So Masterpiece cards are about 1 in every 144 boosters, from what I've read- or one in every four boxes. I got one box each at the release of each set (BFZ, OGW, KLD, AER). In addition, I got a bundle/fat pack for each set, plus god knows how many I've opened from random impulse buys, prize packs, drafts, prereleases, and what not. So yeah, there's a lot of foil wrappers in landfill because of me.
Nothing. Zero. Nada. No expeditions, no inventions, absolutely nothing.
I suppose my frustrations are magnified by the fact that the box I just opened was hilariously bad with how terrible it was (5 Quicksmith Rebels!). That and the fact that last night at FNM, the second place stack (which I just BARELY missed out on) had a Torrential Gearhulk master. Its like the multiverse is flat out taunting me with this luck.
So yeah, mostly a vent thread, but at the same time, just curious if anyone else is getting royally boned in the Masterpiece department themselves.
I hear ya, man, or at least I did. After going through all of BFZ, OGW, and Kaladesh, I'll admit I got a little salty when my younger sister pulled a Cataclysmic Gearhulk (yeah, it's the cheapest one, but it still has a price tag on par with Heart of Kiran) during her second Kaladesh draft ever, after watching adjacent drafters pull inventions on at least two other occasions (one of which was a Mana Crypt that my opponent hilariously used to beat me in a for-fun game with Shrewd Negotiation). My second Aether Revolt prerelease finally rewarded me with an Engineered Explosives in a prize pack, but I do know the feeling of watching seemingly everyone around me get insane pulls.
Assuming each box cost $99 and each fat pack was $40, that's roughly $560 that could've been spent buying the specific treasures/masterpieces/etc that you actually wanted. I stopped cracking packs for basically that same reason; buy the singles you want and hit up a casino if you're looking for a rush.
I pulled four during BFZ, but nothing since. I tend to buy a Bundle box of each set and between 3-6 packs every few weeks (on payday). I did get a box of each except Aether Revolt.
The way I look at things like Masterpiece cards and the like, is you have to look at the odds as being from sealed cases and thusly, for example, in the case of a 1 in 4 box average (the trouble with averages is that some cases could have 2 and some cases could have 0), basically you are looking at 1 per case that one would reasonably expect (but not be guaranteed obviously).
The trouble with buying individual boxes, fat packs(bundles now?) and booster packs, is that you remove the potential consistency from the mix and its just a matter of whether your box is one of the lucky ones from that case or whether you lucked out on your individual pack/fat pack pulls.
It can definitely be frustrating. I know that my luck has been rather minimal from my small quantity purchases from sets (I got the average amount from the many cases of battle for zendikar I purchased, and came out a little ahead from the several cases of fat packs of OGW that I purchased, but have pulled nothing special since then, though I haven't bought in the same quantities as I did for those two sets since then either. I recognize that random is random, but I also understand it can be frustrating when you get a bad box or otherwise and you think how just one of those cards could make up for it if you could just pull one and then nadda :/.
I will relay a story though about how averages can work when opening (in my case at the time, 120 boxes of RTR when I was still with the local shop that I owned/ran the magic singles collection for). Jace in that set was the big pre-release favorite, was something like a $40 card at the time (yes pre-sales prices can be crazy). I get my cases and and opening them like crazy, and the first 60 or so of the boxes I pull far far less of Jace than I should have, which of course was more than a little aggravating, as it was the most important card I was looking to need for my sales, I hadn't really run into a situation where I got that much less of a card like that before and I had been opening that many boxes of each set for years. Anyhow, so I go to open the last 60 boxes, and sure enough, I get far more than normal from those 60 boxes. In the end, it averaged out perfectly. I was a tad dumbfounded by the whole experience, but thankfully I didn't end up super short on Jace at the time as I thought I was going to be after the first 60 boxes.
For small quantities of anything though, sometimes you will get lucky and sometimes you wont. Unfortunately for each individual box and such, a 25% chance is still only a 25% chance, and that doesn't change with buying boxes or packs from other sets, or even other sealed boxes from the same set from different cases and such. Part of why I tend to either buy a whole lot of a set, or barely any at all. I'm not enough of a gambler myself for that sort of thing.
