Also have Chain Lightning at Uncommon as well, honestly I expect both to decline in value rather significantly with an uncommon reprint like this, so would probably be best to dump them if its not too late to get a decent amount out of them still with the intent of grabbing them back after the set is released and the secondary market gets flooded (relatively speaking) with both cards and their price gets cut in 1/2.
Do you think foil Cabal Therapies from Premium Deck Series: Graveborn are worth keeping? Or are they gonna tank as well?
With Counterbalance confirmed out of EMA, I expect a price increase soon - pretty much everything else expensive required to play Miracles is being reprinted.
Is that actually confirmed? Well...not all is lost then. lol I knew reprint(s) were coming, but I didn't know which ones, so I did keep some stuff that maybe I shouldn't have (like Sensei's Divining Top and Ichorid), but then again I'm kinda glad I didn't ship my Counterbalances at the last GP.
its best to look at reprints of ALL non reverved list cards a possibility. So if you need them hang on to them if not then sell them whenever you choose. I know counterbalance will be reprinted its not a question of if but when, just like any high value non-reserve list tourney\casual\edh staple. I think we might end up seeing Eternal Masters and Modern Masters in alternating years. Of Course it depends on how Eternal Masters fares, but so far so good from what I hear.
I suspect the print run will not be that small, it's in three languages and local stores at a 3WC are getting dozens. Just snatched three at MSRP to split with friends because a pal's LGS got cancellations on 5/12 boxes, and they've been around for 15-16 months.
My LGS seems to think the print run is closer to MM15 than MM13 but I can't say for sure only time will tell.
its best to look at reprints of ALL non reverved list cards a possibility. So if you need them hang on to them if not then sell them whenever you choose. I know counterbalance will be reprinted its not a question of if but when, just like any high value non-reserve list tourney\casual\edh staple. I think we might end up seeing Eternal Masters and Modern Masters in alternating years. Of Course it depends on how Eternal Masters fares, but so far so good from what I hear.
I disagree with this, I've recently sold my goblin guides, and have realized something and bought them back at a loss. WotC's actions have proven to me that they are not willing to actually make big impacts on staples pricing. Its nice that they are willing to reprint some of these cards, but printing them at Mythic, in limited sets won't actually do anything to their availability. Even at rare pricing won't fluctuate very far. So if you have cards that you aren't playing but Might play in the future you should probably keep them, since WotC will continue to play these reprint games, and the cards you sold is more likely to raise in price due to deman, then it would to drop in price due to reprints.
its best to look at reprints of ALL non reverved list cards a possibility. So if you need them hang on to them if not then sell them whenever you choose. I know counterbalance will be reprinted its not a question of if but when, just like any high value non-reserve list tourney\casual\edh staple. I think we might end up seeing Eternal Masters and Modern Masters in alternating years. Of Course it depends on how Eternal Masters fares, but so far so good from what I hear.
I disagree with this, I've recently sold my goblin guides, and have realized something and bought them back at a loss. WotC's actions have proven to me that they are not willing to actually make big impacts on staples pricing. Its nice that they are willing to reprint some of these cards, but printing them at Mythic, in limited sets won't actually do anything to their availability. Even at rare pricing won't fluctuate very far. So if you have cards that you aren't playing but Might play in the future you should probably keep them, since WotC will continue to play these reprint games, and the cards you sold is more likely to raise in price due to deman, then it would to drop in price due to reprints.
Here is the thing Wizards tries to create these "masters" sets with draft in mind so that being said they have to decide each archtype for the colors to follow and that sometimes means cutting a card that needs reprinting, which there are many, so the draft is a "fun" experience. Wizards as far as I can tell doesn't like to do reprint everything all at once so they can spread out the "masters" sets for years to entice sales with "fresh" reprints of cards that they didn't include in previous sets. though First and foremost they build with draft being the primary focus which I think is a mistake as a personal opinion. Cards like Damnation and Goblin Guide are almost guaranteed to be in the next Modern Masters set next year simply because they can't ignore those cards along with Snapcaster Mage. I would assume with the current prices of Bob and Clique stable they won't be in the next MM set. It definitely feels that way though I do agree with you. the process of reprinting stuff seems to boil down to designing draft and to make sure future reprint sets are interesting and different enough for people to buy into again.
Edit: also wizards can't predict tournament prevalence of particular cards considering they design these sets at least a year or two in advance. So what may need reprinting at the time of designing may fall out of favor for a different card that wasn't on the radar when the set comes out. But I agree they need more aggressive reprinting otherwise modern will be just like legacy in the long term.
