I do not believe you are correct. If you were thinking about you opening a mana crypt that you needed, well thats just not realistic so I'll assume you are talking about the secondary market and that you think this won't noticeably impact the price of mana crypt.
I believe you are wrong. Yeah 1 in 5,000-something boosters sounds pretty rare, but we're talking about millions of boosters opened all over the world. We're probably going to see thousands, maybe tens of thousands of mana crypts released into the wild. You'll have a few rich hoarders who will buy the blingy mana crypt and keep their old ones, but most people who just want to build a deck will choose one or the other. More supply, pretty much same demand.
If the demand is high enough, a small increase in supply doesn't matter. Some of the cards (read: Blue fetchlands, and a few utility lands) went up in price after the Expeditions were released. The biggest drops in price happen when the card shows up in a Standard set at a standard rarity.
And of course, with Standard now at a faster pace, the life-cycle of any one set is shortened by half a year. Which means that there may not be as many packs opened after all.
And then there's the fact that these are going to be in every set which means that the "Well, I guess I'll open BFZ, I might get an expedition" is not as likely to happen because people are going to have that option with every set.
I don't think as much is being added to the market as you think.
You sir are a gentleman and a scholar. I can't wait till I can play my bicycle land out, thus making me heckbent, while I have Nessie on the field. You know, so I can attack with my Pervert.
Standard is the most-played Constructed format. It's designed as an entry point for players who wish to play Constructed Magic. Through market research and social media, we learned that many of the players who were interested in playing Standard felt it was something beyond their reach. We had to find ways to address this.
Anyone able to explain to me how that works?
Expeditions caused people to buy WAY more BFZ than they would have. A LOT more boosters were opened, and prices for other BFZ cards cratered. So, it was cheaper for people to buy BFZ cards they needed for their decks, making standard "more accessible"
Obviously if people do not care about the inventions and do not end up buying more Kaladesh than they would have, then the argument is no longer valid, but a lot of people love to gamble, so I think it will have an effect.
Obviously Maro could have just come right out and said "yall are going to buy WAY more product because of this, thats gonna be awesome!", but that would have sounded a bit too crass, so he kinda hinted at it, and we got the message.
Pretty much this. BFZ was a weak as hell set. My friend and I were stupid enough to buy a case to see how many we cold crack. What we got? Arid Mesa and Cinder glade. And two players of dragon master outcast. Also to the people comparing this to the whole 100 dollar being folded crap, need to shut up. This is not the same. No one is gonna care if the 100 is folded weird or rolled up weird as long as it's good enough to exchange to the bank and get a new one. Am I guaranteed $100 when I open a kaladesh pack? No. Do I wish they would give at least one masterpiece per pack? Of course I would but wizards will never do that. These masterpieces don't drive down the price of the original card for crap. It will have its own premium due to the rarity. Misty rainforest the expedition version is still worth crazy money as the regular versions.
This only benefits people who crack packs in bulk or draft like fiends. This doesn't bring anyone closer to being able to play Standard unless you get lucky and crack something to sell it immediately.
You're thinking about it in the wrong way. It doesn't make standard more accessible by giving players an expensive expedition to sell if they get lucky. It makes standard more accessible by people with more disposable income and an interest in playing the lottery buying boxes of Kaladesh hoping to crack them and then dumping all the other cards to their lgs or an online retailer. That increases the availability of the rest of the cards in the set and lowers their price. BFZ block had this happen. Even in Oath where the expeditions were worse and the actual standard-legal cards were better, the prices of those standard legal cards were still really low because so many people were playing the expedition lottery Even the cards from Oath that gained enormous popularity in modern for a little while didn't spike very high at all.
I'm ok with this up until they print a brand-new card that can only be obtained at this new rarity. MaRo was very careful about his wording in the article as to make that sound unlikely but not outright deny it would ever happen, and that makes me cautious.
This only benefits people who crack packs in bulk or draft like fiends. This doesn't bring anyone closer to being able to play Standard unless you get lucky and crack something to sell it immediately.
