched in your position. It is not a case of reprinting every eternal staple within a short period of time so the game collapses vs never reprinting eternal staples ever. Most people are just asking for more liberal reprints so the most expensive cards average $50 or so instead of hundreds of dollars (note this is just an example as some cards may be worth more obviously). Like any market it can't keep rising forever. Like housing, why do people always seem to think it is pretty much god given that prices will continually rise forever? People just want to be able to play legacy without needing to be part of the 1% or forgoing a downpayment on a house. Is that so difficult for you to understand? Also, didn't prices actually rise on many of the cards reprinted in the first Modern Masters? If so, what does that suggest? That the numbers of players entering the format grew perhaps? More people = More Money! The key then to avoiding reprints collapsing the format in a short period of time is reprinting staples in a set like Modern Masters (yet more liberally than Modern Masters 2, which largely sucked from what many people on this forum have been saying), but doing so in small batches until the price reaches something more reasonable on the secondary market and/or WOTC statistics show Modern (or whichever format the reprinted staples are in) no longer increasing in the number of players (or increasing at a more normal rate). Also, added benefits of reprinting staples for WOTC is zero design costs and guaranteed profits (WOTC knows a staple will sell). If they want to keep things unique and help maintain value of older cards WOTC could use new art on all reprinted staples. This would cost some money, but make collecting more enjoyable and desired. Once again the options are not only reprinting every eternal staple within a short period of time so the game collapses vs never reprinting eternal staples ever.
Like I stated in my original post I have never played Standard and hate cracking boosters as doing so is equivalent to a lottery. If WOTC fears losing people in Standard by reprinting eternal format staples they could make Standard better. This could be done by focusing more on the storyline (going new places instead of mostly old places with poorer cards (going old places with poorer cards only harms expectations and players long-term outlook on the game)), printing competitively playable cards more evenly at all rarity levels, reducing the price of booster packs (while carefully watching statistics of course as we know WOTC wants profit, but if the number of players keep increasing then this makes up for lost revenue from individual players) and offering reprints of eternal staples as prizes. Note these are just some examples I came up with in 30 seconds. I'm sure there are other ways to make Standard a more desirable format as well (Editing my post: Another option could be reprinting staples and hits when returning to old places. This wouldn't ruin Standard either since these cards would have been in the meta before and WOTC could use the new set to print new cards that impact the meta much easier alongside reprinted cards they already know made an impact. In addition, the other sets rotating with the returned to set would be different from the first time around. This means a new meta and not a stale format).
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
The secondary market prices and people wanting to play non-rotating formats at lower costs are the easiest parts to understand, which is why I didn't even mention them directly in the post, instead stating why Wizards are so cautious about balancing the popularity of formats because of the game decay that happens if non-rotating formats become the most popular format of the game.
Like I before said, the processes you described here (more people = more money) lasts longer in the Standard trap than in non-rotating formats without the threat of design decay to them.
Also, it's easy to say "When the prices reach more reasonable and Modern is no longer increasing in number of players (or at a normal rate)", but in reality, as the first Modern Masters has shown, that when prices go down (they did initially), all it does is escalate the number of players drastically (causing the prices to spike back up). Wizards is scared by the first Modern Masters to do this even more liberally because they're afraid the backlash will be even greater (basically put, escalate the number of players in non-rotating formats even more), which to them, is not a good thing (because of the reasons in the earlier post).
Basically put, a more liberal reprint doesn't actually decrease prices, because it will attract more attention to the format than Wizards would want. I'm saying Wizards doesn't want too much attention drawn to non-rotating formats, which is why they are so stingy with the reprints - that decision has nothing much to do with the Secondary Market from their point of view.
Yes, I'm entrenched in this position because as a player I would want what you state to happen, but since I'm arguing from the view of the other side, I guess I have to be extra-stubborn to not be swayed by my own player's desires, so if I were to take both point of views, Wizards have overdone the "scaling down the power", because if they didn't, the occasional reprint of staples in Standard sets would just solve the problem somewhat without drawing attention to the format itself (nice example will be Theros Thoughtseize). It isn't happening now because the root problem is Standard is too "weak" that Modern Staples simply become "Absolute" Standard Staples as well, which draws too much attention as well.
