Fastlands are quite good, actually, and I play them all the time in GW D&T, and they were 3-4 of in Modern Jund when it was on top. I'll admit that fastlands are somewhat niche, but at least they serve a purpose. These ever so slightly change your luck on the topdeck once, and that is not a niche that will ever need filling in a format that has a choice. I realize that Standard does not have a choice, however, which is yet another reason why I don't like the format.
I think that's where we had a misunderstanding, as I was speaking in terms of standard play. Sorry if I didn't clarify. I already knew these lands wouldn't see play in Modern, so I agree with you on that bit.
These lands are not bad, the issue is their rarity. These kill the price value on packs, and $6 a pop on preorder is a pretty outrageous price for something a marginal step up from a guild gate.
Logistically, these lands are an atrocious failure.
"A rich man thinks all other people are rich, and an intelligent man thinks all other people are similarly gifted. Both are always terribly shocked when they discover the truth of the world. You, my dear brother, are a pious man." - Strahd von Zarovich
These lands are not bad, the issue is their rarity. These kill the price value on packs, and $6 a pop on preorder is a pretty outrageous price for something a marginal step up from a guild gate.
Logistically, these lands are an atrocious failure.
I kinda agree about the rarity. They probaly shouldn't be rare, although I do distinctly remember reading a MaRo article on the mothership about why they print crap rares. And yes, these are bad at rare, although you have just as much of a chance to open a pack and get something like Sphinx of Uthuun. It it any different? No. Did it change the price of core set packs? No. These 5 lands are just more bad rares. But, then again, when I say bad, I mean "not competitive." MaRo said part of the reason he prints "bad" rares is for the kitchen table players. They go to a shop, buy a few packs, and open a Sphinx of Uthuun and they fall in love with it.
Crap rares should never be dual lands. Rare dual lands are historically special cards. Also, using the Sphinx line is weak, because there is a 5:1 ratio on these lands versus a single crap rare like the Sphinx.
The rarity shift simply is not justifiable outside of limited, and that seems like a weak excuse for something like these, they simply could have kept the rarity and designed a different cycle, saving these for uncommons somewhere else.
So, first the dual lands would be Nimbus Maze cycle. Then they would be more Horizon Canopy-esque. Then they would be similar to Halimar Depths.
This is why I don't trust leaks from mtgsalvation unless there is an actual image. Way to be credible, mods.
This, this is the sort of ignorant undiscerning misguided crap that causes people with spoilers (such as poem) to not want to share. The same person who gave us Medomai, thoughtsieze and magma jet gave us Nimbus maze/horizon canopy. We had every reason to believe that person, and could have just gone on expecting horizon canopy.
But no, Tk, the same mod you just call non-credible came in and told us that the real lands would be similar to Halimar depths and not the timespiral lands. As it turns out, scry 1 is similar to ponder sans shuffle, and both etbt.
The leaks on this site have been beyond credible. If you had an ounce of sense or discernment you could see that.
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():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
YMTC: We need a spikey red enchantment. My creations:
RR
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
This, this is the sort of ignorant undiscerning misguided crap that causes people with spoilers (such as poem) to not want to share. The same person who gave us Medomai, thoughtsieze and magma jet gave us Nimbus maze/horizon canopy. We had every reason to believe that person, and could have just gone on expecting horizon canopy.
But no, Tk, the same mod you just call non-credible came in and told us that the real lands would be similar to Halimar depths and not the timespiral lands. As it turns out, scry 1 is similar to ponder sans shuffle, and both etbt.
The leaks on this site have been beyond credible. If you had an ounce of sense or discernment you could see that.
Nobody said we were getting those types of land for sure. It was always speculation.
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():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Crap rares should never be dual lands. Rare dual lands are historically special cards. Also, using the Sphinx line is weak, because there is a 5:1 ratio on these lands versus a single crap rare like the Sphinx.
The rarity shift simply is not justifiable outside of limited, and that seems like a weak excuse for something like these, they simply could have kept the rarity and designed a different cycle, saving these for uncommons somewhere else.
There are always more crap rares than one. The Sphinx line was completely valid. Next time you get the chance, go on the oracle and scroll through standard rares. There are a ton that I can't even begin to remember, and some are even worse than Sphinx. I'm sure there are plenty you haven't heard of.