Not a single masterpiece from the Kaladesh block despite the 5-ish boxes of Kaladesh and 3 boxes of Aether Revolt. Zendikar block I got 7 in relative short order (4 from BfZ and 3 from Oath).
Crucible of Worlds out of 2 boxes of Kaladesh, and Chalice of the Void was in my second pack of the 1 box of Aether Revolt I opened. I'm pretty happy, considering my luck is usually garbage (I pulled 0 Expeditions out of 3 boxes). While I'm certainly happy to have pulled Crucible and Chalice, I want neither of them, but at least they make good trade fodder, or are easy to sell and apply towards the Tabernacle I've got my eye on.
FWIW, it was a good thing I pulled Chalice in my Aether Revolt box, because the box was utter garbage without it: only 3 Mythics (Paradox Engine, Aetherwind Basker, Indomitable Creativity, yay $9 worth of mythics!), no Ajani, no Tezzeret, no Heart of Kiran. It did have a Ballista in it at least.
I've purchased approximately 7 boxes, 5 fat packs, 6 prereleases and an indeterminate number of loose packs since BFZ and I've pulled one treasure/masterpiece (Mystic Gate). So yea, pretty crappy luck. That being said I got my obligatory 1 box of the new of AER and pulled SIX mythics. And that's all regular ones, no foils. I was blown away. Too bad 4 out of the 6 were dollar bin mythics with no planeswalkers. Distribution of the newer sets are wonky.
Me. I've opened exactly 1 expedition, a Mystic Gate. Since BFZ, I have opened 0 other premium cards. I have watched other people open them though - some of my magic friends have opened a small handful at this point.
I have opened 1. These expeditions are having the opposite effect on me - I am reminded each week to not buy more packs because I am not getting the ultra chase rares that eat up their EV.
I own 33, but I've opened exactly 1 - a Graven Cairns expedition (which was in a pack with a Chandra back when that version of her was still retailing for 20 dollars), and of course it's the only one sitting unused in my binder because I don't play those colors (the rest live spread amongst my EDH decks).
After all the packs of Kaladesh I cracked I've basically lost the urge to gamble on opening masterpieces; if I happen to luck into one during a prerelease, that would be pretty sweet, but I would probably wind up spending more on sealed product only to turn up empty-handed then I would just buying whichever of them I actually want, and knowing my luck, if I do crack one it will be one I can't use.
Still super stoked to see what the next batch of masterpieces include, while my wallet is hoping they don't print too many sweet new versions of cards I use now.
I opened a couple boxes of BFZ, 2-3 of Oath (maybe 5 counting prize packs) and got 2 Fetid Heath - one at each prerelease.
I've opened ~8 boxes of Kaladesh and got one masterpiece in a box I split - a Hangarback Walker. Not opened a lot of AER so far, but there wasn't a single masterpiece at any of my LGS' prerelease except for a Sundering Titan on Sunday.
Kaladesh---Opened 1 prerelease pack and about 18-20 extra boosters
Aether Revolt---Opened 1 prerelease pack and 7 extra boosters so far
Standard Showdown---Opened 3 showdown boosters
Got a Marsh Flats expedition on my 1st showdown pack, and a Defense Grid masterpiece on my Aether Revolt prerelease pack, which i traded for my Torrential Gearhulk masterpiece:D
I opened 3 expeditions during BFZ / OGW, but so far have found no masterpieces. My friend who just started playing during SOI pulled a masterpiece during the Kaladesh pre-release and another in his prize pack at the Aether Revolt pre-release. Two other friends also pulled them either from pre-release packs or prize packs over 2 days of AER pre-release tournaments. Oh well...maybe someday my luck will return LOL!
My 4 player group mostly drafts, about once or twice a week.
I got two Expeditions in BFZ (one in each set) and none of us got any Inventions during all of Kaladesh. Then, on Aether Revolt prerelease one of us gets a Cataclysmic Gearhulk Invention, then the next draft (on release day) gets an Oblivion Stone then, in the 2 prize packs he got from that draft, gets a Pristine Angel! All the same guy hahahaha.
