The question for me, if you were going to get into modern would this help you?
You get paths and inquisitions but many of the cards would have to be swapped out. If you want to make this deck closer to optimal you'd pick up 4-6 fetches, 3-4 godless shrines just to get the manabase better.
$75 for a deck into which you should sink $300+ to make it more optimal tier 2 deck feels pretty terrible
lets see : godless shrine : $4.7 *4 == 18.8
fetch lands that will be reprinted*** === $ 13- *4 to 6 ( == 52 _ 76)
;;
...
Well i think ($ 75 + $ 18.8 + $ +- 52) +-$ 145 is worth ( consiering that you didn't had a huge collection or is entering modern/ returning to play magic) a Tier 2 deck ...
If you don't like ( and you realy don't like it) this product isn t for you. Get over it.
You mean to tell me that I can't step in front of people who want to buy this deck to get into modern, buy this deck before they do, and then e-bay the contents of the deck to make a profit?
Rip off. Shame on you Wizards.
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Standard: [leftovers from booster drafts]
Modern: U M'Olk; B Goodstuff
I don't care what anyone says. Wizards COULD have put 4x Thoughtseize, 4x Marsh Flats, 4x Fetid Heath, 4x Auriok Champion and hell, even 4x Bitterblossom in this deck if they wanted to. No, it is not unreasonable, even if it made the deck worth a grand (even I wasn't expecting that, but still). I have not heard one valid argument as to why they couldn't do it.
How about because when they did this back in Chronicles, it almost killed the game?
Lots of in demand cards that people wanted were reprinted in large quantity. It destroyed the value of most of those cards, but more importantly, it destroyed the illusion that a square of printed cardboard holds any intrinsic value. This resulted in many people no longer having any interest in collecting cards that could be made worthless at any time. It took an incredible amount of time and effort on Wizards part to rebuild that, and they are't fool enough to tear it down again.
*yawn*
Not only is there insufficient value in this deck, it's also a pretty poorly made deck.
I didn't expect Bob in this thing. High $ Mythic rares aren't needed and I didn't expect them.
Even Marsh Flats wasn't something I expected. It's the fetch that least needed a reprint, and it wouldn't be very useful as a one of in a deck like this anyway.
But Bitterblossom and Auriok Champion? Those should have 100% been in the deck. They're not mythics, and they're not super popular staples. They're mainly used for this exact deck, and they're only expensive because they're quite simply underprinted right now. Instead of putting in mythic rares like Sword (which has no place in the deck) and Elspeth (which was already in a Duel deck and Modern Masters), put in a pair of bitterblossum and a pair of champions, and actually give people the start of a real deck, instead of a shell missing every single remotely valuable card.
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Decks: Standard - Rally, Modern - Kikichord, Legacy - Elves
Commmander - Eight-and-a-Half Tails; Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker; Prime Speaker Zegana; Alesha, Who Smiles at Death; Daxos the Returned; Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest; Patron of the Moonfolk; Animar, Soul of Elements
I smelled poo all over this thing when I saw the pic advertising Elspeth and Hero. Right then and there, I declined to preorder until I saw the list. I knew this was coming. Neither Elspeth or Hero see much Modern play, and the final list is a joke of a shell of a Tier 2 deck anyway. It's like remixing a B-side song with a terrible strip club bass line - sure, the the shell of the original is there, but the soul is gone and no one cared about it much to begin with, anyway.
I don't care what anyone says. Wizards COULD have put 4x Thoughtseize, 4x Marsh Flats, 4x Fetid Heath, 4x Auriok Champion and hell, even 4x Bitterblossom in this deck if they wanted to. No, it is not unreasonable, even if it made the deck worth a grand (even I wasn't expecting that, but still). I have not heard one valid argument as to why they couldn't do it.
How about because when they did this back in Chronicles, it almost killed the game?
Lots of in demand cards that people wanted were reprinted in large quantity. It destroyed the value of most of those cards, but more importantly, it destroyed the illusion that a square of printed cardboard holds any intrinsic value. This resulted in many people no longer having any interest in collecting cards that could be made worthless at any time. It took an incredible amount of time and effort on Wizards part to rebuild that, and they are't fool enough to tear it down again.
Ah yes, you mean the set that Wizards completely overprinted that was white border and full of mostly junk that no one wanted? I can see how that could destroy the market.
But you seem confident that it would destroy the secondary market and, as a result, Magic itself. How do you know that would happen? What is Wizards supposed to do, then? Just put every card over $20 on a new "reserved list" and promise to never reprint them unless it's in such an extremely limited quantity that the price is either not affected or actually goes up? Yugioh has been doing it for over a decade and despite what people say, that game doesn't seem to be dead (every time I go in Wal-Mart there are tons of new Yugioh products in stock. A game that was dead or dying wouldn't be pumping out that much new product. Doing research on selling some of my old cards also showed me that quite a few of mine still command quite a bit of value on the secondary market).
