I'd be happy with simple themed draft sets. If they have some chase cards, great, but I care more about fun sets and draft themes. Let the collectors and legacy players have something like the FtVs to get their chase reprints. Draft sets should be about draft themes, first and foremost. Mixing value cards into that will just encourage picking cards for value rather than draft strategy. Who wouldn't grab a Tarmogoyf if they saw one in their pack?
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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.
Now bring on a change in the direction of the pack MSRP and card stock quality. As far as the actual announcement is concerned, I'll still probably just buy EDH singles unless the draft format looks spectacular.
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Avatar by Disappointing Signet Inc
EDH Decks UWB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic's spring of life RUG Animar, Soul of the Elements and friends... lots of them WBG Karador king of two worlds (value and attrition) WRKalemne's Angels BRUG Yidris's Wild Party UWBR Breya's Terrifying Tinker Toys UBRThe Pretender
I'd be happy with simple themed draft sets. If they have some chase cards, great, but I care more about fun sets and draft themes. Let the collectors and legacy players have something like the FtVs to get their chase reprints. Draft sets should be about draft themes, first and foremost. Mixing value cards into that will just encourage picking cards for value rather than draft strategy. Who wouldn't grab a Tarmogoyf if they saw one in their pack?
I agree with your sentiment, but I don't agree with your solution. While I buy the occasional FtV to get a key card here and there, they are certainly not the answer. WotC can't or won't print enough FtV to satisfy some of the current demand. FtV pricing is already warped as it is.
What WotC needs to do is to print at least one set say... every two years (or two full cycles, whatever cycle they want) that is not intended to be drafted and is outside whatever rotation they decide on. Not Precons. Not FtV. Not Commander. Not Conspiracy. Just a large set with cards selected to fill in the current voids in the market. Create an outlet for all those outlying cards that will never get printed again in a draft set or precon but still have demand among players. Such a set would allow printings of Storm cards, classic spells, banding even, whatever without concern for how those cards will impact draft or impact whatever format they're trying to preserve. The rule for those cards would be simple, they're only playable in existing formats they would be legal in already. That's what they did for Portal for years.
Magic players did just fine playing in an environment with the original core sets that didn't have much of a cohesive theme for years. No reason players can't do it again.
It seems very likely that they took all the scrapped lists for Expeditions/Inventions/Invocations/etc, and those just become chase cards in (insert theme) Masters.
Great way to make money. Why give something away for free when you can charge $10 a pack?
To be frank, wizards historically didn't have such a need to do reprint sets until relatively recently. The catalyst for all of this was probably the need to try and give support to older formats, but got usurped by the marketing / finance guys as a way to pad out sales numbers. These aren't bad sets, they are just being overpriced and under-printed by the company.
Also, while conspiracy was one of the best masters sets printed, the problem with it was the number of dead cards in the set due to the draft specific conspiracy cards. If the set was all normal cards plus the new monarch based ones it would have been better.
The thing to take away from this new approach to the masters sets is that wizards is genuinely out of ideas on what to do to support the game. Modern has been volatile, standard has been going through an apocalypse of sorts, and they know they can't survive off of commander. The big names adopted pauper to try to find some way to push up interest in the game given the depressed standard and the blood bath from iconic masters. Oh, and then they had to have all the drama happen as well over the last few months.
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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!
personally, do away with the god damned thing and print these things in sets instead.
the price is generally worth it per pack for now but it feels bad when you open garbage like charmbreaker devils, but at the same time the cards reprinted tank in value compared to what they once were, there's a limited amount of good cards you can keep jamming into these things before everything is worthless, and often cards are left out of sets where they could be printed just fine in order to shove them into masters sets.
it was a neat experiment, but its *****. get rid of it, or space them out by two years.
The masters series was originally designed as a ''premier'' product. It costs 3x the price of a regular booster pack because the justification was that it contains more expensive cards, that are hard to get but neccessary in competitive formats. Over the time the sets were getting worse and worse. Designed in ways where it was obvious they put a lot of trash into them, and just a couple of chase cards that people would want to get. They also started to promote more the idea these sets are balanced for limited. Their catch-all excuse it seems.
