Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro partially lied about their Paper Magic release schedule at Gen Con this year so they could sneak in a few IP crossovers like Marvel JUST to appease the Hasbro shareholders? At least they still have to be honest about the Reserve List.
To be fair, given 2025 is two years out and WotC works a little over two years out, it's possible they were still finalizing the date or even the contract for Marvel sets.
Play boosters are modeled after set boosters, the better selling ones, which they are replacing, designed to give the same approximate value, so they are priced the same. If these cost less than set boosters it would be a price decrease. Do you really think WotC was ever going to do that?
No, I didn't think they'd do that, so I don't know what you're asking that question. I just think they could have mitigated some of the blowback from bumping their prices up on a swath of their player base and reducing the amount of product they get at the same time by cutting the price down a bit, especially when they already bumped up prices within the last 18 months or so. Magic is making the most money it has ever had, times three, pretty sure they could take this small hit without pissing off players for no reason.
You don't think they'd do that, but are you still saying they should?
Could they take a hit on this? For sure. That would be nice. But that goes beyond the issue of different types of booster and whether this is a good change.
If they just wanted limited players to pay more, they could have just changed draft boosters to be more expensive in some way. The cost of limited is clearly a side effect, the business reasons for this change are pretty clear, with draft boosters not selling enough. Nothing particularly charitable about taking them at their word here, it's all laid out pretty plainly.
This is the same company that kept intro decks and theme boosters going for nearly half a decade, even though they weren't selling, so this "limited would have died unless we did this" is not something I fully believe.
Intro decks, at least, I'm sure were motivated a lot by the idea that they were necessary to get new players on board, and it took work for them to be convinced that they weren't needed. Theme boosters were replaced by the invention of jumpstart boosters and set boosters.
Could it have died eventually? Maybe, but they made it sound like it was in the next couple of years. I'm sure draft packs still sell FAR more than those useless things, or their newest iteration of the set Jumpstart packs.
The problem wasn't that limited was dying. They have fully said limited has only been going up, the problem was that draft packs weren't selling enough, and that was only being exacerbated when stores bought less as a result. Limited was never going to die, suffer issues maybe, be less profitable quite possibly. Some players were bound to stick to limited but they want limited to be a big format that helps drive sales, not just a format that exists.
Indeed, you could argue that they do want to charge more for limited because of course businesses always want more money,
It's not something you "could argue" that's always an argument that can be made and you should take every excuse they have with a Mount Fuji level of salt. There's no reason to believe this, just like their latest "UB art costs a lot, even though we made the choice to spend more to do it" as though we should be grateful of their filter level art of British actors or Evolving Wilds having vague art to 40k.
They always make excuses and you should never take them at face value.
That's all well and good but it's not as though businesses squeezing customers for money is some kind of sinister shadowy scheme, it's rather normal. They've not got much to hide. They already recently just flatly raised prices using inflation to justify it. If they just wanted to raise prices, they could do it. Would they admit that they just wanted more money just because they think they can? No, not really. But majorly changing the way their main products are put together and the way the sets behind them are designed just in order to raise the price of draft (while also giving players more rare $ cards), is a rather roundabout way to do it. Especially when, as I said, there's no guarantee this will make them more money from draft.
Less cards and making drafting more expensive doesn't seem like a win WotC made this out to be to "save limited." The least they could have done was split the difference between the packs and put his new pack in between the prices of the two being cut. They could have at least cut the art card and included another card. I understand some like them, at first I was rather fond of them, but I'd rather have a game piece than a bookmark, and if they could remove the ad/tip card(s) altogether that would be swell or at least put them on the back of tokens, at least those are nice game pieces to open rather than a "Wanna play more? Then buy Magic twice with Arena!!!!"
In the end this seems like another "Hasbro needs us to make more profit" and force those that like limited to spend more.
Play boosters are modeled after set boosters, the better selling ones, which they are replacing, designed to give the same approximate value, so they are priced the same. If these cost less than set boosters it would be a price decrease. Do you really think WotC was ever going to do that?
If they just wanted limited players to pay more, they could have just changed draft boosters to be more expensive in some way. The cost of limited is clearly a side effect, the business reasons for this change are pretty clear, with draft boosters not selling enough. Nothing particularly charitable about taking them at their word here, it's all laid out pretty plainly.
Indeed, you could argue that they do want to charge more for limited because of course businesses always want more money, but they're not going to get more money if people play limited less because of the price and price is a significant barrier for limited players. They might actually lose money from limited play.