I'm not complaining about what they choose to reprint, the meta fluctuate, and they slate cards for reprint far in advance. I'm not even complaining the format in which they choose to do reprints e.g. Draft. What I am complaining about is how they choose to keep you chasing the chase cards. The expensive staples are the least effected by reprints, and through this practice WotC is encouraging speculation, and not just collecting, which drives up prices like crazy, and these prices constrict WotC's freedom of reprint, because they'll constantly tip toe around the secondary market.
I've already given up on people having easy access to the game, WotC doesn't want more players, it wants the captive gambling addicted enfranchised audience and the captive "I buy ever precon in my colors no matter the EV" casual crowd.
Liliana will never be below $100, Goyf will never be below $100, and let's not even talk about duals.
I would be content if they could at least print the ******* pauper staples that haven't had a Modern border print at least, I need a better way to easy people into formats other than standard and playing with near crumbling-to-dust Cuombajj Witches isn't a nice experience no matter how good the deck is.
I've already given up on people having easy access to the game, WotC doesn't want more players, it wants the captive gambling addicted enfranchised audience and the captive "I buy ever precon in my colors no matter the EV" casual crowd.
Liliana will never be below $100, Goyf will never be below $100, and let's not even talk about duals.
I would be content if they could at least print the ******* pauper staples that haven't had a Modern border print at least, I need a better way to easy people into formats other than standard and playing with near crumbling-to-dust Cuombajj Witches isn't a nice experience no matter how good the deck is.
Richard Garfield on the cost of Magic. He wanted the cards to be collectible "like stamps". To be fair, he talks about price points for cards in the 20 to 50 dollar range. Not 100 - 1000 like we have for so many cards. That being said, secondary market value is a PART OF THE GAME. Easy access? The game could hardly be easier to get into than it is now. Especially since they are planning on a new product and promotion for new players where decks are given away at stores.
Complaining about this seems ridiculous in the face of what was intended here by the very words of the game's creator.
I've already given up on people having easy access to the game, WotC doesn't want more players, it wants the captive gambling addicted enfranchised audience and the captive "I buy ever precon in my colors no matter the EV" casual crowd.
Liliana will never be below $100, Goyf will never be below $100, and let's not even talk about duals.
I would be content if they could at least print the ******* pauper staples that haven't had a Modern border print at least, I need a better way to easy people into formats other than standard and playing with near crumbling-to-dust Cuombajj Witches isn't a nice experience no matter how good the deck is.
Richard Garfield on the cost of Magic. He wanted the cards to be collectible "like stamps". To be fair, he talks about price points for cards in the 20 to 50 dollar range. Not 100 - 1000 like we have for so many cards. That being said, secondary market value is a PART OF THE GAME. Easy access? The game could hardly be easier to get into than it is now. Especially since they are planning on a new product and promotion for new players where decks are given away at stores.
Complaining about this seems ridiculous in the face of what was intended here by the very words of game's creator.
Afraid of losing a buck on your "investments"?
What they give away is a hook for standard and it's not very good since the people who get 30 card decks and a booster sit in front of a "money = skill" grognard and get blown off.
Pauper is a nice way to teach new players and players tired of wasting their money on standard that there is another way to play magic and that you can have a very high power deck that costs what a couple of standard rotations would, but that you can keep forever. But we need some of the oldest cards to be reprinted ASAP if we want to be able to build more decks, ******* Oubliette is impossible to find at a fair price and not having it is not playing the deck at it's best which defeats the point of fair competition.
The commander precons also used to help here but went way down in singles quality last year, hope they vindicate themselves this year.
As for paying a *****load being part of the "game", be real, you have to be a failed human beign who puts a lot of his self esteem on showing off what they can afford to feel any accomplishment from paying those prices. I play all formats, my favourites are vintage and legacy, I constantly meet and befriend other eternal players because we are so hard to find you can't afford to not get along. None of us would give away our cards for free, but most of us wouldn't give a ***** if the prices were cut to less than half by reprints or WotC released gold bordered versions of our decks for a pittance, just so we had more people to actually play these thousand dollar paperweights with. A lot of us are even drafting all the EMA we can find despite having playsets of FoW, Wasteland and Karakas, just so these cards won't end in some *****head "investor"s closet instead.
Public Mod Note
(Rai Kerensky):
Do not flame other users.
