Buying packs has NEVER been worth it, they are lottery tickets where sure you could hit a $100 bill with a $4 pack, but what are the odds of that. You're likely to end up with some crap bulk rare you can sell for 10 cents, an enormous loss. Do people understand this? No, they don't otherwise the lottery wouldn't exist and magic as a game wouldn't make that much profit.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
I opened a Steel Overseer. I can tell you now, there are very few things more broken in this limited environment than the Overseer. I was also in blue (with the Gearhulk) and could protect him with counterspells. Other artifact creatures included Filigree Familiar, Chief of the Foundry, 2X Snare Thopter, Cultivator's Caravan, Sky Skiff, 2X Narmam Viper, and a Whirlermaker. I also had a Demolition Stomper and a Bomat Bazar Barge, which I didn't play. When 11 cards in your deck get buffed by him and stall games really well, it is really easy to just overrun people.
Through 3 prerelease events so far, with turnouts of 70, 41, and 60 or so, there have been 0 pulled from about 171 pre-release kits. Odds should have been about 7. Checking with 3 neighboring stores revealed they have had a total of 2 pulled, both from prize packs, none from pre-release. One store had only 1 pulled, from a pack in a Planeswalker deck. They may be one every 144 packs normally, but are far harder to get in pre-release ones. For pulls you have seen, how many were from the prize packs rather than those in the pre-release kits? For the 1 I have seen at least, they look great. We had been thinking they may not be available because WOTC doesn't want to see turn 1 Sol Ring/Aether Vial etc. But it now looks like perhaps this was a distribution issue with some areas getting none, others getting a fair assortment.
That is just WOTC shooting itself in the foot. 50 expensive "we don't want to reprint this" cards every 6 months. It has a teensy tiny little pool of cards to choose from. I wouldn't even do Expeditions again.
Wait, how are they shooting themselves in the foot? By occasionally giving their customers $50+ dollars on top of their pack?
when 143/144 packs are worth garbage, it isnt even worthit to buy pacs at all.
Buying packs has never been a good way to get cards. This isn't new or bad.
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MTGSalvation; Where the whining is a time honored tradition, and enjoying the game is trolling.
As much fun as it is to see the posts after mine, the point of that, "foot shot" post was that they will eventually run out of ideas for themes of "Masterpieces." 50, well lets say 40 if they use 10 from the block itself, unique great cards that they generally won't reprint in standard or pre-cons that would be worth chasing after.
It is basically an expanded FTV series. And how many themes could you think of for that?
Will you get upset when they produce a decent set where more than half the cards aren't limited jank, but don't include Masterpieces to chase after? How is this theoretical...
Plane-Dominaria, first return since ever Time Spiral. Theme-Lili going after the final demon, but uncovering an old Phyrexian plot involving old planeswalkers. What's in it? Enemy Fetchlands, new enemy legends, Phyrexians, and... never before had planeswalkers, like Urza and his team to take down the Phyrexian Invasion!
Set is so hyped after looking at the full list, and seeing even the great reprints of commons like Gitaxian Probe, Lightning Bolt, tons of great reprints and new powerful stuff at every rarity.
You pester and pester and pester the wotc team to find out what the Masterpiece series will be for the block, and their only simple response on a tumblr blog hidden from the masses so as not to cause great grief and pissed pff players- "The set is already so powerful, and so full of great cards we didn't want to detract from them. So for this block we are skipping Masterpieces, but don't worry they will be back in the next block, the already announced Return to Theros!"
I am not a gambling man, but this probably will happen. A new set will come without them, due their analysts seeing that the set will sell great on its own and won't need a cashgrab to entice people to draft or buy a lot of it. How often did you buy into Battle for the chance at an Expedition? How many boxes did you buy,fat packs? Hoping for that return on investment? The set was subpar and pandered by so many. But I think that has to do with how much of it was played on the interest of pulling shiny new fetches and not on how easy to was to draft and play. Getting sick of bulk rares, bulk mythics, that one reason or another don't have value outside of the limited environment, bored of trying to make Allies or the Landfall decks work when they're missing a heavy push called Multi-color support as the original fetches provided.
