One seeded booster pack: composed entirely of cards relevant to that player’s guild
1 randomized, date stamped foil promo card, drawn from any rare or mythic in the set
I can see how this feeds nicely into the whole flavour/player identity thing where you are supposed to pick your favourite guild and feel like you´re using the game to express yourself, but I´m really not a big fan of seeded packs.
The reason is that I feel that it increases variance between sealed pools, where the colours of your seeded pack matches up poorly against the remaining five packs plus promo, while the person next to you could happen to get most of their good stuff in the correct colors. You are basically asked to force two of your colors, and that´s not how you are supposed to play sealed. I know that I´m not being enough casual minded here, but still, it´s basically teaching players to do it wrong, and an increased variance between sealed pools does not make for a good event.
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I'm not a huge fan for the same reasons - variance increases wildly and if your packs don't line up with your guild well, you're building from 5 packs and it's really hard to make a functional deck
The thing is that sort of thing could happen anyway. The seeded pack, in my opinion, increases the consistency of a sealed pool. Making it more likely that you'll have cards in the colors you want to play.
Yeah, I've never been a fan of this. If your five packs are in your guild, great, you basically get to build with 8 packs worth of cards in color. If your five packs are extremely sparse on your guild, congrats, you get to build with just those five packs.
Add in possible imbalances between the guilds making some seeded packs more valuable than others and it creates a probable feelbad situation.
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The thing is that sort of thing could happen anyway. The seeded pack, in my opinion, increases the consistency of a sealed pool.
I want to argue that this, generally, is simply not true. You can open five regular packs that are heavy RW, and your seeded pack is all BG, making you build from five packs and scrapping one whole booster, or scrap the best cards from your five packs and use your seeded pack and two of the shallower colors from your regular packs. None of those options are good. If you luck out and open five packs that are heavy BG and your seeded pack is also BG, your deck is insane. This is decreased consistency.
Making it more likely that you'll have cards in the colors you want to play.
... and this is true if you decide which colors to run before you open your packs, which is not what you should be doing. But yeah, if you are going to play color X and Y no matter what, then sure, seeded packs are good for you.
I am not quite sure, how it was at RtR prerelease events? IIRC stamped foil rare was guild-specific.
I didn´t play RTR, but I think the promo was fixed based on which guild kit you chose, like Izzet always had a Hypersonic Dragon, Golgari always had a Corpsejack Menace and so on. I remember the M15 prerelease, where you could choose one of five colored kits, and the foil promo was fixed so that you knew which one you got based on your chosen color. This system was pretty bad because most players wanted to play black, since it was known information that the black promo was the most powerful card. During the first prereleases more than half the room was playing black and had the same rare in their decks. During one of the later prereleases the store ran out of black kits, and it felt like the ones who got there first started with an advantage. So yeah, fixed, predetermined promos sucked a lot when the different kits had different ones.
Aw man. Those seeded packs were a bad idea before. How will that be any different this time?
Basically, what happens is that people realize they'd rather have Seeded Pack [Guild] because that guild is better, so those packs go first to the people who arrive earliest. (Stores around where I live let people sign up for a particular guild).
Why would they do this? They're not genericizing the PR kits so that the guild is unknown, are they?
I am not quite sure, how it was at RtR prerelease events? IIRC stamped foil rare was guild-specific.
There was a seeded guild pack, and your promo was always guaranteed. The same repeated for the whole Theros block and M15 (with colors, not guilds)
Khans to Origins, you had a seeded booster and guaranteed promo of your clan or color (1 of 8)
I do not mind seeded packs as long as they made sense (and that was in cases of clear-defined factions like guilds or clans). Having them every prerelease was stupid.
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Because frankly WotC likes to keep doing things players dislike and complain about. They don’t learn from the past no matter how many times they claim they do.
You think at this point if a block involves factions, they’d have prerelease be the factions precon decks plus 3 boosters to allow some variance between people playing the same faction, but keep with the factions themes.