I guess I't easy for people who's interest in MtG is "investment" rather than playing, to ignore when eternal players say their problem with the game isn't that they don't have the cards, but that they don't have enough opponents who have the cards to play against.
I guess I't easy for people who's interest in MtG is "investment" rather than playing, to ignore when eternal players say their problem with the game isn't that they don't have the cards, but that they don't have enough opponents who have the cards to play against.
^100% This.
Sure it'd be sad to have my $250+ Underground Seas tank down to $50. You know what's sadder? To have no one to play with, regardless of how much I paid to get into the format. Sometimes makes me wonder why I bothered buying into the format in the first place.
Luckily it's summer and there's several shops nearby. But still...
Reprints the one card that people point to when saying that art objectifies women.
Well done Wizards.
Liliana does not objectify women in any way at all. We have gotten to a point in our society that every single picture of a women must be objectifying a women in some negative way......blah blah blah.. That is not the case. (((Sarcasm)))Picture of a girl drinking a milk shake, must be sex related and putting women down, picture of girl sitting on a beach, picture of a girl driving a car, picture of a girl on the moon at a new space station.)))
You have a picture of an attractive strong power women who girls dress up as for anime conventions. What more do you want? The picture is fine, happy to see a reprint. Sick of of seeing people claim that everything in existence must be putting women down. Then all I have to do is replace the word "women" with anything else to get the same mentality; fish, cats, arabs, blacks, jews, men, environment, whites, chinese, old people, etc. It doesn't matter what word I put in. Stop sucking life out of everything man. That artwork of her is awesome. Stop putting stuff down man. Just stop. If the picture was really as negative as you claim she would totally nude, in a kitchen, making sandwiches and giving blow jobs. Her abilities would be horrible as well. +1 do nothing -2 do nothing -6 do nothing. Instead liliana of the veil is an amazing planeswalker comparable to jace, the mind sculpter with great art to appreciate.
My suggestion listen to some comedy radio for a while, pandora is free, youtube is free there is something out there for you. ***** go make fun of somebody. The whole world is so serious and campaigning for some cause, or someones rights, everything is a hate crime, racist, sexist. blah blah blah.
"O no mcdonalds must be slandering a hate crime against skinny people every time they make a big mac." hahaha jeeze You're just someone perpetuating another groups negative perspective that they've made you believe is correct. Look at the picture for a hour and tell me what's wrong with it? I don't see anything.
I have heard vague rumors of a moustache-dispensing vending machine in a distant laundromat, across the street from a tattoo parlor. However, this information is shaky, and time is of the essence.
Let's lay out this argument one more time:
If you make Legacy as accessible as standard or modern, no one will play those formats anymore. Really imagine who would really spend their money on Standard when Legacy costs the same, but the cards are more powerful, and there's no rotation. Modern feels even more like a Legacy wanna-be rather than its own unique format. And in order to get people to buy new cards, you need to print cards comparable in power level to the cards played in your brand new most popular format Legacy. If you make Legacy as accessible as standard, why play standard? If no one plays standard, why print new cards?
I guess you could come along and say "well, let's just make it a little more affordable." If that's your argument, why bother? Most people still won't be satisfied with the prices since they won't be altered much, and you'll really have just devalued a lot of people's cards slightly with no real benefit. Or even if it goes like you want- more players taking an interest in building and playing Legacy- a slight price reduction would be cancelled by the increased demand you're seeking.
So the only real solution is to reprint what you can where you can, which is exactly what WoTC is doing with EMA. Dual lands are stuck at the pricetag they're at because people are willing to pay those prices. Somewhere, someone, has waaaaay more disposable income than you do. It sucks, smaller communities may not be able to get enough people who can afford to build and are thus stuck with proxying or not playing, but there's enough demand somewhere to make these the pricetags.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Let's lay out this argument one more time:
If you make Legacy as accessible as standard or modern, no one will play those formats anymore.
This is a bit of a straw-man. I don't think anybody is saying Legacy should be as cheap as Standard!
Ten years ago a tier one Legacy deck would typically run $400-$600. A standard deck would be more like $150-250. Dates and prices are approximate and from memory, but I think it's true that a Legacy was roughly two or three times the cost of Standard deck, and prices were lower across the board.
Many of think this was a much healthier state for the community. Standard was still significantly cheaper than Legacy (especially after a few drafts), so there was plenty of incentive to just play Standard (also Legacy is not for everyone).
