... Collectors are the reason cards cost so much. Collectors are the reason the reserves list exists. This is a game meant to be played. So I'm going to stick with what I said before. No downside.
Collectors are not the reason why Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is worth more than Kytheon, Hero of Akros; or why Scalding Tarn is worth more than Crypt of Agadeem. Those cards were equally likely to open in their respective packs, they exist in similar numbers. The difference in price is caused by a difference in demand from players. There's nothing inherently more "collectible" about a fetch land, but it's a lot more playable in constructed magic. Don't blame collectors when manabases or format staples cost 10x to 100x the price of an average rare in a set.
That being said, I do agree with your stance on masterpieces. There's nothing bad about them in itself. The only potential downside I see, is if masterpieces reduces the likely hood of "real" reprints.
If you can't afford it, you can't afford it. If that annoys you so much, go to college for some degree that will allow you to earn a 6 figure income each year so you can go out and buy whatever magic cards you want. I'm sure a lot of people want black lotus, but cannot afford it. Should WotC pander to those people and reprint lotus until it's $5 so everyone can have one? Probably not as consumer confidence in magic as a brand would be obliterated.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
I understand your disdain, but I have to reiterate: "If you can't afford particular aspects of the hobby, then guess what? Tough nuggets."
The bottom line is, you can't expect a collectible hobby to always remain within the confines of your budget. It has never been that way--that's what makes collecting collecting after all. As such, I hope you find a way to continue to enjoy Magic in the same manner, perhaps taking a different approach to collecting.
I realize that I am probably a minority here. I pretty much only play EDH, though I occasionally go to a draft or prerelease.
To be honest, I am likely to now buy a lot less packs. The odds of pulling one of these is not worth it, and the value of the other cards in the set will be low enough that I can take the money I would normally be spending on boxes and packs and just buy the singles that I need.
Sure, I will still attend the same amount of drafts and prereleases, and an occasional pack here and there, but I am content to let the singles market open the boxes and sell me what I want.
I think the rarity of these is insane though. As a collector as well, I will be happy to pull one if I am lucky, but the cost of these will be crazy high at that rarity - especially on high demand cards like Mana Crypt. I will likely not have the ability to afford collecting a set of them sadly. I will probably try and grab the ones that I like the art on though - that Lotus Petal is really nice!
Anyone else suspect that these "Masterpieces" spell the end of the FTV sets?
Speculated elsewhere by someone else, but it certainly makes a lot of sense that they wouldn't bother with them now that there is something in the same vein in every set.
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"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I will likely not have the ability to afford collecting a set of them sadly. I will probably try and grab the ones that I like the art on though - that Lotus Petal is really nice!
Some youtubers have determined - at yesterday's prices - it will cost somethging like $10k USD for a full set of the Masterpieces (not a playset! just 1x of each)
I think having these is fine. The cards are all reprints, so they won't be necessities for any format (ie they aren't printing the Gearhulks only as Masterpieces, you can get them as regular cards). Do I want a fancy Sol Ring for a commander deck? Sure. Is it a requirement? Of course not. You can still get a regular Commander 2015 Sol Ring for 2 or 3 bucks, and it works exactly the same as a Masterpiece Sol Ring.
Does it increase how many packs players will open overall? Sure it does. That's good business practice on Wizards' part. But it also means more copies of regular Kaladesh cards will be opened, thus dropping the prices for those regular cards. Standard becomes cheaper to play, cards from Kaladesh become cheaper and easier to obtain.
And there's the fun factor; I remember the shouts of joy at various pre-releases for BFZ and OGW when someone lucked out and got an Expedition. Getting that random super-fancy foil card can make your day. And the card doesn't replace anything important (oh no, I didn't get some limited-only common...damn).
I think these are a great idea, and see nothing wrong with introducing them. If a person can't afford to get one, that's just too bad for them. This is a luxury, a game, not food or shelter. Not everyone can have everything.
For a totalist completist ocd collector, these are bad.
For casual true hobby kitchen table players, good if you pull one otherwise doesn't matter.
