I think WOTC needs to expand the reserved list. I think it would benefit consumer confidence and increase sales if people knew that cards were more likely to become collectors editions. I think the process should be very transparent (as in the intention should be announced over a year in advance, with at least 6-12 months of knowing what will be added before it takes effect).
That will never, ever happen. The Reserved List was a mistake that has hurt (the paper version of) the game, as a whole, since its inception.
The collectors are not the ones WotC needs to focus on in the paper format. They actually need to focus on the people who play the game. If the game is fun, people will crack packs. If the game play is bad, people stop cracking packs. Simple as that.
One of the biggest complaints about MtG is how rotations, bans and unbans can render entire decks worthless. An expanded reserved list helps maintain the value of said cards. While yes, it can hurt that little Timmy can't play Vintage, the truth is that collectors and investors buy a lot of product. The truth of the matter is, MtG is not a right. It's a hobby, and all hobbies have costs.
First, can you give a source fot MTGO making more money than paper magic? I actually can´t belive that until i see the mumbers for that. And you woulnd´t just make something like that up, would you?
It is easy to see why that is the case as well. Even if MtGO has a smaller audience than the paper format, WotC has to spend less money making the cards, shipping the cards and sharing the cost of the packs with the distributors and retailers. MtGO's audience could in fact be really tiny and it would still earn WotC as much or more money than the paper format due to the vertical and digital nature of the distribution.
The first thing they need to do is improve the quality of the physical cards. it's stupid that it has to be said, when that is what your company does, you have to do it well. In 10 years, it is entirely possible that you will be unable to find sleeve-legal copies of Amonkhet cards. I'm in Florida, the newest cards are warping in days. There are a lot of other things, but it doesn't matter how good the card text is or how playable the sets are if you need to double sleeve every single card within minutes of cracking the pack. Tarmogoyf at rare in Standard won't actually help if general use destroys all of those copies.
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Project Booster Fun makes it less fun to open a booster.
The first thing they need to do is improve the quality of the physical cards. it's stupid that it has to be said, when that is what your company does, you have to do it well. In 10 years, it is entirely possible that you will be unable to find sleeve-legal copies of Amonkhet cards. I'm in Florida, the newest cards are warping in days. There are a lot of other things, but it doesn't matter how good the card text is or how playable the sets are if you need to double sleeve every single card within minutes of cracking the pack. Tarmogoyf at rare in Standard won't actually help if general use destroys all of those copies.
The head of WotC already said the cost of paper has gone up. They could either lower quality or raise prices. They chose lower quality.
Also, I live in Nevada and the Amonkhet cards are warped. Its pretty bad.
The price may have gone up on paper, but the company is also spending a lot more money designing completely new cards than they used to. Originally they just had standard sets to worry about and filled the blank spaces with core sets composed mostly of reprint cards. When I came back to this game they expanded their card development to include sets like conspiracy and commander at a regular basis. Even more recently, they've started ramping up their new set releases so they have single large sets instead of blocks and they brought core sets back largely because they've stretched themselves as far as they can go on R&D.
They really shouldn't be pouring so much money into doing excessively large standard print runs if they intend to have commander and random summer sets thrown in, and I keep getting the feeling that people don't really like standard that much. Unstable was a huge hit just because it annexed itself from the tournament play, gave pretty consistent value per pack due to the lands, and it wasn't printed to death like some of the other sets out there. They want to make a bunch of different products for different people, but because they are skewing their marketing heavily towards standard, they basically set themselves up for problems when that avenue crumbles.
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!
The first thing they need to do is improve the quality of the physical cards. it's stupid that it has to be said, when that is what your company does, you have to do it well. In 10 years, it is entirely possible that you will be unable to find sleeve-legal copies of Amonkhet cards. I'm in Florida, the newest cards are warping in days. There are a lot of other things, but it doesn't matter how good the card text is or how playable the sets are if you need to double sleeve every single card within minutes of cracking the pack. Tarmogoyf at rare in Standard won't actually help if general use destroys all of those copies.
The head of WotC already said the cost of paper has gone up. They could either lower quality or raise prices. They chose lower quality.
Also, I live in Nevada and the Amonkhet cards are warped. Its pretty bad.
do you have a source for that? that would be REALLY bad
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Project Booster Fun makes it less fun to open a booster.
In short- less emphasis on story- a few sets with zero planeswalkers would be really welcome- and an understanding that it is Magic the Gathering, not Creatures the tappening.
