For me the tipping point was when Wizards didn't reprint enemy fetches in BFZ, as regular rares. Then, in an act of laughing at the Modern community, they reprinted them as ultramegarares. That was pretty much the point of no return for me. I haven't bought a single pack since except for one prerelease I attended.
My feeling towards these latest ones is whatever. Just make them drop the prices of the new fastlands a bit, and then I'll get them.
Sad to hear you go. We will adapt our printing process to adapt to your needs.
That said, I'm really happy about these. I'm not going to own any of them, but they're great to look at. Very glad I'm not a 100% full completionist, because a full set of these costs the same as a car.
As an investor who owns some arbitrary amount of shares of Hasbro, who also plays the game, I can see why they did this but why it will fail.
Gimmicks make money.
The problem is this is no longer a gimmick if they do it every set. It no longer becomes special, and people don't go out and buy 6 cases because it's a 1 time thing. People maybe buy more this time then they did for soi, but how long will that last? Then what gimmick will they pull?
This really should have gone in their bag of tricks to pull out every so often. A big part of the game is cards having value, when you do something too often, that thing loses value, and now it's not as popular, or it becomes stale. It's like how they did full art lands, took them away, and then they came back everyone purchased tons of fat packs due to the value people thought they were going to get from the full art lands. When the next set came out, far less fat packs were sold due to that inherent value falling. They then didn't reprint them, and now they can use that trick again in x amount of years to get people hyped up again (as long as they don't do it too soon).
To me, this is another example of how wizards doesn't understand moderation. I wonder how many less packs of shadows block they sold, or conspiracy, because they had 3 sets come out in quick succession, with another one about to be released as well.
These premium cards are nice, and they would be great from time to time, but at most I probably wouldn't want to see them for than 1 every 4-7 years. Same can be said about full art lands. I also wouldn't mind them bringing out a 'national treasures' type set out where the packs of 15 cards are extremely expensive, around 50-100$ per pack, however these would add no new cards and would appease a different demographic. It also doesn't take regular set selling away by rapidly releasing numerous sets. I have wondered how many less Shadows Over Innistrad was affected by Eternal Masters and Conspiracy both being released so close and quickly in relation to SOI. I know some people will try to say little, or none, however the location I go to had probably 20 conspiracy drafts fire off the first 2 weeks the set was out and no SOI drafts. Essentially because conspiracy came out, SOI lost a chunk of inherent drafters.
I can already see Hasbro's logic on the numbers, "Eternal Masters and Conspiracy were huge successes, however the Shadows Over Innistrad sales were a bit lackluster compared to normal standard sets... there must be a problem with Shadows over Innistrad, let's fix it."
I think that's enough for now. But I would also like to point out, as a player who mainly drafts nowadays, I'm also not a fan of playing in a draft with an opponent having, say, a sol ring or mana crypt. Cards like these aren't printed anymore for a reason, and having them playable in a standard draft is far more insane than the expeditions which in general didn't affect the game to a great extent. Understandably it won't happen every draft, but the power level of a couple of these cards are so much higher than others there's definitely a huge game advantage to them.
Well, the whole argument of getting more reprints into circulation with the Inventions/Expeditions/whatever they are called next time around is pretty obviously bull.
As well, it is plain to see that this is a way for WotC to sell more boxes.
Now, is this a bad thing?
I don't think so. We are talking about a company here, not a charitable institution. If MtG continues to turn a profit, WotC will continue developing and supporting it. As a long-time and very invested Magic player, this is in my interest.
I can forgive a certain amount of marketing speak, as long as the final product lives up to my expectations of quality. So far, this has been the case. Ergo, since I have no real reason to mistrust their development and design policies, I will look forward to this with cautious optimism.
If the effect Expeditions had on BfZ standard is repeatable, this will have a positive impact on the availability of standard-legal cards.
In addition, very pretty and very exclusive foil-only reprints are certainly a draw for me, although I usually won't go out of my way to acquire them.
My only actual negative opinion on the whole thing is that I believe the Invention card frame does not work well with colored cards: The Gearhulks are hard to read as their respective colors, which can have some small but not insignificant impact on gameplay. Luckily, the Gearhulks are the only colored ones so the effect on the whole is quite minor. However it is something Wizards should consider for the next cycle of these, which probably won't be all colorless.
