I thought the point of having a high power limited environment was so they could downshift rarity. Though in this case it seems like pretty blatant pandering to investors since I can't imagine printing this at uncommon would break limited.
My major problem with the rare shifts is that having a peasant cube with random rares bothers me, aesthetically. I have the uncommon versions of loxodon warhammer and the human that returns 1cmc artifacts from the graveyard that was rare shifted in MM in my modern peasent cube even though I also owned the rare versions.
maybe someone will trade my rare one for the uncommon one, or just buy them when the price drops.
We can still hope for a Fyndhorn Elves reprint at common, if having a 1cmc mana dork with Werebear isn't TOO STRONK for limited.
We need more elves for this guy to function at all. Timberwatch, Bloodbraid, and Shaman of the Pack are all uncommons, plus two of which are multicolor, and we need some decent common elves to make elves a viable draft theme.
We can still hope for a Fyndhorn Elves reprint at common, if having a 1cmc mana dork with Werebear isn't TOO STRONK for limited.
We need more elves for this guy to function at all. Timberwatch, Bloodbraid, and Shaman of the Pack are all uncommons, plus two of which are multicolor, and we need some decent common elves to make elves a viable draft theme.
To be fair, we don't know much about the commons and draft-filler yet. Chances are there's a pile of elves of various pedigree sprinkled throughout the commons and uncommons.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
What a joke. People keep saying this set is so full of value, but I'm just not seeing it. The majority of the rares are currently under $10 and likely to drop further, a bunch more are just over $10 and likely to go under, and most of the uncommons and commons are worthless. The most valuable uncommon spoiled so far, Cabal Therapy, is preselling at SCG for $8 and is currently in stock. The "value" is entirely in foils, a handful of rares, and most of the mythics. Not something you can really count on when the MSRP is $10 and you'll probably be paying more.
You act as though the rare is the only card in the pack. Do me a favour, and whenever you open a pack and the rare is sub-$10, throw the whole pack away in disgust and outrage. I'll pick it up for a good chance of getting $10 value or more from the other 14 cards, including the foil.
I'm calling it right now- worst rare in the set. Even good limited players will find better bombs at common and uncommon no sweat. Worst. Episode. Ever.
I really do predict this to be our worst rare in set award winner. I'd be happier opening a jar of eyeballs, so I think anything worse is highly unlikely. This card wont just have zero constructed potential, but not be significantly better than a mass of ghouls in a draft.
Whiners gonna whine
I love this card's reprint even at rare
Without it Heritage Druid could spike to 20-30-40 the following year
This wont happen now. Because of this reprint. Dropping to 5 instead, gj wizards.
Draft experience wont suffer of course. When did draft experience suck because of a rare you dont want?
Holy **** this is the pinnacle of rarity-creep! I love this set to the death, but this is just disgusting and reminding me of yu-gi-oh more and more. wizards said multiple times that they don't care about the secondary market, but putting this at rare shows exactly the opposite. Going by the logic of powerlevel and demand, lightning bolt and chain lightning should've been rare as well.
I'm SO SICK of the "too strong for Standard" argument. It's the new "Dies to removal". We can have a two mana 4/4 with a zillion abilities, but we can't just have Accumulated Knowledge. Makes sense.
I don't know where people get the impression that wotc don't care about the secondary market. This is a company that has withheld reprinting some of the most famous cards in the game because they made a promise to collectors 20 years ago to not affect the secondary market.
There's been much whining about the rarity upshifts today. The most recent example is in re: the upshift of Heritage Druid from uncommon to rare.
Apparently everyone's already forgotten that Force of Will, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Mana Crypt, Karakas, and Wasteland (all anywhere from $70-$150) were spoiled on Monday. This goes without mentioning a dozen other rares/mythics with a value of anywhere between $10 and $30. Even shifted upwards, the Druid is an $8 card--essentially the price of a typical (good) rare. There are also multiple high-value uncommons in this set such as Chain Lightning and Cabal Therapy that were $10+ a pop pre-announcement and are still ACTUALLY uncommon. This set has value at every level.