Those are my thoughts.
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Wanted -Zombie Foils and older expensive Zombie stuff. High Priority- Beta Z Master/ Int. Collector's Edition.
You didn't bomat value barge? Steel overseer means you can crew it easily and it cantrips. I'd be hard pressed not to play that card in limited, it's a 5/5 that cantrips/nice value. Of course overseer would be really good with fabricate a mechanic, you go that into fabricate 1 into fabricate 2 and you cannot possibly lose. Still not as good as sol ring, but yeah busted.
No inventions at your prerelease means nothing. Everything equalizes out in the end/inventions are likely 1:150 packs or something. I opened one myself today. Others were opened as well. All the people posting about oh none opened at my prereleases are the vocal minority who love to complain loudly that they didn't open $60 inventions.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
No inventions at your prerelease means nothing. Everything equalizes out in the end/inventions are likely 1:150 packs or something. I opened one myself today. Others were opened as well. All the people posting about oh none opened at my prereleases are the vocal minority who love to complain loudly that they didn't open $60 inventions.
It actually does mean something. My LGS ran 5 prerelease flights, over two hundred prerelease packs were opened (6 boosters each) so 1200+ boosters cracked. Based on WotC stated ratio of 1:144 packs to get a Masterpiece, there should have been about 9-10 opened. There were zero. I'll acknowledge the possibility that not everyone who opens on might whoop and holler, but a few would have, and none were seen in play. 0 out of 1200 is about as close to statistically impossible as you could get.
My current speculation is that the prerelease packs might have had a differnet distribution rate. over the weekend, i saw about 30 chandras pulled, and only a few of each other mythic. we wont know true ratios until boxes are opened. but i think they sould be 1 in every two boxes at least.
All the people posting about oh none opened at my prereleases are the vocal minority who love to complain loudly that they didn't open $60 inventions.
Funnily enough, there was a guy at my Prerelease who complained that he DID open a $60 Invention.
He got a Champion's Helm, and throughout the entire event he was griping about how it was "just a Champion's Helm" and I was just like "***** I'll take it off your hands if you don't want it, I'll gladly liquidate it and turn that money into other cards."
The problem with defining this format by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again"
My current speculation is that the prerelease packs might have had a differnet distribution rate. over the weekend, i saw about 30 chandras pulled, and only a few of each other mythic. we wont know true ratios until boxes are opened. but i think they sould be 1 in every two boxes at least.
Wizards actually said directly that the ratio is 1 invention ever per 144 boosters, so about I per four boxes. Prerelease packs should have had the same distribution.
In three flights of about 25 persons each, I know at least one invention got opened each time. I saw crucible of worlds, aether vial and a gearhulk. So we were pretty much spot-on for probabilities. It's the mythics which were overflowing at my pre-release. Two double gearhulk pool, one double PW pool, multiple chandras. It seemed everyone got at least one mythic per pre-release package.
I have to give kudos to the packaging as well. The box are nice, functional, they hold sleeved card + SB + dice and the topther, while hard to build, was a nice addition. I picked up all that were left around and my son had a good time building multiple variations. (All fragile...)
I know right? Okay, you got the worst one. It's still worth more than every non invention in the set, and it's a completely fine limited card, as +2/+2 is a powerful effect for 4 for the first equip and then just 1 for the others. Bonus points if you hook it up to a legendary.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
On Saturday, there was a Noxious Gearhulk, Sword of Light and Shadow, Chromatic Lantern, and one unknown masterpiece that the guy forgot which one he had, all he said was that he was able to get $60 credit for it. He pulled two that day. On Sunday someone opened a Sword of Fire and Ice and I opened an Aether Vial.
On Saturday, there was a Noxious Gearhulk, Sword of Light and Shadow, Chromatic Lantern, and one unknown masterpiece that the guy forgot which one he had, all he said was that he was able to get $60 credit for it. He pulled two that day. On Sunday someone opened a Sword of Fire and Ice and I opened an Aether Vial.
Oh for your Aether Vial , is the foil over the complete card or just the border ?