The expected value of a booster box after the initial release phase will always be less than the price of the box, because as long as it's larger people will open boxes until the supply lowers the value of the cards to that point. That means there is a limited amount of value that can be spread around the cards of the set. Even though they are very rare, Masterpieces command a high enough price that they take a not insignificant fraction of the total value of the set. With less total value to be spread among the remaining cards, prices of the regular cards in the set will be less than what they would have been without the Masterpieces.
Wizards never explicitly talks about secondary market value, but this is the effect of making Standard more accessible that they're talking about.
I don't think this will work as well as Expeditions did. EVERYONE wants lands - not everyone wants these niche artifacts.
In my opinion, this basically confirms Ravnica for the set after Amonkhet. There was a 'leak' that said 3 things - two of which have just been confirmed true.
Egyptian themed block after Kaladesh (CHECK!)
A rarity more rare than Mythic Rare (this basically is that)
Ravnica after the Egyptian block.
Since Ravnica also fits the timing of the next Jace reprint - I say it's super plausible. I was shipping Vryn, but all signs point to Ravnica.
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It's nice for stores that do open boosters as prizes doe FNM. The winner gets to take home something worth $50 or more on occasion.
Too bad they only just printed foil Mana Crypt which is one of the most expensive things in EMA holding up the box price. To me this new Mana Crypt makes EMA look like a bit of a smelly investment.
"MaRo was very careful about his wording in the article as to make that sound unlikely but not outright deny it would ever happen, and that makes me cautious."
That last point is just not true:
"There will never be cards appearing in a Masterpiece Series that can't be found outside of it. (I'm talking, of course, about the card itself and not the particular creative/frame treatment.)"
I would be surprised if they don't put Aether Vial here. I mean with all the flavor being about Aether on Kaladesh. It would be stupid IMO not to include Aether vial.
"There will never be cards appearing in a Masterpiece Series that can't be found outside of it. (I'm talking, of course, about the card itself and not the particular creative/frame treatment.)"
I mean that is pretty definitive isn't it...
Definitive wordplay. They can stop calling that slot the 'Masterpiece Series' and print new cards at that rarity in the future. Just like how he said "There are no named mechanics in Kaladesh that are returning mechanics" and yet we have at least 2 cards that are effectively metalcraft. It's technically true, because metalcraft is not a named mechanic in Kaladesh.
The chance to pull one is 1 in a 140 packs. That is about 1 a case. That is no guarantee you'll get one though! You can open a few cases and never see one. They should have made them alot more common then that, at least 1 in 36 packs or even 72 packs! They are only doing this because they think they will earn more money from this method because so many people tried to play the expedition game and failed.
The rarity cycle is pretty much fixed in their processing order. All they did was usurp the existing 'foil mythic rare' slot to put one of these in sometimes instead of a foil mythic. It would be too much work for them to do something like 1/36 or 1/72
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The chance to pull one is 1 in a 140 packs. That is about 1 a case. That is no guarantee you'll get one though! You can open a few cases and never see one. They should have made them alot more common then that, at least 1 in 36 packs or even 72 packs! They are only doing this because they think they will earn more money from this method because so many people tried to play the expedition game and failed.
Isn´t a case 6 booster boxes?
Yup. 6 cases of 36 boosters, making 216 booster packs total.
Which is why Daemon said roughly. There's the chance for two in a case, but more often than not, it'd be one per case.
Am I alone in my sadness that these are all foils? I love the art and frame on these things but I hate foil cards.
They look a bit tacky in my opinion, and worse, they warp too easily. Even the modern foils warp like crazy.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I would love more non-foil promos.
I don't think that wizards would do that especially after that statement.
They'll wait 2 years when that statement has been mostly forgotten.
I remember when they revealed Mythic Rares they said wouldn't be used for chase tournament cards and you wouldn't need them for competitive play (and at the time the planeswalkers were pretty garbage except Jace, so it was believed). Now, pretty much every deck has at least a couple of planeswalkers + a few other good mythics - fat load of bull that was.
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"There will never be cards appearing in a Masterpiece Series that can't be found outside of it. (I'm talking, of course, about the card itself and not the particular creative/frame treatment.)"