There seems to be a widely-held expectation that every card in this set is going to be a $10 bill, and every pack is going to be the proverbial "winning lottery ticket", but that's entirely unrealistic; this has NEVER been the case. (If you want to ensure you get your money's worth the method remains the same--buy a box or buy the singles now that they're cheaper, but I digress...)
First of all, if everything in this set were a busted, $10 card, the MSRP of $10/pack wouldn't be $10/pack. Wizards has to keep the EV of product near MSRP, otherwise retailers are just going to jack the price (see FTV products), which in this case they already have, because this product seems to have a ton of value as it is. Sure, they could put your wishlist of expensive cards in the set, but then you'd just be complaining about $20 boosters instead of $10 boosters.
Second of all, Wizards--if you haven't noticed--is not a charity, but rather in the business of making money; it's like you guys expect them to just give the farm away and include all of the good cards in a single go. I still see people saying they're going to be "unhappy" if Berserk, Rishadan Port and Crucible of Worlds (all $70+ cards) aren't in this set--at RARE no less!
Aside from the previously-identified issue with MSRP and EV, there's also the issue of incentivizing you to buy future products that include the cards that "missed the cut" in Eternal Masters. If you all had your way, there wouldn't be a reason for you to buy Modern Masters 2017, and that's no good for Wizards' bottom line, which ultimately isn't good for the health of the game (more on that in a minute.)
See, here in the real world Wizards has these pesky little things called shareholders that they need to keep satisfied; they also have these things called "overhead costs" and "employees." This means that imperative numero uno is to move product and maximize profit. By doing so, they can continue to receive outside investment, pay MaRk's salary, keep the presses running, and continue making the game that you apparently seem to enjoy notwithstanding all of the ofoffensive rarity shifts that you've taken exception to.
On a related note, part of this strategy of making money involves selling a product that people who buy it--and this goes beyond mere "investors": it includes regular players--expect to retain and (over time) actually gain value.
Some of the cards printed in this set are, as mentioned, already incredibly expensive. Many people have spent a lot of time and energy acquiring those cards. Many (myself included, and I'm hardly a "collector" or "speculator") have already seen their collections take a massive hit from this set being printed as is. That's fine as far as I'm concerned, because it gives other players a window to acquire these rare cards at a reduced price, and these prices will surely bounce back over time--probably relatively quickly. I'll somehow make do in the meantime, and I'm sure I'll take advantage of this window as well, because who can't use another set Wastelands?
What WOULD p*** me off, however, would be if Wizards were to print a large-scale print run of all of the best and most expensive cards in the game--as many seem to think they should be doing--and completely crash the secondary market, thus nuking the value of my collection, which I have spent many years and thousands of dollars acquiring. This would probably prompt me to ragequit; I'd imagine many would be in the same boat. Generally speaking, p***ing off a large segment of your client base isn't a sound business practice.
The bottom line is that this is a zero-sum game; Wizards will never be able to completely satisfy everybody with a product like this because anytime the secondary market prices change there are winners and there are losers. They've taken their best crack at expanding access in the secondary market to some iconic and expensive cards--thereby satisfying people who otherwise wouldn't have access to those cards--without completely crashing the secondary market for those cards and offending the rest of their player-client base.
The alternative is that there's no Eternal Masters at all; take your pick.
Finally, there's the limited issue. Many of you have said that this set shouldn't be about limited." Frankly, that's just your opinion. Apparently Wizards disagrees with it, as do the many players who will no doubt be drafting this set. Accordingly, Wizards has rarity-shifted certain cards from uncommon to rare to avoid certain degenerate interactions in limited. This apparently includes "elf ball" type situations with Heritage Druid. Frankly, I trust their judgment on this one, because they've gotten increasingly good at balancing sets for limited and, IMHO, this set already looks like an absolute blast to draft based on the third of it that's been spoiled.
If you don't like certain aspects of this set and it doesn't live up to your (fantastical) expectations, then by all means don't buy it. That just means more of it for the rest of us at a lower price.