I think this is the sort of price point people would like to see Legacy returned to. Sadly WotC have missed their chance to do this in a clean manner. WotC should have abolished (or softened) the RL back when duals, Wasteland, FoW, etc were $15 cards. Heck, the didn't even need to touch the RL because they still had a loophole. Dual Landds, LEDs, Cradles, etc would have made nice player reward cards or Super Serries promos. Candelabra, Moat, Chains, etc as Judge foils. They didn't do this when they should have, and now they've closed the loophole plus allowed prices to combo to the point where reprints are volatile for the health of the secondary market.
I get that WotC is a business - committed to making money not to supporting Legacy players. It's a shame when capitalism interferes with art and culture. Nonetheless, it's not that outrageous for people to wish the game was as affordable now as it was a decade ago. Reducing that position to wanting to "make Legacy as accessible as Standard" is just plain incorrect.
Yeah, deck prices and the relationship to the number of potential opponents in a format is not a black-and-white, on-and-off proposition. The cheaper decks in a format are, the larger the pool of potential opponents can be. If Legacy costs half as much as it did, then I think you will expect to see somewhat of an increase in the number of people who can and do play it. It might not be as simple as "Half the price = Twice the players," but it's certainly not true that you have to make the prices worthless to get ANY increase.
Eternal players just want to see the prices go down so the players go up. That seems very reasonable to me.
If the problem is that eternal formats are so much more interesting than Standard, and therefore WotC can't make them more accessible for fear of losing Standard players, shouldn't their focus be on making Standard more interesting?
EDH/Commander is a social format, right? So why don't people use their social skills to discuss what they like and don't like, instead of adopting a list with 60+ banned cards?
Let's lay out this argument one more time:
If you make Legacy as accessible as standard or modern, no one will play those formats anymore.
This is a bit of a straw-man. I don't think anybody is saying Legacy should be as cheap as Standard!
Ten years ago a tier one Legacy deck would typically run $400-$600. A standard deck would be more like $150-250. Dates and prices are approximate and from memory, but I think it's true that a Legacy was roughly two or three times the cost of Standard deck, and prices were lower across the board.
Many of think this was a much healthier state for the community. Standard was still significantly cheaper than Legacy (especially after a few drafts), so there was plenty of incentive to just play Standard (also Legacy is not for everyone).
I think this is the sort of price point people would like to see Legacy returned to. Sadly WotC have missed their chance to do this in a clean manner. WotC should have abolished (or softened) the RL back when duals, Wasteland, FoW, etc were $15 cards. Heck, the didn't even need to touch the RL because they still had a loophole. Dual Landds, LEDs, Cradles, etc would have made nice player reward cards or Super Serries promos. Candelabra, Moat, Chains, etc as Judge foils. They didn't do this when they should have, and now they've closed the loophole plus allowed prices to combo to the point where reprints are volatile for the health of the secondary market.
I get that WotC is a business - committed to making money not to supporting Legacy players. It's a shame when capitalism interferes with art and culture. Nonetheless, it's not that outrageous for people to wish the game was as affordable now as it was a decade ago. Reducing that position to wanting to "make Legacy as accessible as Standard" is just plain incorrect.
If you want to see Legacy go back to those price points, you'll also need to see standard go back to those price points. $400 seems to be about the going rate for a T1 Standard deck, right now. It used to be more, remember how much Caw-Blade cost to build? One of the main reasons you're seeing a huge drive in prices is that you're seeing a large rise in playerbase. WOTC has done a very good job at making standard more affordable and more accessible these days, and I'd like to think the days of $1000 standard decks are behind us. But droves of new players eventually also want to play other formats, and Legacy used to be the go-to for players looking for a new format; it wasn't THAT much more expensive than modern, the cards were more powerful, and most of the cards were safe investments protected by the reserve list and free from the frequent and erratic banhammer of Modern. SCG anticipated this and moved their buylist prices to snatch up Legacy staples and we saw the first dramatic rise of Legacy cards in a long time. This helped Modern grow as a format, which needed the help honestly. When it first started, it wasn't terribly popular, at least not in my area. But because it was more accessible, and many players already had the cards, a lot of people got into the "well, might as well build a modern deck, I'm already 75% there anyway and Legacy is hilariously expensive now."
Magic is bigger now more than ever, it has an enormous playerbase that the game has never seen before. Included in that playerbase are several individuals that have deep enough pockets that there is demand created even at the price points vendors are asking.
