As far as draft goes, I've had a lot of people telling me that it doesn't make a good draft format due to lack of any real synergy. Frankly the set looks kind of messy and I think it'll end up being a set that doesn't too to hot. People might buy more singles to get the cards they need rather than gamble on packs or try to draft a bogus format.
No single boxes EVER got a dupe rare. Which means 24 unique rares appeared in ever single box. And due to this fact, when you open multiple boxes in a set with only 53 rares and 17 mythics, you are bound to get overlap somewhere.
That is a bizarre comment. I mean really, if you open the boxes and crack all the packs inside, you'll get overlap with the rares no matter what happens. This is true with every Masters set.
What scenario would one not get overlap of any kind with the existing card rarity ratios?
The difference is I've open lots of single boxes of eternal, iconic, and M17 boxes and have gotten copies of the same rare in the same box. I've gotten copies of the same rares in a lot of standard set boxes as well.
The idea that no single box will have a dupe rare is new.
I saw a video this morning where someone pieces together the results of 12 box openings. No duplicate boxes at all. However there does seem to be a strange effect in the randomization that they DID notice.
No single boxes EVER got a dupe rare. Which means 24 unique rares appeared in ever single box. And due to this fact, when you open multiple boxes in a set with only 53 rares and 17 mythics, you are bound to get overlap somewhere.
According to the theory, Wizards did this to reduce the volatility of the boxes. By doing this, you will still have a gambling factor to boxes, but you shouldn't see some boxes worth 50 bucks and other boxes worth 400. Ideally the boxes should all average out to be better for the consumer and have "crap" boxes still be worth 170ish dollars and good boxes will be closer to 300. So you figure a +/- of about 50 dollars from MSRP.
So we'll have to see how that ultimately plays out.
This is a disaster. This means that these boxes are ultra-mappable, and chances are that cases are too. If cases are mappable, you can't buy sealed product from this set from any vendor you don't know and fully trust to not have exploited this. And you certainly can't buy loose packs, even from a trusted LGS, from a booster display unless they are aware of the problem and are constantly randomizing packs. Vendors who open packs for singles would be fools to not target the boxes and packs to open. The packs identified as crap will only be sold to fools who don't know about this. Spread awareness, people.
It might be worth noting that your pre-order boxes are probably going to be okay if you got them from an official store like Cardkingdom or something. As they will not have enough information to map out boxes and send you *****.
However this will be an issue by the end of release weekend.
But it would be interesting if every box was nearly identical, lol
I don't think it would be every box. But there are probably "sets" of boxes that are going to end up identical. Which makes this look really really bad. Sadly we don't have enough information to go on yet.
Like Legends bad?
I dunno... WotC is already under a hot lamp for A25 card selection. Would they be so crass as to do this on purpose? Perhaps it's the early pre-release boxes he opened? The ones intended to have a very specific collation?
It's not pre-release boxes. There is no pre-release material for Masters sets. He merely has gotten his shipment a couple days early. He can't sell or ship it until Friday.
Chances are, seeing as how there are no other openings on Youtube yet, Rudy probably filmed this opening today planning to wait until Friday to post the videos to comply with embargo. But after seeing the identical boxes, he stopped filming and immediately uploaded the video to WARN people and SHOW people that this is something that happened.
We have to wait and see how bad this is, when more people open product. But if it is that bad, then this first print run could be a disaster in a lot of ways. Manipulating the market, mapping boxes, all sort of very bad ***** for everybody could be happening. And since Rudy has product, chances are it's already shipped out from distributers, and it's too late for WOTC to call anything back and fix it.
But it would be interesting if every box was nearly identical, lol
I don't think it would be every box. But there are probably "sets" of boxes that are going to end up identical. Which makes this look really really bad. Sadly we don't have enough information to go on yet.
It's the same effect shocklands and fetchalnds faced when they were printed in standard Price dropped by 50% (and stayed there).