For tournament players that have to keep up with the Jones's and bling out their deck, Bad
Regular fnm weekend card shop players, Good
Its all perspective. Do you really Have to have these to say you have a complete Kaladesh collection? I would say no, you may say yes.
If I wanted a blinged out Sol Ring, I would get a Alpha or Beta one, not one of these. My perspective is different from others. Everyone has their reasons and problems and praise and can all be correct in some way.
Me honestly, I am a pack gambler. Used to play, don't now, only collect vintage stuff. These will be Bad for me but awesome. I will buy way more packs and fat bundles in the gamble for one of these. It was OK in bfz be because the full art lands along with the rares usually made up the price for me. But only at the beginning. So goes the gamble. These will make the rares and mythics less valuable and so I'll definitely be going in the hole just to pull one. But that is fine with me. I'm willing to spend the money and lose it for the fun of popping packs and hoping for a really pretty foil pull. It'll be fun.
Still don't understand how they are going to do 100 a year and keep them powerful and pricey enough to keep up the mystique and "want/need" to get one.
its not the price of the current printings that matter, sure some are cheap, but the foil versions of some cards are masny times more valuable than the nonfoil.
And for those saying that this will increase availability, i could argue that point. but I will stick by mine that just because a couple thousand more are in circulation, if doesnt make it more available. EVERY SINGLE one of these cards can currently be purchased, its not that they ARENT available, its that they are expensive. So unless masters series lowers the price of traditional printings, it will not increase availablity in the way wizards said it would. If you couldnt afford it before, and were hoping for a reprint to get some, then they do this, and the price stays the same, you still cant afford either of them.
The expeditions are cards playing in every format almost, in playsets nontheless. The inventions are not....some are played in competitve formats and will be herp derp expensive, like crucible and vial. But most are played almost exclusivly in EDH, So im picturing the mana rocks to be the most expensive, with most average around 20-30, then the rest will be 50+
On a side note, the other two swords, coalion relic, extraplanar lens, caged sun, batterskull, winter orb, chalice of the void, and engineered explosivesd to be in the next set
And for those saying that this will increase availability, i could argue that point. but I will stick by mine that just because a couple thousand more are in circulation, if doesnt make it more available. EVERY SINGLE one of these cards can currently be purchased, its not that they ARENT available, its that they are expensive. So unless masters series lowers the price of traditional printings, it will not increase availablity in the way wizards said it would. If you couldnt afford it before, and were hoping for a reprint to get some, then they do this, and the price stays the same, you still cant afford either of them.
Wizards didn't say it would lower prices. They said the cards would be more available. That's a fact - you can't argue it. If there are X copies in circulation now and Wizards prints 1000 copies of it, there will be X+1000 cards in circulation after release.
... Collectors are the reason cards cost so much. Collectors are the reason the reserves list exists. This is a game meant to be played. So I'm going to stick with what I said before. No downside.
Collectors are not the reason why Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is worth more than Kytheon, Hero of Akros; or why Scalding Tarn is worth more than Crypt of Agadeem. Those cards were equally likely to open in their respective packs, they exist in similar numbers. The difference in price is caused by a difference in demand from players. There's nothing inherently more "collectible" about a fetch land, but it's a lot more playable in constructed magic. Don't blame collectors when manabases or format staples cost 10x to 100x the price of an average rare in a set.
That being said, I do agree with your stance on masterpieces. There's nothing bad about them in itself. The only potential downside I see, is if masterpieces reduces the likely hood of "real" reprints.
I think it's a bit silly to point fingers at "collectors" when complaining about card prices. The behavior of collectors, casual players, competitive players, and everybody who ever spends money on Magic cards is to a large extent dictated by the fact that most Standard cards are only available in random boosters. I've said this before, but I feel I have to reiterate how crazy this is from the perspective of somebody who treats Constructed Magic as a skill-intensive game that has little to do with collecting baseball cards. You wouldn't buy a chess set piece by piece, cracking sealed packs in hopes of finally opening that Queen, or asking your buddy if you can borrow a Bishop for next weekend's tournament. There's no inherent reason you need to do so in Magic, and basically every other CCG that's still being supported has moved away from random packs. If WotC really wanted to reduce the price of Standard, they could set an MSRP on factory sets of Kaladesh. No more of this spending $20-$40 on singles you knew were going to drop in price, just for an FNM, simply because it's the first week of Standard and everybody's competing over the few gems that sifted to the top of the random pile of junk.