There are still plenty of smart ways to "invest" in Magic if that's what you really want to do. Buy up playable legacy/Commander playable foils when they're still cheap due to recent printing, buy up Judge promos, buy FTV and Commander precons and sit on them, buy up Standard cards at low presale prices and flip them when they spike. Buy cards during off-season and cash out at the height when everyone is trying to put together decks for the next PTQ.
But there will come a time...it may not be tomorrow, it may not be next month, it may not be a year from now, but there will come a time where if Wizards continues this "new reserved list" strategy, Magic will get to that tipping point where anything but Standard becomes too expensive to play. Maybe, in the end, that's what Wizards wants. After all, Standard sells packs.
AHAHAHAHA. This decklist is perfect. Its playable out of the box, and it utterly wrecks the hopes and dreams of speculators.
Its perfect.
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Nyarlathotep must all things be told
for he is the messenger between the spheres
and the traveler between the realms of the living and the dead.
He shall summon forth the ancient ones
and wake them from their deathly slumber
then shall the elder signs be shattered. Trade Thread
I've got a non-committing reservation for this at my LGS, and I'm not buying it. I like that there are some general purpose modern staples in here (path, inq, dismember, kataki, sword), but I have them.
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When I hit my 3000 post mark, I'm gone for good.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
I think the deck is pretty good actually, I sure wasn't expecting them to put 4 of any rare in the deck. Also you don't have to have fetches to have a good manabase. I don't know where this myth came from. I run plenty of two colour decks and I do just fine with the M10/INN duals, shock lands and pain lands if needed. I've never had any problems casting anything. I know it's not "optimal" but having fetches in your deck likely won't result in you winning games you lost.
I have plenty of modern and legacy decks that doesn't run fetches and still win games. Therefore, their argument about fetches is NOT VALID!
I don't care what anyone says. Wizards COULD have put 4x Thoughtseize, 4x Marsh Flats, 4x Fetid Heath, 4x Auriok Champion and hell, even 4x Bitterblossom in this deck if they wanted to. No, it is not unreasonable, even if it made the deck worth a grand (even I wasn't expecting that, but still). I have not heard one valid argument as to why they couldn't do it.
How about because when they did this back in Chronicles, it almost killed the game?
Lots of in demand cards that people wanted were reprinted in large quantity. It destroyed the value of most of those cards, but more importantly, it destroyed the illusion that a square of printed cardboard holds any intrinsic value. This resulted in many people no longer having any interest in collecting cards that could be made worthless at any time. It took an incredible amount of time and effort on Wizards part to rebuild that, and they are't fool enough to tear it down again.
Ah yes, you mean the set that Wizards completely overprinted that was white border and full of mostly junk that no one wanted? I can see how that could destroy the market.
But you seem confident that it would destroy the secondary market and, as a result, Magic itself. How do you know that would happen? What is Wizards supposed to do, then? Just put every card over $20 on a new "reserved list" and promise to never reprint them unless it's in such an extremely limited quantity that the price is either not affected or actually goes up? Yugioh has been doing it for over a decade and despite what people say, that game doesn't seem to be dead (every time I go in Wal-Mart there are tons of new Yugioh products in stock. A game that was dead or dying wouldn't be pumping out that much new product. Doing research on selling some of my old cards also showed me that quite a few of mine still command quite a bit of value on the secondary market).
There are still plenty of smart ways to "invest" in Magic if that's what you really want to do. Buy up playable legacy/Commander playable foils when they're still cheap due to recent printing, buy up Judge promos, buy FTV and Commander precons and sit on them, buy up Standard cards at low presale prices and flip them when they spike. Buy cards during off-season and cash out at the height when everyone is trying to put together decks for the next PTQ.
But there will come a time...it may not be tomorrow, it may not be next month, it may not be a year from now, but there will come a time where if Wizards continues this "new reserved list" strategy, Magic will get to that tipping point where anything but Standard becomes too expensive to play. Maybe, in the end, that's what Wizards wants. After all, Standard sells packs.
Correct. Wizards needs to set the cap on Modern because inherently, Standard cannot defeat an eternal format. Make anything interesting and viable in Standard and people will either port it to Modern if its powerful enough, or complain on its lack of power level for Modern (XXX Set has nothing for Modern). Either way, a Modern player will not play Standard.