I doubt MaRo was being too literal about the 20 years thing. Here are all auras printed in 2003 and reprinted more than 3 times. The only one that was originally printed in 2003 is Contaminated Bond and that's really only had 2 reprints.
Here is everything meeting those criteria from 2003 or older. There aren't all that many that make sense. Pacifism, Lure, and Steal Artifact seem like the most likely to me and I think they may have finally decided that the only way to make Pacifism playable is making it cost 1.
Edit: Oh, Scryfall links are blocked now? "t:aura year=2003 prints>4 mv>1", "t:aura year<2004 prints>4 mv>1" are what I was trying to link to.
Edit2: Also, maybe I should not have excluded 1 mana auras. It could conceivably be Flight or Firebreathing.
How could they reprint Flight or Firebreathing costing 1 less? Zero mana colourless auras seems extremely unlikely.
it wont be this but lets see if this will end up as are Barry's land playtest card coming to life.
I'm assuming it will be like deserts in Amonkhet or Spheres in Phyrexia All Will Be One as a subtype for various nonbasic lands with no real mechanical meaning, but that some cards care about.
a redone version of a popular mechanic that first premiered in 2009
i will go a little deeper this time
line up is follows
Magic 2010
Conflux
Alara Reborn
Zendikar
Planechase
(excluding dual decks and from the vault since all reprints)
So the mechanic lineup is... (excluding ones clearly deciduous like with flashback and Landfall)
Exalted Unearth
Devour
Domain Cascade
Quest counters
Kicker (honorable mention) Trap type cards
the Ally tribal mechanic
i bolded the best guess's
(for this one i will put guess's next to them if i have one)
Exalted, Unearth and Devour did not premiere in 2009, as per MaRo's description, but the year earlier in Shards of Alara.
Domain of course premiered even earlier in original *Invasion*.
So unless Mark made some kind of mistake, those are all off the table.
“When you <new keyword>, <new keyword> again for the same value.”
this could be a clue that are redone mechanic is "cascade" we had cascade buffers before for example Averna, the Chaos Bloom
That's a thought. I could see maybe doing a cascade variant where the mana value you cascade for is tied to the keyword not the card's cost in order to make it easier to balance.
EDIT: Good chance it's this mechanic though-
WWelp for the remade mechanics (popular) in '09 we have to work with:
- Cascade
- Quests
- Landfall
Imma go with a twist on Quests or maybe a modified Landfall. They could do something with one of those three but quests and maybe landfall appear to be the core culprits.
I think it will be a variant of Quests or Traps. We already know they've explored new versions of both in different Zendikar sets as well as quests in original Throne of Eldraine. Both seem fitting for this set.
I think this is probably too big of a combo with cards like Syr Konrad. You could easily enough change it to not have that problem by making it something like 'Until end of turn, whenever a card would leave your graveyard, exile it, then return it to your graveyard the end of turn.'. This would mean you wouldn't automatically get to flicker your whole graveyard. I would note, this also protects against your opponent reanimating your stuff and could help let your cast flashback spells or the like again.
The idea to let it target any player is not a bad idea.
Elvish Archivist seems quite good. Only one per turn for each but a 2 mana 2/3 that draws a card is a great start and it only gets better from there. Combine it with enchantments cards from Kamigawa and artifacts cards from the Brother War maybe.
Monstrous Rage is a cool twist on a combat trick. Reminds me of similar cards from Ikoria that used keyword counters. And this one looks pretty strong.
and did I miss anything or no adventure enchantments at all in this leak?
No, there are none here. But then we have no reason to expect them to show up in this leak. From what MaRo said, there could only be like two of them, and these are just some random leaked cards.
Apologies, I didn't mean to say that it was the reason they did it. Meant to say it was something they could utilize it for.
Yeah it's something they could do with it definitely.
A very clever and elegant solution also, so that reprinting those cards "universe within" doesn't feel inappropriate with previous sets and context. Really clever.
Well, I mean, only a select portion of cards from 40k and Dr Who will actually fit in the creative of Volleyball's plane without reskinning them in some fashion, and some of those cards are broad enough be able to be reprinted in other sets anyway.