Bring back the elements they have lost as they are "unfun", because what is really unfun is every deck playing creatures killing in the same way and a 3 deck metagame. Oh and if they could arrange a public appearance in stocks for the guys who have so enthusiastically plugged the design paradigm of the post RTR world, giys like Stoddard, Maro et al. who spend their time saying how great and fun Emrakul is and then a few months later apologise for it being banned. I am sure we could provide the rotten fruit.
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
In short- less emphasis on story- a few sets with zero planeswalkers would be really welcome- and an understanding that it is Magic the Gathering, not Creatures the tappening.
Bring back the elements they have lost as they are "unfun", because what is really unfun is every deck playing creatures killing in the same way and a 3 deck metagame. Oh and if they could arrange a public appearance in stocks for the guys who have so enthusiastically plugged the design paradigm of the post RTR world, giys like Stoddard, Maro et al. who spend their time saying how great and fun Emrakul is and then a few months later apologise for it being banned. I am sure we could provide the rotten fruit.
That and put some of the 25+ modern era cards through a normal MSRP set so the prices can get tamed a bit. The whole point of making modern was to get away from Legacy and the RL, which includes legacy level pricing. Right now many of the cards that have really high profiles are just not getting the supply they need to let players actually play with the cards and it doesn't help that they are basically irreplaceable. The second best version of Dark Confidant is so far behind it that there's no contest, and cards like Ancestral Vision and Cryptic Command are blue deck staples that always find a way into a deck even if those decks aren't currently in the lime light.
Also don't want to get started on Snapcaster Mage. To be frank a lot of modern cards require insurance against theft due to the price tag on them. This actually came up a few times in a conversation with one of the agents I've talked to about insuring collections. The problem with MtG is that the game is actively played and many insurance companies that deal with collectible items will not insure items that see active use. On top of which, home owners insurance and the like will only cover partial costs and the collection has to be appraised. Since prices on cards spike and dip quite significantly in Modern this makes it so that even getting an accurate appraisal is difficult.
A few years ago I'd say the hobby was niche enough that it didn't really require the protection, but Wizards own reprint policy has been driving costs quite significantly along with the pro-tour and tournament magic in general. Not to mention they are doing their best to expand the brand and get more people familiar with the game. Wizards basically has to get costs down on the formats people are actively playing because they are the only ones who can actually do it.
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!
Variance that could be more under control by Wizards if they changed their collation/sorting of cards into packs for Masters sets. Iconic is a dumpster fire compared to the others. They can't continue in the fashion of IM, they need to load up the power/value more (ala MM1 2 and 3) in M25 or if they don't drop the price per pack, plain and simple.
*shrug* I've provided the data about EV specifically. If you also have a problem with the variance, that's a different issue.
Personally, I doubt that Iconic Masters or any Masters product has any effect on the "younger/newer players" demographic; they're not the target audience and are unlikely to be the primary consumers. (if we assume that commons/uncommns have no value and to most players they don't and the foils are valued at 0. ) Looking at just rares/mythics.
The Masters edition seems to have followed a very natural course. The first Masters product was aggressively undercosted, as part of a first foray into a product space. They found out that it was way undercosted/overvalued, and they have been trimming the "fat" down to ensure it's a sustainable product line. They can continue to use the Masters edition as a "high variance" product line with normal sets as a "low variance" reference point. People who like high variance will continue to buy Masters, people who don't will not. Wizards is likely going to be fine with lots of players choosing to buy only a subset of the Magic product, and that should already be part of their overall business strategy.
Thank you for posting the EV's that was quite helpful. However I feel that while average EV % is important, for the common player knowing the medum value is also important that would give a player a better idea of the value without the swimgy nature of uber mythic/draft garbage.
Based on finding the math and some help from SCG the medium for eternal masters is only 2.24, a far cry from the $10 price.... This is assuming you only look at rares mythics and assune a don't countfoils. (which most players do,)
I believe you are referring to the median value possibly? I could see the median value being 2.24 a pack for EM. I would expect the mean or average price to be higher as pricey cards skew the average upwards. And yes median would be far more indicative than mean(average) when discussing variance. Thanks.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
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The secondary market is partially to blame for it, but from a birdseye view of things players really don't want high variance in values when opening packs. When a set turns into X card or bust like masters sets often do, the only time it becomes worth it to actually open packs is when one buys them in bulk quantities to offset this factor. Even then I've seen people get burned live on video by masters sets multiple times, and while Tolarians booster box game for the masters sets often goes on the longest, the fact remains that it only takes one bad opening to spoil the experience. That's probably why no one wants to open iconic masters despite it selling for so low on the second hand market. I've actually wanted to buy a box or two, but looking at the contents it's almost better to just buy the playset of whatever card you're interested in and just forget the rest. A lot of the mythic and rare slots in the set are composed of EDH bombs and only a few are really good for 60 card casual or modern play.