As stated in my previous posts I think there is good reason to think reprints can be done while still increasing the player base and profits. You think there is good reason to believe the opposite. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Unfortunately WOTC likely will only change if the player base is loud enough and their pocketbooks are hit. I will continue to not purchase WOTC products and spend my money on the secondary market. In addition, I will continue to inform players and potential players about the bad financial deal they are receiving when purchasing new WOTC products and playing standard. Maybe one day WOTC will change. It doesn't look like today.
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
The current state of the game is awful. I've been playing since the fall of 1994. Never has standard been so boring, regular cards so expensive and the game so completely unexciting. Gone are the days of constructed-playable cards for eternal formats in standard releases. Now we have New World Order, smaller sets, mythic rares, overpriced limited-print products that people actually want but can't buy... Refusing to ban eternal cards like Brainstorm due to the fear of an upper-class of rich elite players throwing a fit. Awful, lifeless CGI card art. All of it. All of it sucks.
If you screw your loyal, long-time players, you kill the game. It's as simple as that. Welcome to the death spiral. Enjoy your ride while you can.
The most fun I have with MTG now is Cube. Cube is my MTG sanctuary. Long live Cube.
My Kamigawa cube.
My Mirage Cube
Actually I'm quite with agreement with your general idea - remember the original post you first quoted was a post in response to a drastic difference in profit numbers, which implied mass reprints (which we already more or less agreed will never happen). You quoted a lot of Modern Masters examples (not that I can blame you for it), which was going against "Wizards wants only a specific subset of player base to grow".
Definitely even from the other side of the argument there's no way to believe lesser profits are better, but the main point was Wizards sees the popularity of non-rotating formats as a threat to long-term profits because of remaining design space (remember power creep basically not allowed) - that is actually true, so while they don't mind being liberal about reprints, it's the presence of the format that they are more concerned about, which unfortunately reprints have a huge part of because of the attention we give to it. Modern Masters is literally the pinnacle of advertising a format they don't want to be too popular.
1. Wow. So I'm not playing an actual game because the most expensive card in my manabase is Rugged Highlands. That is such amazing snobbishness its not funny. My deck is a 50/50 deck, which is the goal here, and never once have I lost because I used a Rugged Highlands instead of a Wooded Foothills/Cinder Glade. Which brings me to:
2. I find the concept of the pricey manabase extremely overrated. To be a GP winner, its absolutely necessary. To have a few good games at FNM? Its absolutely not necessary, and I know that from experience. Like, for crackling doom- optimally, you may need 10 of each color, but to cast it, you only need one, and there are plenty of ways to get yourself three colors that don't cost $30 a pop. Evolving Wilds, for one. Lifelands. Multidorks. Its a decent sized list. And while they aren't optimal, the goal here, AGAIN, is not complete optimization, but simply being serviceable. For Whisperwood Elemental, you need two forests and three whatevers. That's not hard to get into play, even if you're not playing monogreen. People love to overcomplicate stuff up the yin-yang, but in the end, it all boils down simply: it all taps for one mana. A Plains, a Mountain, and an Island pays for a Mantis Rider just as well as two Flooded Strand-fetched Prairie Streams and a Shivan Reef.
3. You're treating Magic like a gambling addict treats a Casino. You gotta go in making a profit or else the nights a complete failure! No its not. Its a $5 buy in for constructed, and that pays for a night of fun and social interaction, and far more cheaply than a night at a restaurant and a bar. Five bucks is a cost, not an investment, and going in expecting a return (espcially if you're playing a budget deck) is the height of foolishness. If you're on a budget, you have a $5 buy in, and maybe you can buy 1-2 boosters a week to help grow your collection and get tradebaits (or, y'know, actually get nice cards, cause that does actually happen), or conversely buy some cheap rares in lieu of the boosters. That's $10-15 a week. Hardly bank-breaking. But if you're going to FNM with the goal of earning a profit, then my god do I feel sorry for you.
it's sad that there's cards very playable in the eternal formats that will never be reprinted, left to disintegrate no matter what sleeves, or end up playing with toploaders lol or even just proxies. what is its what's left.
I like the idea of new arts on reprints. originals would stabilize, still collectible, and more fun playing for a larger player base. some which would still play standard or even take it up after learning to play with friends'/relatives' collections.
newness will always be more popular than antique, wizards need not worry legacy or the others will dominate the player base. plenty of people chase promos, foils, and other new mtg products to support the whole that is magic. why doesn't wotc see this?