I have a Aether Vial and it looks like the foil on it is missing in the art and middle of the card. Looks very weird.
On Saturday, there was a Noxious Gearhulk, Sword of Light and Shadow, Chromatic Lantern, and one unknown masterpiece that the guy forgot which one he had, all he said was that he was able to get $60 credit for it. He pulled two that day. On Sunday someone opened a Sword of Fire and Ice and I opened an Aether Vial.
Oh for your Aether Vial , is the foil over the complete card or just the border ?
I have a Aether Vial and it looks like the foil on it is missing in the art and middle of the card. Looks very weird.
only te copper frame and border is foily. Its kinda dissapointing.
Out of 300 prerelease boxes and prize packs cases there was a lotus petal, all 3 swords, aether vile, red gearhulk, 2 green gear hulk, simularcum, sol ring, greaves, helm, 8 or 9 chandras. The ratio we were getting was something like 1/275 packs. In contrast during bfz we had 37 with the same number of participants. It was far higher. I bought 3 boxes of bfz and opened 2 in one box and 1 in each of the others. The ratios seemed to be way off from what they were.
On Saturday, there was a Noxious Gearhulk, Sword of Light and Shadow, Chromatic Lantern, and one unknown masterpiece that the guy forgot which one he had, all he said was that he was able to get $60 credit for it. He pulled two that day. On Sunday someone opened a Sword of Fire and Ice and I opened an Aether Vial.
Oh for your Aether Vial , is the foil over the complete card or just the border ?
I have a Aether Vial and it looks like the foil on it is missing in the art and middle of the card. Looks very weird.
only te copper frame and border is foily. Its kinda dissapointing.
Have to agree. The foiling is really meh. It would have been better if they just did the generic Game Day style foil with the fancy frame.
I bought 3 boxes of bfz and opened 2 in one box and 1 in each of the others. The ratios seemed to be way off from what they were.
I think you just got very lucky with expeditions, 4 in 3 boxes is nowhere near the overall ratio (exept you meant 4 in 3 cases, which seems to be more in line with the general record).
Also wizards might very well have a lower masterpiece-ratio for prerelease-kits to prevent warping the experience by fast mana starts too much. So I would wait for records of Box openings before drawing any conclusions here.
Oh I know I was insanely lucky and that was boxes not cases. I was just saying from the experience we had at my lgs, we had much higher ratios. Maybe they were corrected is all I am saying.
No inventions at your prerelease means nothing. Everything equalizes out in the end/inventions are likely 1:150 packs or something. I opened one myself today. Others were opened as well. All the people posting about oh none opened at my prereleases are the vocal minority who love to complain loudly that they didn't open $60 inventions.
It actually does mean something. My LGS ran 5 prerelease flights, over two hundred prerelease packs were opened (6 boosters each) so 1200+ boosters cracked. Based on WotC stated ratio of 1:144 packs to get a Masterpiece, there should have been about 9-10 opened. There were zero. I'll acknowledge the possibility that not everyone who opens on might whoop and holler, but a few would have, and none were seen in play. 0 out of 1200 is about as close to statistically impossible as you could get.
Country ? We had 6 pre-releases (australia) and not a single invention either about 1400 packs
As much fun as it is to see the posts after mine, the point of that, "foot shot" post was that they will eventually run out of ideas for themes of "Masterpieces." 50, well lets say 40 if they use 10 from the block itself, unique great cards that they generally won't reprint in standard or pre-cons that would be worth chasing after.
It is basically an expanded FTV series. And how many themes could you think of for that?
[lengthy strawman, slipperyslope, and other pointless conjecture]
So now they're going to shoot themselves in the foot because you think they won't be able to think of cards that we want? Or that they will shoot themselves in the foot by making a really, really good set?
I'm not sure if you're trolling or just oxygen deprived.
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MTGSalvation; Where the whining is a time honored tradition, and enjoying the game is trolling.
As much fun as it is to see the posts after mine, the point of that, "foot shot" post was that they will eventually run out of ideas for themes of "Masterpieces." 50, well lets say 40 if they use 10 from the block itself, unique great cards that they generally won't reprint in standard or pre-cons that would be worth chasing after.