Hell during Gatecrash prerelease i wanted to play Boros, but they had no more of their guild kits and ended up with a Simic one...that luckly had so much good Boros pulls i was still able to play Boros. And another guy ended up playing Simic with a Gruul kit.
Why they try and keep up with draft when factions are involved is beyond me.
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I remember choosing Simic at the Gatecrash prerelease and my pool being really *****ty, I ended up having to play with mostly Gruul cards that weren't that good on their own either and losing all matches I played. I didn't play Sealed for a long time after that experience...
Well, let's hope it's going to be better this time around I guess.
I didn´t play RTR, but I think the promo was fixed based on which guild kit you chose, like Izzet always had a Hypersonic Dragon, Golgari always had a Corpsejack Menace and so on.
Nope. Each guild had a pool of eight possible promos that could be the promo in that guild's seeded booster (one mythic and seven rares). So as a result there were some rares that simply could not appear as promos (most notably, the shocks).
Oh, or am I just thinking of the nonpromo rare from the guild seeded pack. Yeah, that may be it.
I want to argue that this, generally, is simply not true. You can open five regular packs that are heavy RW, and your seeded pack is all BG, making you build from five packs and scrapping one whole booster, or scrap the best cards from your five packs and use your seeded pack and two of the shallower colors from your regular packs. None of those options are good. If you luck out and open five packs that are heavy BG and your seeded pack is also BG, your deck is insane. This is decreased consistency.
Okay... but how is this any different from opening 6 normal packs? You open a decent RW deck then in your last pack you open the sickest B bomb rare and 2 awesome uncommons and then you don't know what to do anymore. That's just how Sealed works. It is an inherently unfair format, with or without seeded packs, and sometimes the pack gods are simply not on your side.
I, for one, am quite happy to see seeded packs return for the Prerelease. I enjoy having a good chance to play the color combination I want to going in. I'm just glad WotC got rid of those guaranteed promos because those were terrible.
I didn´t play RTR, but I think the promo was fixed based on which guild kit you chose, like Izzet always had a Hypersonic Dragon, Golgari always had a Corpsejack Menace and so on.
Nope. Each guild had a pool of eight possible promos that could be the promo in that guild's seeded booster (one mythic and seven rares). So as a result there were some rares that simply could not appear as promos (most notably, the shocks).
Oh, or am I just thinking of the nonpromo rare from the guild seeded pack. Yeah, that may be it.
RtR and gatecrash both had the intro pack rares as the seeded promo and in dragons maze is when the 8 potential promo thing started I believe. However it might have been in khans of tarkir when the system of 8 potential promos started
Edit:the promos for dragons maze were actually just mazes end and the seeded boosters just had a rare or mythic from your guild that was not stamped
I would say probably more than one of the packs should be a seeded pack for the sake of consistency. I know when they did this with Dragons I had five other packs that had very little in my colors and it became almost impossible to build with the seeded pack because of that. Maybe a 3/3 split?
Aw man. Those seeded packs were a bad idea before. How will that be any different this time?
Basically, what happens is that people realize they'd rather have Seeded Pack [Guild] because that guild is better, so those packs go first to the people who arrive earliest. (Stores around where I live let people sign up for a particular guild).
Why would they do this? They're not genericizing the PR kits so that the guild is unknown, are they?
I remember all Golgari sealed packs being taken before the tournament started (maybe people hoped for a new Dredge, who knows...)
My question is, why not make all the sealed boosters seeded? If I want to play Boros, I won't complain about six packs heavy on red and white. That just increases the chances of getting good cards in the colors I want to play. If I buy a Boros box, I want good Boros cards; I don't want to wind up playing a bunch of Dimir or Golgari cards instead.
Add in possible imbalances between the guilds making some seeded packs more valuable than others and it creates a probable feelbad situation.
If that's a concern, why not just play one of the guilds you feel is better? If you're looking for good cards in a certain color, you've got two guilds to choose between.
Because frankly WotC likes to keep doing things players dislike and complain about. They don’t learn from the past no matter how many times they claim they do.