But no, I agree, there's not a direct correlation between 1/2 price=double players. And I agree, I would like to see prices go down. But how does anyone propose we get prices down without tanking the market as a whole, but still having enough impact to draw in new players? EMA is the best possible solution to this, and the secondary market is being predatory in the way they handled all the related reserve list cards. If vendors had not jacked the prices up alongside the EMA release, EMA might have done exactly what you and I both want and that's getting more people hooked on this format to the point that they're willing to save their pennies to build a deck over the course of a year. Sadly, predatory practices mean that instead of your USeas at $200, and you might have been willing to pursue them, at $350 it's just....no for too many people.
I'm sorry, I just don't see any way to go back in time at this point.
If we do reduce the position to "make it as accessible as standard" we break everything.
If we reduce it to "just more affordable, but still more expensive than standard" we might succeed in getting some new players, which will increase demand which will drive prices for reserve list cards back up even if we did figure out a way to make them drop.
If we choose any lesser option than that (well, we just want to see a slight dip in the cards) then why bother?
But......
if we print a bunch of non-reserve staples in a set like Modern Masters, we can make all the OTHER cards more affordable to make it easier for people to swallow the pricetag of the RL cards they need......this is a good plan right up until the secondary market raises the prices of said cards in anticipation of people wanting to do exactly that.
EMA was Legacy's best gift to get new players in a long time and the secondary market has completely jacked that up and neutered the effect the set was supposed to have.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Print EMA type sets with larger print runs and lower prices. This would go a long way towards fixing the problem.
Not to crash value levels, but to help more levels.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Currently Playing: Standard:
Nothing, the format Bores me! Legacy: RBurn (Made on the Cheap!)R RGBelcherRG WSoldier StompyW BReanimatorB EDH: BUGRWSliver OverlordWRGUB BGeth, Lord of the VaultB
And I'm sure that this is a strong possibility in the future, I can see an EMA2 next year. And we might be able to fix the problem of all the non-RL cards. But at some point you're gonna wind up with $5 Force of Wills and $500 Underground Seas and Legacy is STILL gonna cost $2k to get into, if only because $1900 worth of it is wrapped up in 6 RL cards in the decklist. Either that or vendors stop marking up their prices, whicdh is not going to happen when faced with increased demand and limited supply.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
And I'm sure that this is a strong possibility in the future, I can see an EMA2 next year. And we might be able to fix the problem of all the non-RL cards. But at some point you're gonna wind up with $5 Force of Wills and $500 Underground Seas and Legacy is STILL gonna cost $2k to get into, if only because $1900 worth of it is wrapped up in 6 RL cards in the decklist. Either that or vendors stop marking up their prices, whicdh is not going to happen when faced with increased demand and limited supply.
I do agree with this, but it is better to lower prices where you can. I think if you balance well you can get chase cards like FoW and Wasteland to the $20 range. It's a balancing act for sure, but I think it can be done.
If you lower prices and increase production, you also won't have near the rage about card quality. This set with a $5-7 price tag per pack would have gone over much better.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Currently Playing: Standard:
Nothing, the format Bores me! Legacy: RBurn (Made on the Cheap!)R RGBelcherRG WSoldier StompyW BReanimatorB EDH: BUGRWSliver OverlordWRGUB BGeth, Lord of the VaultB
It's not an issue of getting Forces and the like to the $20 or even $50 range, it's getting the RL cards out of the $300+ range. People were ok with Forces being $75. Sure, that was a bit on the expensive side for many, but Force at $75 wasn't the barrier, it's the RL cards pushing $200-$300. You can make the non RL stuff as cheap as you want, and sure, it helps, but if it causes all your other RL cardboard to go up even more, you're not really accomplishing anything. There's no viable substitute for true duals, Tabernacle, Candelabra, or LED. There just isn't. And you can have $20 Forces all day long but at the end of the day, there's gonna be some stuff that players just have to pony up for. The issue is those cards, needing 4x FoW was never a major obstacle. It was a hurdle, sure, but not an insurmountable one, a playset of these things in played condition though, could be had for less than a copy of a single Volcanic Island. Lowering the prices of some non-RL cards helps, yeah, but it doesn't solve the problem of the cards you can't lower the price for, especially when those prices keep increasing whenever something else decreases to try an make na extra buck off of "perceived newfound interest" in the format.