Also, the very fact that only a few cards are going to see modern play as a 4x is why the prices sink on so many other cards while the price rises on those few cards. For a set to really keep even there has to be a lot of highly played cards in the rare slot to soak up the box value. If they threw literally everything but the kitchen sink into a single masters set that would be the only case where I think the 240 msrp would actually be justified.
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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!
It's pretty annoying. The company keeps making the super high cost cards of modern the golden egg for their sets, then the first thing I've seen most people do when they pull them is trade out of them for cheaper cards since a lot of people aren't comfortable playing with them. There's also a lot of people who just sit on the cards, too, and never take them out to use.
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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!
They need to find a way to increase power level in Standard. Right now 99% of your standard cards are completely useless once they rotate out. I'm not into renting cards which is exactly what you are doing in buying standard cards right now. Very few end up being useful in Modern or older formats.
They also need to find a way to make tournament level decks more affordable or increase prize support, probably both. I would play a lot more Standard if I got a decent rare once a month and uncommons with alt art. If you could play FNM every week for a year and get a few play sets of a competitive play level card, that would draw people out for FNM more. It doesn't have to be something like Hazoret but a good $1-$2 rare that is used in tier decks.
Nothing is worse for the game than telling a noob that yeah, if you want to really compete in Standard you gotta drop at least $250 for your first deck and all you have is that one deck. Oh.. yeah..want to play Modern? Do you have $1000?
Sure, you can roll a budget deck but good luck going better than 2-2 in most metas. You show up to play without a tier deck in a lot of places and you are just donating money to the other players.
First, can you give a source fot MTGO making more money than paper magic? I actually can´t belive that until i see the mumbers for that. And you woulnd´t just make something like that up, would you?
Well I did manage to find a source in reference to this to help back up my claims -
According to the web article it says, "By 2007, it is estimated that over 300,000 registered accounts existed for MTGO, with a Magic executive stating that “[Magic Online] is worth somewhere between 30% to 50% of the total Magic business [3].”
Paper Magic makes up only 35% of Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro's total revenue of MTG compared to MTGO which apparently is more successful, not to mention that the supporting infrastructure for Paper Magic is at an all time low due to the low print quality of products. So that statistic isn't too far off.
I apologize If you felt that I was misleading you. We all want to get to the facts on certain things it's just that sometimes it's hard.
Second, Video gaming is quite different from magic. I know some people that play magic and don´t play video games, although they are a minority.
Third, if there is no difference between an AI and a real player to you, it says a lot about your social life.
I do still know people who have lan partys, where they meet up for video games, even if they could just do it over the internet. Any idea why?
How is playing against an AI just as rewarding as playing against a real player? Back when I used to play video games during my childhood I hardly had anyone to hang out with to play games with aside from my family until I discovered Trading Card Games/Collectible Card Games where I realized just how fun it was to enjoy a similar hobby with others.
I know a lot of magic players who next to never played in a LGS, a lot of them women. Mostly, because they do it after work or on the weekend, when most LGS are closed. Some do it, because they have no intrest in playing with strangers anyway. At least one does it, because he dosn´t want to be seen playing magic in public. They do run tournaments at home. I thought i have seen a research of wizards that the biggest group of players were casual players which are not assosiated with any LGS. Why discount that group (Actually, i don´t have a source to that, and even if i did, that was years ago. Its just my private belive that this is (still) the case. If you disagree with kitchen table casuals being the biggest group, i am not going to convince you. Might just be a case of what you belive).
I go to my LGS to hang out and play games with others who share similar interests as I do. I patron and spend money there vs. online to keep the store alive for that reason alone. The store and the community are what makes the LGS special. For some people it's not all about getting booster packs 50 cents cheaper online with free shipping. If we allow LGS's to die just to save a few bucks on a box then why would that be more important than no longer having a place to go to play the games we love? At the end of the day people need to stop being so cheap for whatever reason. What's the point of owning paper cards with no place to play?