Now they say they are making them ''themed'' sets. But iconic masters was already a themed set. In fact, one of the most popular complaints is that the set wasn't ''iconic'' enough. Looking at the title of the new set it is called ''Masters 25''. And they are tying it into the 25th anniversary. What kind of a feel does this evoke? Cards that have been defining or relevant, or one might say iconic, in the 25 years of magic. What exactly is the difference between themes here? Or Ftv:20? By making them themed the master series loses any original quality or intent they had for making them in the first place. It's only a matter of time till we get ''Dragon masters''.
And yet they are still triple the price. It's classic marketing. Release a premier product that is decent and justify a higher price point. Slowly turn it into less and less of a valuable series, and into a lottery. The series by now is cemented into the consiousness of your audience as the triple priced one, because it is (was) worth it. Announce a rebranding and package it as if your purpose is to make fun and interesting sets and draft environments, while the price tag remains the same, because it's expected from this series.
See Manite's post from the top of the page. ''I don't care about value I just want a fun and thematic set, with great drafting experience''. Now that's all well and good, I am the same type of player. But people don't realize such is the purpose of normal sets already. Normal sets that don't have a triple price tag.
WotC seems to be trying to extract as much money as possible lately from everything. While the quality of the game is in overall decline. Dominaria absolutely needs to be huge for them.
it was a neat experiment, but its *****. get rid of it, or space them out by two years.
This is a great point. The fact that we are going to have three Masters sets in a year (MM3, IMA, and MA25) is too much and why we had so many poor Masters sets. You can't pump out that much product at that price so often, you just can't. These sets need to come out far less frequent and need to have far more punch, especially if they are to continue being $10 per pack.
Unstable has a foil card in each pack yet the price of a booster pack was kept to the standard MSRP. Charging 10$ per booster is and will be the main issue Masters sets have. Combine that with crappy cards aimed only for limited formats that have no constructed value, and you get a disaster. No one wants to pull a Sky Swollower from a 10$ pack. Period.
Quoted for absolute truth!!!
Nothing like spending 30 bucks (plus tax) on 3 packs getting 3 25 cent garbage rares and 3 common foil pieces of trash worth a quarter each as well. Wizards should at least feed you dinner before they bend you over.
These sets need to come out far less frequent and need to have far more punch, especially if they are to continue being $10 per pack.
Preach brother!!!
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Drop the price to $6.99 a pack. Make 36 pack boxes. Don't print ANY rares under $1 secondary market (unless it is a format staple). Every foil should be at Uncommon or above!!! No more crap foils!!! Watch these fly off the shelves instead of collecting dust like Iconic Disasters.
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
it was a neat experiment, but its *****. get rid of it, or space them out by two years.
This is a great point. The fact that we are going to have three Masters sets in a year (MM3, IMA, and MA25) is too much and why we had so many poor Masters sets. You can't pump out that much product at that price so often, you just can't. These sets need to come out far less frequent and need to have far more punch, especially if they are to continue being $10 per pack.
It's more than that. What is happening now with more rapid releases of masters sets is what would happen eventually even on a slower release cycle. From the grand scheme of things the only real problem with masters sets is that due to the way wizards has been supporting stores, many of the small businesses adopted the strategy of selling older out of print cards on mark up to help keep themselves afloat. Wizards tried to engineer the masters series so that it keeps a high floor on the money cards and give high returns to stores, but this doesn't really work long term because eventually the supply of cards being traded around will erode the price of even the most expensive card. Case and point, Tarmogoyf. In a way I kind of find it funny how we all hated investors, yet at the same time investing and selling high is how some, if not most LGS, seem to keep afloat these days.
The other issue is that reprinting older cards contributes to the volatility of the market. Even relatively weak standard cards cause huge movements on older stock, especially on the reserve list. Blood Sun basically doubled the price of tempest block lands like Lotus Vale. Then again, they shouldn't have written the RL the way they did.
Personally, I think that local games stores need to adopt a new model of some sort to keep themselves afloat and not get too heavily tied to gaming companies giving support. While this is happening with WoTC, I could see it happening with any toy maker or manufacturer.
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!
I like how the post begins with a remark about how the set didn't work out at the LGS and how it's such a good draft experience but ignores another issue that connects both of those; the "draft packs" available at big box stores. Why buy at the LGS when you can get it cheaper during Target's card sale and not have to worry about passing a money card after taking the foil money card when you can get both opening the packs at home?
