Zendikar (V1) and the Eldrazi (V1) storylines were some of my favorites of the past 10 years or so. We got a bunch of interesting card mechanics out of it (landfall, colorless cards, Allies, level up) and a fairly decent storyline that ends on a cliffhanger of world in peril. So I was excited to see it was coming back, then they released what they did... Landfall was back, but worse. Allies were back, and just didn't matter or work in a way that made sense half the time. Level up was gone. Worst of all the Eldrazi somehow all got weaker. Gone was annihilate (granted it was OP but it fit what they were) and instead we got ingest, which was a god awful mechanic that was not fun to build around in any format. The whole set seemed like hot garbage, and it was 2 back to back expansions. Then we go back to Innistrad, another block in recent(ish) years with great flavor and setting and now here comes the Eldrazi again. You know if you wanted them to eat another plane, why not Kamigawa. It already sucked so Emrakul could have done us all a favor.
What's next? How about they eat Wizards and half the set's just blank cards. NO ONE WOULD SEE IT COMING!!!
Not sure what happened to magic, the past couple years worth of expansions have felt pretty terrible.
Create a basic land pool off to the side of the play field. It has 30 of each land type for each player and non basic lands can still be included in your deck. And cards that refer to searching your deck for basic lands are re-worked to get them from the pile and any cards that let you get all your lands (there's not many) are just removed from the game. You get a starting hand size of 5 but a max still of seven. During your turn you may play a land from your hand or from the basic land pool. Otherwise all the rules stay the same.
Not to derail the thread but you can get the demon achievement now, although it's tedious. PLay with a mostly unlocked blue deck, you have a couple ways to steal creatures and 4 of those illusion clone creatures. Play against that demon deck with all the dudes that summon that demon. Steal it, clone it x 4, & win.
That being said. Did this version of DOTP NEED another exalted deck? And that one at that :(.
LOL, Wow, and WTH are three of the acronyms that first jumped to mind when I saw the full extend of the disdain wizards has for it's player-base. I was expecting it to be bad after the first day of spoilers, but not THAT bad. There are 2, TWO cards in this set anyone really cares about play wise. Scroll Rack, and Sylvan Library. The P3K cards, while nice, and I'm sure people think they are awesome, are only good because their actual print cards are expensive. This print run will not help that. The fact that both of them are lackluster only adds to the feeling like you finally got that ultra rare bottle of Crystal Pepsi only to realize that Crystal Pepsi is terrible.
Seriously. Cards that recently appeared in commander and Planechase are the cards they felt were the things most Commander players really wanted? Really? REALLY? IF people want those cards they can get them. Shoehorning them into this product feels about as forced as Al Bundy trying to get a size 14 into a size 5. In the end I'm glad this was so short-printed that only the most insane of us will get a set. The sad thign is the only thing in this entire pack that was pretty cool was the life counter. It's cool in that, man that would be neat to have, sort of way. But not so neat that I'll pay $75 to get it...
Wizards. Really... You could have just not put anything out this year in that Premium Deck slot, we're all busy buying RTR cards anyhow. This is truly for people that hate having money. Can't wait to see what is in that Gift-pack for Christmas, or Modern Masters now.
I'm guessing the Modern staples will be at all rarity levels but a good 2/3 of the cards will be modern cards that will help them pad out a set much like every other set printed has staples for standard and a lot of bad cards. Also using the Master sets as an example points to this. There were a lot of bad cards int eh old days and they padded out what people wanted (duals and a few choice rares and uncommons) with really terrible cards.
I say charge whatever you want for this stupid, stupid, product. 18 cards for $75 dollars from the company that manufactures the product is laughable, and sets a bad precedent where said company learns they can charge over-inflated prices for the good cards (look at the modern expansion next year).
So, while it's nice to see re-prints, the cost is just too damn high.
1. Players start buying the reprints and flock to Vintage or Legacy, whichever their format of choice is and old time collectors, out of disgust because their cards are now worth a fraction of what they were, leave the game. In the end, do we end up with more players or fewer players? In addition, what does this do to the trust that the public has in the game itself knowing that their cards could be worthless the next day.
The public loves them some call of duty games and Madden football games and those are near worthless as soon as the newer ones come out. People still buy them because they want the new stuff and they want to be able to play with everyone else that plays with the new stuff. The idea that Magic would die if the cards were made worthless after they rotated is not true. If anything it would allow for things like Vintage, Legacy, and Modern to become more of a thing because access to cards would be less about can you afford them?
2. Same as above except old time players don't leave. They'd rather play the game and have cards not worth as much than to not be able to play as eventually, the old formats WILL die without reprints as there are only so many cards to go around.
3. Nothing changes. Nobody really cares about the reprints. Or very few care. They would rather play standard or modern because the older formats intimidate them. After all, they are harder to master because of the larger card pool. But, because of the reprints, values of old cards go down and this pisses off the collectors. Gradually, they sell their cards and leave the game.