I mean that is pretty definitive isn't it...
Definitive wordplay. They can stop calling that slot the 'Masterpiece Series' and print new cards at that rarity in the future. Just like how he said "There are no named mechanics in Kaladesh that are returning mechanics" and yet we have at least 2 cards that are effectively metalcraft. It's technically true, because metalcraft is not a named mechanic in Kaladesh.
At that point this whole argument is stupid and pedantic though, because then they're something entirely other than the masterpiece series both in name and function.
Wizards also doesn really benefit from putting cards exclusively at that rarity. It's too high of a barrier to entry.
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Check out the thread for my cube if you have the time, and tell me how terrible it is.
Generals meant to be drafted first in a single pack of 6 cards.
And here is the actual cube, meant to be drafted in 4 regular sized packs. (60 card decks)
As long as they treat masterpieces as pure bonus, I think I'm ok with this added lottery.
And in my opinion the frame is really pretty this time, unlike the "full art" variant they did for expeditions.
Also, is it just me, or does the first swamp look more like "plains at night" than an actual swamp?
Am I alone in my sadness that these are all foils? I love the art and frame on these things but I hate foil cards.
They look a bit tacky in my opinion, and worse, they warp too easily. Even the modern foils warp like crazy.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I would love more non-foil promos.
I think they are pretty high quality foils when it comes to that. I play mine double sleeved and they didn't warp one single bit until this very day. My only gripe about expeditions is an issue that I can only assume is due to sloppy packaging. I don't know what happened there, but almost all the expeditions I saw had visible wear and some damage on the borders even when you literally pulled them fresh from a pack. Eternal masters foils were similar to that as well. Whatever causes this has hopefully been taken care of in the meantime. Noone wants a damaged card, but if it's that rare and expensive it's even worse.
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.
Okay, while everyone is *****ing about the new expeditions, here are my thoughts on the basic lands. Because, I'm a vorthos, and the basic lands are often a highlight of a block for me.
Plains: They are definitely looking sharp. Especially the third one, with the shining citadel in the distance.
Island: I wouldn't mind the swirls and everything, if it weren't for the distorted perspective. Still, Johannes Voss's is pretty gorgeous.
Swamp: Holy ***** these are beautiful.
Mountain: The least inspiring of the bunch, but they are still pretty nice. I like how Richard Wright's is rising out of a lake.
Forest: I wish I could live in each one of these locations.
In my personal ranking, these are tied for third place for best basic lands, alongside Zendikar/BfZ and Alara. They are pretty, but they just can't compete with original Innistrad block and Tarkir, my favorite and second favorite land picks.
Vorthos Cartography - Check out my completed maps of Zendikar and Innistrad!
"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
Rather than printing Standard playable commons and uncommons, lets just milk people who like to play the booster pack lottery.
That does not work. Whatever is rare and mythic rare still needs to be better than common and uncommon, and then THOSE super-powerful rare cards would now be the "new standard playable", and those powerful common and uncommons you are thinking about would no longer be standard playable.
The bolded part is false. Bulk rares and mythics will always exist. Look at the average standard deck, just about everything aside from basic lands is rare or mythic these days.
The bolded part is true. If you believe that they should make a set where literally every rare and mythic rare is a bulk rare and the ONLY standard playable cards are at common and uncommon, then you have a vision for a game that I don't think many other players share. It would also make limited a lot less fun and interesting, the format would get stale very quickly.
If you can't go two posts without a ridiculous straw man, its not worth discussing this with you.
Can someone explain this to me, because I don't understand this at all. Taken from the article on the Wizards site. How do Expeditions and Inventions keep Standard accessible? I'm not following.
"Challenge #1: Keeping Standard Accessible
Standard is the most-played Constructed format. It's designed as an entry point for players who wish to play Constructed Magic. Through market research and social media, we learned that many of the players who were interested in playing Standard felt it was something beyond their reach. We had to find ways to address this."
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Masterpiece cards are planned for Magic Online, but will not be redeemable and are not counted as part of the set. They're going to be distributed in an exciting new way, but we're not quite ready to announce what that is. Look for that announcement later this month.