Complex and perhaps clunky but a good stab (pun intended) at a murder mystery mechanic. I like the idea of marking creatures secretly as guilty or innocent and the double sided counters is a good way of doing that I think. I do worry with all the moving pieces this has that it will be a bit of a hassle to play with and won't play out the way it's intended very often. I also worry the counters will be used often as combat tricks and if even they aren't actually used this way in any given game, the potential for it could be a headache whenever anyone conceals a crime to have to take it into consideration.
I guess the space set is their way to lay the groundwork for reprints from Universe Beyond cards from things like the Warhammer 40K, or Dr. Who Commander decks. Gives them a space to make "Unique" creature types to fit the Astartes or Daleks or whatever. Also will probably work for any sci-fi-ish set. "Where's this power armor come from?" "Eh, let's just use the space world."
I highly doubt that was at all the reason they decided to make this set. The success of Warhammer 40k decks might have been a factor, alongside the most obvious influence of the success of Kamigawa Neon Dynasty.
To be fair, given 2025 is two years out and WotC works a little over two years out, it's possible they were still finalizing the date or even the contract for Marvel sets.
You don't think they'd do that, but are you still saying they should?
Could they take a hit on this? For sure. That would be nice. But that goes beyond the issue of different types of booster and whether this is a good change.
Intro decks, at least, I'm sure were motivated a lot by the idea that they were necessary to get new players on board, and it took work for them to be convinced that they weren't needed. Theme boosters were replaced by the invention of jumpstart boosters and set boosters.
The problem wasn't that limited was dying. They have fully said limited has only been going up, the problem was that draft packs weren't selling enough, and that was only being exacerbated when stores bought less as a result. Limited was never going to die, suffer issues maybe, be less profitable quite possibly. Some players were bound to stick to limited but they want limited to be a big format that helps drive sales, not just a format that exists.
That's all well and good but it's not as though businesses squeezing customers for money is some kind of sinister shadowy scheme, it's rather normal. They've not got much to hide. They already recently just flatly raised prices using inflation to justify it. If they just wanted to raise prices, they could do it. Would they admit that they just wanted more money just because they think they can? No, not really. But majorly changing the way their main products are put together and the way the sets behind them are designed just in order to raise the price of draft (while also giving players more rare $ cards), is a rather roundabout way to do it. Especially when, as I said, there's no guarantee this will make them more money from draft.
Play boosters are modeled after set boosters, the better selling ones, which they are replacing, designed to give the same approximate value, so they are priced the same. If these cost less than set boosters it would be a price decrease. Do you really think WotC was ever going to do that?
If they just wanted limited players to pay more, they could have just changed draft boosters to be more expensive in some way. The cost of limited is clearly a side effect, the business reasons for this change are pretty clear, with draft boosters not selling enough. Nothing particularly charitable about taking them at their word here, it's all laid out pretty plainly.
Indeed, you could argue that they do want to charge more for limited because of course businesses always want more money, but they're not going to get more money if people play limited less because of the price and price is a significant barrier for limited players. They might actually lose money from limited play.
How could they reprint Flight or Firebreathing costing 1 less? Zero mana colourless auras seems extremely unlikely.
I'm assuming it will be like deserts in Amonkhet or Spheres in Phyrexia All Will Be One as a subtype for various nonbasic lands with no real mechanical meaning, but that some cards care about.
Exalted, Unearth and Devour did not premiere in 2009, as per MaRo's description, but the year earlier in Shards of Alara.
Domain of course premiered even earlier in original *Invasion*.
So unless Mark made some kind of mistake, those are all off the table.
That's a thought. I could see maybe doing a cascade variant where the mana value you cascade for is tied to the keyword not the card's cost in order to make it easier to balance.
EDIT: Good chance it's this mechanic though- . Seems like a good fit.
I think it will be a variant of Quests or Traps. We already know they've explored new versions of both in different Zendikar sets as well as quests in original Throne of Eldraine. Both seem fitting for this set.
The idea to let it target any player is not a bad idea.
No, there are none here. But then we have no reason to expect them to show up in this leak. From what MaRo said, there could only be like two of them, and these are just some random leaked cards.
Well, I mean, only a select portion of cards from 40k and Dr Who will actually fit in the creative of Volleyball's plane without reskinning them in some fashion, and some of those cards are broad enough be able to be reprinted in other sets anyway.
Yeah it's something they could do with it definitely.
I highly doubt that was at all the reason they decided to make this set. The success of Warhammer 40k decks might have been a factor, alongside the most obvious influence of the success of Kamigawa Neon Dynasty.