I'm not sure if this belongs here or Market Street, so mods feel free to move it. I would like to make a thread to discuss recent reprints of Modern staples. I am just curious if people think this is the right direction, seeing as how the products specifically designed for Modern are what I think backfired.
Hits
-Standard reprints: shocklands, fetchlands, Chord of Calling, Thoughtseize, Mutavault, Urborg
-The occasional Duel Deck reprints: Remand, Life from the Loam, Path to Exile, Ajani Vengant
These are hits because they greatly increased supply and reduced prices, and that's all we can ask for from reprints.
I realize that this may be debatable. I refer to the "Modern Masters 2" thread in Rumor Mill for the long pages of discussion on the Modern Masters product. For this thread I will just focus on the Modern Event Deck for the miss section. This product was designed to get newer players into Modern, and it did not succeed. You can still find a lot of this product online despite having a very limited in supply. The product was a good idea in theory but the execution was way off. Why include City of Brass in a BW deck? Wouldn't Godless Shrine make more sense? Also, why not include a full playset of Path to Exile and Inquisition of Kozilek? If Wizards really wanted to go cheap, why not make a Burn or Affinity or Infect shell instead? It would have been a lot better than a shell of BW Tokens. Even a full-fledged version of this deck is Tier 2 at best (no offense to any BW Tokens players). And for a $75, an Affinity shell such as the one below would've been a much better product than the BW Tokens one. This would be a decent start for a new player.
When it comes to the Modern Event deck, I'd suggest WotC look at these ideas:
Consistency - all Modern event decks should use the regular 4 offs that are typically used, it's okay in Standard to do tons of singletons and make a relatively inconsistent brew, it's not really okay in Modern, if a competitive version of the deck would have 4 of a certain card in it, the event deck version should have 4 of that card, if it has that card at all. Playsets are very important. The other aspect of consistency is lands, Modern can't handle poorer land bases as well as Standard, lands in the deck should make sense and be relevant, and ones that aren't utility lands or something special like that should usually have a good way to come in untapped relevant to the deck type and other cards in the deck. It doesn't have to full playsets of fetches and shocks (although I'd prefer such in the appropriate cases), but it could be things like painlands, fastlands, checklands, and filterlands. Unless the deck has at least 3 colors, don't put in stuff like City of Brass or Mana Confluence. Avoid clearly Modern unplayable lands like the new lifegain common duals from KTK. Modern is a far more aggressive and fast paced format than Standard, it can't afford poor consistency. And you shouldn't introduce new players to a difficult format with bad deck design utilizing non-playsets of things that should be playsets.
Budget mode- Price it like regular event decks, at about $25, it costs the same to print anyway, or maybe $30 if they really want it to be slightly more expensive, due to perhaps higher average card quality. Make sure to print enough to meet demand at these low prices unless the deck involved is already a budget deck of similar price (like maybe some versions of burn or infect).
For anything over $30, the deck has to be solidly Tier 2 on it's own, out of box, not a nerfed Tier 2 deck that is closer to a bad fringe budget brew or theoretical 'Tier 3'. It needs to be something with likely solid performance by UNSKILLED players if it doesn't have a ton of cards they'd think are super cool, even at a relatively competitive LSG Modern event that includes about half Tier 2 and Half Tier 1 and maybe 1 or 2 lesser brews.
Numbers of rares/mythics in the deck should be proportionate to the price. Regular event decks have about 10 rares and are about $25.
I'd do it something like this:
Budget mode $25
10 rares, maybe a mythic or two
Budget mode $30
10 rares, at least one mythic, maybe as part of the rares, maybe as slightly beyond that, as part of total rares+mythics 11-14 or so.
Reasonable Mode $50
20 rares/mythics, at least two cards should be mtyhics here, but I'd suggest 4 as the standard, that way in certain decks it could be a playset of a certain card if you keep the number of mythics the same. This kind of deck should never be less than Tier 2, and well designed, if potentially somewhat budget mode. This version should include sleeves of at least half-decent quality. Must include appropriate emblems and overlays and tokens and such, although not necessarily enough sleeves for them. Should be relatively easy to play for a beginner to Modern, but familiar with LSG FNM Standard stuff.