Now, of course, they wouldn't do that, because of the weight of tradition, because of the relationship between Wizards, the players, and LGSs, because it would alienate casual players who don't care that much about having universal access to cards and like opening packs, but also because they're owned by Hasbro and the pack model makes money. So we're stuck with it. I get it, and I've long since given up hope that they would get rid of the random packs, even when they for some crazy reason decided to replicate that model online, where it was completely unnecessary. Selling packs is priority #1; reducing the price of Standard is a happy side-effect of meeting that priority well.
So let's not demonize other customers when Wizards is the one perpetuating an unworkable model. Yes, I know they have stockholders and Wizards needs to make money to keep our beloved game in existence. But when I read MaRo's words and think about the direction these things are going, it makes me sad that they aren't exploiting what in my mind is the best thing about the pack model -- set after set of well-designed Limited formats makes opening packs a deep and engaging game in and of itself. But instead of aggressively promoting Limited, they push Standard and make their Constructed players choose between gambling and buying game pieces on the secondary market. This change represents putting their eggs in the Standard basket, and in my opinion using a gimmick to sell packs represents choosing style over substance as the thing they want the world to see when it thinks of Magic the game.
Wizards didn't say it would lower prices. They said the cards would be more available. That's a fact - you can't argue it. If there are X copies in circulation now and Wizards prints 1000 copies of it, there will be X+1000 cards in circulation after release.
This kind of thing is needlessly pedantic. Making the cards more available in the absolute sense is not a thing anybody is interested in if the increase in availability is microscopic and doesn't have any effect on the overall market. There's no "hey, it's technically more available so what are you complaining about?" If I told my wife "we need more coffee," and she went to the store and bought a teaspoon's worth of coffee I wouldn't say "thanks for the coffee," I would assume she was trolling me or had some sort of problem with the concept of keeping coffee in the house in the first place. That's why people are frustrated: because the response doesn't address the actual problem, not because they don't know that x + 1 is more than x.
Anyone else suspect that these "Masterpieces" spell the end of the FTV sets?
Speculated elsewhere by someone else, but it certainly makes a lot of sense that they wouldn't bother with them now that there is something in the same vein in every set.
Yes - I think so. From the Vault was never a very good product overall. It did not do enough to meet the demand and was not printed enough. Those that bought it to speculate on almost always lost value (unless they got it at distributor pricing) because they were always marked up above MSRP.
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Rose tint my world, keep me safe from my trouble and pain.
I think that until they can become easier to acquire, Masterpieces are pointless. Shouldn't go away, though.
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BRGMy Deck(Modern): Bolts'n'Burns WMy other, WIP casual deck: Zero to Hero
Protection from Will-O'-the-Wisps, Ali-from-Cairos, and Uncle-Istvans
Legendary snow landwalk
---------------------------------------
On the reserved list: Wizards won't remove it. Only we can. In other words: Play Modern, Pauper, or No-RL Eternal.
I will likely not have the ability to afford collecting a set of them sadly. I will probably try and grab the ones that I like the art on though - that Lotus Petal is really nice!
Some youtubers have determined - at yesterday's prices - it will cost somethging like $10k USD for a full set of the Masterpieces (not a playset! just 1x of each)
How are they getting to that figure? Are they going by the amount of boosters you need to open or something? Because with a very rough (with a lot of rounded up) calculation, I'm coming at no more than $3K.
Which is still pricey, but a far cry from 10K.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
The $10k figure is the amount of boosters you need to open to crack 30 masterpieces on average. The number you're saying is the estimate to buy them all as singles.
Currently Starcity them at $2540 for a complete set.
I'm just gonna hope that I crack one. One unintended consequence, though, is that players will no longer be as excited to open a planeswalker.
If they would be "clever" they would put an alternate artwork planeswalker in these masterpiece slots aswell, just to make an even more ridiculous expensive version of them.