Crap rares should never be dual lands. Rare dual lands are historically special cards. Also, using the Sphinx line is weak, because there is a 5:1 ratio on these lands versus a single crap rare like the Sphinx.
The rarity shift simply is not justifiable outside of limited, and that seems like a weak excuse for something like these, they simply could have kept the rarity and designed a different cycle, saving these for uncommons somewhere else.
I don't see why shifting the rarity for limited purposes is a weak excuse when limited is arguably as important as, if not more important than, constructed to Wizards of the Coast. The more packs Wizards is able to sell, the more money Wizards makes. The people who buy the most packs are casual players and limited players. As such, it's in their interest to cater towards those groups. Casuals will buy packs of Theros regardless of the rarity of the scry duals. How many packs limited players will buy, however, will depend on the quality of the Theros environment. The better the environment, the greater the amount of packs sold to limited players. I'm sure R&D considered having this cycle as uncommon, tested them in limited, and found that the additional mana-fixing granted by the scry duals clashed with the intended design of the limited environment. As such, the decided to keep them at rare.
Now, you might say at this point that if they thought the dual cycle needed to be rare for limited purposes, then Wizards should have made duals more worthy of Rare status. Again, the answer to why this thinking is incorrect is related to environment health, in this case Constructed. R&D believed that these lands needed to exist in the Theros constructed environment for a reason. As I'm not R&D, I can't say for sure what that reason is, but it's very likely that they wanted the environment to be hostile towards aggressive tri-color decks yet friendly towards tri-color midrange and control decks. Well, these lands fit the bill perfectly. Moreover, there are likely to be plenty of synergies between these lands and what we've yet to see from Theros and future sets in the block.
TLDR: Trust R&D. They know what they're doing for the most part.
MaRo said part of the reason he prints "bad" rares is for the kitchen table players. They go to a shop, buy a few packs, and open a Sphinx of Uthuun and they fall in love with it.
Except kitchen table players aren't usually super excited to open a land in their rare slot unless it's worth a lot of money and they can sell it to buy a better card.
Edit:
Here is what Mark Rosewater had to say on the issue:
"I’ll do my best.
Plain come-into-play tapped lands (meaning that’s all they do) are default uncommon. That’s the baseline. Then depending on the set things can move around a little.
In Return to Ravnica, we had the gates. The gates were common because in a multicolor block it’s crucial for limited that the mana fixing show up high in as-fan (as-fan talks about how many of something you get in each booster taking rarity into account) so to match the needs of the block we pushed the cards down a rarity.
The scry lands are the tap-lands plus. (Yes, the gates had the gates subtype but that mattered, especially in constructed, very little.) I know some of you don’t value scry 1 highly, but as I think time will show, in both constructed and limited, it’s more significant than it might seem at first blush. This pushes them to somewhere between uncommon and rare.
To figure out which way they fall, we look at the set they are in and the needs of the set. Theros limited is the opposite of Return to Ravnica. There is a little multicolor but mostly at higher rarities and mana fixing is way less important in Theros limited. This means that the momentum pushes the opposite way. Uncommon is very valuable space for making limited have longterm replay value and we would rather have five other cards there than the dual lands so the environment pushes them upwards instead of down.
There are obvious numerous other factors, but this is the impact that each set had on the decision about where to put its dual lands."
Except kitchen table players aren't usually super excited to open a land in their rare slot unless it's worth a lot of money and they can sell it to buy a better card.
Edit:
Here is what Mark Rosewater had to say on the issue:
"I’ll do my best.
Plain come-into-play tapped lands (meaning that’s all they do) are default uncommon. That’s the baseline. Then depending on the set things can move around a little.
In Return to Ravnica, we had the gates. The gates were common because in a multicolor block it’s crucial for limited that the mana fixing show up high in as-fan (as-fan talks about how many of something you get in each booster taking rarity into account) so to match the needs of the block we pushed the cards down a rarity.
The scry lands are the tap-lands plus. (Yes, the gates had the gates subtype but that mattered, especially in constructed, very little.) I know some of you don’t value scry 1 highly, but as I think time will show, in both constructed and limited, it’s more significant than it might seem at first blush. This pushes them to somewhere between uncommon and rare.