Are there more elves in Eternal Masters than Lorwyn/Morningtide to justify the rarity increase for "Limited Purposes"? Stay tuned to the full Spoiler List to find out!
I'm less merciful with this particular card's rarity shift, since Baleful Strix and Shardless Agent were always Supplementary Product-only cards (where rarity merely meant quantity in said product) and Sensei's Divining Top and Isochron Scepter were "generally" powerful cards (and artifacts, like Aether Vial), so their rarity shift was expected.
This falls along the lines of Argothian Enchantress, but is technically worse since at least the Enchantress had the "Mythic didn't exist back then" excuse, plus Mythics and Rares still occupy the same slot, whereas the gap between uncommon and rare is wider.
But they do whatever they deem most profitable, so we have to take it in our stride and complain on...
There's been much whining about the rarity upshifts today. The most recent example is in re: the upshift of Heritage Druid from uncommon to rare.
Apparently everyone's already forgotten that Force of Will, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Mana Crypt, Karakas, and Wasteland (all anywhere from $70-$150) were spoiled on Monday. This goes without mentioning a dozen other rares/mythics with a value of anywhere between $10 and $30. Even shifted upwards, the Druid is an $8 card--essentially the price of a typical (good) rare. There are also multiple high-value uncommons in this set such as Chain Lightning and Cabal Therapy that were $10+ a pop pre-announcement and are still ACTUALLY uncommon. This set has value at every level.
I don't really disagree with your thesis (set's already good), but the fact that 3 (debatably 4) of the cards you chose as examples are rarity upshifts that were properly handled and make sense on every level doesn't really help your case. Heritage Druid doesn't make sense on the face of it for limited or even value purposes. Maybe it'll make some kind of hidden sense after we draft the set a lot, but in general, people don't see it now, and they do with the upshifts you list. Also, Chain Lightning is also a rarity upshift (that people also generally understand) and has never been uncommon before.
There's been much whining about the rarity upshifts today. The most recent example is in re: the upshift of Heritage Druid from uncommon to rare.
Apparently everyone's already forgotten that Force of Will, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Mana Crypt, Karakas, and Wasteland (all anywhere from $70-$150) were spoiled on Monday. This goes without mentioning a dozen other rares/mythics with a value of anywhere between $10 and $30. Even shifted upwards, the Druid is an $8 card--essentially the price of a typical (good) rare. There are also multiple high-value uncommons in this set such as Chain Lightning and Cabal Therapy that were $10+ a pop pre-announcement and are still ACTUALLY uncommon. This set has value at every level.
I don't really disagree with your thesis (set's already good), but the fact that 3 (debatably 4) of the cards you chose as examples are rarity upshifts that were properly handled and make sense on every level doesn't really help your case. Heritage Druid doesn't make sense on the face of it for limited or even value purposes. Maybe it'll make some kind of hidden sense after we draft the set a lot, but in general, people don't see it now, and they do with the upshifts you list. Also, Chain Lightning is also a rarity upshift (that people also generally understand) and has never been uncommon before.
I disagree entirely. Whether an upshift was "properly handled" is, relatively speaking, subjective. Clearly Wizards considered a number of factors in determining rarity--hence why they downhshifted several old cards like Emperor Crocodile that didn't have a lot of value but that they nonetheless thought belonged in the set. While I would agree that all of the cards I mentioned in my opening paragraph were "properly" upshifted, I disagree that Heritage Druid being rare is somehow facially inappropriate.
First of all, Wizards has already repeatedly expressed that "Elves" is going to be a limited archetype; the only logical conclusion is that, somewhere in the 163 cards that haven't yet been spoiled, there is going to be a large number of elves. Two of the things elves do best are (1) flood the board, and (2) generate a bunch of mana. It's pretty easy to see how this could get degenerate quickly with Heritage Druid in play.