If cards like blood moon, chalice, etc. were printed in a pack that only cost $4.0 the value of those cards would quickly be gutted.
I'm gonna disagree with you there on the general rule of these original expensive cards were sold at under $4 per pack when they were new. Time often tells a different story behind the collectibility and power of a card. Who can predict what happens to Liliana Death's Majesty in five years? Ten Years? We don't know what happens to future values of any of this stuff. We can only guess, but the original price point means nothing.
Whether you get Gaea's Craddle for $2.75 cents in 1999 or Lilly for $4 in 2018, doesn't mean anything to what the card will be worth in 2030.
These masters packs shouldn't be any more expensive than any other magic set. They are glorified gambling sets and nothing more, that's why they are expensive.
Masters sets should be reprint sets to help lower the cost of old staple cards that players need for ALL formats. And they should be just as easy to get as a pack of Ixalan, not harder. The more players that have easy access to formats like Legacy and Modern, the healthier the playerbase will remain.
How many people fall out of magic because they can't keep up with countless new sets? How many players stop playing because their decks can't compete with their friends because their friends have Urza's Saga cards?
The collectors ruin this game for the players and the players ruin the card for the collectors. Wizards CAN make both sets of people happy, instead they choose to blindly do money-grubbing dumb crap to make the Hasbro investors as happy as possible, without realizing that their sales would increase dramatically by simply giving players what they want.
I think the problem that would create is that every set there would be some format defining card that is locked at an extremely rare rarity and therefore its price would go through the roof, creating a big rift between the ability for a player to win or just compete fairly and their budget. Standard staples at mythic can already easily reach $40, $50, $60. If that becomes $100 because those cards are so rare we may have another Tarkir block standard situation on our hands where standard decks were just about as pricey as modern ones and that's extremely unhealthy for the format and for the player base.
They don't have to be format defining, they don't even have to be good for the current format. They just have to be all-around good cards. Even if they kept the same 1 in 6 pack average, but made EVERY mythic good, I don't think is unreasonable. It's just rarity shifting and nothing more.
For example, what if they moved Glorious End from Mythic to Rare and instead made Glorybringer the mythic? How much does it really affect standard, or the playability of anything? It doesn't change anything except making GLorybringer pulls more exciting and making Glorious End less disappointing to pull. I don't think it is out of balance to say that every mythic should be a good card period. And by doing the rarity shifting I suggest doesn't really affect the value of anything. Glorybringer might have been a 15-20 dollar card instead of a 10 dollar card for a while, but it would widely sway anything in the long run.
My biggest problem in the whole Master's thing is that these sets become even more gamble heavy than any other sets printed. They have a handful of 60+ dollar cards, and a bunch of trash. They mark up the price to 10 bucks, for what? Players still get mostly junk, and even when you do get a decent card, it's only decent in draft formats.
Frankly Masters sets boil down to this. 90% draft playable, thus making them good limited sets. 10% money cards people actually need for constructed formats. It isn't a celebration of anything. Top that off with most LGS's marking up the prices to 12-15 dollars a pack.
If WoTc really wanted to make a celebration of Magic, they would abolish the damn reserved list and re-print highly sought after cards. People who make the argument that reprinted old powerhouse cards like Gaea's Craddle would ruin the value of the original printing are simply wrong. Look at any Beta/Alpha card that has been reprinted a billion times. Those A/B cards are still expensive because 1st editions mean a lot to collectors. Reprinting old cards with new art, new boarders, would do WONDERS for magic. It would allow new players to get into more competitive formats easier without breaking their credit cards, it would increase interest in various formats, it would increase revenue for WoTC as players buy packs for quality cards, and it helps the secondary market by increasing circulation of more desireable yet affordable cards.
I was having this conversation with some friends during our last EDH meet up, and the question came up about the idea of pulling a trash Mythic and how often you look at a mythic in a set and just cringe that you didn't get a good mythic.