Which leads us to the consequence that they should simply put any card in the set in an alternate art version in a rarity slot that is just for the pimp people and put a "reprint" slot in every booster that isnt standard legal (but draft legal).
Eh, this has stopped pissing me off. These are cards I will never see in person for the most part, and they are cards I don't even really want: it makes me uncomfortable playing with hundreds of dollars worth of cardboard anyway, so I'd be eager to trade off one Sword of Feast and Famine for two.
Only avaricious fools will seek every one of these, and if you've got that much money to waste, and you REALLY wouldn't rather spend it on starving children, I guess that's as good a dump as any. Their mere existence saddens some, because they can't collect them all, but take heart, and remember: a complete set of Kaladesh does NOT include masterpieces. That's a different set, just as a foil set is different.
Everyone who says this is a marketing ploy is right, but there is more to it: people really like the idea that they have a chance of opening some unbelievably good in every pack. Humans have always been susceptible to the lottery effect. In the end, I expect this will boost sales for a while, and then just become status quo.
For pure limited purposes, Sword of Feast and Famine is NOT a good card to introduce into the format, but the cards are not really more warping than the best mythics that are already in the set. Not for limited, anyway. Even the most broken cards, like Time Walk aren't actually meaningfully better than something like Dovin Baan when compared to commons.
Normal Magic players needs to resign themselves to never having any of these cards. If they continue doing this, then you may be able to expect to pull one or two in your career. I look at it as a random upside: not something to consider when buying cards, just something to vaguely hope for, much like foil planeswalkers.
Wizards didn't say it would lower prices. They said the cards would be more available. That's a fact - you can't argue it. If there are X copies in circulation now and Wizards prints 1000 copies of it, there will be X+1000 cards in circulation after release.
This kind of thing is needlessly pedantic. Making the cards more available in the absolute sense is not a thing anybody is interested in if the increase in availability is microscopic and doesn't have any effect on the overall market. There's no "hey, it's technically more available so what are you complaining about?" If I told my wife "we need more coffee," and she went to the store and bought a teaspoon's worth of coffee I wouldn't say "thanks for the coffee," I would assume she was trolling me or had some sort of problem with the concept of keeping coffee in the house in the first place. That's why people are frustrated: because the response doesn't address the actual problem, not because they don't know that x + 1 is more than x.
No one has said that it will have an effect on the overall market.
People are saying that "THEYRE SAYING AVAILABILITY WILL GO UP BUT IT WONT" which is factually incorrect.
Availability will go up - that's a fact.
Prices will not change much - that's also a fact.
No one is saying that the latter is true, but people are arguing that the former is false.
No one has said that it will have an effect on the overall market.
People are saying that "THEYRE SAYING AVAILABILITY WILL GO UP BUT IT WONT" which is factually incorrect.
Availability will go up - that's a fact.
Prices will not change much - that's also a fact.
No one is saying that the latter is true, but people are arguing that the former is false.
If I get in my car and say "I'm going to run to the store and buy a loaf of bread," and someone says "that's factually incorrect. You're going to drive," it's factually correct that that person was factually correct in correcting me. It's also morally correct to call that person a douche. This entire line of argument depends on one side pretending they don't understand what the other side means. That's why it's pedantic and unhelpful. Something can be technically true and at the same time be pedantic and unhelpful.
No one is arguing that availability of these cards is not increasing in an absolute sense. At the same time, no one has ever asked for any increase, no matter how small in the availability of these cards. People are asking for a significant increase that represents a noticeable effort to meet the demand for reprints that is out there. People are questioning Maro spending two paragraphs talking about how one of the goals of this project is to meet the demand for reprints when everyone knows that it won't come close to doing any such thing. Nobody is talking about whether or not this is an increase in the absolute sense, except for the people who are snarkily saying "well, you didn't say how much of an increase you wanted..."
We can, if we want to actually discuss this, gather some numbers and talk about how much this will actually increase the availability of the cards, and what kind of level of production it would take to address the demand, and whether that's even a good idea given the interests of singles sellers etc. But if your goal is just to chirp "well, you saidCrucible of Worlds needs a reprint and one in every dozen cases or so is technically a reprint," I don't see how that helps anything. Take your trophy for noticing when somebody was "factually incorrect" and move on.