Second of all, even with the upshift Druid is like what, a $6 t $8 card? (LP copies from Morningtide are still going for around $9-10 on TCGPlayer but seem to be dropping.) That puts it smack dab in the middle of the pack in term of value rares in this set; as recently as a year ago, which would have been around the time that this set was being designed and developed, it was a $25 card. I do not see how anyone could argue that it's all that inappropriate from a financial standpoint to make this a rare. Not every rare is going to be a $15 bombshell, and yet this is one that has a lot of potential to spike in value at a later time. It's still basically anywhere from 60 to 80% of the value of your pack if you happen to crack it.
So many complainers! You know what, if you don't like it, don't buy it. Personally I don't care whether it's a rare or Uncommon. I own a playset and whether they are $5 or $10 is irrelevant to me. Ignoring the fact that this is a COLLECTABLE card game is extremely short sighted. People moan and whine about "investors" but without the $ collectability this game would have gone the way of pokemon long ago.
I actually agree with a lot of the rarity shifts (sorry folks, FoW, Karakas, tutors, shardless, etc. all make plenty of sense at their new rarity for value or limited concerns--to me anyway). Even mom is pretty busted in limited. However, I just don't get this one. It is a pretty niche card, with middling value, that really doesn't do much in limited. Where is the justification?
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Sig by Dark Night Cavalier at Heroes of the Plane Studios!
So many complainers! You know what, if you don't like it, don't buy it. Personally I don't care whether it's a rare or Uncommon. I own a playset and whether they are $5 or $10 is irrelevant to me. Ignoring the fact that this is a COLLECTABLE card game is extremely short sighted. People moan and whine about "investors" but without the $ collectability this game would have gone the way of pokemon long ago.
It's a collectable card game that we are supposed to be able to play. It's not exactly playable if your opponent happens to win because economically he's better off than you are and that generally is what ends up happening. So I hope you enjoy collecting your cards, get to play one or two games, then have those people refuse to ever play against you again. Modern survives because it's competitive and people generally come to the fork and decide to plunge deeper just to try and improve their win ratio. Legacy and vintage often don't work that way.
What erks me is that these are the cards many people grew up playing with and WoTC couldn't even put the price tag at 100 usd a box. They decided it had to be another overly expensive box set of only 24 packs and upcosted to be over twice the price of their crap standard offerings.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
There are a lot of rarity shifts in this set that I think people, including myself, are rightfully upset about. This one doesn't bother me though. The value is above MSRP and above what I'm paying per pack on my box. And so if I open one of these in a pack, I'll either break even or gain a little value depending on whether prices shift at all. There are a number of non-shifted rares in this set that will return a negative value and that I'd be pretty damn unhappy to open. And so while this card wouldn't increase the value of a box if I pulled it, it at least helps mitigate the risk.
What a joke. People keep saying this set is so full of value, but I'm just not seeing it. The majority of the rares are currently under $10 and likely to drop further, a bunch more are just over $10 and likely to go under, and most of the uncommons and commons are worthless. The most valuable uncommon spoiled so far, Cabal Therapy, is preselling at SCG for $8 and is currently in stock. The "value" is entirely in foils, a handful of rares, and most of the mythics. Not something you can really count on when the MSRP is $10 and you'll probably be paying more.
You act as though the rare is the only card in the pack. Do me a favour, and whenever you open a pack and the rare is sub-$10, throw the whole pack away in disgust and outrage. I'll pick it up for a good chance of getting $10 value or more from the other 14 cards, including the foil.
Did you even read my post? I specifically mentioned the value of the commons and uncommons.
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Thats the only viable way to make sence of this ...
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maybe someone will trade my rare one for the uncommon one, or just buy them when the price drops.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
We need more elves for this guy to function at all. Timberwatch, Bloodbraid, and Shaman of the Pack are all uncommons, plus two of which are multicolor, and we need some decent common elves to make elves a viable draft theme.
To be fair, we don't know much about the commons and draft-filler yet. Chances are there's a pile of elves of various pedigree sprinkled throughout the commons and uncommons.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
You act as though the rare is the only card in the pack. Do me a favour, and whenever you open a pack and the rare is sub-$10, throw the whole pack away in disgust and outrage. I'll pick it up for a good chance of getting $10 value or more from the other 14 cards, including the foil.