To figure out which way they fall, we look at the set they are in and the needs of the set. Theros limited is the opposite of Return to Ravnica. There is a little multicolor but mostly at higher rarities and mana fixing is way less important in Theros limited. This means that the momentum pushes the opposite way. Uncommon is very valuable space for making limited have longterm replay value and we would rather have five other cards there than the dual lands so the environment pushes them upwards instead of down.
There are obvious numerous other factors, but this is the impact that each set had on the decision about where to put its dual lands."
Makes sense to me.
To me - once they realized they were between an uncommon and a rare, they should have seen then that they weren't quite good enough to take up 5 rare slots and gone back to the drawing board. I'm not upset but these lands are pretty bad.
Except kitchen table players aren't usually super excited to open a land in their rare slot unless it's worth a lot of money and they can sell it to buy a better card.
Edit:
Here is what Mark Rosewater had to say on the issue:
"I’ll do my best.
Plain come-into-play tapped lands (meaning that’s all they do) are default uncommon. That’s the baseline. Then depending on the set things can move around a little.
In Return to Ravnica, we had the gates. The gates were common because in a multicolor block it’s crucial for limited that the mana fixing show up high in as-fan (as-fan talks about how many of something you get in each booster taking rarity into account) so to match the needs of the block we pushed the cards down a rarity.
The scry lands are the tap-lands plus. (Yes, the gates had the gates subtype but that mattered, especially in constructed, very little.) I know some of you don’t value scry 1 highly, but as I think time will show, in both constructed and limited, it’s more significant than it might seem at first blush. This pushes them to somewhere between uncommon and rare.
To figure out which way they fall, we look at the set they are in and the needs of the set. Theros limited is the opposite of Return to Ravnica. There is a little multicolor but mostly at higher rarities and mana fixing is way less important in Theros limited. This means that the momentum pushes the opposite way. Uncommon is very valuable space for making limited have longterm replay value and we would rather have five other cards there than the dual lands so the environment pushes them upwards instead of down.
There are obvious numerous other factors, but this is the impact that each set had on the decision about where to put its dual lands."
Makes sense to me.
Oddly enough, this is an opinion i agree with. Story time.
Back when i was a fledgling magic player, only been playing for a few weeks. I bought a pack of zendikar. And know what? I was so upset my friend got a foil big green meanie, and all i got was this stupid foil land that makes me lose life to get another land.
How naiive we new players are.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I fear I won't have much time to play Magic these days.
I get to watch worlds develop around me.
I get to watch great leaders, terrible oppressors, and trend setters rise and fall.
Limited, Standard, Modern, everything is a different playing field I feel I can observe, but will not actually touch.
I look forward to the stories I will hear.
And more so to the ones I will watch unfold first hand.
Isn't the unknown exciting?
My issue is hardly with the land, so much as feeling I am getting a decent amount of return on 6 boxes of product. These lands do not present that in any way. The price of a box drops substantially with these 5 lands at rare.
I understand the reasoning behind the rarity in conjunction with limited, but for lands, there is an incredible amount of design space for them to come up with something that at least gives people wanting to buy lots of this product, some sort of return on their purchase. My issue is that these do not. It is wasted design space in an otherwise weak set thus far. This is just a piss poor year for buying product outside of your boosters for limited events.
nuh uh, It was a misty rainforest. "if my deck isnt blue green this card is even dumber!"
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I fear I won't have much time to play Magic these days.
I get to watch worlds develop around me.
I get to watch great leaders, terrible oppressors, and trend setters rise and fall.
Limited, Standard, Modern, everything is a different playing field I feel I can observe, but will not actually touch.
I look forward to the stories I will hear.
And more so to the ones I will watch unfold first hand.
Isn't the unknown exciting?
I don't mind "crap" rares. In fact, they're great because I get to enjoy the delicious tears. I'll just never get it, you have to pull a valuable card every time you open a booster? I get the feeling that people just need these cards so they can gloat and go "Look at my collection, I'm better than you."
I don't mind "crap" rares. In fact, they're great because I get to enjoy the delicious tears. I'll just never get it, you have to pull a valuable card every time you open a booster? I get the feeling that people just need these cards so they can gloat and go "Look at my collection, I'm better than you."