EG: It does no good to drop the price of FOW through reprints to $50, when this also causes Usea or Volcanic, or whatever to go up an extra $130.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Reprints aren't the solution to lower prices. In a $2000 deck, if $1000 is in Reserved List cards and $1000 in non reserved list ones, and you keep reprinting the last ones, caeteris paribus, prices will tend towards $2000 and $0 respectively. The only thing that changes is the percentage of money in the deck that is in Reserved List cards.
The solution to lower Legacy prices is making Reserved List cards less needed. There are two ways to do that:
1. Make them less needed in the decks where they are already played. Print new cards that are good Reserved list cards substitutes, or that in some way allow you to play less copies per deck (for example, if you play fetchlands, you play less dual lands).
2. Make new decks with 0 Reserved List cards viable. If I'm not wrong, Death and Taxes and Merfolk don't use any Reserved List card. Wizards could keep printing new cards that make decks with 0 Reserved List cards competitive enough.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
It also shows up in a lot of ANT sideboards
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=11439737#post11439737
Reality is only what man allows it to be. Few shape it so that many may accept it.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
its best to look at reprints of ALL non reverved list cards a possibility. So if you need them hang on to them if not then sell them whenever you choose. I know counterbalance will be reprinted its not a question of if but when, just like any high value non-reserve list tourney\casual\edh staple. I think we might end up seeing Eternal Masters and Modern Masters in alternating years. Of Course it depends on how Eternal Masters fares, but so far so good from what I hear.
My LGS seems to think the print run is closer to MM15 than MM13 but I can't say for sure only time will tell.
I disagree with this, I've recently sold my goblin guides, and have realized something and bought them back at a loss. WotC's actions have proven to me that they are not willing to actually make big impacts on staples pricing. Its nice that they are willing to reprint some of these cards, but printing them at Mythic, in limited sets won't actually do anything to their availability. Even at rare pricing won't fluctuate very far. So if you have cards that you aren't playing but Might play in the future you should probably keep them, since WotC will continue to play these reprint games, and the cards you sold is more likely to raise in price due to deman, then it would to drop in price due to reprints.
RIP Karn EDH
Here is the thing Wizards tries to create these "masters" sets with draft in mind so that being said they have to decide each archtype for the colors to follow and that sometimes means cutting a card that needs reprinting, which there are many, so the draft is a "fun" experience. Wizards as far as I can tell doesn't like to do reprint everything all at once so they can spread out the "masters" sets for years to entice sales with "fresh" reprints of cards that they didn't include in previous sets. though First and foremost they build with draft being the primary focus which I think is a mistake as a personal opinion. Cards like Damnation and Goblin Guide are almost guaranteed to be in the next Modern Masters set next year simply because they can't ignore those cards along with Snapcaster Mage. I would assume with the current prices of Bob and Clique stable they won't be in the next MM set. It definitely feels that way though I do agree with you. the process of reprinting stuff seems to boil down to designing draft and to make sure future reprint sets are interesting and different enough for people to buy into again.
Edit: also wizards can't predict tournament prevalence of particular cards considering they design these sets at least a year or two in advance. So what may need reprinting at the time of designing may fall out of favor for a different card that wasn't on the radar when the set comes out. But I agree they need more aggressive reprinting otherwise modern will be just like legacy in the long term.
RIP Karn EDH
Liliana will never be below $100, Goyf will never be below $100, and let's not even talk about duals.
I would be content if they could at least print the ******* pauper staples that haven't had a Modern border print at least, I need a better way to easy people into formats other than standard and playing with near crumbling-to-dust Cuombajj Witches isn't a nice experience no matter how good the deck is.
I'm going to post this again:
https://youtu.be/3gtqv5vYANI
Richard Garfield on the cost of Magic. He wanted the cards to be collectible "like stamps". To be fair, he talks about price points for cards in the 20 to 50 dollar range. Not 100 - 1000 like we have for so many cards. That being said, secondary market value is a PART OF THE GAME. Easy access? The game could hardly be easier to get into than it is now. Especially since they are planning on a new product and promotion for new players where decks are given away at stores.
Complaining about this seems ridiculous in the face of what was intended here by the very words of the game's creator.
My Kamigawa cube.
My Mirage Cube
Afraid of losing a buck on your "investments"?
What they give away is a hook for standard and it's not very good since the people who get 30 card decks and a booster sit in front of a "money = skill" grognard and get blown off.
Pauper is a nice way to teach new players and players tired of wasting their money on standard that there is another way to play magic and that you can have a very high power deck that costs what a couple of standard rotations would, but that you can keep forever. But we need some of the oldest cards to be reprinted ASAP if we want to be able to build more decks, ******* Oubliette is impossible to find at a fair price and not having it is not playing the deck at it's best which defeats the point of fair competition.