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
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They need to find a way to increase power level in Standard. Right now 99% of your standard cards are completely useless once they rotate out. I'm not into renting cards which is exactly what you are doing in buying standard cards right now. Very few end up being useful in Modern or older formats.
They also need to find a way to make tournament level decks more affordable or increase prize support, probably both. I would play a lot more Standard if I got a decent rare once a month and uncommons with alt art. If you could play FNM every week for a year and get a few play sets of a competitive play level card, that would draw people out for FNM more. It doesn't have to be something like Hazoret but a good $1-$2 rare that is used in tier decks.
Nothing is worse for the game than telling a noob that yeah, if you want to really compete in Standard you gotta drop at least $250 for your first deck and all you have is that one deck. Oh.. yeah..want to play Modern? Do you have $1000?
Sure, you can roll a budget deck but good luck going better than 2-2 in most metas. You show up to play without a tier deck in a lot of places and you are just donating money to the other players.
It's not necessarily power level that's the problem, it's card efficiency and playfulness. WoTCs game design department made some radical departures from the old world design in an effort to simplify the game for their hearthstone knock off. For one, they started changing removal spell restrictions to be based upon casting cost, toughness or power, etc, instead of "if it is black", or "if it is an artifact". This makes their conditional kill spells a whole lot worse for eternal play. I.e, Go for the Throat is as good as Murder if there aren't a ton of artifacts in modern at the time. Even Fatal Push is basically less flexible than Lightning Bolt was, so there is that.
The other big change was removal of one mana creatures and rocks that could potentially make mana. These cards served a major role in allowing spells that were above 3 cmc to actually see at least some play, and were responsible for allowing decks to play cards that otherwise would never see play due to sheer math. I suppose R&D also deemed this kind of play line too complex for their MTG hearthstone knock off so they killed them and stuck the game with 2 cmc dorks, which basically slowed the entire game down to a crawl, forced way too much stuff into the 4 cmc and 3 cmc spots, among other things.
The final thing they did is make all the do something creatures 3-4 cmc and sometimes have what is intended as the game finishers at 5 cmc. This was sort of okay back in SoI and EMN, but they also weakened them in the latest blocks, which in combination with the lack of good one drop mana rocks / dorks renders a huge number of cards unplayable.
It just comes down to the fact that the current lead designers have a different vision than Richard and the original team had, and it's severely damaging the game in ways that the company hopefully is starting to come around to. They've been working off the idea that it's just the old timer players that are upset with the design shift, but it hits every player eventually, and this is especially true now since standard just went through the biggest collapse since Original Mirrodin block. The modern cards that are super expensive should never have gotten to those price points. They got there because of a design shift and the lack of proper reprint support. Now Wotc just lost massive sales on standard and Iconic masters, is surviving off of unstable and maybe commander right now, and is trying to steer the ship into the right direction again. Just pray it's a better direction than the one we just had.
If they want to make MtG hearthstone, fine. Leave Paper MTG out of the whole thing and do different mechanics for the online game.
Also, I have the feeling the big dirty secret is that they are trying to kill modern off completely by NOT reprinting the cards that are central to a lot of decks. At least, that is what I think they were trying to do, but now are flipping back on the whole decision since they made another pro-tour that was modern. You just don't know what the heck these guys are doing 9/10 times during the week and the last 1/10 is pure educated speculation.
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!
One of the biggest complaints about MtG is how rotations, bans and unbans can render entire decks worthless. An expanded reserved list helps maintain the value of said cards. While yes, it can hurt that little Timmy can't play Vintage, the truth is that collectors and investors buy a lot of product. The truth of the matter is, MtG is not a right. It's a hobby, and all hobbies have costs.
The same goes to investments in TCGs. If an investor wants to play the financial game within the game he needs to accept the risks and take the eventual losses. The investor has no right to make a profit.
The truth is the reserved list is choking eternal formats to death, and it’s not the end of the world if it goes away. Without it, many of those cards in that list would still be first editions, with the old look, and that would still be a good investment, no matter how many times those cards get reprinted.
So, even without the reserved list, there would still be a lot of stuff for the financial game.
Now, that doesn’t mean that there can’t be a reserved list, one that doesn’t get in the way of the playing side of the game.