Moolah Mode $75
About 30 rares/mythics, lands in particular must be good stuff, even if they are expensive normally (and these should be printed sufficiently to drive the price down of those lands and keep speculators from buying up all the event decks if there is noticeably more value to the deck than the individual cards at time of print). More or less rares/mythics is fine if it a competitive version of the deck that has seen recent top 8 modern tournament results is used. Must be either a NON-BUDGET fully competitive Tier 2 deck with at least one relatively recent top 8 tournament result, or a mildly budget Tier 1 deck (so long as the full version of the deck is over $100, if the full version of the tier 1 deck is under $100, this should be the full version). This version should have high quality sleeves that will last and truly protect cards and shuffle well, with unique backs specific for this event deck. Consider having new art on one or more of the cards in the deck, especially any that previously had ugly art or art that didn't actually fit the card well, or art that doesn't fit this specific deck theme well. Consider having new art for any basic lands in the deck, including potentially them being full art lands like the Zendikar ones. Consider having dice or beads to represent any counters. Must include appropriate tokens and emblems and overlays and such, and enough sleeves for them too. Should actually contain some extra sleeves to replace damaged or accidentally marked ones. Can be somewhat harder to play, although easier favored.
At the $50 and even more importantly the $75 price points, there must be a large enough print run that players can get their hands on it easily at MSRB, rather than at jacked up prices online or at LSGs that do so due to speculation from the value of the cards in the deck. Do this even or especially if it drives down some card prices. The $25-30 ones may need similar print runs less often if they contain enough value to cause similar effects, but the more budget deck design for these should make it unlikely for this to happen.
Some decks I'd strongly consider printing Modern event decks based upon include:
Burn
Tron (some version of it, maybe one of the cheaper ones?)
Affinity
Infect
Delver (some version of it)
Bloom Titan
GW Hatebears
Merfolk
UR Storm
GW Auras (Boggles)
One of those weird multicolor decks like 5 color human hatebears that runs Cavern of Souls, Pillar of Paruns, Reflecting Pool, and Ancient Ziggurat, so long as you include 4 of each of those except maybe Reflecting Pool.
Some kind of reanimator or other graveyard focused deck
Are the standard event decks that powerful? If not, why should the modern ones be? I mean, I would love to go buy boggles.dek in a nice new box with sleeves and everything, but is that really a viable choice? If we include all the proper cards for tier 1/2 then I truely believe that my flgs would Jack up the price immensely. Also, with just enough cards to draw you in, hopefully it causes people to buy singles, there for supporting the lgs.
If it isn't as good as I noted, it can't justify being more than the Standard event decks in $.
Newbie players don't care as much about the value of the cards in the deck, they care about how much it wins, but they also won't spend money on a deck easily, especially if it compares poorly in number of rares. It is already hard to get them to buy Standard event decks, because those decks tend to be bad, and not have enough more rares than a intro deck.
If your LGS is jacking up the prices, WotC is underprinting. Price is a supply vs. demand issue. WotC needs to print enough of things, and make it clear they are doing so, that people will be able to buy it for roughly MSRP even on the secondary market, while it is still out, rather than all MSRP copies being snatched up and resold for more.
A newbie player won't pay $50+ on a deck that won't get results, especially if they are expected to spend another $100 or more on singles to bring it up to par, and a half-experienced friend will be able to help them put together a budget burn or infect deck for about $30 that will put up better results.
$50 spent on a modern event deck should really only give you a little more than equivalent value in cards compared with what you would spend on it if you just decided to build it yourself. Maybe in the neighborhood of $60-70 in value.
It does not have to be like this,. They can WOW us with excellent event decks.
God sometimes I think we are all like that one friend with the rabid pit bull that terrorises his entirely family and says no its fine I love my dog. While having a heart attack every time a dog barks. We have been so condition with poor product that this is just silly,.
At least konami gives there fandom all the cards they want,.