No, I need the money I put into a TCG allow my hobby to allow that ho by to at least partially support itself. Spending half a grand on 6 boxes is a LOT of money for a hobby where it's collector's aspect has no value. When I pick up a case, I expect the boxes of product to have value in them that allows me to trade off the excess for a return I can invest back into the game at a reasonable amount.
Is this really that hard of a concept to understand?
For TK-421 and Trollcreature, you might want to take a 2nd look at your dual land sources. There is nothing Horizon Canopy-esque or Nimbus Maze-esque about this cycle. Maybe a Halimar Depths reference makes a bit of sense but anyone with knowledge of magic cards would just say "Dual land versions of New Benalia".
There is a similarity to Canopy though. Canopy let's you dig 1, and if you use this to put the top on the bottom, it does let you dig deeper 1.
But yes, I would have used New Benalia as my example if I'd known.
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():
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She wants a ride on the pony, dude.
Mafia Stats
Kill shot: BB
Issue with my shooting? Please visit my helpdesk and help me learn to aim!
My issue is hardly with the land, so much as feeling I am getting a decent amount of return on 6 boxes of product. These lands do not present that in any way. The price of a box drops substantially with these 5 lands at rare.
I understand the reasoning behind the rarity in conjunction with limited, but for lands, there is an incredible amount of design space for them to come up with something that at least gives people wanting to buy lots of this product, some sort of return on their purchase. My issue is that these do not. It is wasted design space in an otherwise weak set thus far. This is just a piss poor year for buying product outside of your boosters for limited events.
There is almost no set that will give you a "decent amount of return" on a case. Don't buy cases.
There is almost no set that will give you a "decent amount of return" on a case. Don't buy cases.
You clearly have no understanding of how this works on a collection level. I buy a case of Return to Ravnica, take my single set and trade off what I can to complete it. The return is not having a bunch of shifty ass ****ing bulk rates on top of a loss poor cycle of lands which nullify 3/4 of a case.
If I need singles, I buy singles. Keeping up with the competitive scene and buying boxes to build collections are two very different things.
There is a similarity to Canopy though. Canopy let's you dig 1, and if you use this to put the top on the bottom, it does let you dig deeper 1.
But yes, I would have used New Benalia as my example if I'd known.
No worries. Sorry if I came off as rude or unthankful. That wasn't my intention. Great work as always. In this time of skeptimism and fakers it's great to have people to trust.
Stop expecting stuff like that when it's not your call. Also the booster packs are random so if you want a hobby, pay for it. Don't complain to the rest of us because we don't care. Complain to Wizards otC if you like.
This has been the natural order of collecting this CTCG since it's induction. It isn't going go change. It is perfectly acceptable to expect what I purchase to have partial value when this has been how the game has worked for the entirety of it's existence.
I also think your overestimate how much I actually care. A cycle like this decrease the return on an investment when I buy a case. What does this mean? It means I do not actively buy a case, I turn to the secondary market and buy the set outright. I will be getting my complete set of Theros cards one way or another, and the money I spend on it is inevitable. I really don't care all that much how I obtain my sets, opening product is just a fun ritual I like to go through when I do. I have not opened a single expansion set box since Innistrad, or a core set box since M10.
That being said, I find it slightly upsetting that I do not get to fully support my LGS in the way I do when I purchase my cases. Instead, I order from a monger like SCG or some random Joe from a certain bidding site. I am the reason people like you ***** about increasingly steep single prices when things like this happen in sets.
Your response is ignorant to collectors, who do more than just play this game and who have reasons behind buying into this hobby beyond just playing it. The fact is that MTG cards are worth money, which means they have equity. So excuse me when I am not entirely pleased when a new set has substantially decreasing equity because of a poorly integrated cycle.
If you are even marginally rational, you would understand the many reasons why equity is important.
You're welcome. =3
I think that's where we had a misunderstanding, as I was speaking in terms of standard play. Sorry if I didn't clarify. I already knew these lands wouldn't see play in Modern, so I agree with you on that bit.
The "spoiler" that says the new lands will be like "H_____ D_____" has been up for a while. The rest was pretty much all speculation.
EDIT: Reply #777 for luck? Lol
Logistically, these lands are an atrocious failure.
But those were uncommon...