It is basically an expanded FTV series. And how many themes could you think of for that?
[lengthy strawman, slipperyslope, and other pointless conjecture]
So now they're going to shoot themselves in the foot because you think they won't be able to think of cards that we want? Or that they will shoot themselves in the foot by making a really, really good set?
I'm not sure if you're trolling or just oxygen deprived.
Well its not far fetched that 50 cards (but like 5/10 of them are just mythics from the set, leaves us with ~40) in 2 sets is quite a lot.
And if you think of modern, you would have reprints of any meaningful card with say 500 different cards (theres not TOO much relevant stuff).
So it is still questionable if they will run out of cards that are relevant, especially as they do THIS and still do FTV, Commander, Judge Promos and what not.
As much fun as it is to see the posts after mine, the point of that, "foot shot" post was that they will eventually run out of ideas for themes of "Masterpieces." 50, well lets say 40 if they use 10 from the block itself, unique great cards that they generally won't reprint in standard or pre-cons that would be worth chasing after.
It is basically an expanded FTV series. And how many themes could you think of for that?
[lengthy strawman, slipperyslope, and other pointless conjecture]
So now they're going to shoot themselves in the foot because you think they won't be able to think of cards that we want? Or that they will shoot themselves in the foot by making a really, really good set?
I'm not sure if you're trolling or just oxygen deprived.
Well its not far fetched that 50 cards (but like 5/10 of them are just mythics from the set, leaves us with ~40) in 2 sets is quite a lot.
And if you think of modern, you would have reprints of any meaningful card with say 500 different cards (theres not TOO much relevant stuff).
So it is still questionable if they will run out of cards that are relevant, especially as they do THIS and still do FTV, Commander, Judge Promos and what not.
There are well more than 500 cards that see play in Standard, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander, and Kitchen Table that are not on the reserve list. And its not like a card couldn't be in multiple Masterpiece sets. It doesn't even have to be an expensive card or even a good card.
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MTGSalvation; Where the whining is a time honored tradition, and enjoying the game is trolling.
I only ended up going to one prerelease, and saw one invention (Aether Vial) out of 22 participants. Though I was told that the 3 previous events saw 2 others.
I'm kind of the opinion that there may not have been that many seeded into the prelease packs simply because most of the Inventions are outrageous in limited, and prerelease events are supposed to be as fun as possible. But that's pure speculation. I do recall the Expeditions falling more frequently during the BFZ and Oath prerelease events, for whatever that's worth.
At any rate, I just finished opening my sealed case. I was VERY fortunate to hit 3 Inventions, Mind's Eye, Sculpting Steel and Crucible of Worlds. I can't imagine that's the norm, but thy don't seem to be any more or less rare than the Expeditions were.
Good luck with your packs!
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Buying packs has never been a good way to get cards. This isn't new or bad.
It is basically an expanded FTV series. And how many themes could you think of for that?
Will you get upset when they produce a decent set where more than half the cards aren't limited jank, but don't include Masterpieces to chase after? How is this theoretical...
Plane-Dominaria, first return since ever Time Spiral. Theme-Lili going after the final demon, but uncovering an old Phyrexian plot involving old planeswalkers. What's in it? Enemy Fetchlands, new enemy legends, Phyrexians, and... never before had planeswalkers, like Urza and his team to take down the Phyrexian Invasion!
Set is so hyped after looking at the full list, and seeing even the great reprints of commons like Gitaxian Probe, Lightning Bolt, tons of great reprints and new powerful stuff at every rarity.
You pester and pester and pester the wotc team to find out what the Masterpiece series will be for the block, and their only simple response on a tumblr blog hidden from the masses so as not to cause great grief and pissed pff players- "The set is already so powerful, and so full of great cards we didn't want to detract from them. So for this block we are skipping Masterpieces, but don't worry they will be back in the next block, the already announced Return to Theros!"