Konami is so much better at reprinting stuff than WotC it's not even close, in yugioh you can buy 3 of the pre-constructed deck and have something close a tier 1.5 deck for the investment of 45$. Or you can straight up buy a super viable deck for 200, the tier 0 deck are no more than 400$ most of the time, and if you speculate on them you get punished because they will reprint/ban the most expensive/powerful cards of the deck in 1 year time. I don't really like how Konami handles the game itself, but the availability of the cards is that much better than magic that you cant really talk about it
So i would do something similar for modern and have 50$ event decks with all of the really expensive cards as a 1of, so by buying 4 of them you would have a complete deck.
Yu-Gi-Oh also has an extremely volatile and unreliable secondary market because of this. Most stores I know are extremely reluctant to stock singles for Yu-Gi-Oh, because today's $40 card is a common in the next set or banned.
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Only thing I'd like WotC to do more like YuGiOh that I can think of is the Duels of the Planeswalkers games. The YuGiOh gameboy and DS games I've played were all way better than those, as far as I can recall. Plus I'd love having a MtG game on my 3DS!
Honestly, I don't think they need to go quite as far as Yu-Gi-Oh when it comes to reprints, but they could go noticeably farther than they do now, especially for key cards that fit well into multiple decks or define entire archetypes and need 4-ofs for those archetypes. They seem to have gotten the picture of what they need to do for lands, given that we just got shocklands reprints, the rest of the fetchlands added making it looking like we'll get the zendifetches reprinted in Dragons of Tarkir (if they don't then that will indicate they don't know what they are doing reprint wise IMO). But we need more than just lands and what the occasional conservative Standard reprint can offer us, and limited printings of Modern Masters or poorly conceived or overpriced Modern event decks just won't cut it.
I think it's important to point out that the problem with event decks applies for the standard decks too. Most of them aren't even close to playable out of the box at FNM level. I bought the KTK event deck to play at a FNM where I didn't have a deck for reasons, and while I just wanted to play some games and didn't have high expectations for its performance, it was still disappointing to go 0-4. I never really felt that I stood a chance in any of the matches. The product didn't even come close to doing what it's supposed to do. It wouldn't hurt so bad if the combined value of the cards in the set wasn't abysmal as well. That's the worst money I ever spent on this game.
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Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Anyone who thinks Modern Masters was a miss, doesnt understand the product. Modern Masters did exactly what it was suppose to do.
As for the talk about event decks, people are wanting $300-$500 of cards for $75. They dont want an out of the box deck that can compete. They want a deck that a player can tweek to their likeness. The tokens deck was not that bad and gave someone thinking that deck a great start to a semi competitive deck.
People already complain about things being sold for over MSRP. What does everyone think would happen if Wotc put out event decks that were competitive out of the box, was worth hundreds of dollars and MSRP was $75-$100? People would hoard them and they would rarely be sold for MSRP.
I think there's a middle ground between "competitive out of the box" + "worth hundreds of dollars" and completely not competitive + questionable if the value even hits MSRP. I took a look at the deck both with an eye towards value and an eye towards giving it as a gift and it didn't pass muster for either use.
I think the idea of a modern event deck is still valid, but the execution on that first attempt was pretty bad.
If they print the event decks in enough numbers then the price should be reasonable irregardless of how much awesomeness is in it.
That all depends on if Wotc really wants to lower the prices of the cards they are using for Modern products. If they approach the event decks the same way they approached Modern Masters, I doubt they want to tank prices.
I received the Modern Event deck for Christmas, and I'd have to agree that it's a completely miss. I'd not sure how they got $75 for a pile of cards that aren't worth a whole lot. You make out ahead, sure, but you still need to go out and finish playsets, get good cards for the sideboard, and play with something other than Ultrapro sleeves. It's an okay start, but I'm a pretty experienced player that wants to try a new format. $75 is a lot for the player not sure what they want to play, and the deck doesn't seem that great out of the box, as is. I hate how much WotC was focusing on the secondary market with this deck, because it really hurt it's playability.