Modern can only earn money for Wizards if its price barrier is high and WotrC does a slow, moderate reprint release over time, because it will sell packs. Crash everything, everybody moves to Modern, results in WotC needing to print power creep to sell packs, because new boosters appeal to nobody otherwise.
I find that the event deck sucks if you have some modern cards. It's not worth the investment in my opinion. No Bitterblossom is weird and the lack of Fetches or Shocks is pathetic. For getting more Modern players and helping increase the pool of available modern cards; Wizards is pissing in the wind and its hitting us in the face. The should have posted at least 2 different Event decks to get more interest.
This is just lame.
eh... If the deck had fetches and/or bitterblossom the price would probably be around 150, not 75 dollars. What do you expect?
All I wanted was to see Hero of Bladehold in the deck, because he's just that cool.
As for shocks? Let's see here, shocks are 6-10 dollars a shot now. Simple to add in on your own. Let's see what else is in standard that could go in. Hmmm... There was Sorin, he's a neat token builder that synergizes well with Elspeth. It's easy to upgrade it from an Ok deck to a decent deck. Now to make it truly competitive? You'll need to spend a little extra cash. Poo poo... whine whine... I hate WotC because I wanted a cheap deck to win a major PTQ with out of the box! Sorry, but when did Wizards ever do such a thing?
Your points are solid. My complaint is that Modern Masters was intended to expand the pool of Modern staples and create interest in the format. Of all the decks Wizards chose; BW tokens is weak. Hero of Bladehold should have been in the deck for sure. Many might find fetches not worth playing for $, but I find deck thinning wins games. It can hurt you facing an opposing tarmogoyf, but the gains from getting that needed color is very advantageous. Regardless, preaching to the choir....
This is supposed to be a premium deck, not a Wizards recognizing individual prices of cards for MSRP setting. Other premium decks or collections have better cards for far less MSRP than individual prices of cards in the respective decks. You should have to invest in the deck if it's a pre-con, this list given is only good for true newb players. Limited quantity, high priced, and low power level is what I place it at. 2 of those types are really only purchased by long time players/collectors or well off players. Modern has an availability problem and Wizards is just not getting it in my opinion.
Ah yes, you mean the set that Wizards completely overprinted that was white border and full of mostly junk that no one wanted? I can see how that could destroy the market.
No, yeah, I'm sure you are right, it was no big deal. It's not like it was serious enough to result in a public apology and force their hand on a promised reprint policy that they have stuck with for 18 years or anything.
I don't care what anyone says. Wizards COULD have put 4x Thoughtseize, 4x Marsh Flats, 4x Fetid Heath, 4x Auriok Champion and hell, even 4x Bitterblossom in this deck if they wanted to. No, it is not unreasonable, even if it made the deck worth a grand (even I wasn't expecting that, but still). I have not heard one valid argument as to why they couldn't do it.
How about because when they did this back in Chronicles, it almost killed the game?
Lots of in demand cards that people wanted were reprinted in large quantity. It destroyed the value of most of those cards, but more importantly, it destroyed the illusion that a square of printed cardboard holds any intrinsic value. This resulted in many people no longer having any interest in collecting cards that could be made worthless at any time. It took an incredible amount of time and effort on Wizards part to rebuild that, and they are't fool enough to tear it down again.
According to your logic, Magic should have died by now since they reprinted the Shocklands a lot.
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- H. L. Mencken
It's great for players who need that Elspeth and that sword and all those staple uncommons. Still, $75 is a steep price for a precon, even if you argue the real value of all the cards added up is twice the price.
It'll be interesting to see how well it sells and if we can pick it up later for closer to $50 or less if it sits on shelves. Fire & Lightning, the "Premium Deck Series" deck that was a good starter for a Legacy burn deck, went down to $20 on sale until the stock dried up. I think it was originally $35 MSRP (maybe $40?) and I remember people saying it's a GREAT value if you want to get into Legacy on the cheap, but it was still a lot of money for people to spring for a precon. Eventually the premium deck series was cancelled. (The curly foils in the PDS decks were also annoying. I still bought 2x F&L when they hit $20.)
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"Right about now I am wondering if Fredy Montero needed a kidney, how many guys in Seattle would line up to oblige?"
-- David Falk, Seattle Soccer Examiner, March 2009
"I wanted free money in cardboard format and they only gave me an extra $10, not the $100 I expected".
Not everyone who wants competitive cards reprinted just wants free money. Not everyone who wanted this deck to actually contain the cards that BW tokens plays was just planning on buying up as many copies as they could get their hands on and reselling for a big profit. Personally, I wanted to try out BW Tokens for Modern since it was my favorite deck during Inn Standard, so I was really hoping for a reprint of Auriok Champion here and I was also hoping we would see a few Fetid Heath because I play a lot of Commander and am always looking for more shocks, filters and fetches.