Unfortunately, up to two boxes of Kaladesh and 2 of Aether Revolt with no masterpieces between the combined ~150 packs. To make maters worse, chase rares and even uncommons are dodging me. Total of one Copter, one harvester and one ballista and only 3 fatal push. Running extremely below average on pulls of the good stuff.
None pulled here. I've been to a couple prereleases of BFZ, 1 Oath, 2 Kaladesh and 2 Aether revolt and a bundle of Aether and no such luck. I did get an Ajani Regular and Promo as well as a foil Tezzy and Heart of Kiran, so i can't be too upset. Though if anyone pulls the plat angel I will be super jelly XD.
Just yesterday, I went to my first Aether Revolt draft. I didn't pull anything good with the three draft packs and had a really crappy deck and only won 2 games out of 4 rounds. As my consolation prize, I was handed a pack of Conspiracy 2. Then a second later, the guy asks me if I wanted a pack of Aether Revolt instead. I said yes and exchanged the packs. Well, I opened the pack of Aether Revolt and pulled a Platinum Angel. That was my first masterpiece.
As others have said, you've spent several hundred dollars doing it the hard way - you could have a handful of expedition Polluted Deltas by now instead. Booster boxes are intended for businesses to sell pack by pack over the course of a few days or weeks, the idea of a consumer buying the whole thing for themselves just never made sense to me. You wouldn't go to a convenience store and grab an entire display case of chocolate bars or mints and buy it all on the spot, right?
Beyond that, you can get guaranteed value by just spending this money on things you want. If you had the choice of doing your own groceries or just handing the cash over in exchange for "some amount" of "maybe what you want", what do you think you'd pick? I've got pages of masterpieces by now but WOTC hasn't made a dollar off of me with KLD because I don't support the set.
tl;dr you're being silly with your money and this makes it hard to sympathize
I think most poeple misunderstood me. I'm not opening a bunch of packs trying to get one. I just open a bunch of packs for cards, and you'd figure at this point I'd have finally gotten one.
Just to let you know, the chances of getting Amonkhet invocations is actually higher than the chances of getting masterpieces in Kaladesh and Aether Revolt. That's part of the reason the prices are dropping like a rock on those guys right now.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
So Masterpiece cards are about 1 in every 144 boosters, from what I've read- or one in every four boxes. I got one box each at the release of each set (BFZ, OGW, KLD, AER). In addition, I got a bundle/fat pack for each set, plus god knows how many I've opened from random impulse buys, prize packs, drafts, prereleases, and what not. So yeah, there's a lot of foil wrappers in landfill because of me.
Nothing. Zero. Nada. No expeditions, no inventions, absolutely nothing.
I suppose my frustrations are magnified by the fact that the box I just opened was hilariously bad with how terrible it was (5 Quicksmith Rebels!). That and the fact that last night at FNM, the second place stack (which I just BARELY missed out on) had a Torrential Gearhulk master. Its like the multiverse is flat out taunting me with this luck.
So yeah, mostly a vent thread, but at the same time, just curious if anyone else is getting royally boned in the Masterpiece department themselves.
At Aether Revolt I pulled a Trinisphere. I purchased two booster boxes and pulled a Grindstone, also pulled a foil Fatal Push.
Link to Discord server where anybody from MTGS can keep up with thread topics while everything is being sorted out with the new site.
The trouble with buying individual boxes, fat packs(bundles now?) and booster packs, is that you remove the potential consistency from the mix and its just a matter of whether your box is one of the lucky ones from that case or whether you lucked out on your individual pack/fat pack pulls.
It can definitely be frustrating. I know that my luck has been rather minimal from my small quantity purchases from sets (I got the average amount from the many cases of battle for zendikar I purchased, and came out a little ahead from the several cases of fat packs of OGW that I purchased, but have pulled nothing special since then, though I haven't bought in the same quantities as I did for those two sets since then either. I recognize that random is random, but I also understand it can be frustrating when you get a bad box or otherwise and you think how just one of those cards could make up for it if you could just pull one and then nadda :/.