Modern Masters seems like another miss. Limited run set full of a ton of stuff that isn't seeing play, and it costs you $30 to draft it. I can't think of any reason to not print this at a reasonable price, or increase the print run so we don't have reprinted cards going up in price because of it's release. I'm really hoping MM2015 gets around that, and actually has a pretty big run for the amount of people playing the format. We can talk about how $200 Goyf's are bad, but $80 Bob, $60 Cliques, $50 Fetches... None of these things are going to help grow the format.
Market makes the price, if the goyfs are 200$ bills it's because someone still buy them at that price. Blame the player base not the wotc.
- L
Actually it is at least partly WotC's fault, you see, prices tend to be dictated by something called supply and demand. With a larger supply, it will outstrip current demand, and prices will usually go down because stores realize they can move more product by lowering their prices and attracting more customers. With something like Goyf and the current supply, lowering their prices is a bad idea because the demand far outstrips the supply, so they raise prices so they don't run out and can get the maximum out of customers for their limited supply, just as long as they have a decent chance of selling at all. The players do set a _max_ price that they'll pay for a certain card, and I'd say $200 is pretty crazy there for a piece of cardboard, but the price _will_ go down if WotC prints enough that stores feel safe selling more that they won't run out of supply.
To that end, limited print runs tend to be terrible for managing prices, which makes things like Modern Masters, with it's limited print runs, bad for controlling prices of highly in-demand cards like Goyf, especially printed as mythic rares, and if Modern Masters increases demand by increasing popularity of Modern, more than it's limited supply increases the supply.
What type of players pay 200 dollars for a card? Just because SCG has decided that should be the price does not make it so that thousands of people cannot wait to be ripped off.
All that this ridiculous reprint policy ensures is that the people who dont buy any product (Collectors) are happy and the shops like SCG can dictate the price of whole slews of cards. Yugioh with all its problems have still sold over a billion cards and you can bet there awesome reprint policy has much to do with it.
Konami is so much better at reprinting stuff than WotC it's not even close, in yugioh you can buy 3 of the pre-constructed deck and have something close a tier 1.5 deck for the investment of 45$. Or you can straight up buy a super viable deck for 200, the tier 0 deck are no more than 400$ most of the time, and if you speculate on them you get punished because they will reprint/ban the most expensive/powerful cards of the deck in 1 year time. I don't really like how Konami handles the game itself, but the availability of the cards is that much better than magic that you cant really talk about it
So i would do something similar for modern and have 50$ event decks with all of the really expensive cards as a 1of, so by buying 4 of them you would have a complete deck.
Yu-Gi-Oh also has an extremely volatile and unreliable secondary market because of this. Most stores I know are extremely reluctant to stock singles for Yu-Gi-Oh, because today's $40 card is a common in the next set or banned.
I will respectably disagree with this 1st Edition version of sought after cards are all expensive an highly sought after even if there are many less expensive printings in existence. Your honest ghost rare is and always will be a 35$ card even if there is 50 cent common versions of the cards.
Market makes the price, if the goyfs are 200$ bills it's because someone still buy them at that price. Blame the player base not the wotc.
- L
Actually it is at least partly WotC's fault, you see, prices tend to be dictated by something called supply and demand. With a larger supply, it will outstrip current demand, and prices will usually go down because stores realize they can move more product by lowering their prices and attracting more customers. With something like Goyf and the current supply, lowering their prices is a bad idea because the demand far outstrips the supply, so they raise prices so they don't run out and can get the maximum out of customers for their limited supply, just as long as they have a decent chance of selling at all. The players do set a _max_ price that they'll pay for a certain card, and I'd say $200 is pretty crazy there for a piece of cardboard, but the price _will_ go down if WotC prints enough that stores feel safe selling more that they won't run out of supply.
To that end, limited print runs tend to be terrible for managing prices, which makes things like Modern Masters, with it's limited print runs, bad for controlling prices of highly in-demand cards like Goyf, especially printed as mythic rares, and if Modern Masters increases demand by increasing popularity of Modern, more than it's limited supply increases the supply.
Well the goyf problem it's a problem that could be solved only with power creep unfortunately.
There is no way that a tarmogoyf power level creature would be printed in standard right now and supplementary products don't solve the problem even with rare rarity (see Cryptic Command).