I love this card's reprint even at rare
Without it Heritage Druid could spike to 20-30-40 the following year
This wont happen now. Because of this reprint. Dropping to 5 instead, gj wizards.
Draft experience wont suffer of course. When did draft experience suck because of a rare you dont want?
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
Apparently everyone's already forgotten that Force of Will, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Mana Crypt, Karakas, and Wasteland (all anywhere from $70-$150) were spoiled on Monday. This goes without mentioning a dozen other rares/mythics with a value of anywhere between $10 and $30. Even shifted upwards, the Druid is an $8 card--essentially the price of a typical (good) rare. There are also multiple high-value uncommons in this set such as Chain Lightning and Cabal Therapy that were $10+ a pop pre-announcement and are still ACTUALLY uncommon. This set has value at every level.
There seems to be a widely-held expectation that every card in this set is going to be a $10 bill, and every pack is going to be the proverbial "winning lottery ticket", but that's entirely unrealistic; this has NEVER been the case. (If you want to ensure you get your money's worth the method remains the same--buy a box or buy the singles now that they're cheaper, but I digress...)
First of all, if everything in this set were a busted, $10 card, the MSRP of $10/pack wouldn't be $10/pack. Wizards has to keep the EV of product near MSRP, otherwise retailers are just going to jack the price (see FTV products), which in this case they already have, because this product seems to have a ton of value as it is. Sure, they could put your wishlist of expensive cards in the set, but then you'd just be complaining about $20 boosters instead of $10 boosters.
Second of all, Wizards--if you haven't noticed--is not a charity, but rather in the business of making money; it's like you guys expect them to just give the farm away and include all of the good cards in a single go. I still see people saying they're going to be "unhappy" if Berserk, Rishadan Port and Crucible of Worlds (all $70+ cards) aren't in this set--at RARE no less!
Aside from the previously-identified issue with MSRP and EV, there's also the issue of incentivizing you to buy future products that include the cards that "missed the cut" in Eternal Masters. If you all had your way, there wouldn't be a reason for you to buy Modern Masters 2017, and that's no good for Wizards' bottom line, which ultimately isn't good for the health of the game (more on that in a minute.)
See, here in the real world Wizards has these pesky little things called shareholders that they need to keep satisfied; they also have these things called "overhead costs" and "employees." This means that imperative numero uno is to move product and maximize profit. By doing so, they can continue to receive outside investment, pay MaRk's salary, keep the presses running, and continue making the game that you apparently seem to enjoy notwithstanding all of the ofoffensive rarity shifts that you've taken exception to.
On a related note, part of this strategy of making money involves selling a product that people who buy it--and this goes beyond mere "investors": it includes regular players--expect to retain and (over time) actually gain value.
Some of the cards printed in this set are, as mentioned, already incredibly expensive. Many people have spent a lot of time and energy acquiring those cards. Many (myself included, and I'm hardly a "collector" or "speculator") have already seen their collections take a massive hit from this set being printed as is. That's fine as far as I'm concerned, because it gives other players a window to acquire these rare cards at a reduced price, and these prices will surely bounce back over time--probably relatively quickly. I'll somehow make do in the meantime, and I'm sure I'll take advantage of this window as well, because who can't use another set Wastelands?
What WOULD p*** me off, however, would be if Wizards were to print a large-scale print run of all of the best and most expensive cards in the game--as many seem to think they should be doing--and completely crash the secondary market, thus nuking the value of my collection, which I have spent many years and thousands of dollars acquiring. This would probably prompt me to ragequit; I'd imagine many would be in the same boat. Generally speaking, p***ing off a large segment of your client base isn't a sound business practice.
The bottom line is that this is a zero-sum game; Wizards will never be able to completely satisfy everybody with a product like this because anytime the secondary market prices change there are winners and there are losers. They've taken their best crack at expanding access in the secondary market to some iconic and expensive cards--thereby satisfying people who otherwise wouldn't have access to those cards--without completely crashing the secondary market for those cards and offending the rest of their player-client base.