If by "players" you mean "vocal minorities who'll complain no matter what Wizards does". And the claim that Wizards doesn't learn is laughable; every change they've made has been based on player input, like when players complained that every prerelease box had the exact same promo thus they introduced the 8 promo system. HFIL, Wizards is about the only party I've seen involved with MtG that is willing to change. Around here, I'm just seeing the usual kneejerk reactions.
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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.
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.
I didn´t play RTR, but I think the promo was fixed based on which guild kit you chose, like Izzet always had a Hypersonic Dragon, Golgari always had a Corpsejack Menace and so on.
Nope. Each guild had a pool of eight possible promos that could be the promo in that guild's seeded booster (one mythic and seven rares). So as a result there were some rares that simply could not appear as promos (most notably, the shocks).
Oh, or am I just thinking of the nonpromo rare from the guild seeded pack. Yeah, that may be it.
RtR and gatecrash both had the intro pack rares as the seeded promo and in dragons maze is when the 8 potential promo thing started I believe. However it might have been in khans of tarkir when the system of 8 potential promos started
Edit:the promos for dragons maze were actually just mazes end and the seeded boosters just had a rare or mythic from your guild that was not stamped
Yeah, I did the reminder-research since, and it was my last statement that was accurate... the seeded guild packs, for each guild, had a pool of eight possible cards in their rare slot (the mythic guild leader, and seven other possible rares). This was in addition to the guild-fixed foil promo (that was the part where my memory failed me).
Starting with the Battle for Zendikar prerelease, we will no longer be using seeded packs. You will get six Battle for Zendikar boosters along with a stamped preview card that can be any rare or mythic rare from the set. This change was made based on a lot feedback from all of you.
As usual, the unhappy are louder than the satisfied. So when the norm was seeded boosters, they heard the unhappy say "Change this!" and the satisfied said nothing. So they changed to appease who they were hearing complain. And then of course some time later they hear "Change this back!" from the dissatisfied while the satisfied remain quiet...
As usual, the unhappy are louder than the satisfied. So when the norm was seeded boosters, they heard the unhappy say "Change this!" and the satisfied said nothing. So they changed to appease who they were hearing complain. And then of course some time later they hear "Change this back!" from the dissatisfied while the satisfied remain quiet...
Not that I read every single piece of content about Magic... But I have not read a single comment about bringing back seeded packs in the last 12 months.
This felt like it came out of nowhere to me. I'll be glad to be proven wrong, if you've read any commentary asking for these to come back.
I want to argue that this, generally, is simply not true. You can open five regular packs that are heavy RW, and your seeded pack is all BG, making you build from five packs and scrapping one whole booster, or scrap the best cards from your five packs and use your seeded pack and two of the shallower colors from your regular packs. None of those options are good. If you luck out and open five packs that are heavy BG and your seeded pack is also BG, your deck is insane. This is decreased consistency.
Okay... but how is this any different from opening 6 normal packs? You open a decent RW deck then in your last pack you open the sickest B bomb rare and 2 awesome uncommons and then you don't know what to do anymore. That's just how Sealed works. It is an inherently unfair format, with or without seeded packs, and sometimes the pack gods are simply not on your side.
In that black pack, even as as a worst case example, it is very likely that you'll find SOME cards for your RW deck. In your seeded BG pack you are guaranteed to find zero. This is a significant and to me pretty obvious difference. The fact that there is inherent variance in regular sealed does not change the fact that this is greatly exaggerated in 5+seed. Same problem, but worse.
Prerelease kits will contain:
I can see how this feeds nicely into the whole flavour/player identity thing where you are supposed to pick your favourite guild and feel like you´re using the game to express yourself, but I´m really not a big fan of seeded packs.
The reason is that I feel that it increases variance between sealed pools, where the colours of your seeded pack matches up poorly against the remaining five packs plus promo, while the person next to you could happen to get most of their good stuff in the correct colors. You are basically asked to force two of your colors, and that´s not how you are supposed to play sealed. I know that I´m not being enough casual minded here, but still, it´s basically teaching players to do it wrong, and an increased variance between sealed pools does not make for a good event.
Opinions?