Well the goyf problem it's a problem that could be solved only with power creep unfortunately.
There is no way that a tarmogoyf power level creature would be printed in standard right now and supplementary products don't solve the problem even with rare rarity (see Cryptic Command).
I disagree that supplementary products can't solve this problem. The great thing about Modern is that it's an Eternal format not bound by the Reserve List. If wizards wanted to, they could make a boxset with 15 cards in it, charge $50, and get them into Walmarts across North America. Put Goyf, Bob, Lilliana, the enemy fetches, whatever. WotC is going to make money regardless of what the ink on the cardstock says, and players get an easy way into the format.
The biggest problem with Legacy and Modern is card availability, but Wizards can easily fix that for one format. I think that they should.
Well the goyf problem it's a problem that could be solved only with power creep unfortunately.
There is no way that a tarmogoyf power level creature would be printed in standard right now and supplementary products don't solve the problem even with rare rarity (see Cryptic Command).
I disagree that supplementary products can't solve this problem. The great thing about Modern is that it's an Eternal format not bound by the Reserve List. If wizards wanted to, they could make a boxset with 15 cards in it, charge $50, and get them into Walmarts across North America. Put Goyf, Bob, Lilliana, the enemy fetches, whatever. WotC is going to make money regardless of what the ink on the cardstock says, and players get an easy way into the format.
The biggest problem with Legacy and Modern is card availability, but Wizards can easily fix that for one format. I think that they should.
Well, no. The reason people are willing to spend so much money on these cards is because they expect the cards to always be worth something in that range. If they were to do something like that, thousands of players would freak out and leave the game. The best bet for lowering prices (while not tanking them in one action) is consistent reprints through products like Modern Masters, and cycling staples through standard (aka, what they are doing). Now Modern Masters could get a bigger print run, and $10 MSRP seems excessive, but overall I am very happy with Wizard's current direction, I just hope the success of Modern Masters gives Wizards a big enough financial incentive to print Legacy Masters #ReservedListHasGotToGo
Market makes the price, if the goyfs are 200$ bills it's because someone still buy them at that price. Blame the player base not the wotc.
- L
Actually it is at least partly WotC's fault, you see, prices tend to be dictated by something called supply and demand. With a larger supply, it will outstrip current demand, and prices will usually go down because stores realize they can move more product by lowering their prices and attracting more customers. With something like Goyf and the current supply, lowering their prices is a bad idea because the demand far outstrips the supply, so they raise prices so they don't run out and can get the maximum out of customers for their limited supply, just as long as they have a decent chance of selling at all. The players do set a _max_ price that they'll pay for a certain card, and I'd say $200 is pretty crazy there for a piece of cardboard, but the price _will_ go down if WotC prints enough that stores feel safe selling more that they won't run out of supply.
To that end, limited print runs tend to be terrible for managing prices, which makes things like Modern Masters, with it's limited print runs, bad for controlling prices of highly in-demand cards like Goyf, especially printed as mythic rares, and if Modern Masters increases demand by increasing popularity of Modern, more than it's limited supply increases the supply.
Well the goyf problem it's a problem that could be solved only with power creep unfortunately.
There is no way that a tarmogoyf power level creature would be printed in standard right now and supplementary products don't solve the problem even with rare rarity (see Cryptic Command).
I'm sure that if they printed MM as an yearly on demand thing the price would crash really hard. Which is the thing that they need to do, if they are willing to destroy player wallets for the protour at least more people should be able to play with the cards.
I also think that MM should be a 360 card set with: 25 Mythics - 75 Rares - 100 Uncommons - 160 Commons
So you want even a less of a chance to rip the cards everyone wants. There is a reason sets are the size they are. They tried bigger sets in the past and they sold terribly. Even though some of those sets are looked at as some of the best sets Wotc ever made.
So you want even a less of a chance to rip the cards everyone wants. There is a reason sets are the size they are. They tried bigger sets in the past and they sold terribly. Even though some of those sets are looked at as some of the best sets Wotc ever made.
