Points out that especially the new cards from these "premium" products produce a massive inflation in the cost of building decks.
Its kinda ironic how people just 5 years ago asked for lots and lots of reprints, which do help to reduce the cost of singles, but WotC answer to that was to print extremely inflated new products that ramp up the price tremendously.
You could build modern decks for 600$ , today almost all decks cost 1000$+ , which is pretty much insanity, if you think about it.
In a tournament with 30 people, we have a collective amount of card value of 30000$+ in a room (not including any trading cards in addition to that).
By what WotC is doing, that trend seems to just get worse, as with every reprint, we get a bunch of super expensive singles that go hand in hand with them in the same product.
That all said, given Magic is a game for 13+ year old, think about it, how children are actively supposed to access a format that asks for a 1000$+ deck to play, so that price tag alone is a massive gatekeeper.
I know that Seth showed that decks are expensive, however the sample is from the top decks.
There are always budget decks that are cheaper or cards that can be substituted to lower the price.
You can drastically reduce the cost with a 2 color deck.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
I know that Seth showed that decks are expensive, however the sample is from the top decks.
There are always budget decks that are cheaper or cards that can be substituted to lower the price.
You can drastically reduce the cost with a 2 color deck.
Sure, if you intentionally dodge all expensive cards you can still get some working decks (to some degree) and maybe even win something competitive (even if you chances overall are worse doing so, they are not zero).
But still, if you avoid the big money cards from Modern Horizon your deck is worse off almost in any case.
At this point "Tron" is fairly cheap Modern deck, as it got basically no new cards from Modern Horizon, and that shows immediately.
If they would play like 4x a 90$ card, they would also be in the 1000$+ range right away, just by adding a single card from a premium product card pool to a deck.
That impact is for me undeniable problematic, i would rather have competitive decks that have a lot of commons and uncommons, which drastically pull down the price tag of a deck.
If a deck is made out of rares and mythics almost entirely, the average cost per card is much higher and the upper end especially for the mythics gets "ugly" if they are 4x in a deck.
----
If modern Horizon would be costed like a normal magic set, the prices would certainly be halve or a third, which would pull down almost all the deck price tags by like 300$+ of almost all the decks.
The mana-base is a cost issue in almost any format that has the money-lands, but if you bought into a set of them you covered the cost of a bunch of decks as at least the lands are somewhat interchangeable (so that helps, rather than having decks that also have entirely different manabases too).
For example, "blue" fetchlands cover a lot of decks, so they are expensive, but also open up a lot of decks.
While a card like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is specific and expensive, if you commit to buy 4 your deck selection is more narrow (so thats the kind of card that by design might be much better as a rare, as its application is more fringe and shouldnt be crazy expensive to cover that).
nothing new, magic has always been an expensive hobby
Yeah but not to this degree. Let's put it this way, If you have a sitting U.S. President who is giving bailout after bailout and the inflation is 5.4% since he/she took office and up to 9% a day to a month which is over 10.8% a year then yes it does change how you view things. Paper Magic is getting more expensive because of U.S. politics. Costs are going up due to hyperinflation which is why Modern is more expensive now than it's ever been. You also have to take into account transportation costs to deliver these sealed products containing Paper Magic cards which also adds to the Secondary Market value of card singles in terms of how much product is opened to lower demand by increasing supply. Since whales are really good at bottle necking supply in order to increase the demand for sealed products they're able to flip online that leads to more expensive cards due to supply shortages within the Secondary Market and less people willing to sell cards in eternal formats. Paper Standard cards move more due to set rotation.
You don't have as many people willing to crack booster packs anymore outside of playing in a booster draft or a sealed event because the risk simply isn't worth the reward when there's no guarantee of pulling specific card singles needed for certain deck strategies not to mention how bad the pull rates might be. Otherwise you have a scenario where people resort having to Buylist what they've pulled at their LGS until they pull what they need when they can just simply get it from someone through a trade deal, their LGS If they have a card single inventory, or from an online vendor. This would also be really bad for Local Game Stores (LGSs) because they would have piles upon piles of Buylist orders waiting to be graded on a weekly basis before the sellers can spend their store credit to buy what they need from them which takes up lines at the cash registers in front of these stores. Since these stores only have few employees to stay in business in order to pay rent every month that means that there aren't a lot of spare hands to deal with these kinds of issues.
You also have to factor in how the current state of the manual labor market and unemployment is affecting Local Game Stores (LGSs) with more jobs available now than people willing to work in which some people on social media call, "The Great Resignation". We now live in a business market where most people feel more comfortable to work from home rather than at the office or their mom and pop / brick and mortar retail store while having that physical location is still the lifeblood of WHY players engage in these gaming hobbies like Paper Magic and other Tabletop games. That's why hybrid business models are becoming the new normal where you can work from home AND still provide a physical location for your business with the potential of not cutting the middleman or in this case the local distributor. Because of market inflation you're getting less Paper Magic cards for the same amount of money because your money has less buying power so unless you're making more money then you're only losing out on life.
"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
A lot of inflation is from "EDH/Commander" being a lot more popular.
That alone increased the demand for lots of old cards, that otherwise nobody ever played in other formats.
Bitcoin and the like you see a very real influx in Magic card prices as well.
If people make money, they use that money, and a lot of people buy into their hobbies.
Former students with no income could today be high payed CEO of a company (Chris Wilson is a prominent Magic collector of crazy collections Missprint collection).