We all know that WoTc makes trash rares for a reason, it helps make the actual good rares improve in value. But why Mythic? Considering that there can be as few as 2-3 Mythics in an entire booster box. Sometimes only 1 Mythic per box in some poor Master's boxes. Why do they make so many poor Mythics?
I came up with the question of why not make Mythic more powerful but more rare? So say instead of 1 mythic in 6 packs on average. Why not make mythic be 1 per box, but also make sure that every mythic in the set is great? Would that be a better feeling than finally getting a mythic only to have it be a trash card like Glorious End or something like that?
What do you guys think of Mythic rarity in general and how would you feel if they made the mythic rarity cards all around better cards but harder to get?
This is looking like fun draft set, but overall I'm not super excited for it anymore. There are a few cards I hope to pull, but it's so skewed with soooooo much stuff I don't care about. Everybody is after different things I guess, but I'm only about a 6/10 for the set.
Frankly I would rather a Masters set be full of 20-40 dollar cards, then a few 60+ dollar cards, and mostly <10 dollar cards.
I'm still waiting for something to appear that really speaks to me in this set. I'd love to see a new Mana Vault, or another older staple. The problem is that WOTC went a little heavy handed with the reserved list and most of the cards of real power and value from Urza's and earlier, are all reserved.
I would have loves to see a Grim Monolith, Gaea's Craddle, or something along those lines.
Now I'm crossing my fingers for a Crucible of Worlds.
Also, I really wish they'd stop reprinting Jace. The only reason he has any hype in this set is because of the unbanning, but the dude has been in so many sets now that is he really a special (non-foil) pull?
There was a study that came out to suggest that a small lab rat will not engage in rough and tumble play with a larger rat if they don't win 1 out of 3 engagements. Same is largely true of humans, people don't like seeing the same person win over and over. This phenomenon is why combo decks are frowned upon mostly by casual players, watching someone play solitaire and gesticulate wildly while keeping track of floating mana, Storm count and stack sequencing. Competitive play and situations where rewards are on the line, the goal is to win and be the best. A small setting with some close friends playing EDH doesn't have the same incentives.
If your meta is not adjusting to beat your deck, then I suggest you tone it down/lose on purpose/find a different group. I prefer they adjust to hating out your deck, but if that isn't the consensus then adjust yours to make winning against you rewarding and challenging.
I think the NBA will disagree with you there. Professional sports often boils down to the same teams winning for years on end.
In my playgroup, I found that playing this deck basically means I can win very quickly and so far in the ten or so games I've played, the deck wins 100% of the time. My friends decks are all very very powerful, but they are not fast enough to deal with Rafiq. It's gotten me to worry that they may start not wanting to play EDH with me at all if I continue to use this deck.
The problem is, my other deck, which is a Mayeal the Anima deck, is barely stronger than a pre-con deck and their decks will obliterate Mayeal no matter what. Even if I have time to build up big creatures there is nothing I can do to get through the 1-billion token deck, or the endless Sorceries deck, that my friends have. So I am in this situation where if I play the deck I invested in (rafiq), I can beat their decks so easily it isn't even much of a fight. But if I play Mayeal then I also have no chance.
They swear that they don't mind Rafiq, and to be honest there is a lot of answers to Rafiq in Magic, it's just not in their decks. But I also don't want to win everytime.
So the question to you guys is, what do you do in this situation? Is it possible that a deck is too strong for a given playgroup? Should I continue to play Rafiq but purposefully hang back on certain games so that it starts losing? Or maybe I play with Mayeal to loose and Rafiq to win and just rotate them so that my friends continue to have varied games of EDH?
I feel bad because I really like my Rafiq deck. And the power it holds makes me feel confident that the money spent wasn't wasted. (except the 140 bucks for Tropical Island, I probably could have done without that).
Sure. I probably could have phrased it better.
As far as draft goes, I've had a lot of people telling me that it doesn't make a good draft format due to lack of any real synergy. Frankly the set looks kind of messy and I think it'll end up being a set that doesn't too to hot. People might buy more singles to get the cards they need rather than gamble on packs or try to draft a bogus format.