I don't care what anyone says. Wizards COULD have put 4x Thoughtseize, 4x Marsh Flats, 4x Fetid Heath, 4x Auriok Champion and hell, even 4x Bitterblossom in this deck if they wanted to. No, it is not unreasonable, even if it made the deck worth a grand (even I wasn't expecting that, but still). I have not heard one valid argument as to why they couldn't do it.
"Because that would be nuts" isn't a valid argument. What's nuts is the price of cards these days. "Because the cards are expensive" isn't a valid argument. If anything that's an argument FOR doing it. "Because Wizards can't print enough to meet demand" isn't a valid argument. Printing cards is what Wizards does for a living. It probably costs them like .50 cents (or less) to print one of these decks up and they make a huge profit in each one. The only way there would be a shortage is if Wizards decides to make one. "Because card shops/hoarders/speculators would lose money" isn't a valid argument. This deck was announced months ago. They've had since then to flip their cards. In some cases they've had much longer to unload the cards. "Because hoarders would buy them all up and no one else would get them" isn't a valid argument. In the beginning? Sure. The decks would go for double MSPR or more on the secondary market. Shops would instantly sell out as greedy people bought up as many as they could get their hands on and then immediately ran off to Ebay. Then Wizards prints more. Card shops make a killing. Speculators/hoarders make a killing (for a short time) Again, they sell out instantly. Now the market is being FLOODED with PLAYSETS (I think people really underestimate how 4x copies of a card will affect value. This isn't a "1-of $15 card in a $30 deck that has nothing else of real value" like Standard event decks). By this point, all of the cards that had a low amount of value like IOK, Path, Chapel, Koilos are only worth a buck or two at most. Other cards that added up like Zealous Persecution, Lingering Souls and Procession can't even be given away now. And the actual money cards have taken a big dent in price. The lower-value ones are probably $4-$5 at most (if not less). Now it's no longer profitable to resell the decks. The price drops back down to MSRP, maybe less, the players who want the decks to actually use them can afford them. Wizards stops printing, the supply slowly dries up and the secondary market on the cards slowly rebounds as new players come in who also want said cards. It may take a year or two and some of the low value cards may never quite recover, but that's ok. There is still a HUGE list full of cards that are way too expensive and every day more and more cards creep up onto that list as more and more people start playing, more people start hoarding, and cards get older, further out of print and harder to find.
This. totally this. The way I see it is if you don't resell a card you aren't making money on it; if you got it at a "deal" or not. I, and many others, want to play the game and the price only makes us not play as much and with less diversity. But in this case they print a product that has a bunch of cards that have been reprinted/printed recently that a bunch of people already have. What's the point? How does this help anyone? You can add up the price of the cards all you want but in reality you and most people have about 75% of this deck.
It's absolutely useful in getting into Modern. It has a good skeleton for the BW deck where the owner can slowly optimize it himself. Additionally, one can open it and just take it to a local event and have fun.
To the people who might say 'oh the deck suck, he'd get crushed', explain how someone who picks up a deck going to his first Modern tournament is suppose to win with a preconstructed anything?
People aren't saying it should have been super smashy crush everything in sight good. Stop using that straw man. It is both stupid and incorrect. People wanted something with a usable list. There have been loads of options that are legitimately used in this deck presented that were ignored in favor of sword of feast and famine or city of brass. Many people who want to play modern were hoping for at least a few usable cards in this so they didn't have to compete with standard players for resources. Could it have had thoughtseizes? Yes, and likely should have. Same with bitterblossoms and hero of bladeholds. Godless shrines, though nice, aren't necessary. People aren't demanding marsh flats or four ofs for this deck. They were saying that this is garbage (and it is) and that there were other, reasonable alternatives to the filler in this deck.
But Bitterblossom and Auriok Champion? Those should have 100% been in the deck. They're not mythics, and they're not super popular staples. They're mainly used for this exact deck, and they're only expensive because they're quite simply underprinted right now. Instead of putting in mythic rares like Sword (which has no place in the deck) and Elspeth (which was already in a Duel deck and Modern Masters), put in a pair of bitterblossum and a pair of champions, and actually give people the start of a real deck, instead of a shell missing every single remotely valuable card.
B/W tokens rarely runs bitterblossom and squadron hawk. Hawk was in Craig Wescoe's pro tour list specifically to fight zoo, and hasn't seen much play elsewhere. Bitterblossom means not running honor of the pure. It's been tested and the tradeoff isn't worth it. Auriok Champion has fallen out of favor and is barely seen anymore. Swords are actually pretty common in the deck, although war and peace is usually better than feast or famine.