I am not a gambling man, but this probably will happen. A new set will come without them, due their analysts seeing that the set will sell great on its own and won't need a cashgrab to entice people to draft or buy a lot of it. How often did you buy into Battle for the chance at an Expedition? How many boxes did you buy,fat packs? Hoping for that return on investment? The set was subpar and pandered by so many. But I think that has to do with how much of it was played on the interest of pulling shiny new fetches and not on how easy to was to draft and play. Getting sick of bulk rares, bulk mythics, that one reason or another don't have value outside of the limited environment, bored of trying to make Allies or the Landfall decks work when they're missing a heavy push called Multi-color support as the original fetches provided.
Those are my thoughts.
Selling some cards I don't want.
Generally less than tcg mid.
No inventions at your prerelease means nothing. Everything equalizes out in the end/inventions are likely 1:150 packs or something. I opened one myself today. Others were opened as well. All the people posting about oh none opened at my prereleases are the vocal minority who love to complain loudly that they didn't open $60 inventions.
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It actually does mean something. My LGS ran 5 prerelease flights, over two hundred prerelease packs were opened (6 boosters each) so 1200+ boosters cracked. Based on WotC stated ratio of 1:144 packs to get a Masterpiece, there should have been about 9-10 opened. There were zero. I'll acknowledge the possibility that not everyone who opens on might whoop and holler, but a few would have, and none were seen in play. 0 out of 1200 is about as close to statistically impossible as you could get.
Funnily enough, there was a guy at my Prerelease who complained that he DID open a $60 Invention.
He got a Champion's Helm, and throughout the entire event he was griping about how it was "just a Champion's Helm" and I was just like "***** I'll take it off your hands if you don't want it, I'll gladly liquidate it and turn that money into other cards."
Wizards actually said directly that the ratio is 1 invention ever per 144 boosters, so about I per four boxes. Prerelease packs should have had the same distribution.
I have to give kudos to the packaging as well. The box are nice, functional, they hold sleeved card + SB + dice and the topther, while hard to build, was a nice addition. I picked up all that were left around and my son had a good time building multiple variations. (All fragile...)
Currently Playing:
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Oh for your Aether Vial , is the foil over the complete card or just the border ?
I have a Aether Vial and it looks like the foil on it is missing in the art and middle of the card. Looks very weird.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
only te copper frame and border is foily. Its kinda dissapointing.
Have to agree. The foiling is really meh. It would have been better if they just did the generic Game Day style foil with the fancy frame.
I think you just got very lucky with expeditions, 4 in 3 boxes is nowhere near the overall ratio (exept you meant 4 in 3 cases, which seems to be more in line with the general record).
Also wizards might very well have a lower masterpiece-ratio for prerelease-kits to prevent warping the experience by fast mana starts too much. So I would wait for records of Box openings before drawing any conclusions here.
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
Country ? We had 6 pre-releases (australia) and not a single invention either about 1400 packs
So now they're going to shoot themselves in the foot because you think they won't be able to think of cards that we want? Or that they will shoot themselves in the foot by making a really, really good set?
I'm not sure if you're trolling or just oxygen deprived.
Well its not far fetched that 50 cards (but like 5/10 of them are just mythics from the set, leaves us with ~40) in 2 sets is quite a lot.
And if you think of modern, you would have reprints of any meaningful card with say 500 different cards (theres not TOO much relevant stuff).
So it is still questionable if they will run out of cards that are relevant, especially as they do THIS and still do FTV, Commander, Judge Promos and what not.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
There are well more than 500 cards that see play in Standard, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander, and Kitchen Table that are not on the reserve list. And its not like a card couldn't be in multiple Masterpiece sets. It doesn't even have to be an expensive card or even a good card.
I'm kind of the opinion that there may not have been that many seeded into the prelease packs simply because most of the Inventions are outrageous in limited, and prerelease events are supposed to be as fun as possible. But that's pure speculation. I do recall the Expeditions falling more frequently during the BFZ and Oath prerelease events, for whatever that's worth.
At any rate, I just finished opening my sealed case. I was VERY fortunate to hit 3 Inventions, Mind's Eye, Sculpting Steel and Crucible of Worlds. I can't imagine that's the norm, but thy don't seem to be any more or less rare than the Expeditions were.
Good luck with your packs!