The difference is I've open lots of single boxes of eternal, iconic, and M17 boxes and have gotten copies of the same rare in the same box. I've gotten copies of the same rares in a lot of standard set boxes as well.
The idea that no single box will have a dupe rare is new.
No single boxes EVER got a dupe rare. Which means 24 unique rares appeared in ever single box. And due to this fact, when you open multiple boxes in a set with only 53 rares and 17 mythics, you are bound to get overlap somewhere.
According to the theory, Wizards did this to reduce the volatility of the boxes. By doing this, you will still have a gambling factor to boxes, but you shouldn't see some boxes worth 50 bucks and other boxes worth 400. Ideally the boxes should all average out to be better for the consumer and have "crap" boxes still be worth 170ish dollars and good boxes will be closer to 300. So you figure a +/- of about 50 dollars from MSRP.
So we'll have to see how that ultimately plays out.
It might be worth noting that your pre-order boxes are probably going to be okay if you got them from an official store like Cardkingdom or something. As they will not have enough information to map out boxes and send you *****.
However this will be an issue by the end of release weekend.
It's not pre-release boxes. There is no pre-release material for Masters sets. He merely has gotten his shipment a couple days early. He can't sell or ship it until Friday.
Chances are, seeing as how there are no other openings on Youtube yet, Rudy probably filmed this opening today planning to wait until Friday to post the videos to comply with embargo. But after seeing the identical boxes, he stopped filming and immediately uploaded the video to WARN people and SHOW people that this is something that happened.
We have to wait and see how bad this is, when more people open product. But if it is that bad, then this first print run could be a disaster in a lot of ways. Manipulating the market, mapping boxes, all sort of very bad ***** for everybody could be happening. And since Rudy has product, chances are it's already shipped out from distributers, and it's too late for WOTC to call anything back and fix it.
I don't think it would be every box. But there are probably "sets" of boxes that are going to end up identical. Which makes this look really really bad. Sadly we don't have enough information to go on yet.
I'm gonna disagree with you there on the general rule of these original expensive cards were sold at under $4 per pack when they were new. Time often tells a different story behind the collectibility and power of a card. Who can predict what happens to Liliana Death's Majesty in five years? Ten Years? We don't know what happens to future values of any of this stuff. We can only guess, but the original price point means nothing.
Whether you get Gaea's Craddle for $2.75 cents in 1999 or Lilly for $4 in 2018, doesn't mean anything to what the card will be worth in 2030.
These masters packs shouldn't be any more expensive than any other magic set. They are glorified gambling sets and nothing more, that's why they are expensive.
Masters sets should be reprint sets to help lower the cost of old staple cards that players need for ALL formats. And they should be just as easy to get as a pack of Ixalan, not harder. The more players that have easy access to formats like Legacy and Modern, the healthier the playerbase will remain.
How many people fall out of magic because they can't keep up with countless new sets? How many players stop playing because their decks can't compete with their friends because their friends have Urza's Saga cards?
The collectors ruin this game for the players and the players ruin the card for the collectors. Wizards CAN make both sets of people happy, instead they choose to blindly do money-grubbing dumb crap to make the Hasbro investors as happy as possible, without realizing that their sales would increase dramatically by simply giving players what they want.
They don't have to be format defining, they don't even have to be good for the current format. They just have to be all-around good cards. Even if they kept the same 1 in 6 pack average, but made EVERY mythic good, I don't think is unreasonable. It's just rarity shifting and nothing more.
For example, what if they moved Glorious End from Mythic to Rare and instead made Glorybringer the mythic? How much does it really affect standard, or the playability of anything? It doesn't change anything except making GLorybringer pulls more exciting and making Glorious End less disappointing to pull. I don't think it is out of balance to say that every mythic should be a good card period. And by doing the rarity shifting I suggest doesn't really affect the value of anything. Glorybringer might have been a 15-20 dollar card instead of a 10 dollar card for a while, but it would widely sway anything in the long run.