Maybe if the packs weren't $10 and were only $7 at max, boxes were 36 packs instead of 24, and they wouldn't upgrade card rarities just because of their price then maybe people would actually enjoy them outside of drafting, oh and if drafting wasn't $30-$50. Specifically IMA wasn't "iconic" in many ways and in no way deserved to have $10 packs with how little was actually in it.
He says that they get better with each iteration, but considering we haven't had a Masters sets be as good as the MM1 that proves that little saying completely wrong.
I really agree with most of this. Just reducing the price of the packs would be an enormous step in the right direction.
Talk about a bunch of idiots it's not going to bring a huge impact to modern yes blood sun is going to be spotted in modern but only to deal with fetchlands and stuff like ghost quarter
I think Iconic Masters follows Wizards' basic guidelines of 33% chase cards/good cards, 33% middling cards/Commander cards, 33% junk for a set. As everybody else stated, the packs are too expensive.
Yanno, I really should write that article about how "mediocre to *****" isn't the same as "good in Commander", even though people here use it as such all the time.
And yeah, this reminds me of comics in the 90s in a way. And all that trying to attract speculators nearly destroyed the comic book industry.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
I'd be happy with simple themed draft sets. If they have some chase cards, great, but I care more about fun sets and draft themes. Let the collectors and legacy players have something like the FtVs to get their chase reprints. Draft sets should be about draft themes, first and foremost. Mixing value cards into that will just encourage picking cards for value rather than draft strategy. Who wouldn't grab a Tarmogoyf if they saw one in their pack?
They make every Standard set as draftable. Conspiracy is draftable. If they're going to continue with Masters sets, they should just forget about drafting, and put in real cards that people need for collections and decks. Let literally every other set they produce care about drafting and be full of draft-level cards, but if we're spending $10 on a pack, make sure we're getting cards that we aren't going to leave on the table.
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Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
I would definitely prefer the focus for Masters sets to not be on Drafting but I doubt WotC wants to do that, since Drafting is such a powerful motivator for regular people to buy multiple packs (where as they would normally just go online and buy the singles they want from the set).
so, instead of getting cool duel decks/premier decks or from the vault series that you can get some guaranteed cool cards / we are turning this into a overpriced booster chase/singles aswell?
am i missing something? i think they discontinued the decks, and i dont think there will be more themed things if they make themed hot potato packs/sets
Lower the ******* MSRP of these stupid sets. A pack costing 10 dollars is a disgrace.
This.
He completely misses the point. Telling people that the draft format is fun is asinine. All the stores near me were charging $40 a draft. No one wants to draft at that price. If you get 3 drafts, that's $120 on magic for 3 events. Insanity.
Side note, I see several people saying that none of the Masters sets were as good as the first, and while that may be true, I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed Eternal Masters. Further, Iconic Masters did have a lot of money cards, but they tanked in value after being printed in IMA. So then we get to this quagmire where we want lower prices on staples, but also want to open value. The only solution, or at least a great first step, would be lowering the prices on these packs. Stores sold MM1 packs for $10 because they knew they could; MM was still a new, shiny concept. Wizards reacted by increasing the MSRP. If the price were lowered for Masters sets going forward, especially since Masters sets aren't the new hotness they once were, stores wouldn't get away with that mark up.
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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).
Card prices are due to supply and demand. Some cards have high demand and keep the price even if reprinted. Some cards have high price only because the supply is low. IMA had many in the latter category. Basically, a card has to be a staple in a format to hold value.
Many cards in many master sets have kept or increased in price. For example, snapcaster mage used to be 65CAD. It got reprinted and went as low as 55CAD but now has bounced back to 70+CAD. Fetches in the latest modern master set were in a middle ground: they were extremely expensive due to both low supply and high demand. Now they are merely pricey. The demand is still there, the supply augmented. They have crashed. They're still betwen 40 - 75 CAD each.
Side note, I see several people saying that none of the Masters sets were as good as the first, and while that may be true, I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed Eternal Masters. Further, Iconic Masters did have a lot of money cards, but they tanked in value after being printed in IMA. So then we get to this quagmire where we want lower prices on staples, but also want to open value. The only solution, or at least a great first step, would be lowering the prices on these packs. Stores sold MM1 packs for $10 because they knew they could; MM was still a new, shiny concept. Wizards reacted by increasing the MSRP. If the price were lowered for Masters sets going forward, especially since Masters sets aren't the new hotness they once were, stores wouldn't get away with that mark up.