That's kind of the point tough, i would like if all of the rares and mythics were modern playable and kind of expensive, like 10+ dollar so every pack will get you money back at launch, and also this would allow wizards to not tank the prices immediately while still printing on demand, if the prices went down 80% in 4 years that would be fantastic, if the wend down 50% in 1 year that would atrocious.
You are only thinking about one side of the equation. Wotc and LGS need boxes to sell or be ripped open for them to make money. If the player base shies away (which they have done in the past to big sets) Wotc and the LGS dont make money and it hurts more then just Modern. Wotc has to make money and the lGS have to have a reason to get boxes for the price in any format to be effected.
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Hits
-Standard reprints: shocklands, fetchlands, Chord of Calling, Thoughtseize, Mutavault, Urborg
-The occasional Duel Deck reprints: Remand, Life from the Loam, Path to Exile, Ajani Vengant
These are hits because they greatly increased supply and reduced prices, and that's all we can ask for from reprints.
Misses
-Modern Event Deck
-Modern Masters
-Modern Masters 2015
I realize that this may be debatable. I refer to the "Modern Masters 2" thread in Rumor Mill for the long pages of discussion on the Modern Masters product. For this thread I will just focus on the Modern Event Deck for the miss section. This product was designed to get newer players into Modern, and it did not succeed. You can still find a lot of this product online despite having a very limited in supply. The product was a good idea in theory but the execution was way off. Why include City of Brass in a BW deck? Wouldn't Godless Shrine make more sense? Also, why not include a full playset of Path to Exile and Inquisition of Kozilek? If Wizards really wanted to go cheap, why not make a Burn or Affinity or Infect shell instead? It would have been a lot better than a shell of BW Tokens. Even a full-fledged version of this deck is Tier 2 at best (no offense to any BW Tokens players). And for a $75, an Affinity shell such as the one below would've been a much better product than the BW Tokens one. This would be a decent start for a new player.
4 Darksteel Citadel
6 Island
6 Mountain
creatures 24
4 Vault Skirge
4 Signal Pest
4 Memnite
4 Ornithopter
4 Steel Overseer
2 Etched Champion
2 Master of Etherium
4 Galvanic Blast
4 Ensoul Artifact
4 Thoughtcast
4 Cranial Plating
4 Springleaf Drum
Consistency - all Modern event decks should use the regular 4 offs that are typically used, it's okay in Standard to do tons of singletons and make a relatively inconsistent brew, it's not really okay in Modern, if a competitive version of the deck would have 4 of a certain card in it, the event deck version should have 4 of that card, if it has that card at all. Playsets are very important. The other aspect of consistency is lands, Modern can't handle poorer land bases as well as Standard, lands in the deck should make sense and be relevant, and ones that aren't utility lands or something special like that should usually have a good way to come in untapped relevant to the deck type and other cards in the deck. It doesn't have to full playsets of fetches and shocks (although I'd prefer such in the appropriate cases), but it could be things like painlands, fastlands, checklands, and filterlands. Unless the deck has at least 3 colors, don't put in stuff like City of Brass or Mana Confluence. Avoid clearly Modern unplayable lands like the new lifegain common duals from KTK. Modern is a far more aggressive and fast paced format than Standard, it can't afford poor consistency. And you shouldn't introduce new players to a difficult format with bad deck design utilizing non-playsets of things that should be playsets.
Budget mode- Price it like regular event decks, at about $25, it costs the same to print anyway, or maybe $30 if they really want it to be slightly more expensive, due to perhaps higher average card quality. Make sure to print enough to meet demand at these low prices unless the deck involved is already a budget deck of similar price (like maybe some versions of burn or infect).
For anything over $30, the deck has to be solidly Tier 2 on it's own, out of box, not a nerfed Tier 2 deck that is closer to a bad fringe budget brew or theoretical 'Tier 3'. It needs to be something with likely solid performance by UNSKILLED players if it doesn't have a ton of cards they'd think are super cool, even at a relatively competitive LSG Modern event that includes about half Tier 2 and Half Tier 1 and maybe 1 or 2 lesser brews.
Numbers of rares/mythics in the deck should be proportionate to the price. Regular event decks have about 10 rares and are about $25.