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
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Add in possible imbalances between the guilds making some seeded packs more valuable than others and it creates a probable feelbad situation.
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Edit: I didn´t play RTR, but I think the promo was fixed based on which guild kit you chose, like Izzet always had a Hypersonic Dragon, Golgari always had a Corpsejack Menace and so on. I remember the M15 prerelease, where you could choose one of five colored kits, and the foil promo was fixed so that you knew which one you got based on your chosen color. This system was pretty bad because most players wanted to play black, since it was known information that the black promo was the most powerful card. During the first prereleases more than half the room was playing black and had the same rare in their decks. During one of the later prereleases the store ran out of black kits, and it felt like the ones who got there first started with an advantage. So yeah, fixed, predetermined promos sucked a lot when the different kits had different ones.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Basically, what happens is that people realize they'd rather have Seeded Pack [Guild] because that guild is better, so those packs go first to the people who arrive earliest. (Stores around where I live let people sign up for a particular guild).
Why would they do this? They're not genericizing the PR kits so that the guild is unknown, are they?
There was a seeded guild pack, and your promo was always guaranteed. The same repeated for the whole Theros block and M15 (with colors, not guilds)
Khans to Origins, you had a seeded booster and guaranteed promo of your clan or color (1 of 8)
I do not mind seeded packs as long as they made sense (and that was in cases of clear-defined factions like guilds or clans). Having them every prerelease was stupid.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
Because frankly WotC likes to keep doing things players dislike and complain about. They don’t learn from the past no matter how many times they claim they do.
You think at this point if a block involves factions, they’d have prerelease be the factions precon decks plus 3 boosters to allow some variance between people playing the same faction, but keep with the factions themes.
Hell during Gatecrash prerelease i wanted to play Boros, but they had no more of their guild kits and ended up with a Simic one...that luckly had so much good Boros pulls i was still able to play Boros. And another guy ended up playing Simic with a Gruul kit.
Why they try and keep up with draft when factions are involved is beyond me.
BAfter the lights go out on you, after your worthless life is through. I will remember how you scream...B
Well, let's hope it's going to be better this time around I guess.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
Nope. Each guild had a pool of eight possible promos that could be the promo in that guild's seeded booster (one mythic and seven rares). So as a result there were some rares that simply could not appear as promos (most notably, the shocks).
Oh, or am I just thinking of the nonpromo rare from the guild seeded pack. Yeah, that may be it.
I, for one, am quite happy to see seeded packs return for the Prerelease. I enjoy having a good chance to play the color combination I want to going in. I'm just glad WotC got rid of those guaranteed promos because those were terrible.
RtR and gatecrash both had the intro pack rares as the seeded promo and in dragons maze is when the 8 potential promo thing started I believe. However it might have been in khans of tarkir when the system of 8 potential promos started
Edit:the promos for dragons maze were actually just mazes end and the seeded boosters just had a rare or mythic from your guild that was not stamped
I remember all Golgari sealed packs being taken before the tournament started (maybe people hoped for a new Dredge, who knows...)
If that's a concern, why not just play one of the guilds you feel is better? If you're looking for good cards in a certain color, you've got two guilds to choose between.
If by "players" you mean "vocal minorities who'll complain no matter what Wizards does". And the claim that Wizards doesn't learn is laughable; every change they've made has been based on player input, like when players complained that every prerelease box had the exact same promo thus they introduced the 8 promo system. HFIL, Wizards is about the only party I've seen involved with MtG that is willing to change. Around here, I'm just seeing the usual kneejerk reactions.
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.
Yeah, I did the reminder-research since, and it was my last statement that was accurate... the seeded guild packs, for each guild, had a pool of eight possible cards in their rare slot (the mythic guild leader, and seven other possible rares). This was in addition to the guild-fixed foil promo (that was the part where my memory failed me).
Not that I read every single piece of content about Magic... But I have not read a single comment about bringing back seeded packs in the last 12 months.
This felt like it came out of nowhere to me. I'll be glad to be proven wrong, if you've read any commentary asking for these to come back.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'