The alternative is that there's no Eternal Masters at all; take your pick.
Finally, there's the limited issue. Many of you have said that this set shouldn't be about limited." Frankly, that's just your opinion. Apparently Wizards disagrees with it, as do the many players who will no doubt be drafting this set. Accordingly, Wizards has rarity-shifted certain cards from uncommon to rare to avoid certain degenerate interactions in limited. This apparently includes "elf ball" type situations with Heritage Druid. Frankly, I trust their judgment on this one, because they've gotten increasingly good at balancing sets for limited and, IMHO, this set already looks like an absolute blast to draft based on the third of it that's been spoiled.
If you don't like certain aspects of this set and it doesn't live up to your (fantastical) expectations, then by all means don't buy it. That just means more of it for the rest of us at a lower price.
Cheers.
I'm less merciful with this particular card's rarity shift, since Baleful Strix and Shardless Agent were always Supplementary Product-only cards (where rarity merely meant quantity in said product) and Sensei's Divining Top and Isochron Scepter were "generally" powerful cards (and artifacts, like Aether Vial), so their rarity shift was expected.
This falls along the lines of Argothian Enchantress, but is technically worse since at least the Enchantress had the "Mythic didn't exist back then" excuse, plus Mythics and Rares still occupy the same slot, whereas the gap between uncommon and rare is wider.
But they do whatever they deem most profitable, so we have to take it in our stride and complain on...
I don't really disagree with your thesis (set's already good), but the fact that 3 (debatably 4) of the cards you chose as examples are rarity upshifts that were properly handled and make sense on every level doesn't really help your case. Heritage Druid doesn't make sense on the face of it for limited or even value purposes. Maybe it'll make some kind of hidden sense after we draft the set a lot, but in general, people don't see it now, and they do with the upshifts you list. Also, Chain Lightning is also a rarity upshift (that people also generally understand) and has never been uncommon before.
I disagree entirely. Whether an upshift was "properly handled" is, relatively speaking, subjective. Clearly Wizards considered a number of factors in determining rarity--hence why they downhshifted several old cards like Emperor Crocodile that didn't have a lot of value but that they nonetheless thought belonged in the set. While I would agree that all of the cards I mentioned in my opening paragraph were "properly" upshifted, I disagree that Heritage Druid being rare is somehow facially inappropriate.
First of all, Wizards has already repeatedly expressed that "Elves" is going to be a limited archetype; the only logical conclusion is that, somewhere in the 163 cards that haven't yet been spoiled, there is going to be a large number of elves. Two of the things elves do best are (1) flood the board, and (2) generate a bunch of mana. It's pretty easy to see how this could get degenerate quickly with Heritage Druid in play.
Second of all, even with the upshift Druid is like what, a $6 t $8 card? (LP copies from Morningtide are still going for around $9-10 on TCGPlayer but seem to be dropping.) That puts it smack dab in the middle of the pack in term of value rares in this set; as recently as a year ago, which would have been around the time that this set was being designed and developed, it was a $25 card. I do not see how anyone could argue that it's all that inappropriate from a financial standpoint to make this a rare. Not every rare is going to be a $15 bombshell, and yet this is one that has a lot of potential to spike in value at a later time. It's still basically anywhere from 60 to 80% of the value of your pack if you happen to crack it.
My sales thread: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/trading-post/details/1651-ktk-for-sale
It's a collectable card game that we are supposed to be able to play. It's not exactly playable if your opponent happens to win because economically he's better off than you are and that generally is what ends up happening. So I hope you enjoy collecting your cards, get to play one or two games, then have those people refuse to ever play against you again. Modern survives because it's competitive and people generally come to the fork and decide to plunge deeper just to try and improve their win ratio. Legacy and vintage often don't work that way.
What erks me is that these are the cards many people grew up playing with and WoTC couldn't even put the price tag at 100 usd a box. They decided it had to be another overly expensive box set of only 24 packs and upcosted to be over twice the price of their crap standard offerings.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Did you even read my post? I specifically mentioned the value of the commons and uncommons.