I will relay a story though about how averages can work when opening (in my case at the time, 120 boxes of RTR when I was still with the local shop that I owned/ran the magic singles collection for). Jace in that set was the big pre-release favorite, was something like a $40 card at the time (yes pre-sales prices can be crazy). I get my cases and and opening them like crazy, and the first 60 or so of the boxes I pull far far less of Jace than I should have, which of course was more than a little aggravating, as it was the most important card I was looking to need for my sales, I hadn't really run into a situation where I got that much less of a card like that before and I had been opening that many boxes of each set for years. Anyhow, so I go to open the last 60 boxes, and sure enough, I get far more than normal from those 60 boxes. In the end, it averaged out perfectly. I was a tad dumbfounded by the whole experience, but thankfully I didn't end up super short on Jace at the time as I thought I was going to be after the first 60 boxes.
For small quantities of anything though, sometimes you will get lucky and sometimes you wont. Unfortunately for each individual box and such, a 25% chance is still only a 25% chance, and that doesn't change with buying boxes or packs from other sets, or even other sealed boxes from the same set from different cases and such. Part of why I tend to either buy a whole lot of a set, or barely any at all. I'm not enough of a gambler myself for that sort of thing.
FWIW, it was a good thing I pulled Chalice in my Aether Revolt box, because the box was utter garbage without it: only 3 Mythics (Paradox Engine, Aetherwind Basker, Indomitable Creativity, yay $9 worth of mythics!), no Ajani, no Tezzeret, no Heart of Kiran. It did have a Ballista in it at least.
I have opened 1. These expeditions are having the opposite effect on me - I am reminded each week to not buy more packs because I am not getting the ultra chase rares that eat up their EV.
After all the packs of Kaladesh I cracked I've basically lost the urge to gamble on opening masterpieces; if I happen to luck into one during a prerelease, that would be pretty sweet, but I would probably wind up spending more on sealed product only to turn up empty-handed then I would just buying whichever of them I actually want, and knowing my luck, if I do crack one it will be one I can't use.
Still super stoked to see what the next batch of masterpieces include, while my wallet is hoping they don't print too many sweet new versions of cards I use now.
I've opened ~8 boxes of Kaladesh and got one masterpiece in a box I split - a Hangarback Walker. Not opened a lot of AER so far, but there wasn't a single masterpiece at any of my LGS' prerelease except for a Sundering Titan on Sunday.
Aether Revolt---Opened 1 prerelease pack and 7 extra boosters so far
Standard Showdown---Opened 3 showdown boosters
Got a Marsh Flats expedition on my 1st showdown pack, and a Defense Grid masterpiece on my Aether Revolt prerelease pack, which i traded for my Torrential Gearhulk masterpiece:D
UW Azorius Control
Modern
UW Azorius Control
I only been to 2 prerlease tho.
Man if you are rich and have a job just buy them.
EDH: Xenagos, God of Revels.
I got two Expeditions in BFZ (one in each set) and none of us got any Inventions during all of Kaladesh. Then, on Aether Revolt prerelease one of us gets a Cataclysmic Gearhulk Invention, then the next draft (on release day) gets an Oblivion Stone then, in the 2 prize packs he got from that draft, gets a Pristine Angel! All the same guy hahahaha.
Talk about insane run!
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Beyond that, you can get guaranteed value by just spending this money on things you want. If you had the choice of doing your own groceries or just handing the cash over in exchange for "some amount" of "maybe what you want", what do you think you'd pick? I've got pages of masterpieces by now but WOTC hasn't made a dollar off of me with KLD because I don't support the set.
tl;dr you're being silly with your money and this makes it hard to sympathize
WElp, I have now. Third Amonkhet pack I opened had a Containment Priest
It was beautiful. Even though I first read it as "Attainment Priest" because stupid font.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Thats exactly what i do ;P
Always fill up my food stock and it lasts a long time.
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