I kinda agree about the rarity. They probaly shouldn't be rare, although I do distinctly remember reading a MaRo article on the mothership about why they print crap rares. And yes, these are bad at rare, although you have just as much of a chance to open a pack and get something like Sphinx of Uthuun. It it any different? No. Did it change the price of core set packs? No. These 5 lands are just more bad rares. But, then again, when I say bad, I mean "not competitive." MaRo said part of the reason he prints "bad" rares is for the kitchen table players. They go to a shop, buy a few packs, and open a Sphinx of Uthuun and they fall in love with it.
The rarity shift simply is not justifiable outside of limited, and that seems like a weak excuse for something like these, they simply could have kept the rarity and designed a different cycle, saving these for uncommons somewhere else.
This, this is the sort of ignorant undiscerning misguided crap that causes people with spoilers (such as poem) to not want to share. The same person who gave us Medomai, thoughtsieze and magma jet gave us Nimbus maze/horizon canopy. We had every reason to believe that person, and could have just gone on expecting horizon canopy.
But no, Tk, the same mod you just call non-credible came in and told us that the real lands would be similar to Halimar depths and not the timespiral lands. As it turns out, scry 1 is similar to ponder sans shuffle, and both etbt.
The leaks on this site have been beyond credible. If you had an ounce of sense or discernment you could see that.
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
Fires Rf Salvation
Nobody said we were getting those types of land for sure. It was always speculation.
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
There are always more crap rares than one. The Sphinx line was completely valid. Next time you get the chance, go on the oracle and scroll through standard rares. There are a ton that I can't even begin to remember, and some are even worse than Sphinx. I'm sure there are plenty you haven't heard of.
I don't see why shifting the rarity for limited purposes is a weak excuse when limited is arguably as important as, if not more important than, constructed to Wizards of the Coast. The more packs Wizards is able to sell, the more money Wizards makes. The people who buy the most packs are casual players and limited players. As such, it's in their interest to cater towards those groups. Casuals will buy packs of Theros regardless of the rarity of the scry duals. How many packs limited players will buy, however, will depend on the quality of the Theros environment. The better the environment, the greater the amount of packs sold to limited players. I'm sure R&D considered having this cycle as uncommon, tested them in limited, and found that the additional mana-fixing granted by the scry duals clashed with the intended design of the limited environment. As such, the decided to keep them at rare.
Now, you might say at this point that if they thought the dual cycle needed to be rare for limited purposes, then Wizards should have made duals more worthy of Rare status. Again, the answer to why this thinking is incorrect is related to environment health, in this case Constructed. R&D believed that these lands needed to exist in the Theros constructed environment for a reason. As I'm not R&D, I can't say for sure what that reason is, but it's very likely that they wanted the environment to be hostile towards aggressive tri-color decks yet friendly towards tri-color midrange and control decks. Well, these lands fit the bill perfectly. Moreover, there are likely to be plenty of synergies between these lands and what we've yet to see from Theros and future sets in the block.
TLDR: Trust R&D. They know what they're doing for the most part.
Check out my expected lands table at:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Airj6A6lYAz_dG05T2JETnVTak1xQ0tqOHNSdEJLWVE&hl=en_US#gid=0
Except kitchen table players aren't usually super excited to open a land in their rare slot unless it's worth a lot of money and they can sell it to buy a better card.
Edit:
Here is what Mark Rosewater had to say on the issue:
"I’ll do my best.
Plain come-into-play tapped lands (meaning that’s all they do) are default uncommon. That’s the baseline. Then depending on the set things can move around a little.
In Return to Ravnica, we had the gates. The gates were common because in a multicolor block it’s crucial for limited that the mana fixing show up high in as-fan (as-fan talks about how many of something you get in each booster taking rarity into account) so to match the needs of the block we pushed the cards down a rarity.
The scry lands are the tap-lands plus. (Yes, the gates had the gates subtype but that mattered, especially in constructed, very little.) I know some of you don’t value scry 1 highly, but as I think time will show, in both constructed and limited, it’s more significant than it might seem at first blush. This pushes them to somewhere between uncommon and rare.
To figure out which way they fall, we look at the set they are in and the needs of the set. Theros limited is the opposite of Return to Ravnica. There is a little multicolor but mostly at higher rarities and mana fixing is way less important in Theros limited. This means that the momentum pushes the opposite way. Uncommon is very valuable space for making limited have longterm replay value and we would rather have five other cards there than the dual lands so the environment pushes them upwards instead of down.