My only actual negative opinion on the whole thing is that I believe the Invention card frame does not work well with colored cards: The Gearhulks are hard to read as their respective colors, which can have some small but not insignificant impact on gameplay. Luckily, the Gearhulks are the only colored ones so the effect on the whole is quite minor. However it is something Wizards should consider for the next cycle of these, which probably won't be all colorless.
If by "next cycle" you mean the masterpieces in the next block, don`t worry, they will have a different frame, probably one that shows off colors better. These have that Kaladesh-specific curly swirly metal thing going on, and they can afford to make them orange because the Gearhulks are most likely the only colored artifacts, or close to it. I like how the orange kind of mirror the old brown artifacts.
Gambling - Call it what you want but they are encouraging and enticing gambling, possibly by underage kids.while adults have their own money time and can make their own decisions it actually can turn into a problem and introducing it to younger people is not good. And if you don't get the payoff, your other rare or mythic won't be worth much either because of so many packs being open.
See, this is where I`m at. Yes, it`s true that nobody has to have these, they are opt-in and an added value bonus, but I can see lots of kids and gambling-savvy players buy a lot more packs hoping to get these, which ultimately leads to nothing but disappointment. They say that these drive sales, and they do, but in my opinion they drive sales for the wrong reasons. They (and some of you on here too) love spinning it as if it makes Standard more accessible, but it does so at the expense of, well, gullible lotterists. So "look we made Standard cheaper" is a pretty sleazy spin on "look, we increased the lottery aspect because it turns out it lets us leech more money from pack cracking addicts".
I realize that they are a company and they need to make money, and that in turn keeps the game alive. I understand and appreciate that. I also realize that if people waste money on the masterpiece lottery, it`s their own fault. I just think this whole thing makes WotC look greedy and sharky, that`s all.
That problem doesn`t tick me off as much as this, though:
Challenge #2: Getting Players Access to Older Cards
(...)
Third, all of Zendikar Expeditions (with the exception of the Battle for Zendikar rare duals) were cards that players had wanted reprints of. We had already tried putting old, powerful reprints into Standard-legal sets, but the impact on Standard was problematic. Zendikar Expeditions got the reprints into booster packs of a Standard-legal set without creating this problem. It wasn't a total solution, but it was at least another step in helping alleviate it. It also allowed us to find a solution that our bread-and-butter sets could help with. Hmm, a way to address challenge #2.
Are they seriously pretending that expeditions and masterpieces give players "access" to these cards? All these will be more expensive than their already available prints. They`re writing as if the problem is that there aren`t enough pieces out there for everyone. That`s nonsense. I can go online and buy Mana Crypt and Mana Vault right now. The cards are there to be bought. 100% of the availability problem is the price tags on these cards, and these über rare reprints do exactly nothing, 0%, to alleviate this problem. The claim that this program helps players get access to older cards is false, a straight up lie. That`s to be taken seriously imo.
Full art lands shouldn't always appear, it's correct to make them once every X block. The fact is that from THS on, I haven't seen a single block that deserved them less than BFZ: look at those arts, they're awesome! Zendikar landscapes are so peculiar that it doesn't fit for every Magic fan around the world, so now we need something really new. It's a pity we got full art lands only one year ago, because KLD has another peculiar landscape I would love to see depicted in full art frames.
Why shouldn't they be in every set? I have no use for half-art, modern border lands. So while I do like many of these basic artworks, I'll never play any of them over full arts or old bordered lands.
You won't, other people will. I know lots of people that can't stand the old border because they've grown up with the new one, and seeing very different cards in hand is a punch in the eye for them. Moreover, if you always make something "special", by definition it immediatly ceases to be special, and that's how they are treating full art lands, which I completely agree. Sometimes it's better to get what we like only from time to time and still enjoy it...
Why do they need to be "special" though. Players prefer full art lands, so the only thing you're really losing here by making them a regular occurrence is the hype generated when they announce that a block will have them. Meanwhile the player base gets a larger array of options, and the basic lands of each set will be used more often.