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Collectors are not the reason why Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is worth more than Kytheon, Hero of Akros; or why Scalding Tarn is worth more than Crypt of Agadeem. Those cards were equally likely to open in their respective packs, they exist in similar numbers. The difference in price is caused by a difference in demand from players. There's nothing inherently more "collectible" about a fetch land, but it's a lot more playable in constructed magic. Don't blame collectors when manabases or format staples cost 10x to 100x the price of an average rare in a set.
That being said, I do agree with your stance on masterpieces. There's nothing bad about them in itself. The only potential downside I see, is if masterpieces reduces the likely hood of "real" reprints.
Currently Playing:
Retired
The bottom line is, you can't expect a collectible hobby to always remain within the confines of your budget. It has never been that way--that's what makes collecting collecting after all. As such, I hope you find a way to continue to enjoy Magic in the same manner, perhaps taking a different approach to collecting.
To be honest, I am likely to now buy a lot less packs. The odds of pulling one of these is not worth it, and the value of the other cards in the set will be low enough that I can take the money I would normally be spending on boxes and packs and just buy the singles that I need.
Sure, I will still attend the same amount of drafts and prereleases, and an occasional pack here and there, but I am content to let the singles market open the boxes and sell me what I want.
I think the rarity of these is insane though. As a collector as well, I will be happy to pull one if I am lucky, but the cost of these will be crazy high at that rarity - especially on high demand cards like Mana Crypt. I will likely not have the ability to afford collecting a set of them sadly. I will probably try and grab the ones that I like the art on though - that Lotus Petal is really nice!
Speculated elsewhere by someone else, but it certainly makes a lot of sense that they wouldn't bother with them now that there is something in the same vein in every set.
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Some youtubers have determined - at yesterday's prices - it will cost somethging like $10k USD for a full set of the Masterpieces (not a playset! just 1x of each)
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/334931-what-is-the-most-pimp-card-deck-youve-seen-or?comment=5361
Commander
RGOmnath, Locus of Rage Grenades! EDHGR
UWSygg's Defense, EDH - Voltron & ControlWU
BUGMimeoplasm EDH ft. Ifnir Cycling-discard comboBUG
WBTeysa, Connoisseur of CullingBW
BWSelenia & Recruiter of the Guard suicice combo EDHWB
UBRWGO-Kagachi - 5 Color Enchantments - EDHUBRWG
Does it increase how many packs players will open overall? Sure it does. That's good business practice on Wizards' part. But it also means more copies of regular Kaladesh cards will be opened, thus dropping the prices for those regular cards. Standard becomes cheaper to play, cards from Kaladesh become cheaper and easier to obtain.
And there's the fun factor; I remember the shouts of joy at various pre-releases for BFZ and OGW when someone lucked out and got an Expedition. Getting that random super-fancy foil card can make your day. And the card doesn't replace anything important (oh no, I didn't get some limited-only common...damn).
I think these are a great idea, and see nothing wrong with introducing them. If a person can't afford to get one, that's just too bad for them. This is a luxury, a game, not food or shelter. Not everyone can have everything.
For casual true hobby kitchen table players, good if you pull one otherwise doesn't matter.
For tournament players that have to keep up with the Jones's and bling out their deck, Bad
Regular fnm weekend card shop players, Good
Its all perspective. Do you really Have to have these to say you have a complete Kaladesh collection? I would say no, you may say yes.
If I wanted a blinged out Sol Ring, I would get a Alpha or Beta one, not one of these. My perspective is different from others. Everyone has their reasons and problems and praise and can all be correct in some way.
Me honestly, I am a pack gambler. Used to play, don't now, only collect vintage stuff. These will be Bad for me but awesome. I will buy way more packs and fat bundles in the gamble for one of these. It was OK in bfz be because the full art lands along with the rares usually made up the price for me. But only at the beginning. So goes the gamble. These will make the rares and mythics less valuable and so I'll definitely be going in the hole just to pull one. But that is fine with me. I'm willing to spend the money and lose it for the fun of popping packs and hoping for a really pretty foil pull. It'll be fun.