I’m talking about exclusive and special prints, like foils and masterpieces. These are the versions of cards more suitable for collectors/investors. They are already more expensive than the regular versions, so they would be perfect for this side of the TCG.
This way investors get their toys and Wizards gets to reprint a regular version of any card. It’s a good trade of and everybody is happy and no side gets in the way of the other.
The price may have gone up on paper, but the company is also spending a lot more money designing completely new cards than they used to. Originally they just had standard sets to worry about and filled the blank spaces with core sets composed mostly of reprint cards. When I came back to this game they expanded their card development to include sets like conspiracy and commander at a regular basis. Even more recently, they've started ramping up their new set releases so they have single large sets instead of blocks and they brought core sets back largely because they've stretched themselves as far as they can go on R&D.
Core Sets have returned because WotC realized it was too difficult to include lots of reprints/functional-reprints/Basic Cards that Standard needs to thrive while also giving each non-Core Set expansion its own identity.
The price may have gone up on paper, but the company is also spending a lot more money designing completely new cards than they used to. Originally they just had standard sets to worry about and filled the blank spaces with core sets composed mostly of reprint cards. When I came back to this game they expanded their card development to include sets like conspiracy and commander at a regular basis. Even more recently, they've started ramping up their new set releases so they have single large sets instead of blocks and they brought core sets back largely because they've stretched themselves as far as they can go on R&D.
Core Sets have returned because WotC realized it was too difficult to include lots of reprints/functional-reprints/Basic Cards that Standard needs to thrive while also giving each non-Core Set expansion its own identity.
It's actually for more reasons than that. They are building sets for draft and to keep reprinting certain answers means building a draft set that is largely the same each time that answer is put in. Going back to Go for the Throat, that card works fine in an artifact heavy set since with a lot of artifact creature threats it's similar in function to Walk the Plank, but in a set that doesn't have a lot of artifacts in it that spell might as well be a 2 cost Murder. Also, I have a hard time believing that Pithing Needle somehow isn't viable in Ixalan and that they had to have Sorcerous Spyglass.
However, look at what they are replacing flexible kill spells like Murder with. Vanquish the weak is a purely worse card at 3 cmc since it can't answer late game threats. Instead, the only thing that can do that right now is Walk the Plank at sorcery speed or Vraska's Contempt at 4 cmc.
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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!
There is no harm (Pithing vs Spyglass) in having functionally similar, but distinct, cards.
There is when talking about which card is going to see more play. A one mana increase in cost means a ton in formats like modern, and the tacked on effect doesn't really help much. When you cast something like Pithing Needle, you aren't interested in their hand: You already know what you are aiming to disable preemptively by using the card, so in terms of which one is better, the former is. However, in this case since the casting costs are both below 3 I'd say both are playable cards.
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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!
They need to explore design space, to find (or make the mistakes) the corner cases that make cards great.
Like the Vanquisher vs Smother? Yeah thats a flat out nerf, 'Done for Limited' kind of garbage that is why I never play Limited, but Spyglass, and cards like it, need to be created too, we cannot just reprint everything over and over and over, people who dont play Modern or Legacy would get bored of that.
They need to explore design space, to find (or make the mistakes) the corner cases that make cards great.
Like the Vanquisher vs Smother? Yeah thats a flat out nerf, 'Done for Limited' kind of garbage that is why I never play Limited, but Spyglass, and cards like it, need to be created too, we cannot just reprint everything over and over and over, people who dont play Modern or Legacy would get bored of that.
They get bored of cards regardless. When it comes to bread and butter cards that fit into sideboards it doesn't really matter at the end of the day that much if it's some fancy new version or an old one, the effect is the same. They do have to print new cards, but to say something like "they had to explore design space" as the reason to basically make another version of pithing needle or people would get bored is kind of silly.
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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!
No it isnt. I mean if Pithing Needle is your hill to die on, sure I guess, but I'm talking about the concept behind these similar but different cards. If you want to just keep on with your desire for Pithing Needle (a $3 sideboard rare thats been reprinted), thats fine, but Spyglass in no way shape or form is a bad print, and it didnt NEED to be Pithing Needle.
Again, Vanquish? Yes, thats garbage, and Limited fodder, but Pithing Needle doesnt need a reprint, Spyglass is fine.