There are at least a couple Masters sets where if they boosters were less they still would not have been price gouged, unless your LGS does that sort of thing regularly. In your example of MM1 there was some fear it would be the only set to do that kind of thing and many took advantage of that, but even still at $10 per pack that set was barely worth it.
With how often they have been appearing these sets have felt more like slightly better core sets than anything special. WotC continues to state that they have learned form their mistakes, but many Masters sets prove that wrong. I'll trust them on this when they do more than one right thing consistently.
they need to spend less time wasting time on supplemental items and concentrate more time and effort into the standard sets.
"Modern Masters" should contain modern constructed relevant cards....I don't care if some cards were made 9 years ago and some were made 2 years ago....WHATS THE BIG DEAL? No one wants to see 50% junk in a set that is supposed to be aimed at lowering the price tag entry barrier for Modern.
If WOTC wants to make the set draftable thats fine...but don't make it draftable by including 50% junk and shifting rarities of cards.
I like how the post begins with a remark about how the set didn't work out at the LGS and how it's such a good draft experience but ignores another issue that connects both of those; the "draft packs" available at big box stores. Why buy at the LGS when you can get it cheaper during Target's card sale and not have to worry about passing a money card after taking the foil money card when you can get both opening the packs at home?
Err, Iconic Masters was a mess and honestly I'm still trying to piece together what exactly happened that resulted in the packs getting repackaged at walmart. From the way things sounded it wasn't as strait forward as WoTC deciding they wanted the product there as much as something else happened that caused packs to end up in the stores. The thing that just crushed iconic masters was that it hit during the pre-christmas toy sales season so the packs were not just in the stores, they were getting sold at the price of normal sets in a lot of places. Ironically, this was the one time in ages I actually bought sealed product just to have fun opening it because the set was full of old favorites and it felt like going back in time to better days.
That's really what I don't like about masters sets: They shouldn't be selling these at 10 dollars a pack. They are one of the few ways to get to play with cards from sets and blocks certain players may have missed and with the price of kamigawa, innistrad, etc, being so high on sealed boxes it's probably the only way for many people.
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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!
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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.
EDH Decks
UWB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic's spring of life
RUG Animar, Soul of the Elements and friends... lots of them
WBG Karador king of two worlds (value and attrition)
WRKalemne's Angels
BRUG Yidris's Wild Party
UWBR Breya's Terrifying Tinker Toys
UBR The Pretender
I agree with your sentiment, but I don't agree with your solution. While I buy the occasional FtV to get a key card here and there, they are certainly not the answer. WotC can't or won't print enough FtV to satisfy some of the current demand. FtV pricing is already warped as it is.
What WotC needs to do is to print at least one set say... every two years (or two full cycles, whatever cycle they want) that is not intended to be drafted and is outside whatever rotation they decide on. Not Precons. Not FtV. Not Commander. Not Conspiracy. Just a large set with cards selected to fill in the current voids in the market. Create an outlet for all those outlying cards that will never get printed again in a draft set or precon but still have demand among players. Such a set would allow printings of Storm cards, classic spells, banding even, whatever without concern for how those cards will impact draft or impact whatever format they're trying to preserve. The rule for those cards would be simple, they're only playable in existing formats they would be legal in already. That's what they did for Portal for years.
Magic players did just fine playing in an environment with the original core sets that didn't have much of a cohesive theme for years. No reason players can't do it again.
Great way to make money. Why give something away for free when you can charge $10 a pack?
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Also, while conspiracy was one of the best masters sets printed, the problem with it was the number of dead cards in the set due to the draft specific conspiracy cards. If the set was all normal cards plus the new monarch based ones it would have been better.
The thing to take away from this new approach to the masters sets is that wizards is genuinely out of ideas on what to do to support the game. Modern has been volatile, standard has been going through an apocalypse of sorts, and they know they can't survive off of commander. The big names adopted pauper to try to find some way to push up interest in the game given the depressed standard and the blood bath from iconic masters. Oh, and then they had to have all the drama happen as well over the last few months.