Still don't understand how they are going to do 100 a year and keep them powerful and pricey enough to keep up the mystique and "want/need" to get one.
And for those saying that this will increase availability, i could argue that point. but I will stick by mine that just because a couple thousand more are in circulation, if doesnt make it more available. EVERY SINGLE one of these cards can currently be purchased, its not that they ARENT available, its that they are expensive. So unless masters series lowers the price of traditional printings, it will not increase availablity in the way wizards said it would. If you couldnt afford it before, and were hoping for a reprint to get some, then they do this, and the price stays the same, you still cant afford either of them.
The expeditions are cards playing in every format almost, in playsets nontheless. The inventions are not....some are played in competitve formats and will be herp derp expensive, like crucible and vial. But most are played almost exclusivly in EDH, So im picturing the mana rocks to be the most expensive, with most average around 20-30, then the rest will be 50+
On a side note, the other two swords, coalion relic, extraplanar lens, caged sun, batterskull, winter orb, chalice of the void, and engineered explosivesd to be in the next set
Wizards didn't say it would lower prices. They said the cards would be more available. That's a fact - you can't argue it. If there are X copies in circulation now and Wizards prints 1000 copies of it, there will be X+1000 cards in circulation after release.
I think it's a bit silly to point fingers at "collectors" when complaining about card prices. The behavior of collectors, casual players, competitive players, and everybody who ever spends money on Magic cards is to a large extent dictated by the fact that most Standard cards are only available in random boosters. I've said this before, but I feel I have to reiterate how crazy this is from the perspective of somebody who treats Constructed Magic as a skill-intensive game that has little to do with collecting baseball cards. You wouldn't buy a chess set piece by piece, cracking sealed packs in hopes of finally opening that Queen, or asking your buddy if you can borrow a Bishop for next weekend's tournament. There's no inherent reason you need to do so in Magic, and basically every other CCG that's still being supported has moved away from random packs. If WotC really wanted to reduce the price of Standard, they could set an MSRP on factory sets of Kaladesh. No more of this spending $20-$40 on singles you knew were going to drop in price, just for an FNM, simply because it's the first week of Standard and everybody's competing over the few gems that sifted to the top of the random pile of junk.
Now, of course, they wouldn't do that, because of the weight of tradition, because of the relationship between Wizards, the players, and LGSs, because it would alienate casual players who don't care that much about having universal access to cards and like opening packs, but also because they're owned by Hasbro and the pack model makes money. So we're stuck with it. I get it, and I've long since given up hope that they would get rid of the random packs, even when they for some crazy reason decided to replicate that model online, where it was completely unnecessary. Selling packs is priority #1; reducing the price of Standard is a happy side-effect of meeting that priority well.
So let's not demonize other customers when Wizards is the one perpetuating an unworkable model. Yes, I know they have stockholders and Wizards needs to make money to keep our beloved game in existence. But when I read MaRo's words and think about the direction these things are going, it makes me sad that they aren't exploiting what in my mind is the best thing about the pack model -- set after set of well-designed Limited formats makes opening packs a deep and engaging game in and of itself. But instead of aggressively promoting Limited, they push Standard and make their Constructed players choose between gambling and buying game pieces on the secondary market. This change represents putting their eggs in the Standard basket, and in my opinion using a gimmick to sell packs represents choosing style over substance as the thing they want the world to see when it thinks of Magic the game.
This kind of thing is needlessly pedantic. Making the cards more available in the absolute sense is not a thing anybody is interested in if the increase in availability is microscopic and doesn't have any effect on the overall market. There's no "hey, it's technically more available so what are you complaining about?" If I told my wife "we need more coffee," and she went to the store and bought a teaspoon's worth of coffee I wouldn't say "thanks for the coffee," I would assume she was trolling me or had some sort of problem with the concept of keeping coffee in the house in the first place. That's why people are frustrated: because the response doesn't address the actual problem, not because they don't know that x + 1 is more than x.
Yes - I think so. From the Vault was never a very good product overall. It did not do enough to meet the demand and was not printed enough. Those that bought it to speculate on almost always lost value (unless they got it at distributor pricing) because they were always marked up above MSRP.