There are obvious numerous other factors, but this is the impact that each set had on the decision about where to put its dual lands."
Makes sense to me.
GModern Belcher
GGreen Deck Wins
3I'm the King
RBlazeTron
To me - once they realized they were between an uncommon and a rare, they should have seen then that they weren't quite good enough to take up 5 rare slots and gone back to the drawing board. I'm not upset but these lands are pretty bad.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=11439737#post11439737
Reality is only what man allows it to be. Few shape it so that many may accept it.
Oddly enough, this is an opinion i agree with. Story time.
Back when i was a fledgling magic player, only been playing for a few weeks. I bought a pack of zendikar. And know what? I was so upset my friend got a foil big green meanie, and all i got was this stupid foil land that makes me lose life to get another land.
How naiive we new players are.
I get to watch great leaders, terrible oppressors, and trend setters rise and fall.
Limited, Standard, Modern, everything is a different playing field I feel I can observe, but will not actually touch.
I look forward to the stories I will hear.
And more so to the ones I will watch unfold first hand.
Isn't the unknown exciting?
I understand the reasoning behind the rarity in conjunction with limited, but for lands, there is an incredible amount of design space for them to come up with something that at least gives people wanting to buy lots of this product, some sort of return on their purchase. My issue is that these do not. It is wasted design space in an otherwise weak set thus far. This is just a piss poor year for buying product outside of your boosters for limited events.
nuh uh, It was a misty rainforest. "if my deck isnt blue green this card is even dumber!"
I get to watch great leaders, terrible oppressors, and trend setters rise and fall.
Limited, Standard, Modern, everything is a different playing field I feel I can observe, but will not actually touch.
I look forward to the stories I will hear.
And more so to the ones I will watch unfold first hand.
Isn't the unknown exciting?
No, I need the money I put into a TCG allow my hobby to allow that ho by to at least partially support itself. Spending half a grand on 6 boxes is a LOT of money for a hobby where it's collector's aspect has no value. When I pick up a case, I expect the boxes of product to have value in them that allows me to trade off the excess for a return I can invest back into the game at a reasonable amount.
Is this really that hard of a concept to understand?
There is a similarity to Canopy though. Canopy let's you dig 1, and if you use this to put the top on the bottom, it does let you dig deeper 1.
But yes, I would have used New Benalia as my example if I'd known.
Mafia Stats
Kill shot: BB
Issue with my shooting? Please visit my helpdesk and help me learn to aim!
There is almost no set that will give you a "decent amount of return" on a case. Don't buy cases.
Standard: W/R Aggro
You clearly have no understanding of how this works on a collection level. I buy a case of Return to Ravnica, take my single set and trade off what I can to complete it. The return is not having a bunch of shifty ass ****ing bulk rates on top of a loss poor cycle of lands which nullify 3/4 of a case.
If I need singles, I buy singles. Keeping up with the competitive scene and buying boxes to build collections are two very different things.
No worries. Sorry if I came off as rude or unthankful. That wasn't my intention. Great work as always. In this time of skeptimism and fakers it's great to have people to trust.
This has been the natural order of collecting this CTCG since it's induction. It isn't going go change. It is perfectly acceptable to expect what I purchase to have partial value when this has been how the game has worked for the entirety of it's existence.
I also think your overestimate how much I actually care. A cycle like this decrease the return on an investment when I buy a case. What does this mean? It means I do not actively buy a case, I turn to the secondary market and buy the set outright. I will be getting my complete set of Theros cards one way or another, and the money I spend on it is inevitable. I really don't care all that much how I obtain my sets, opening product is just a fun ritual I like to go through when I do. I have not opened a single expansion set box since Innistrad, or a core set box since M10.
That being said, I find it slightly upsetting that I do not get to fully support my LGS in the way I do when I purchase my cases. Instead, I order from a monger like SCG or some random Joe from a certain bidding site. I am the reason people like you ***** about increasingly steep single prices when things like this happen in sets.
Your response is ignorant to collectors, who do more than just play this game and who have reasons behind buying into this hobby beyond just playing it. The fact is that MTG cards are worth money, which means they have equity. So excuse me when I am not entirely pleased when a new set has substantially decreasing equity because of a poorly integrated cycle.
If you are even marginally rational, you would understand the many reasons why equity is important.