And couldn't this same "ceases to be special" argument be applied to the Masterpiece series that has just been announced?
How long can they possibly keep this up? 100 premium foil ultra-rare cards a year? They will either be printing the same cards over and over, or will move in to making "masterpieces" out of complete junk, or...
It's just a matter of time before they start printing new cards at this rarity. Maybe they won't even be Standard legal. But it will happen.
I just wanted to comment on the gorgeous basic lands in this set, specifically the Swamps. I love that they're not the usual "dark, nasty, depressing *****scape" and instead are vibrant and colorful. They're very Lorwyn. And that's a beautiful sewer!
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Can you name all of the creature types with at least 20 cards? Try my Sporcle Quiz! Last Updated: 6/29/20 (Core Set 2021).
How long can they possibly keep this up? 100 premium foil ultra-rare cards a year? They will either be printing the same cards over and over, or will move in to making "masterpieces" out of complete junk, or...
It's just a matter of time before they start printing new cards at this rarity. Maybe they won't even be Standard legal. But it will happen.
If we assume that they will continue to print one of the cycles from the set at this rarity for the forseeable future, the total number of actual reprints is reduced to 80 per year.
There's a total of some 12'000+ distinct Magic cards in existence at this moment, a number that is increasing with every new set. At some point, cards from a few sets or years ago will become viable for reprinting in this manner. Also, I assume that a card that was used as an expedition/invention/whatever-it-is-called-next once is not automatically disqualified from consideration in a future iteration of the same.
So, we've got a few years of this ahead of us before this really becomes a problem. If you think about how many cards people are clamoring to have reprinted, coupled with the fact that not all of those cards fit the same mold (I don't think Champion's Helm or Lightning Greaves are quite on the same level with Mana Crypt or Painter's Servant) then the card pool those can be selected from opens up from 'fairly bonkers' to 'reasonably playable somewhere'.
As I've mentioned before, I do not so far have any reason to significantly mistrust Wizards' judgment in these matters, so I stay cautiously optimistic. I do not believe imagining the worst case scenario to be particularly productive.
That said, as soon as cards are only available at this rarity (if they start to print new cards as you mentioned) that tune of mine will change. Trust is something earned slowly and destroyed very very quickly, so I hope Wizards will value mine accordingly.
I honestly don't believe we'll see the same result with Masterpiece cards lowering prices as we did with Expeditions - purely because Expeditions were chase lands that everyone wanted for pretty much every format. Other cards are only useful for certain deck types.
You might be underestimating the "bling" effect a bit... with such a low supply there might be enough people chasing playsets of Mox Opal for their Affinity deck or a fancy Mana Crypt for their Cube that they'll keep the prices generally high. An EMA foil Crypt is $150 right now, and that's banned in most formats. Not a super-high demand but low enough supply, and the type of people who want a Mana Crypt for their EDH deck typically want the fanciest Crypt possible. If just one of these cards sustains a price like that, it could easily have a warping effect on card values.
This is also, if I'm not mistaken, the only foil printing of Mana Vault and Scroll Rack. That sort of thing matters to some people.
Yes, but that is still a much narrower base than people who wanted bling Expedition lands. Because everyone plays lands in every format - not everyone plays those artifacts.
It will have an effect - just not as strong of an effect as Expdition did.
Anyway, I was worried about smaller singles sellers like DesolatorMagic - but he's thrilled by this (and it's something he has being saything they should do for awhile) so I guess really no one loses here. Although he said he lost money on BFZ.
In his video he says that this is 'pure value' and it won't affect the prices of Standard that much - it's a pure add-on that makes sets more profitable for singles sellers.
I'm not sure I agree - but he's in a better position to know.
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Rose tint my world, keep me safe from my trouble and pain.
There's a total of some 12'000+ distinct Magic cards in existence at this moment, a number that is increasing with every new set. At some point, cards from a few sets or years ago will become viable for reprinting in this manner. Also, I assume that a card that was used as an expedition/invention/whatever-it-is-called-next once is not automatically disqualified from consideration in a future iteration of the same.