Can someone explain this to me, because I don't understand this at all. Taken from the article on the Wizards site. How do Expeditions and Inventions keep Standard accessible? I'm not following.
"Challenge #1: Keeping Standard Accessible
Standard is the most-played Constructed format. It's designed as an entry point for players who wish to play Constructed Magic. Through market research and social media, we learned that many of the players who were interested in playing Standard felt it was something beyond their reach. We had to find ways to address this."
Their plan is to have people buy more boosters and to keep printing everything good at Rare and Mythic.
Also, is it just me, or does the first swamp look more like "plains at night" than an actual swamp?
You mean Adam Paquette's sunset one? That looks like a rice paddy, which is technically a type of wetland, so it does indeed fall under Wizard's classification of swamp. Of course, a real swamp is a wetland with trees, but Wizards groups marshes (treeless wetlands) and bogs (stagnant wetlands) in there as well.
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Vorthos Cartography - Check out my completed maps of Zendikar and Innistrad!
"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
Anyhow, the best I can come up with myself is a game in the top 8 of a PTQ back during Urza block in which we were starting game 3 with time already expired, so the tiebreaker rule was that whoever had more life after 3 turns would win. And I lost to... healing salve.
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If the demand is high enough, a small increase in supply doesn't matter. Some of the cards (read: Blue fetchlands, and a few utility lands) went up in price after the Expeditions were released. The biggest drops in price happen when the card shows up in a Standard set at a standard rarity.
And of course, with Standard now at a faster pace, the life-cycle of any one set is shortened by half a year. Which means that there may not be as many packs opened after all.
And then there's the fact that these are going to be in every set which means that the "Well, I guess I'll open BFZ, I might get an expedition" is not as likely to happen because people are going to have that option with every set.
I don't think as much is being added to the market as you think.
Agreement for both comments. That Mana Crypt is outstanding.
Expeditions are here to stay and I can't wait to see the Amonkhet ones!!!
I'm ok with this up until they print a brand-new card that can only be obtained at this new rarity. MaRo was very careful about his wording in the article as to make that sound unlikely but not outright deny it would ever happen, and that makes me cautious.
The expected value of a booster box after the initial release phase will always be less than the price of the box, because as long as it's larger people will open boxes until the supply lowers the value of the cards to that point. That means there is a limited amount of value that can be spread around the cards of the set. Even though they are very rare, Masterpieces command a high enough price that they take a not insignificant fraction of the total value of the set. With less total value to be spread among the remaining cards, prices of the regular cards in the set will be less than what they would have been without the Masterpieces.
Wizards never explicitly talks about secondary market value, but this is the effect of making Standard more accessible that they're talking about.
In my opinion, this basically confirms Ravnica for the set after Amonkhet. There was a 'leak' that said 3 things - two of which have just been confirmed true.
Since Ravnica also fits the timing of the next Jace reprint - I say it's super plausible. I was shipping Vryn, but all signs point to Ravnica.
Too bad they only just printed foil Mana Crypt which is one of the most expensive things in EMA holding up the box price. To me this new Mana Crypt makes EMA look like a bit of a smelly investment.
Quote:
"MaRo was very careful about his wording in the article as to make that sound unlikely but not outright deny it would ever happen, and that makes me cautious."
That last point is just not true:
"There will never be cards appearing in a Masterpiece Series that can't be found outside of it. (I'm talking, of course, about the card itself and not the particular creative/frame treatment.)"
I mean that is pretty definitive isn't it...
Definitive wordplay. They can stop calling that slot the 'Masterpiece Series' and print new cards at that rarity in the future. Just like how he said "There are no named mechanics in Kaladesh that are returning mechanics" and yet we have at least 2 cards that are effectively metalcraft. It's technically true, because metalcraft is not a named mechanic in Kaladesh.
The rarity cycle is pretty much fixed in their processing order. All they did was usurp the existing 'foil mythic rare' slot to put one of these in sometimes instead of a foil mythic. It would be too much work for them to do something like 1/36 or 1/72
Yup. 6 cases of 36 boosters, making 216 booster packs total.