No it isnt. I mean if Pithing Needle is your hill to die on, sure I guess, but I'm talking about the concept behind these similar but different cards. If you want to just keep on with your desire for Pithing Needle (a $3 sideboard rare thats been reprinted), thats fine, but Spyglass in no way shape or form is a bad print, and it didnt NEED to be Pithing Needle.
Again, Vanquish? Yes, thats garbage, and Limited fodder, but Pithing Needle doesnt need a reprint, Spyglass is fine.
To be honest this feels more like you just decided to take an example and had some kind of personal thing going with taking it out of context. Replace X card that does roughly the same thing as a modern staple that has a tacked on bonus or negative and is set at +1/-1 cmc, it doesn't matter. Plus you are saying standard players would get bored and I've played standard recently: We weren't going to get bored if the sorcerous spyglass was pithing needle. The same could be said if they replaced Walk the Plank with some other removal spell that was printed before like Doom blade.
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!
One of the biggest complaints about MtG is how rotations, bans and unbans can render entire decks worthless. An expanded reserved list helps maintain the value of said cards. While yes, it can hurt that little Timmy can't play Vintage, the truth is that collectors and investors buy a lot of product. The truth of the matter is, MtG is not a right. It's a hobby, and all hobbies have costs.
From a Forbes article c. 2013: "Magic: the Gathering celebrated its 20th birthday and to make it memorable, they’re setting their business on fire. “Magic: the Gathering Online,” or the online version of the game, comprises 30% to 40% of the company’s revenues, quoted Worth Wollpert, Executive Producer of Magic Online."
It is easy to see why that is the case as well. Even if MtGO has a smaller audience than the paper format, WotC has to spend less money making the cards, shipping the cards and sharing the cost of the packs with the distributors and retailers. MtGO's audience could in fact be really tiny and it would still earn WotC as much or more money than the paper format due to the vertical and digital nature of the distribution.
The head of WotC already said the cost of paper has gone up. They could either lower quality or raise prices. They chose lower quality.
Also, I live in Nevada and the Amonkhet cards are warped. Its pretty bad.
They really shouldn't be pouring so much money into doing excessively large standard print runs if they intend to have commander and random summer sets thrown in, and I keep getting the feeling that people don't really like standard that much. Unstable was a huge hit just because it annexed itself from the tournament play, gave pretty consistent value per pack due to the lands, and it wasn't printed to death like some of the other sets out there. They want to make a bunch of different products for different people, but because they are skewing their marketing heavily towards standard, they basically set themselves up for problems when that avenue crumbles.
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!
do you have a source for that? that would be REALLY bad
Bring back the elements they have lost as they are "unfun", because what is really unfun is every deck playing creatures killing in the same way and a 3 deck metagame. Oh and if they could arrange a public appearance in stocks for the guys who have so enthusiastically plugged the design paradigm of the post RTR world, giys like Stoddard, Maro et al. who spend their time saying how great and fun Emrakul is and then a few months later apologise for it being banned. I am sure we could provide the rotten fruit.
That and put some of the 25+ modern era cards through a normal MSRP set so the prices can get tamed a bit. The whole point of making modern was to get away from Legacy and the RL, which includes legacy level pricing. Right now many of the cards that have really high profiles are just not getting the supply they need to let players actually play with the cards and it doesn't help that they are basically irreplaceable. The second best version of Dark Confidant is so far behind it that there's no contest, and cards like Ancestral Vision and Cryptic Command are blue deck staples that always find a way into a deck even if those decks aren't currently in the lime light.
Also don't want to get started on Snapcaster Mage. To be frank a lot of modern cards require insurance against theft due to the price tag on them. This actually came up a few times in a conversation with one of the agents I've talked to about insuring collections. The problem with MtG is that the game is actively played and many insurance companies that deal with collectible items will not insure items that see active use. On top of which, home owners insurance and the like will only cover partial costs and the collection has to be appraised. Since prices on cards spike and dip quite significantly in Modern this makes it so that even getting an accurate appraisal is difficult.
A few years ago I'd say the hobby was niche enough that it didn't really require the protection, but Wizards own reprint policy has been driving costs quite significantly along with the pro-tour and tournament magic in general. Not to mention they are doing their best to expand the brand and get more people familiar with the game. Wizards basically has to get costs down on the formats people are actively playing because they are the only ones who can actually do it.
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!