This product has everything you need for tokens save for thoughtseize, godless shrine, and fetches. Adding those would have made the deck a huge speculation target and, at least at first, drastically reduced the chance of new players getting it. Two of those three cards are still in standard, making them easy to acquire. The fetches will eventually be reprinted anyway.
Ah yes, you mean the set that Wizards completely overprinted that was white border and full of mostly junk that no one wanted? I can see how that could destroy the market.
No, yeah, I'm sure you are right, it was no big deal. It's not like it was serious enough to result in a public apology and force their hand on a promised reprint policy that they have stuck with for 18 years or anything.
I believe time is also an important factor that must be considered. The Chronicles incident was forever ago, when Magic was still relatively new and the player base was a lot smaller. At the time, it was THE card game. There was nothing else like it. No Yugioh, no Pokemon, no VS, no Duel Masters, nothing. The closest analog anyone had was sports cards. So yes, I fully believe that there were a lot of people back then who invested in Magic as a collectible, never expecting Wizards to actually reprint the money cards en masse. But as you said, that was 18 years ago. Wizards had a stupid, knee-jerk reaction that that has hurt the game and continues to hurt the game as they still use a similar policy to artificially induce short supplies of expensive staples. Times have changed. People know how card games work now (or should). There's no excuse.
But I will digress as this thread isn't for discussing Wizard's Modern Reserved List policy, even though there's not much else to discuss because the decks are such a joke at that pricepoint.
I don't care what anyone says. Wizards COULD have put 4x Thoughtseize, 4x Marsh Flats, 4x Fetid Heath, 4x Auriok Champion and hell, even 4x Bitterblossom in this deck if they wanted to. No, it is not unreasonable, even if it made the deck worth a grand (even I wasn't expecting that, but still). I have not heard one valid argument as to why they couldn't do it.
how about: because there are a lot of people who spent a good amount of time and money building a proper BW token deck, and it's not good business to allow that to tank in value? you want to add a marsh flats? fine. a couple godless shrines? no problem. but to suggest that putting all those cards you listed in the deck is "reasonable" is hilariously provincial and screams of someone who's butthurt over not cashing in on a product they speculated on.
The problem with the deck isn't the lack or existence of money cards in it.
It's that it's not well designed in terms of basic deck-building principles for Modern, and Modern is an inherently more competitive format than Standard when it comes to LSGs.
Wizards wants people to start playing Modern, that is great.
But they should at least follow good deck-building principles in a more competitive format.
It's excusable in Standard for the pre-constructed decks to suck. They still have a chance of getting some wins because a decent amount of people are sheer beginners running home-brew decks at the average FNM using cards they pulled in barely enough packs to put together a coherent deck. People who haven't really started doing much trading or singles purchases.
Modern doesn't have an environment like that for newbies. By the time someone can afford Modern, or spending $75 on a deck in the first place, they should understand deck-building principles well enough to see that this deck is badly designed. Most people who play Modern at LSGs are people who transitioned to it from some Standard, or have been playing the game since before Modern was developed as a format. They might not be pros, but they'll still have significantly more consistent decks than this.
Worse, there are better designed _cheaper_ decks that are likely to get someone more wins in Modern at an LSG than this. I've seen cheap burn decks, cheap poison decks, etc. and other under $75 decks that are both better designed and likely to get better win percentages against the kind of people who you'll find playing Modern at an LSG, and their decks.
It's not so much that the deck has bad cards, it doesn't. It's also relatively cheap/easy to improve. But as a deck, it isn't worth $75, even if the individual cards are worth more. City of Brass is just the most egregious and obvious issue.
The deck has a 1 drop black spell that you probably want to play turn 1 if you have it, in Inquisition of Kozilek. When you have things like that going on, you want to have at least 13 lands that can let you play that spell on the first turn. This deck only has 10, and 2 of them are City of Brass, which shouldn't be in the deck in the first place.
The deck has Sword of Feast and Famine, which, while a great card, doesn't particularly do anything relevant to the deck's strategies, other than maybe force them to discard, and it isn't an efficient, quick, or reliable source for that. If you have to have a 'sword of' card for some reason Sword of Fire and Ice would have granted more relevant protection vs. red and blue for a token deck (tokens being weak to blue bounce spells, and lightning bolt being very common type of removal in Modern), helped with removal of troublesome opponent creatures, and helped with the deck's minimal card advantage sources. Sword of Body and Mind at least creates tokens that work with Intangible Virtue.
Having less than a playset of things like Path to Exile is questionable as well.