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!
the price is generally worth it per pack for now but it feels bad when you open garbage like charmbreaker devils, but at the same time the cards reprinted tank in value compared to what they once were, there's a limited amount of good cards you can keep jamming into these things before everything is worthless, and often cards are left out of sets where they could be printed just fine in order to shove them into masters sets.
it was a neat experiment, but its *****. get rid of it, or space them out by two years.
The masters series was originally designed as a ''premier'' product. It costs 3x the price of a regular booster pack because the justification was that it contains more expensive cards, that are hard to get but neccessary in competitive formats. Over the time the sets were getting worse and worse. Designed in ways where it was obvious they put a lot of trash into them, and just a couple of chase cards that people would want to get. They also started to promote more the idea these sets are balanced for limited. Their catch-all excuse it seems.
Now they say they are making them ''themed'' sets. But iconic masters was already a themed set. In fact, one of the most popular complaints is that the set wasn't ''iconic'' enough. Looking at the title of the new set it is called ''Masters 25''. And they are tying it into the 25th anniversary. What kind of a feel does this evoke? Cards that have been defining or relevant, or one might say iconic, in the 25 years of magic. What exactly is the difference between themes here? Or Ftv:20? By making them themed the master series loses any original quality or intent they had for making them in the first place. It's only a matter of time till we get ''Dragon masters''.
And yet they are still triple the price. It's classic marketing. Release a premier product that is decent and justify a higher price point. Slowly turn it into less and less of a valuable series, and into a lottery. The series by now is cemented into the consiousness of your audience as the triple priced one, because it is (was) worth it. Announce a rebranding and package it as if your purpose is to make fun and interesting sets and draft environments, while the price tag remains the same, because it's expected from this series.
See Manite's post from the top of the page. ''I don't care about value I just want a fun and thematic set, with great drafting experience''. Now that's all well and good, I am the same type of player. But people don't realize such is the purpose of normal sets already. Normal sets that don't have a triple price tag.
WotC seems to be trying to extract as much money as possible lately from everything. While the quality of the game is in overall decline. Dominaria absolutely needs to be huge for them.
This is a great point. The fact that we are going to have three Masters sets in a year (MM3, IMA, and MA25) is too much and why we had so many poor Masters sets. You can't pump out that much product at that price so often, you just can't. These sets need to come out far less frequent and need to have far more punch, especially if they are to continue being $10 per pack.
Quoted for absolute truth!!!
Nothing like spending 30 bucks (plus tax) on 3 packs getting 3 25 cent garbage rares and 3 common foil pieces of trash worth a quarter each as well. Wizards should at least feed you dinner before they bend you over.
Preach brother!!!
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Drop the price to $6.99 a pack. Make 36 pack boxes. Don't print ANY rares under $1 secondary market (unless it is a format staple). Every foil should be at Uncommon or above!!! No more crap foils!!! Watch these fly off the shelves instead of collecting dust like Iconic Disasters.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
It's more than that. What is happening now with more rapid releases of masters sets is what would happen eventually even on a slower release cycle. From the grand scheme of things the only real problem with masters sets is that due to the way wizards has been supporting stores, many of the small businesses adopted the strategy of selling older out of print cards on mark up to help keep themselves afloat. Wizards tried to engineer the masters series so that it keeps a high floor on the money cards and give high returns to stores, but this doesn't really work long term because eventually the supply of cards being traded around will erode the price of even the most expensive card. Case and point, Tarmogoyf. In a way I kind of find it funny how we all hated investors, yet at the same time investing and selling high is how some, if not most LGS, seem to keep afloat these days.
The other issue is that reprinting older cards contributes to the volatility of the market. Even relatively weak standard cards cause huge movements on older stock, especially on the reserve list. Blood Sun basically doubled the price of tempest block lands like Lotus Vale. Then again, they shouldn't have written the RL the way they did.
Personally, I think that local games stores need to adopt a new model of some sort to keep themselves afloat and not get too heavily tied to gaming companies giving support. While this is happening with WoTC, I could see it happening with any toy maker or manufacturer.
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!