----
But in general, if the product itself is 2x as expensive the chase-cards just skyrocket even more.
A lot of inflation is from "EDH/Commander" being a lot more popular.
That alone increased the demand for lots of old cards, that otherwise nobody ever played in other formats.
Bitcoin and the like you see a very real influx in Magic card prices as well.
If people make money, they use that money, and a lot of people buy into their hobbies.
Former students with no income could today be high payed CEO of a company (Chris Wilson is a prominent Magic collector of crazy collections Missprint collection).
----
But in general, if the product itself is 2x as expensive the chase-cards just skyrocket even more.
It really depends on how much of the Modern card pool is highly played in EDH / Commander and it's quite a significant number from 8th Edition up to the latest Premiere Set releases including Modern Horizons sets.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
America Bless Christ Jesus
"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
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thanks-to-modern-horizons-modern-is-more-expensive-than-ever
Points out that especially the new cards from these "premium" products produce a massive inflation in the cost of building decks.
Its kinda ironic how people just 5 years ago asked for lots and lots of reprints, which do help to reduce the cost of singles, but WotC answer to that was to print extremely inflated new products that ramp up the price tremendously.
You could build modern decks for 600$ , today almost all decks cost 1000$+ , which is pretty much insanity, if you think about it.
In a tournament with 30 people, we have a collective amount of card value of 30000$+ in a room (not including any trading cards in addition to that).
By what WotC is doing, that trend seems to just get worse, as with every reprint, we get a bunch of super expensive singles that go hand in hand with them in the same product.
That all said, given Magic is a game for 13+ year old, think about it, how children are actively supposed to access a format that asks for a 1000$+ deck to play, so that price tag alone is a massive gatekeeper.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ #BlueLivesMatter ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ
There are always budget decks that are cheaper or cards that can be substituted to lower the price.
You can drastically reduce the cost with a 2 color deck.
pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
Sure, if you intentionally dodge all expensive cards you can still get some working decks (to some degree) and maybe even win something competitive (even if you chances overall are worse doing so, they are not zero).
But still, if you avoid the big money cards from Modern Horizon your deck is worse off almost in any case.
At this point "Tron" is fairly cheap Modern deck, as it got basically no new cards from Modern Horizon, and that shows immediately.
If they would play like 4x a 90$ card, they would also be in the 1000$+ range right away, just by adding a single card from a premium product card pool to a deck.
That impact is for me undeniable problematic, i would rather have competitive decks that have a lot of commons and uncommons, which drastically pull down the price tag of a deck.
If a deck is made out of rares and mythics almost entirely, the average cost per card is much higher and the upper end especially for the mythics gets "ugly" if they are 4x in a deck.
----
If modern Horizon would be costed like a normal magic set, the prices would certainly be halve or a third, which would pull down almost all the deck price tags by like 300$+ of almost all the decks.
The mana-base is a cost issue in almost any format that has the money-lands, but if you bought into a set of them you covered the cost of a bunch of decks as at least the lands are somewhat interchangeable (so that helps, rather than having decks that also have entirely different manabases too).
For example, "blue" fetchlands cover a lot of decks, so they are expensive, but also open up a lot of decks.
While a card like Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer is specific and expensive, if you commit to buy 4 your deck selection is more narrow (so thats the kind of card that by design might be much better as a rare, as its application is more fringe and shouldnt be crazy expensive to cover that).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ #BlueLivesMatter ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ
You don't have as many people willing to crack booster packs anymore outside of playing in a booster draft or a sealed event because the risk simply isn't worth the reward when there's no guarantee of pulling specific card singles needed for certain deck strategies not to mention how bad the pull rates might be. Otherwise you have a scenario where people resort having to Buylist what they've pulled at their LGS until they pull what they need when they can just simply get it from someone through a trade deal, their LGS If they have a card single inventory, or from an online vendor. This would also be really bad for Local Game Stores (LGSs) because they would have piles upon piles of Buylist orders waiting to be graded on a weekly basis before the sellers can spend their store credit to buy what they need from them which takes up lines at the cash registers in front of these stores. Since these stores only have few employees to stay in business in order to pay rent every month that means that there aren't a lot of spare hands to deal with these kinds of issues.
You also have to factor in how the current state of the manual labor market and unemployment is affecting Local Game Stores (LGSs) with more jobs available now than people willing to work in which some people on social media call, "The Great Resignation". We now live in a business market where most people feel more comfortable to work from home rather than at the office or their mom and pop / brick and mortar retail store while having that physical location is still the lifeblood of WHY players engage in these gaming hobbies like Paper Magic and other Tabletop games. That's why hybrid business models are becoming the new normal where you can work from home AND still provide a physical location for your business with the potential of not cutting the middleman or in this case the local distributor. Because of market inflation you're getting less Paper Magic cards for the same amount of money because your money has less buying power so unless you're making more money then you're only losing out on life.
"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
That alone increased the demand for lots of old cards, that otherwise nobody ever played in other formats.
Bitcoin and the like you see a very real influx in Magic card prices as well.
If people make money, they use that money, and a lot of people buy into their hobbies.
Former students with no income could today be high payed CEO of a company (Chris Wilson is a prominent Magic collector of crazy collections Missprint collection).
----
But in general, if the product itself is 2x as expensive the chase-cards just skyrocket even more.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ #BlueLivesMatter ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ฎ
"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