Wizards should not be encouraging beginners in more serious formats to play anything _but_ playsets, for consistency sake, outside of the sideboard.
Also, as others have said, regular event decks are $25 msrp. They contain 10 rares. This is $75 msrp. It contains 20 rares/mythics. Even with the inclusion of mythics, I find it hard to justify the price being 3 times the normal event decks unless it were 30 rares/mythics, or at least something like 20 rares 5 mythics. 2 mythics and 18 rares isn't enough to justify $75 MSRP, IMO, regardless of the value of the individual cards on the secondary market, when it comes to MSRP. If they want to include only 2 mythics, they should have included 28 rares. If they want to include 18 rares and 2 mythics, they should have had the MSRP be $50, rather than $75.
For the sake of beginners to the format though, I'd rather them have done the same price and number of rares as the Standard event decks, and just done a good budget deck for Modern. Not this wonky thing.
Also, as others have said, regular event decks are $25 msrp. They contain 10 rares. This is $75 msrp. It contains 20 rares/mythics. Even with the inclusion of mythics, I find it hard to justify the price being 3 times the normal event decks unless it were 30 rares/mythics, or at least something like 20 rares 5 mythics. 2 mythics and 18 rares isn't enough to justify $75 MSRP, IMO, regardless of the value of the individual cards on the secondary market, when it comes to MSRP. If they want to include only 2 mythics, they should have included 28 rares. If they want to include 18 rares and 2 mythics, they should have had the MSRP be $50, rather than $75.
I made a similar argument in the Modern forums about the MSRP and the number of rares compared to a Standard event deck, and people accused me of trolling.
lets see : godless shrine : $4.7 *4 == 18.8
fetch lands that will be reprinted*** === $ 13- *4 to 6 ( == 52 _ 76)
;;
...
Well i think ($ 75 + $ 18.8 + $ +- 52) +-$ 145 is worth ( consiering that you didn't had a huge collection or is entering modern/ returning to play magic) a Tier 2 deck ...
If you don't like ( and you realy don't like it) this product isn t for you. Get over it.
Rip off. Shame on you Wizards.
Modern: U M'Olk; B Goodstuff
How about because when they did this back in Chronicles, it almost killed the game?
Lots of in demand cards that people wanted were reprinted in large quantity. It destroyed the value of most of those cards, but more importantly, it destroyed the illusion that a square of printed cardboard holds any intrinsic value. This resulted in many people no longer having any interest in collecting cards that could be made worthless at any time. It took an incredible amount of time and effort on Wizards part to rebuild that, and they are't fool enough to tear it down again.
Not only is there insufficient value in this deck, it's also a pretty poorly made deck.
I didn't expect Bob in this thing. High $ Mythic rares aren't needed and I didn't expect them.
Even Marsh Flats wasn't something I expected. It's the fetch that least needed a reprint, and it wouldn't be very useful as a one of in a deck like this anyway.
But Bitterblossom and Auriok Champion? Those should have 100% been in the deck. They're not mythics, and they're not super popular staples. They're mainly used for this exact deck, and they're only expensive because they're quite simply underprinted right now. Instead of putting in mythic rares like Sword (which has no place in the deck) and Elspeth (which was already in a Duel deck and Modern Masters), put in a pair of bitterblossum and a pair of champions, and actually give people the start of a real deck, instead of a shell missing every single remotely valuable card.
Commmander - Eight-and-a-Half Tails; Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker; Prime Speaker Zegana; Alesha, Who Smiles at Death; Daxos the Returned; Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest; Patron of the Moonfolk; Animar, Soul of Elements
Currently Playing:
Modern:
Tron
Titan-Shift
Ah yes, you mean the set that Wizards completely overprinted that was white border and full of mostly junk that no one wanted? I can see how that could destroy the market.
But you seem confident that it would destroy the secondary market and, as a result, Magic itself. How do you know that would happen? What is Wizards supposed to do, then? Just put every card over $20 on a new "reserved list" and promise to never reprint them unless it's in such an extremely limited quantity that the price is either not affected or actually goes up? Yugioh has been doing it for over a decade and despite what people say, that game doesn't seem to be dead (every time I go in Wal-Mart there are tons of new Yugioh products in stock. A game that was dead or dying wouldn't be pumping out that much new product. Doing research on selling some of my old cards also showed me that quite a few of mine still command quite a bit of value on the secondary market).
There are still plenty of smart ways to "invest" in Magic if that's what you really want to do. Buy up playable legacy/Commander playable foils when they're still cheap due to recent printing, buy up Judge promos, buy FTV and Commander precons and sit on them, buy up Standard cards at low presale prices and flip them when they spike. Buy cards during off-season and cash out at the height when everyone is trying to put together decks for the next PTQ.