Modern: (G/U)Infect (G/U)Tron
Legacy: (U/B)Tezzeret (U/B)(W/U)Miracles(W/U)(B/G)Dredge(R/W)
Commander:(U/R)Mizzix (U/R)(W/U)Sydri(U/B)(W/U)Zur(U/B)
I really agree with most of this. Just reducing the price of the packs would be an enormous step in the right direction.
avacyn, angel of hope was like $30 plus before now only $13 (iconic masters)
Austere Command was like in the $20-$15 before but on tcg you can get it for only $5 (Lorwyn) or $4 (iconic)
The praetors lost nearly half their original prices from this
Same can be said for the kamigawa spirit dragon cycle
Necropotence that's no longer expensive you can find it for $3 on tcg and yes mint
Oh and as for the lotus vale buy out
Talk about a bunch of idiots it's not going to bring a huge impact to modern yes blood sun is going to be spotted in modern but only to deal with fetchlands and stuff like ghost quarter
Yanno, I really should write that article about how "mediocre to *****" isn't the same as "good in Commander", even though people here use it as such all the time.
And yeah, this reminds me of comics in the 90s in a way. And all that trying to attract speculators nearly destroyed the comic book industry.
On phasing:
They make every Standard set as draftable. Conspiracy is draftable. If they're going to continue with Masters sets, they should just forget about drafting, and put in real cards that people need for collections and decks. Let literally every other set they produce care about drafting and be full of draft-level cards, but if we're spending $10 on a pack, make sure we're getting cards that we aren't going to leave on the table.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
But, for whatever reason, they do not like doing it in print.
am i missing something? i think they discontinued the decks, and i dont think there will be more themed things if they make themed hot potato packs/sets
i hope im wrong?
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This.
He completely misses the point. Telling people that the draft format is fun is asinine. All the stores near me were charging $40 a draft. No one wants to draft at that price. If you get 3 drafts, that's $120 on magic for 3 events. Insanity.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
My 720 Peasant Cube
Card prices are due to supply and demand. Some cards have high demand and keep the price even if reprinted. Some cards have high price only because the supply is low. IMA had many in the latter category. Basically, a card has to be a staple in a format to hold value.
Many cards in many master sets have kept or increased in price. For example, snapcaster mage used to be 65CAD. It got reprinted and went as low as 55CAD but now has bounced back to 70+CAD. Fetches in the latest modern master set were in a middle ground: they were extremely expensive due to both low supply and high demand. Now they are merely pricey. The demand is still there, the supply augmented. They have crashed. They're still betwen 40 - 75 CAD each.
There are at least a couple Masters sets where if they boosters were less they still would not have been price gouged, unless your LGS does that sort of thing regularly. In your example of MM1 there was some fear it would be the only set to do that kind of thing and many took advantage of that, but even still at $10 per pack that set was barely worth it.
With how often they have been appearing these sets have felt more like slightly better core sets than anything special. WotC continues to state that they have learned form their mistakes, but many Masters sets prove that wrong. I'll trust them on this when they do more than one right thing consistently.
"Modern Masters" should contain modern constructed relevant cards....I don't care if some cards were made 9 years ago and some were made 2 years ago....WHATS THE BIG DEAL? No one wants to see 50% junk in a set that is supposed to be aimed at lowering the price tag entry barrier for Modern.
If WOTC wants to make the set draftable thats fine...but don't make it draftable by including 50% junk and shifting rarities of cards.
WBG Karador GBW
R Daretti R
RG Omnath GR
WRG Modern Burn GRW
WB Modern Tokens BW
DCI Rules Advisor as of 5/18/2015
Err, Iconic Masters was a mess and honestly I'm still trying to piece together what exactly happened that resulted in the packs getting repackaged at walmart. From the way things sounded it wasn't as strait forward as WoTC deciding they wanted the product there as much as something else happened that caused packs to end up in the stores. The thing that just crushed iconic masters was that it hit during the pre-christmas toy sales season so the packs were not just in the stores, they were getting sold at the price of normal sets in a lot of places. Ironically, this was the one time in ages I actually bought sealed product just to have fun opening it because the set was full of old favorites and it felt like going back in time to better days.
That's really what I don't like about masters sets: They shouldn't be selling these at 10 dollars a pack. They are one of the few ways to get to play with cards from sets and blocks certain players may have missed and with the price of kamigawa, innistrad, etc, being so high on sealed boxes it's probably the only way for many people.
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!