I believe you are referring to the median value possibly? I could see the median value being 2.24 a pack for EM. I would expect the mean or average price to be higher as pricey cards skew the average upwards. And yes median would be far more indicative than mean(average) when discussing variance. Thanks.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Also, the very fact that only a few cards are going to see modern play as a 4x is why the prices sink on so many other cards while the price rises on those few cards. For a set to really keep even there has to be a lot of highly played cards in the rare slot to soak up the box value. If they threw literally everything but the kitchen sink into a single masters set that would be the only case where I think the 240 msrp would actually be justified.
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!
And then people like Card Slinger J wonder why people wouldn't want to go to game stores, and how you could ever play Magic anywhere else.
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!
They also need to find a way to make tournament level decks more affordable or increase prize support, probably both. I would play a lot more Standard if I got a decent rare once a month and uncommons with alt art. If you could play FNM every week for a year and get a few play sets of a competitive play level card, that would draw people out for FNM more. It doesn't have to be something like Hazoret but a good $1-$2 rare that is used in tier decks.
Nothing is worse for the game than telling a noob that yeah, if you want to really compete in Standard you gotta drop at least $250 for your first deck and all you have is that one deck. Oh.. yeah..want to play Modern? Do you have $1000?
Sure, you can roll a budget deck but good luck going better than 2-2 in most metas. You show up to play without a tier deck in a lot of places and you are just donating money to the other players.
https://rctom.hbs.org/submission/from-physical-to-digital-magic-the-gathering/
According to the web article it says, "By 2007, it is estimated that over 300,000 registered accounts existed for MTGO, with a Magic executive stating that “[Magic Online] is worth somewhere between 30% to 50% of the total Magic business [3].”
Paper Magic makes up only 35% of Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro's total revenue of MTG compared to MTGO which apparently is more successful, not to mention that the supporting infrastructure for Paper Magic is at an all time low due to the low print quality of products. So that statistic isn't too far off.
I apologize If you felt that I was misleading you. We all want to get to the facts on certain things it's just that sometimes it's hard. How is playing against an AI just as rewarding as playing against a real player? Back when I used to play video games during my childhood I hardly had anyone to hang out with to play games with aside from my family until I discovered Trading Card Games/Collectible Card Games where I realized just how fun it was to enjoy a similar hobby with others. I go to my LGS to hang out and play games with others who share similar interests as I do. I patron and spend money there vs. online to keep the store alive for that reason alone. The store and the community are what makes the LGS special. For some people it's not all about getting booster packs 50 cents cheaper online with free shipping. If we allow LGS's to die just to save a few bucks on a box then why would that be more important than no longer having a place to go to play the games we love? At the end of the day people need to stop being so cheap for whatever reason. What's the point of owning paper cards with no place to play?
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
It's not necessarily power level that's the problem, it's card efficiency and playfulness. WoTCs game design department made some radical departures from the old world design in an effort to simplify the game for their hearthstone knock off. For one, they started changing removal spell restrictions to be based upon casting cost, toughness or power, etc, instead of "if it is black", or "if it is an artifact". This makes their conditional kill spells a whole lot worse for eternal play. I.e, Go for the Throat is as good as Murder if there aren't a ton of artifacts in modern at the time. Even Fatal Push is basically less flexible than Lightning Bolt was, so there is that.
The other big change was removal of one mana creatures and rocks that could potentially make mana. These cards served a major role in allowing spells that were above 3 cmc to actually see at least some play, and were responsible for allowing decks to play cards that otherwise would never see play due to sheer math. I suppose R&D also deemed this kind of play line too complex for their MTG hearthstone knock off so they killed them and stuck the game with 2 cmc dorks, which basically slowed the entire game down to a crawl, forced way too much stuff into the 4 cmc and 3 cmc spots, among other things.
The final thing they did is make all the do something creatures 3-4 cmc and sometimes have what is intended as the game finishers at 5 cmc. This was sort of okay back in SoI and EMN, but they also weakened them in the latest blocks, which in combination with the lack of good one drop mana rocks / dorks renders a huge number of cards unplayable.
It just comes down to the fact that the current lead designers have a different vision than Richard and the original team had, and it's severely damaging the game in ways that the company hopefully is starting to come around to. They've been working off the idea that it's just the old timer players that are upset with the design shift, but it hits every player eventually, and this is especially true now since standard just went through the biggest collapse since Original Mirrodin block. The modern cards that are super expensive should never have gotten to those price points. They got there because of a design shift and the lack of proper reprint support. Now Wotc just lost massive sales on standard and Iconic masters, is surviving off of unstable and maybe commander right now, and is trying to steer the ship into the right direction again. Just pray it's a better direction than the one we just had.