Case in point - Hangarback Walker. It's only just now rotating out of Standard. It is, however, the most iconic and well played Kaladesh card from Origins.
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Rose tint my world, keep me safe from my trouble and pain.
[quote from="Fiveod »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/755712-mothership-spoilers-9-12?comment=243"]
There's a total of some 12'000+ distinct Magic cards in existence at this moment, a number that is increasing with every new set.
And out of this number, how many are notable enough to warrant getting excited over a "masterpiece" printing? A few hundred at best? The vast majority of those 12,000 distinct cards are completely unplayable, and another big chunk are playable but not interesting or valuable.
[quote from="Fiveod »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/755712-mothership-spoilers-9-12?comment=243"]
There's a total of some 12'000+ distinct Magic cards in existence at this moment, a number that is increasing with every new set.
And out of this number, how many are notable enough to warrant getting excited over a "masterpiece" printing? A few hundred at best? The vast majority of those 12,000 distinct cards are completely unplayable, and another big chunk are playable but not interesting or valuable.
</blockquote>
I think basically anything that has had a FTV theme will have masterpieces too. Heck, even the "theme" of any given set could spawn a group of 50 cards a la inn's gothic horror. Legendaries, dragons, angels, demons, "the graveyard," Femme fatales, PW's (which you KNOW is going to be one of the next FTV's), Slivers???, Eldrazi...again(sad party blower sound), I could go on.
Edit: Unreserved masterpieces (But that will be a different time and place in magic's timeline)
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My favorite flavor text: Time of Heroes
Feel free to tell me yours!
Can wotc actually come up with 100 desirable hard to find money reprints a year. Not so sure that's sustainable which would lead to not so great cards in this rarity that end up at $10?
I'd imagine that there are more than enough cards, between what is modern legal, and what is legal in eternal formats, to be able to construct combinations of these for a good long time without them getting too stale - of course, this assumption would rely on the possibility of there being multiple themes being tapped into, rather than them just sticking to one theme at a time so to speak, and also rely on them possibly mixing in previous masterpieces... who knows, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Here's an exercise: Let's say the block after Amonkhet is a third Ravnica, and they're picking out Masterpieces for that block. What theme do they use? My inkling is Ravnica Guilds, mostly multicolor cards that are reprinted with Guild artwork, flavor, and watermarks, as well as some reprints from the past two Ravnica blocks and the Guild Leaders from the third block.
Chances are Ravnica Guilds would use slightly different numbers from Kaladesh Inventions, aiming for an equal distribution among all ten guilds. However, this has the problem of RAV3 presumably being a large/small block, unless they make both sets large to ensure all guilds get roughly equal representation. If that's the case, both halves of Ravnica Guilds would consist of roughly 25-30 cards, otherwise the first half will either have to include some from the Guilds not yet visited, let certain Guilds have more representation which is undesirable, or include some guild-neutral cards like Pillar of the Paruns and Seal of the Guildpact.
Disregarding the specific numbers, we can speculate that certain multicolor cards would be in high demand for the Guild treatment.
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Speculation about further masterpices and such is best suited for the speculation/baseless speculation subforum, for future reference.
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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.
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Sad to hear you go. We will adapt our printing process to adapt to your needs.
That said, I'm really happy about these. I'm not going to own any of them, but they're great to look at. Very glad I'm not a 100% full completionist, because a full set of these costs the same as a car.
( 0.0 )
=O ((U/R)) O=
(")(")
I'm an AI making Magic cards.
http://www.staalmedia.nl/nexus/#generate
Gimmicks make money.
The problem is this is no longer a gimmick if they do it every set. It no longer becomes special, and people don't go out and buy 6 cases because it's a 1 time thing. People maybe buy more this time then they did for soi, but how long will that last? Then what gimmick will they pull?
This really should have gone in their bag of tricks to pull out every so often. A big part of the game is cards having value, when you do something too often, that thing loses value, and now it's not as popular, or it becomes stale. It's like how they did full art lands, took them away, and then they came back everyone purchased tons of fat packs due to the value people thought they were going to get from the full art lands. When the next set came out, far less fat packs were sold due to that inherent value falling. They then didn't reprint them, and now they can use that trick again in x amount of years to get people hyped up again (as long as they don't do it too soon).