The commander precons also used to help here but went way down in singles quality last year, hope they vindicate themselves this year.
As for paying a *****load being part of the "game", be real, you have to be a failed human beign who puts a lot of his self esteem on showing off what they can afford to feel any accomplishment from paying those prices. I play all formats, my favourites are vintage and legacy, I constantly meet and befriend other eternal players because we are so hard to find you can't afford to not get along. None of us would give away our cards for free, but most of us wouldn't give a ***** if the prices were cut to less than half by reprints or WotC released gold bordered versions of our decks for a pittance, just so we had more people to actually play these thousand dollar paperweights with. A lot of us are even drafting all the EMA we can find despite having playsets of FoW, Wasteland and Karakas, just so these cards won't end in some *****head "investor"s closet instead.
Between this and all the name-calling, I must admit, you lay out a compelling case..
Fully-powered 600-Card "Dream Cube" https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/dreamcube
450-Card "Artificer's Cube" https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/artificer
Cubing in Indianapolis...send me a PM!!
^100% This.
Sure it'd be sad to have my $250+ Underground Seas tank down to $50. You know what's sadder? To have no one to play with, regardless of how much I paid to get into the format. Sometimes makes me wonder why I bothered buying into the format in the first place.
Luckily it's summer and there's several shops nearby. But still...
If you make Legacy as accessible as standard or modern, no one will play those formats anymore. Really imagine who would really spend their money on Standard when Legacy costs the same, but the cards are more powerful, and there's no rotation. Modern feels even more like a Legacy wanna-be rather than its own unique format. And in order to get people to buy new cards, you need to print cards comparable in power level to the cards played in your brand new most popular format Legacy. If you make Legacy as accessible as standard, why play standard? If no one plays standard, why print new cards?
I guess you could come along and say "well, let's just make it a little more affordable." If that's your argument, why bother? Most people still won't be satisfied with the prices since they won't be altered much, and you'll really have just devalued a lot of people's cards slightly with no real benefit. Or even if it goes like you want- more players taking an interest in building and playing Legacy- a slight price reduction would be cancelled by the increased demand you're seeking.
So the only real solution is to reprint what you can where you can, which is exactly what WoTC is doing with EMA. Dual lands are stuck at the pricetag they're at because people are willing to pay those prices. Somewhere, someone, has waaaaay more disposable income than you do. It sucks, smaller communities may not be able to get enough people who can afford to build and are thus stuck with proxying or not playing, but there's enough demand somewhere to make these the pricetags.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Ten years ago a tier one Legacy deck would typically run $400-$600. A standard deck would be more like $150-250. Dates and prices are approximate and from memory, but I think it's true that a Legacy was roughly two or three times the cost of Standard deck, and prices were lower across the board.
Many of think this was a much healthier state for the community. Standard was still significantly cheaper than Legacy (especially after a few drafts), so there was plenty of incentive to just play Standard (also Legacy is not for everyone).
I think this is the sort of price point people would like to see Legacy returned to. Sadly WotC have missed their chance to do this in a clean manner. WotC should have abolished (or softened) the RL back when duals, Wasteland, FoW, etc were $15 cards. Heck, the didn't even need to touch the RL because they still had a loophole. Dual Landds, LEDs, Cradles, etc would have made nice player reward cards or Super Serries promos. Candelabra, Moat, Chains, etc as Judge foils. They didn't do this when they should have, and now they've closed the loophole plus allowed prices to combo to the point where reprints are volatile for the health of the secondary market.
I get that WotC is a business - committed to making money not to supporting Legacy players. It's a shame when capitalism interferes with art and culture. Nonetheless, it's not that outrageous for people to wish the game was as affordable now as it was a decade ago. Reducing that position to wanting to "make Legacy as accessible as Standard" is just plain incorrect.
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com/
RUGLegacy Lands.dec
RUGBLegacy Lands.dec
RGLegacy Lands.dec
WUBRG EDH Lands.dec
UBR EDH Artificer Prodigy
B EDH Relentless Rats
Yeah, deck prices and the relationship to the number of potential opponents in a format is not a black-and-white, on-and-off proposition. The cheaper decks in a format are, the larger the pool of potential opponents can be. If Legacy costs half as much as it did, then I think you will expect to see somewhat of an increase in the number of people who can and do play it. It might not be as simple as "Half the price = Twice the players," but it's certainly not true that you have to make the prices worthless to get ANY increase.