WMy other, WIP casual deck: Zero to Hero
Protection from Will-O'-the-Wisps, Ali-from-Cairos, and Uncle-Istvans
Legendary snow landwalk
---------------------------------------
On the reserved list: Wizards won't remove it. Only we can. In other words: Play Modern, Pauper, or No-RL Eternal.
How are they getting to that figure? Are they going by the amount of boosters you need to open or something? Because with a very rough (with a lot of rounded up) calculation, I'm coming at no more than $3K.
Which is still pricey, but a far cry from 10K.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
Currently Starcity them at $2540 for a complete set.
My 720 Peasant Cube
If they would be "clever" they would put an alternate artwork planeswalker in these masterpiece slots aswell, just to make an even more ridiculous expensive version of them.
Which leads us to the consequence that they should simply put any card in the set in an alternate art version in a rarity slot that is just for the pimp people and put a "reprint" slot in every booster that isnt standard legal (but draft legal).
We can still work on this ;P
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Only avaricious fools will seek every one of these, and if you've got that much money to waste, and you REALLY wouldn't rather spend it on starving children, I guess that's as good a dump as any. Their mere existence saddens some, because they can't collect them all, but take heart, and remember: a complete set of Kaladesh does NOT include masterpieces. That's a different set, just as a foil set is different.
Everyone who says this is a marketing ploy is right, but there is more to it: people really like the idea that they have a chance of opening some unbelievably good in every pack. Humans have always been susceptible to the lottery effect. In the end, I expect this will boost sales for a while, and then just become status quo.
For pure limited purposes, Sword of Feast and Famine is NOT a good card to introduce into the format, but the cards are not really more warping than the best mythics that are already in the set. Not for limited, anyway. Even the most broken cards, like Time Walk aren't actually meaningfully better than something like Dovin Baan when compared to commons.
Normal Magic players needs to resign themselves to never having any of these cards. If they continue doing this, then you may be able to expect to pull one or two in your career. I look at it as a random upside: not something to consider when buying cards, just something to vaguely hope for, much like foil planeswalkers.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
No one has said that it will have an effect on the overall market.
People are saying that "THEYRE SAYING AVAILABILITY WILL GO UP BUT IT WONT" which is factually incorrect.
Availability will go up - that's a fact.
Prices will not change much - that's also a fact.
No one is saying that the latter is true, but people are arguing that the former is false.
Now now, if you have to put quotes around it it isn't literal.
UBBreya's Toybox (Competitive, Combo)WR
RGodzilla, King of the MonstersG
-Retired Decks-
UBLazav, Dimir Mastermind (Competitive, UB Voltron/Control)UB
"Knowledge is such a burden. Release it. Release all your fears to me."
—Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
Its literally in quotes.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
If I get in my car and say "I'm going to run to the store and buy a loaf of bread," and someone says "that's factually incorrect. You're going to drive," it's factually correct that that person was factually correct in correcting me. It's also morally correct to call that person a douche. This entire line of argument depends on one side pretending they don't understand what the other side means. That's why it's pedantic and unhelpful. Something can be technically true and at the same time be pedantic and unhelpful.
No one is arguing that availability of these cards is not increasing in an absolute sense. At the same time, no one has ever asked for any increase, no matter how small in the availability of these cards. People are asking for a significant increase that represents a noticeable effort to meet the demand for reprints that is out there. People are questioning Maro spending two paragraphs talking about how one of the goals of this project is to meet the demand for reprints when everyone knows that it won't come close to doing any such thing. Nobody is talking about whether or not this is an increase in the absolute sense, except for the people who are snarkily saying "well, you didn't say how much of an increase you wanted..."
We can, if we want to actually discuss this, gather some numbers and talk about how much this will actually increase the availability of the cards, and what kind of level of production it would take to address the demand, and whether that's even a good idea given the interests of singles sellers etc. But if your goal is just to chirp "well, you said Crucible of Worlds needs a reprint and one in every dozen cases or so is technically a reprint," I don't see how that helps anything. Take your trophy for noticing when somebody was "factually incorrect" and move on.