But there will come a time...it may not be tomorrow, it may not be next month, it may not be a year from now, but there will come a time where if Wizards continues this "new reserved list" strategy, Magic will get to that tipping point where anything but Standard becomes too expensive to play. Maybe, in the end, that's what Wizards wants. After all, Standard sells packs.
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Its perfect.
for he is the messenger between the spheres
and the traveler between the realms of the living and the dead.
He shall summon forth the ancient ones
and wake them from their deathly slumber
then shall the elder signs be shattered.
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Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
I have plenty of modern and legacy decks that doesn't run fetches and still win games. Therefore, their argument about fetches is NOT VALID!
Correct. Wizards needs to set the cap on Modern because inherently, Standard cannot defeat an eternal format. Make anything interesting and viable in Standard and people will either port it to Modern if its powerful enough, or complain on its lack of power level for Modern (XXX Set has nothing for Modern). Either way, a Modern player will not play Standard.
Modern can only earn money for Wizards if its price barrier is high and WotrC does a slow, moderate reprint release over time, because it will sell packs. Crash everything, everybody moves to Modern, results in WotC needing to print power creep to sell packs, because new boosters appeal to nobody otherwise.
Your points are solid. My complaint is that Modern Masters was intended to expand the pool of Modern staples and create interest in the format. Of all the decks Wizards chose; BW tokens is weak. Hero of Bladehold should have been in the deck for sure. Many might find fetches not worth playing for $, but I find deck thinning wins games. It can hurt you facing an opposing tarmogoyf, but the gains from getting that needed color is very advantageous. Regardless, preaching to the choir....
This is supposed to be a premium deck, not a Wizards recognizing individual prices of cards for MSRP setting. Other premium decks or collections have better cards for far less MSRP than individual prices of cards in the respective decks. You should have to invest in the deck if it's a pre-con, this list given is only good for true newb players. Limited quantity, high priced, and low power level is what I place it at. 2 of those types are really only purchased by long time players/collectors or well off players. Modern has an availability problem and Wizards is just not getting it in my opinion.
Multiplayer Decks- Memnarch - Animar, Soul of Elements - Zur, the Enchanter - Atraxa, Praetors' Voice - Food Chain Tazri - Teysa Karlov
Modern BUMill and Bant Spirits.
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No, yeah, I'm sure you are right, it was no big deal. It's not like it was serious enough to result in a public apology and force their hand on a promised reprint policy that they have stuck with for 18 years or anything.
According to your logic, Magic should have died by now since they reprinted the Shocklands a lot.
- H. L. Mencken
French Duel Commander
WBR Kaalia of the Vast WBR
RUG Maelstrom Wanderer RUG
It'll be interesting to see how well it sells and if we can pick it up later for closer to $50 or less if it sits on shelves. Fire & Lightning, the "Premium Deck Series" deck that was a good starter for a Legacy burn deck, went down to $20 on sale until the stock dried up. I think it was originally $35 MSRP (maybe $40?) and I remember people saying it's a GREAT value if you want to get into Legacy on the cheap, but it was still a lot of money for people to spring for a precon. Eventually the premium deck series was cancelled. (The curly foils in the PDS decks were also annoying. I still bought 2x F&L when they hit $20.)
-- David Falk, Seattle Soccer Examiner, March 2009
This. totally this. The way I see it is if you don't resell a card you aren't making money on it; if you got it at a "deal" or not. I, and many others, want to play the game and the price only makes us not play as much and with less diversity. But in this case they print a product that has a bunch of cards that have been reprinted/printed recently that a bunch of people already have. What's the point? How does this help anyone? You can add up the price of the cards all you want but in reality you and most people have about 75% of this deck.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/trading-post/details/360-bitterblossom-and-mistbind-clique-looking-to-trade
To the people who might say 'oh the deck suck, he'd get crushed', explain how someone who picks up a deck going to his first Modern tournament is suppose to win with a preconstructed anything?
EDH is a CASUAL format. Get with the program, or GTFO.
B/W tokens rarely runs bitterblossom and squadron hawk. Hawk was in Craig Wescoe's pro tour list specifically to fight zoo, and hasn't seen much play elsewhere. Bitterblossom means not running honor of the pure. It's been tested and the tradeoff isn't worth it. Auriok Champion has fallen out of favor and is barely seen anymore. Swords are actually pretty common in the deck, although war and peace is usually better than feast or famine.