Which is why Daemon said roughly. There's the chance for two in a case, but more often than not, it'd be one per case.
They look a bit tacky in my opinion, and worse, they warp too easily. Even the modern foils warp like crazy.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I would love more non-foil promos.
They'll wait 2 years when that statement has been mostly forgotten.
I remember when they revealed Mythic Rares they said wouldn't be used for chase tournament cards and you wouldn't need them for competitive play (and at the time the planeswalkers were pretty garbage except Jace, so it was believed). Now, pretty much every deck has at least a couple of planeswalkers + a few other good mythics - fat load of bull that was.
At that point this whole argument is stupid and pedantic though, because then they're something entirely other than the masterpiece series both in name and function.
Wizards also doesn really benefit from putting cards exclusively at that rarity. It's too high of a barrier to entry.
Generals meant to be drafted first in a single pack of 6 cards.
And here is the actual cube, meant to be drafted in 4 regular sized packs. (60 card decks)
And in my opinion the frame is really pretty this time, unlike the "full art" variant they did for expeditions.
Also, is it just me, or does the first swamp look more like "plains at night" than an actual swamp?
W(W/U)U Ephara - Flash & Taxes W(W/U)U || B(B/G)G Meren - Circle of Life B(B/G)G
RGW Marath - Ever shifting Wilds RGW || (U/R)C(W/B) Breya - Artificial Dominion (U/R)C(W/B)
UBR Becket Brass - take what you can, give nothing back UBR
I think they are pretty high quality foils when it comes to that. I play mine double sleeved and they didn't warp one single bit until this very day. My only gripe about expeditions is an issue that I can only assume is due to sloppy packaging. I don't know what happened there, but almost all the expeditions I saw had visible wear and some damage on the borders even when you literally pulled them fresh from a pack. Eternal masters foils were similar to that as well. Whatever causes this has hopefully been taken care of in the meantime. Noone wants a damaged card, but if it's that rare and expensive it's even worse.
Plains: They are definitely looking sharp. Especially the third one, with the shining citadel in the distance.
Island: I wouldn't mind the swirls and everything, if it weren't for the distorted perspective. Still, Johannes Voss's is pretty gorgeous.
Swamp: Holy ***** these are beautiful.
Mountain: The least inspiring of the bunch, but they are still pretty nice. I like how Richard Wright's is rising out of a lake.
Forest: I wish I could live in each one of these locations.
In my personal ranking, these are tied for third place for best basic lands, alongside Zendikar/BfZ and Alara. They are pretty, but they just can't compete with original Innistrad block and Tarkir, my favorite and second favorite land picks.
"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
If you can't go two posts without a ridiculous straw man, its not worth discussing this with you.
"Challenge #1: Keeping Standard Accessible
Standard is the most-played Constructed format. It's designed as an entry point for players who wish to play Constructed Magic. Through market research and social media, we learned that many of the players who were interested in playing Standard felt it was something beyond their reach. We had to find ways to address this."
STANDARD:
RRRMono RedRRR
MODERN:
BGBeatdown ElvesBG
GWDevoted Druid ComboGW
EDH:
URGMaelstrom WandererURG
BBBSheoldred, Whispering OneBBB
BGNath of the Gilt-LeafBG
Looking for Knowledge Pools! All languages, conditions, foil/non-foil, etc. PM me with your Pools and we can work something out
Masterpiece cards are planned for Magic Online, but will not be redeemable and are not counted as part of the set. They're going to be distributed in an exciting new way, but we're not quite ready to announce what that is. Look for that announcement later this month.
Their plan is to have people buy more boosters and to keep printing everything good at Rare and Mythic.
You mean Adam Paquette's sunset one? That looks like a rice paddy, which is technically a type of wetland, so it does indeed fall under Wizard's classification of swamp. Of course, a real swamp is a wetland with trees, but Wizards groups marshes (treeless wetlands) and bogs (stagnant wetlands) in there as well.
"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
*gasps*
Two words: Reserved List
(...and I sincerely hope this "Masterpiece series" doesn't have a hidden agenda, and isn't some clever attempt or ploy to circumvent the policy)