To me, this is another example of how wizards doesn't understand moderation. I wonder how many less packs of shadows block they sold, or conspiracy, because they had 3 sets come out in quick succession, with another one about to be released as well.
These premium cards are nice, and they would be great from time to time, but at most I probably wouldn't want to see them for than 1 every 4-7 years. Same can be said about full art lands. I also wouldn't mind them bringing out a 'national treasures' type set out where the packs of 15 cards are extremely expensive, around 50-100$ per pack, however these would add no new cards and would appease a different demographic. It also doesn't take regular set selling away by rapidly releasing numerous sets. I have wondered how many less Shadows Over Innistrad was affected by Eternal Masters and Conspiracy both being released so close and quickly in relation to SOI. I know some people will try to say little, or none, however the location I go to had probably 20 conspiracy drafts fire off the first 2 weeks the set was out and no SOI drafts. Essentially because conspiracy came out, SOI lost a chunk of inherent drafters.
I can already see Hasbro's logic on the numbers, "Eternal Masters and Conspiracy were huge successes, however the Shadows Over Innistrad sales were a bit lackluster compared to normal standard sets... there must be a problem with Shadows over Innistrad, let's fix it."
I think that's enough for now. But I would also like to point out, as a player who mainly drafts nowadays, I'm also not a fan of playing in a draft with an opponent having, say, a sol ring or mana crypt. Cards like these aren't printed anymore for a reason, and having them playable in a standard draft is far more insane than the expeditions which in general didn't affect the game to a great extent. Understandably it won't happen every draft, but the power level of a couple of these cards are so much higher than others there's definitely a huge game advantage to them.
As well, it is plain to see that this is a way for WotC to sell more boxes.
Now, is this a bad thing?
I don't think so. We are talking about a company here, not a charitable institution. If MtG continues to turn a profit, WotC will continue developing and supporting it. As a long-time and very invested Magic player, this is in my interest.
I can forgive a certain amount of marketing speak, as long as the final product lives up to my expectations of quality. So far, this has been the case. Ergo, since I have no real reason to mistrust their development and design policies, I will look forward to this with cautious optimism.
If the effect Expeditions had on BfZ standard is repeatable, this will have a positive impact on the availability of standard-legal cards.
In addition, very pretty and very exclusive foil-only reprints are certainly a draw for me, although I usually won't go out of my way to acquire them.
My only actual negative opinion on the whole thing is that I believe the Invention card frame does not work well with colored cards: The Gearhulks are hard to read as their respective colors, which can have some small but not insignificant impact on gameplay. Luckily, the Gearhulks are the only colored ones so the effect on the whole is quite minor. However it is something Wizards should consider for the next cycle of these, which probably won't be all colorless.
See, this is where I`m at. Yes, it`s true that nobody has to have these, they are opt-in and an added value bonus, but I can see lots of kids and gambling-savvy players buy a lot more packs hoping to get these, which ultimately leads to nothing but disappointment. They say that these drive sales, and they do, but in my opinion they drive sales for the wrong reasons. They (and some of you on here too) love spinning it as if it makes Standard more accessible, but it does so at the expense of, well, gullible lotterists. So "look we made Standard cheaper" is a pretty sleazy spin on "look, we increased the lottery aspect because it turns out it lets us leech more money from pack cracking addicts".
I realize that they are a company and they need to make money, and that in turn keeps the game alive. I understand and appreciate that. I also realize that if people waste money on the masterpiece lottery, it`s their own fault. I just think this whole thing makes WotC look greedy and sharky, that`s all.
That problem doesn`t tick me off as much as this, though:
Are they seriously pretending that expeditions and masterpieces give players "access" to these cards? All these will be more expensive than their already available prints. They`re writing as if the problem is that there aren`t enough pieces out there for everyone. That`s nonsense. I can go online and buy Mana Crypt and Mana Vault right now. The cards are there to be bought. 100% of the availability problem is the price tags on these cards, and these über rare reprints do exactly nothing, 0%, to alleviate this problem. The claim that this program helps players get access to older cards is false, a straight up lie. That`s to be taken seriously imo.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Why do they need to be "special" though. Players prefer full art lands, so the only thing you're really losing here by making them a regular occurrence is the hype generated when they announce that a block will have them. Meanwhile the player base gets a larger array of options, and the basic lands of each set will be used more often.