This product has everything you need for tokens save for thoughtseize, godless shrine, and fetches. Adding those would have made the deck a huge speculation target and, at least at first, drastically reduced the chance of new players getting it. Two of those three cards are still in standard, making them easy to acquire. The fetches will eventually be reprinted anyway.
I believe time is also an important factor that must be considered. The Chronicles incident was forever ago, when Magic was still relatively new and the player base was a lot smaller. At the time, it was THE card game. There was nothing else like it. No Yugioh, no Pokemon, no VS, no Duel Masters, nothing. The closest analog anyone had was sports cards. So yes, I fully believe that there were a lot of people back then who invested in Magic as a collectible, never expecting Wizards to actually reprint the money cards en masse. But as you said, that was 18 years ago. Wizards had a stupid, knee-jerk reaction that that has hurt the game and continues to hurt the game as they still use a similar policy to artificially induce short supplies of expensive staples. Times have changed. People know how card games work now (or should). There's no excuse.
But I will digress as this thread isn't for discussing Wizard's Modern Reserved List policy, even though there's not much else to discuss because the decks are such a joke at that pricepoint.
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how about: because there are a lot of people who spent a good amount of time and money building a proper BW token deck, and it's not good business to allow that to tank in value? you want to add a marsh flats? fine. a couple godless shrines? no problem. but to suggest that putting all those cards you listed in the deck is "reasonable" is hilariously provincial and screams of someone who's butthurt over not cashing in on a product they speculated on.
It's that it's not well designed in terms of basic deck-building principles for Modern, and Modern is an inherently more competitive format than Standard when it comes to LSGs.
Wizards wants people to start playing Modern, that is great.
But they should at least follow good deck-building principles in a more competitive format.
It's excusable in Standard for the pre-constructed decks to suck. They still have a chance of getting some wins because a decent amount of people are sheer beginners running home-brew decks at the average FNM using cards they pulled in barely enough packs to put together a coherent deck. People who haven't really started doing much trading or singles purchases.
Modern doesn't have an environment like that for newbies. By the time someone can afford Modern, or spending $75 on a deck in the first place, they should understand deck-building principles well enough to see that this deck is badly designed. Most people who play Modern at LSGs are people who transitioned to it from some Standard, or have been playing the game since before Modern was developed as a format. They might not be pros, but they'll still have significantly more consistent decks than this.
Worse, there are better designed _cheaper_ decks that are likely to get someone more wins in Modern at an LSG than this. I've seen cheap burn decks, cheap poison decks, etc. and other under $75 decks that are both better designed and likely to get better win percentages against the kind of people who you'll find playing Modern at an LSG, and their decks.
It's not so much that the deck has bad cards, it doesn't. It's also relatively cheap/easy to improve. But as a deck, it isn't worth $75, even if the individual cards are worth more. City of Brass is just the most egregious and obvious issue.
The deck has a 1 drop black spell that you probably want to play turn 1 if you have it, in Inquisition of Kozilek. When you have things like that going on, you want to have at least 13 lands that can let you play that spell on the first turn. This deck only has 10, and 2 of them are City of Brass, which shouldn't be in the deck in the first place.
The deck has Sword of Feast and Famine, which, while a great card, doesn't particularly do anything relevant to the deck's strategies, other than maybe force them to discard, and it isn't an efficient, quick, or reliable source for that. If you have to have a 'sword of' card for some reason Sword of Fire and Ice would have granted more relevant protection vs. red and blue for a token deck (tokens being weak to blue bounce spells, and lightning bolt being very common type of removal in Modern), helped with removal of troublesome opponent creatures, and helped with the deck's minimal card advantage sources. Sword of Body and Mind at least creates tokens that work with Intangible Virtue.
Having less than a playset of things like Path to Exile is questionable as well.
Wizards should not be encouraging beginners in more serious formats to play anything _but_ playsets, for consistency sake, outside of the sideboard.
Also, as others have said, regular event decks are $25 msrp. They contain 10 rares. This is $75 msrp. It contains 20 rares/mythics. Even with the inclusion of mythics, I find it hard to justify the price being 3 times the normal event decks unless it were 30 rares/mythics, or at least something like 20 rares 5 mythics. 2 mythics and 18 rares isn't enough to justify $75 MSRP, IMO, regardless of the value of the individual cards on the secondary market, when it comes to MSRP. If they want to include only 2 mythics, they should have included 28 rares. If they want to include 18 rares and 2 mythics, they should have had the MSRP be $50, rather than $75.
For the sake of beginners to the format though, I'd rather them have done the same price and number of rares as the Standard event decks, and just done a good budget deck for Modern. Not this wonky thing.
I made a similar argument in the Modern forums about the MSRP and the number of rares compared to a Standard event deck, and people accused me of trolling.