I'd do it something like this:
Budget mode $25
10 rares, maybe a mythic or two
Budget mode $30
10 rares, at least one mythic, maybe as part of the rares, maybe as slightly beyond that, as part of total rares+mythics 11-14 or so.
Reasonable Mode $50
20 rares/mythics, at least two cards should be mtyhics here, but I'd suggest 4 as the standard, that way in certain decks it could be a playset of a certain card if you keep the number of mythics the same. This kind of deck should never be less than Tier 2, and well designed, if potentially somewhat budget mode. This version should include sleeves of at least half-decent quality. Must include appropriate emblems and overlays and tokens and such, although not necessarily enough sleeves for them. Should be relatively easy to play for a beginner to Modern, but familiar with LSG FNM Standard stuff.
Moolah Mode $75
About 30 rares/mythics, lands in particular must be good stuff, even if they are expensive normally (and these should be printed sufficiently to drive the price down of those lands and keep speculators from buying up all the event decks if there is noticeably more value to the deck than the individual cards at time of print). More or less rares/mythics is fine if it a competitive version of the deck that has seen recent top 8 modern tournament results is used. Must be either a NON-BUDGET fully competitive Tier 2 deck with at least one relatively recent top 8 tournament result, or a mildly budget Tier 1 deck (so long as the full version of the deck is over $100, if the full version of the tier 1 deck is under $100, this should be the full version). This version should have high quality sleeves that will last and truly protect cards and shuffle well, with unique backs specific for this event deck. Consider having new art on one or more of the cards in the deck, especially any that previously had ugly art or art that didn't actually fit the card well, or art that doesn't fit this specific deck theme well. Consider having new art for any basic lands in the deck, including potentially them being full art lands like the Zendikar ones. Consider having dice or beads to represent any counters. Must include appropriate tokens and emblems and overlays and such, and enough sleeves for them too. Should actually contain some extra sleeves to replace damaged or accidentally marked ones. Can be somewhat harder to play, although easier favored.
At the $50 and even more importantly the $75 price points, there must be a large enough print run that players can get their hands on it easily at MSRB, rather than at jacked up prices online or at LSGs that do so due to speculation from the value of the cards in the deck. Do this even or especially if it drives down some card prices. The $25-30 ones may need similar print runs less often if they contain enough value to cause similar effects, but the more budget deck design for these should make it unlikely for this to happen.
Some decks I'd strongly consider printing Modern event decks based upon include:
Burn
Tron (some version of it, maybe one of the cheaper ones?)
Affinity
Infect
Delver (some version of it)
Bloom Titan
GW Hatebears
Merfolk
UR Storm
GW Auras (Boggles)
One of those weird multicolor decks like 5 color human hatebears that runs Cavern of Souls, Pillar of Paruns, Reflecting Pool, and Ancient Ziggurat, so long as you include 4 of each of those except maybe Reflecting Pool.
Some kind of reanimator or other graveyard focused deck
Newbie players don't care as much about the value of the cards in the deck, they care about how much it wins, but they also won't spend money on a deck easily, especially if it compares poorly in number of rares. It is already hard to get them to buy Standard event decks, because those decks tend to be bad, and not have enough more rares than a intro deck.
If your LGS is jacking up the prices, WotC is underprinting. Price is a supply vs. demand issue. WotC needs to print enough of things, and make it clear they are doing so, that people will be able to buy it for roughly MSRP even on the secondary market, while it is still out, rather than all MSRP copies being snatched up and resold for more.
A newbie player won't pay $50+ on a deck that won't get results, especially if they are expected to spend another $100 or more on singles to bring it up to par, and a half-experienced friend will be able to help them put together a budget burn or infect deck for about $30 that will put up better results.
God sometimes I think we are all like that one friend with the rabid pit bull that terrorises his entirely family and says no its fine I love my dog. While having a heart attack every time a dog barks. We have been so condition with poor product that this is just silly,.
At least konami gives there fandom all the cards they want,.