Eternal players just want to see the prices go down so the players go up. That seems very reasonable to me.
No seriously.
If you want to see Legacy go back to those price points, you'll also need to see standard go back to those price points. $400 seems to be about the going rate for a T1 Standard deck, right now. It used to be more, remember how much Caw-Blade cost to build? One of the main reasons you're seeing a huge drive in prices is that you're seeing a large rise in playerbase. WOTC has done a very good job at making standard more affordable and more accessible these days, and I'd like to think the days of $1000 standard decks are behind us. But droves of new players eventually also want to play other formats, and Legacy used to be the go-to for players looking for a new format; it wasn't THAT much more expensive than modern, the cards were more powerful, and most of the cards were safe investments protected by the reserve list and free from the frequent and erratic banhammer of Modern. SCG anticipated this and moved their buylist prices to snatch up Legacy staples and we saw the first dramatic rise of Legacy cards in a long time. This helped Modern grow as a format, which needed the help honestly. When it first started, it wasn't terribly popular, at least not in my area. But because it was more accessible, and many players already had the cards, a lot of people got into the "well, might as well build a modern deck, I'm already 75% there anyway and Legacy is hilariously expensive now."
Magic is bigger now more than ever, it has an enormous playerbase that the game has never seen before. Included in that playerbase are several individuals that have deep enough pockets that there is demand created even at the price points vendors are asking.
But no, I agree, there's not a direct correlation between 1/2 price=double players. And I agree, I would like to see prices go down. But how does anyone propose we get prices down without tanking the market as a whole, but still having enough impact to draw in new players? EMA is the best possible solution to this, and the secondary market is being predatory in the way they handled all the related reserve list cards. If vendors had not jacked the prices up alongside the EMA release, EMA might have done exactly what you and I both want and that's getting more people hooked on this format to the point that they're willing to save their pennies to build a deck over the course of a year. Sadly, predatory practices mean that instead of your USeas at $200, and you might have been willing to pursue them, at $350 it's just....no for too many people.
I'm sorry, I just don't see any way to go back in time at this point.
If we do reduce the position to "make it as accessible as standard" we break everything.
If we reduce it to "just more affordable, but still more expensive than standard" we might succeed in getting some new players, which will increase demand which will drive prices for reserve list cards back up even if we did figure out a way to make them drop.
If we choose any lesser option than that (well, we just want to see a slight dip in the cards) then why bother?
But......
if we print a bunch of non-reserve staples in a set like Modern Masters, we can make all the OTHER cards more affordable to make it easier for people to swallow the pricetag of the RL cards they need......this is a good plan right up until the secondary market raises the prices of said cards in anticipation of people wanting to do exactly that.
EMA was Legacy's best gift to get new players in a long time and the secondary market has completely jacked that up and neutered the effect the set was supposed to have.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Not to crash value levels, but to help more levels.
Currently Playing:
Standard:
Nothing, the format Bores me!
Legacy:
RBurn (Made on the Cheap!)R
RGBelcherRG
WSoldier StompyW
BReanimatorB
EDH:
BUGRWSliver OverlordWRGUB
BGeth, Lord of the VaultB
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
I do agree with this, but it is better to lower prices where you can. I think if you balance well you can get chase cards like FoW and Wasteland to the $20 range. It's a balancing act for sure, but I think it can be done.
If you lower prices and increase production, you also won't have near the rage about card quality. This set with a $5-7 price tag per pack would have gone over much better.
Currently Playing:
Standard:
Nothing, the format Bores me!
Legacy:
RBurn (Made on the Cheap!)R
RGBelcherRG
WSoldier StompyW
BReanimatorB
EDH:
BUGRWSliver OverlordWRGUB
BGeth, Lord of the VaultB
EG: It does no good to drop the price of FOW through reprints to $50, when this also causes Usea or Volcanic, or whatever to go up an extra $130.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
The solution to lower Legacy prices is making Reserved List cards less needed. There are two ways to do that:
1. Make them less needed in the decks where they are already played. Print new cards that are good Reserved list cards substitutes, or that in some way allow you to play less copies per deck (for example, if you play fetchlands, you play less dual lands).
2. Make new decks with 0 Reserved List cards viable. If I'm not wrong, Death and Taxes and Merfolk don't use any Reserved List card. Wizards could keep printing new cards that make decks with 0 Reserved List cards competitive enough.