If they want to make MtG hearthstone, fine. Leave Paper MTG out of the whole thing and do different mechanics for the online game.
Also, I have the feeling the big dirty secret is that they are trying to kill modern off completely by NOT reprinting the cards that are central to a lot of decks. At least, that is what I think they were trying to do, but now are flipping back on the whole decision since they made another pro-tour that was modern. You just don't know what the heck these guys are doing 9/10 times during the week and the last 1/10 is pure educated speculation.
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!
The same goes to investments in TCGs. If an investor wants to play the financial game within the game he needs to accept the risks and take the eventual losses. The investor has no right to make a profit.
The truth is the reserved list is choking eternal formats to death, and it’s not the end of the world if it goes away. Without it, many of those cards in that list would still be first editions, with the old look, and that would still be a good investment, no matter how many times those cards get reprinted.
So, even without the reserved list, there would still be a lot of stuff for the financial game.
Now, that doesn’t mean that there can’t be a reserved list, one that doesn’t get in the way of the playing side of the game.
I’m talking about exclusive and special prints, like foils and masterpieces. These are the versions of cards more suitable for collectors/investors. They are already more expensive than the regular versions, so they would be perfect for this side of the TCG.
This way investors get their toys and Wizards gets to reprint a regular version of any card. It’s a good trade of and everybody is happy and no side gets in the way of the other.
Core Sets have returned because WotC realized it was too difficult to include lots of reprints/functional-reprints/Basic Cards that Standard needs to thrive while also giving each non-Core Set expansion its own identity.
It's actually for more reasons than that. They are building sets for draft and to keep reprinting certain answers means building a draft set that is largely the same each time that answer is put in. Going back to Go for the Throat, that card works fine in an artifact heavy set since with a lot of artifact creature threats it's similar in function to Walk the Plank, but in a set that doesn't have a lot of artifacts in it that spell might as well be a 2 cost Murder. Also, I have a hard time believing that Pithing Needle somehow isn't viable in Ixalan and that they had to have Sorcerous Spyglass.
However, look at what they are replacing flexible kill spells like Murder with. Vanquish the weak is a purely worse card at 3 cmc since it can't answer late game threats. Instead, the only thing that can do that right now is Walk the Plank at sorcery speed or Vraska's Contempt at 4 cmc.
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!
EDIT: And your Murder vs Vanquish comparison is a bit off. They are differnt by casting cost, and that matters.
Vanquish vs Smother well...yeah.
Spirits
There is when talking about which card is going to see more play. A one mana increase in cost means a ton in formats like modern, and the tacked on effect doesn't really help much. When you cast something like Pithing Needle, you aren't interested in their hand: You already know what you are aiming to disable preemptively by using the card, so in terms of which one is better, the former is. However, in this case since the casting costs are both below 3 I'd say both are playable cards.
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!
They need to explore design space, to find (or make the mistakes) the corner cases that make cards great.
Like the Vanquisher vs Smother? Yeah thats a flat out nerf, 'Done for Limited' kind of garbage that is why I never play Limited, but Spyglass, and cards like it, need to be created too, we cannot just reprint everything over and over and over, people who dont play Modern or Legacy would get bored of that.
Spirits
They get bored of cards regardless. When it comes to bread and butter cards that fit into sideboards it doesn't really matter at the end of the day that much if it's some fancy new version or an old one, the effect is the same. They do have to print new cards, but to say something like "they had to explore design space" as the reason to basically make another version of pithing needle or people would get bored is kind of silly.
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!
Again, Vanquish? Yes, thats garbage, and Limited fodder, but Pithing Needle doesnt need a reprint, Spyglass is fine.
Spirits
To be honest this feels more like you just decided to take an example and had some kind of personal thing going with taking it out of context. Replace X card that does roughly the same thing as a modern staple that has a tacked on bonus or negative and is set at +1/-1 cmc, it doesn't matter. Plus you are saying standard players would get bored and I've played standard recently: We weren't going to get bored if the sorcerous spyglass was pithing needle. The same could be said if they replaced Walk the Plank with some other removal spell that was printed before like Doom blade.
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!
It hurts the game that they removed land destruction, good counterspells, great enchantments and such from the game. New card types would help.