And couldn't this same "ceases to be special" argument be applied to the Masterpiece series that has just been announced?
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control
It's just a matter of time before they start printing new cards at this rarity. Maybe they won't even be Standard legal. But it will happen.
My 720 Peasant Cube
If we assume that they will continue to print one of the cycles from the set at this rarity for the forseeable future, the total number of actual reprints is reduced to 80 per year.
There's a total of some 12'000+ distinct Magic cards in existence at this moment, a number that is increasing with every new set. At some point, cards from a few sets or years ago will become viable for reprinting in this manner. Also, I assume that a card that was used as an expedition/invention/whatever-it-is-called-next once is not automatically disqualified from consideration in a future iteration of the same.
So, we've got a few years of this ahead of us before this really becomes a problem. If you think about how many cards people are clamoring to have reprinted, coupled with the fact that not all of those cards fit the same mold (I don't think Champion's Helm or Lightning Greaves are quite on the same level with Mana Crypt or Painter's Servant) then the card pool those can be selected from opens up from 'fairly bonkers' to 'reasonably playable somewhere'.
As I've mentioned before, I do not so far have any reason to significantly mistrust Wizards' judgment in these matters, so I stay cautiously optimistic. I do not believe imagining the worst case scenario to be particularly productive.
That said, as soon as cards are only available at this rarity (if they start to print new cards as you mentioned) that tune of mine will change. Trust is something earned slowly and destroyed very very quickly, so I hope Wizards will value mine accordingly.
Yes, but that is still a much narrower base than people who wanted bling Expedition lands. Because everyone plays lands in every format - not everyone plays those artifacts.
It will have an effect - just not as strong of an effect as Expdition did.
Anyway, I was worried about smaller singles sellers like DesolatorMagic - but he's thrilled by this (and it's something he has being saything they should do for awhile) so I guess really no one loses here. Although he said he lost money on BFZ.
In his video he says that this is 'pure value' and it won't affect the prices of Standard that much - it's a pure add-on that makes sets more profitable for singles sellers.
I'm not sure I agree - but he's in a better position to know.
Case in point - Hangarback Walker. It's only just now rotating out of Standard. It is, however, the most iconic and well played Kaladesh card from Origins.
And out of this number, how many are notable enough to warrant getting excited over a "masterpiece" printing? A few hundred at best? The vast majority of those 12,000 distinct cards are completely unplayable, and another big chunk are playable but not interesting or valuable.
I think basically anything that has had a FTV theme will have masterpieces too. Heck, even the "theme" of any given set could spawn a group of 50 cards a la inn's gothic horror. Legendaries, dragons, angels, demons, "the graveyard," Femme fatales, PW's (which you KNOW is going to be one of the next FTV's), Slivers???, Eldrazi...again(sad party blower sound), I could go on.
Edit: Unreserved masterpieces (But that will be a different time and place in magic's timeline)
Feel free to tell me yours!
I'd imagine that there are more than enough cards, between what is modern legal, and what is legal in eternal formats, to be able to construct combinations of these for a good long time without them getting too stale - of course, this assumption would rely on the possibility of there being multiple themes being tapped into, rather than them just sticking to one theme at a time so to speak, and also rely on them possibly mixing in previous masterpieces... who knows, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Chances are Ravnica Guilds would use slightly different numbers from Kaladesh Inventions, aiming for an equal distribution among all ten guilds. However, this has the problem of RAV3 presumably being a large/small block, unless they make both sets large to ensure all guilds get roughly equal representation. If that's the case, both halves of Ravnica Guilds would consist of roughly 25-30 cards, otherwise the first half will either have to include some from the Guilds not yet visited, let certain Guilds have more representation which is undesirable, or include some guild-neutral cards like Pillar of the Paruns and Seal of the Guildpact.
Disregarding the specific numbers, we can speculate that certain multicolor cards would be in high demand for the Guild treatment.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
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.