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
Because obviously Modern is comparable to the trainwreck that is comp YuGiOh.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
Yu-Gi-Oh also has an extremely volatile and unreliable secondary market because of this. Most stores I know are extremely reluctant to stock singles for Yu-Gi-Oh, because today's $40 card is a common in the next set or banned.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
Honestly, I don't think they need to go quite as far as Yu-Gi-Oh when it comes to reprints, but they could go noticeably farther than they do now, especially for key cards that fit well into multiple decks or define entire archetypes and need 4-ofs for those archetypes. They seem to have gotten the picture of what they need to do for lands, given that we just got shocklands reprints, the rest of the fetchlands added making it looking like we'll get the zendifetches reprinted in Dragons of Tarkir (if they don't then that will indicate they don't know what they are doing reprint wise IMO). But we need more than just lands and what the occasional conservative Standard reprint can offer us, and limited printings of Modern Masters or poorly conceived or overpriced Modern event decks just won't cut it.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
As for the talk about event decks, people are wanting $300-$500 of cards for $75. They dont want an out of the box deck that can compete. They want a deck that a player can tweek to their likeness. The tokens deck was not that bad and gave someone thinking that deck a great start to a semi competitive deck.
People already complain about things being sold for over MSRP. What does everyone think would happen if Wotc put out event decks that were competitive out of the box, was worth hundreds of dollars and MSRP was $75-$100? People would hoard them and they would rarely be sold for MSRP.
I think the idea of a modern event deck is still valid, but the execution on that first attempt was pretty bad.
That all depends on if Wotc really wants to lower the prices of the cards they are using for Modern products. If they approach the event decks the same way they approached Modern Masters, I doubt they want to tank prices.
Modern Masters seems like another miss. Limited run set full of a ton of stuff that isn't seeing play, and it costs you $30 to draft it. I can't think of any reason to not print this at a reasonable price, or increase the print run so we don't have reprinted cards going up in price because of it's release. I'm really hoping MM2015 gets around that, and actually has a pretty big run for the amount of people playing the format. We can talk about how $200 Goyf's are bad, but $80 Bob, $60 Cliques, $50 Fetches... None of these things are going to help grow the format.
- L
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
To that end, limited print runs tend to be terrible for managing prices, which makes things like Modern Masters, with it's limited print runs, bad for controlling prices of highly in-demand cards like Goyf, especially printed as mythic rares, and if Modern Masters increases demand by increasing popularity of Modern, more than it's limited supply increases the supply.
All that this ridiculous reprint policy ensures is that the people who dont buy any product (Collectors) are happy and the shops like SCG can dictate the price of whole slews of cards. Yugioh with all its problems have still sold over a billion cards and you can bet there awesome reprint policy has much to do with it.
I will respectably disagree with this 1st Edition version of sought after cards are all expensive an highly sought after even if there are many less expensive printings in existence. Your honest ghost rare is and always will be a 35$ card even if there is 50 cent common versions of the cards.
Well the goyf problem it's a problem that could be solved only with power creep unfortunately.
There is no way that a tarmogoyf power level creature would be printed in standard right now and supplementary products don't solve the problem even with rare rarity (see Cryptic Command).
These players for example
- L
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
I disagree that supplementary products can't solve this problem. The great thing about Modern is that it's an Eternal format not bound by the Reserve List. If wizards wanted to, they could make a boxset with 15 cards in it, charge $50, and get them into Walmarts across North America. Put Goyf, Bob, Lilliana, the enemy fetches, whatever. WotC is going to make money regardless of what the ink on the cardstock says, and players get an easy way into the format.
The biggest problem with Legacy and Modern is card availability, but Wizards can easily fix that for one format. I think that they should.
So you want even a less of a chance to rip the cards everyone wants. There is a reason sets are the size they are. They tried bigger sets in the past and they sold terribly. Even though some of those sets are looked at as some of the best sets Wotc ever made.
You are only thinking about one side of the equation. Wotc and LGS need boxes to sell or be ripped open for them to make money. If the player base shies away (which they have done in the past to big sets) Wotc and the LGS dont make money and it hurts more then just Modern. Wotc has to make money and the lGS have to have a reason to get boxes for the price in any format to be effected.