Frankly Masters sets boil down to this. 90% draft playable, thus making them good limited sets. 10% money cards people actually need for constructed formats. It isn't a celebration of anything. Top that off with most LGS's marking up the prices to 12-15 dollars a pack.
If WoTc really wanted to make a celebration of Magic, they would abolish the damn reserved list and re-print highly sought after cards. People who make the argument that reprinted old powerhouse cards like Gaea's Craddle would ruin the value of the original printing are simply wrong. Look at any Beta/Alpha card that has been reprinted a billion times. Those A/B cards are still expensive because 1st editions mean a lot to collectors. Reprinting old cards with new art, new boarders, would do WONDERS for magic. It would allow new players to get into more competitive formats easier without breaking their credit cards, it would increase interest in various formats, it would increase revenue for WoTC as players buy packs for quality cards, and it helps the secondary market by increasing circulation of more desireable yet affordable cards.
I was having this conversation with some friends during our last EDH meet up, and the question came up about the idea of pulling a trash Mythic and how often you look at a mythic in a set and just cringe that you didn't get a good mythic.
We all know that WoTc makes trash rares for a reason, it helps make the actual good rares improve in value. But why Mythic? Considering that there can be as few as 2-3 Mythics in an entire booster box. Sometimes only 1 Mythic per box in some poor Master's boxes. Why do they make so many poor Mythics?
I came up with the question of why not make Mythic more powerful but more rare? So say instead of 1 mythic in 6 packs on average. Why not make mythic be 1 per box, but also make sure that every mythic in the set is great? Would that be a better feeling than finally getting a mythic only to have it be a trash card like Glorious End or something like that?
What do you guys think of Mythic rarity in general and how would you feel if they made the mythic rarity cards all around better cards but harder to get?
This is looking like fun draft set, but overall I'm not super excited for it anymore. There are a few cards I hope to pull, but it's so skewed with soooooo much stuff I don't care about. Everybody is after different things I guess, but I'm only about a 6/10 for the set.
Frankly I would rather a Masters set be full of 20-40 dollar cards, then a few 60+ dollar cards, and mostly <10 dollar cards.
I would have loves to see a Grim Monolith, Gaea's Craddle, or something along those lines.
Now I'm crossing my fingers for a Crucible of Worlds.
Also, I really wish they'd stop reprinting Jace. The only reason he has any hype in this set is because of the unbanning, but the dude has been in so many sets now that is he really a special (non-foil) pull?
I think the NBA will disagree with you there. Professional sports often boils down to the same teams winning for years on end.
In my playgroup, I found that playing this deck basically means I can win very quickly and so far in the ten or so games I've played, the deck wins 100% of the time. My friends decks are all very very powerful, but they are not fast enough to deal with Rafiq. It's gotten me to worry that they may start not wanting to play EDH with me at all if I continue to use this deck.
The problem is, my other deck, which is a Mayeal the Anima deck, is barely stronger than a pre-con deck and their decks will obliterate Mayeal no matter what. Even if I have time to build up big creatures there is nothing I can do to get through the 1-billion token deck, or the endless Sorceries deck, that my friends have. So I am in this situation where if I play the deck I invested in (rafiq), I can beat their decks so easily it isn't even much of a fight. But if I play Mayeal then I also have no chance.
They swear that they don't mind Rafiq, and to be honest there is a lot of answers to Rafiq in Magic, it's just not in their decks. But I also don't want to win everytime.
So the question to you guys is, what do you do in this situation? Is it possible that a deck is too strong for a given playgroup? Should I continue to play Rafiq but purposefully hang back on certain games so that it starts losing? Or maybe I play with Mayeal to loose and Rafiq to win and just rotate them so that my friends continue to have varied games of EDH?
I feel bad because I really like my Rafiq deck. And the power it holds makes me feel confident that the money spent wasn't wasted. (except the 140 bucks for Tropical Island, I probably could have done without that).