The collectors are doing nothing for the game or Wizards. So why does Wizards cater to them so much. The people who actually play the game fall into two camps. Re-print Everything, and Re-print nothing. The re-print nothing group tends to feel slighted that they just payed $75 for a Goyf that ends up being reprinted and it goes down in value. They aren't so much mad that they now have something that's worth LESS money, but that they feel they over-payed. This also seems like some crazy concept that's new to Magic players and collectible nuts in general. People assume that because you have something that the value should always go up, when the rest of what we all own does the exact opposite. My car's never going to go up in value, My computer isn't going to go up in value, the food I bought isn't going to go up in value.
In the end making the game stress collectible more than game leads to situations where people buy things up at a low price then just sell it back to you at a high price, and how does that help Wizards attract people to a format? In the end the collectors actually do more harm to this game than anything else. They create an artificial value on cards by increasing the scarcity of the product, they don't contribute to the game and by raising prices actually deter people from playing, and they usually could care less about the health of the game and only about the health of their collection.
With a couple exceptions, a lot of what was in P3K, while rare, isn't as spectacular as people tend to think it is. On MTGO people have full access to Retainers and old One Eye. Retainers is 10 cents and One Eye is 6 cents. They are both fun, yes, and I feel that their abilities are unique, but neither are worth the over-inflated price tag that's been given them. It's a nice thought that there will now be more Retainers in circulation, but it's not like they are being dropped into a big set to matter. The price will still stay somewhat high, and I still don't understand why. Rarity alone shouldn't dictate if something is worth more money, the card also needs to be good.
Well, good on those that wanted these cards in paper. The retainers are a good addition, I don't understand ANY of the others. SO far there's 2 good cards that people really wanted and were in high demand and the rest is pretty bad.
Timmy =/= Noob
Timmy doesn't mean a fetish for big things;
Timmies play for getting an experience.
It could be playing with big spells / achieving a huge board presence in the game. (Power Gamers)
Playing a very luck-based deck with cards like Stitch in Time (Adrenalin Gamers).
Or even watching you rage as he counters each of your spells/discards your whole hand (Griefer Timmies).
Timmy's also tend to value big creatures over many other things so I get what your saying, and I wasn't saying they were noobs, but it's easier to give them a bad trade if the bad trade involves a big spell or creature they find interesting, regardless it's $$value.
I think a lot of people that come to this site assume everyone that plays the game is like them (myself included likely). Not everyone enjoys trading.
You're not spending the extra money on the foil, you're spending on the cards as a whole. Since this set will contain staples and the best cards used in modern, you're paying for the chance of getting all good cards, from common to the rare. You could get Aether Vial and Tarmogoyf and Lightning Helix all in the same pack. That's if those cards are in the set. It was just an example. But you understand.
That kind of sets a terrible precedent on several levels. First allowing them to charge you more just because the cards are better admits that most cards in magic are in fact terrible and if you want better cards, even wizards is going to charge you more. Second if in fact this is something they do bi-annually or something, and your focus is eternal formats, why bother buying regular packs ever again? Why trudge through all the terrible they print year in and year out and just buy the "good cards" sure you'd miss out on standard, but if modern becomes a format everyone wants to play, then just get singles you like and wait for this modern stuff to come around again.
Just paying wizards more money because the cards are guaranteed better is not a good move. FTV and such get a pass because they go a bit of the extra mile on those and foil them in a certain way and that matters to some people. Besides Wizards has said time and time again that the motivation they have for making cards a certain rarity isn't money based (that's a whole different lie but they say it and we buy it). Charging more for cards you know is better points at that "mission statement" and laughs in it's face.
Still a bit shocked that this is 2 weeks away, and we have no spoiler. For something you needed to get your reserve in on a long time ago, they aren't tossing anyone a bone to let them know what they are actually paying for. Right now, all we have is 1 card, a bunch of oversized cards people likely don't care too much about, and a bunch of plastic bits that, while cool, aren't worth the price tag. If they have great cards in there, great, but they sort of hung this thing on a pretty big trust hook and it's now only being sold to speculators. Kind of crummy.
Realize that the "bad old days" of trading are actually long behind us for the most part. Now that the internet is on every device on the planet and sites like magiccards.info update their prices instantaneously. You will always get market value on the card you trade for at that time. A smart trader can still get extra value out of you by using a multitude of tactics but the days of having a guy give up a 25 dollar card and trading him a 1 dollar card in return are pretty much long gone.
How wrong you are. While there are people that go to the stores with every bit of knowledge of the cards as they can get, there's still a large number of people, casual players, that have no freaking clue. They see things like Shiny demon that makes my opponent sac a creature to stop it from attacking as a better card than a stupid land that deals damage to me when it comes into play.
While a lot of us can see the bad trade there, the new player, or timmy player, can't or doesn't care and while you can say that's their fault, it's not. It's also a different discussion entirely. I'm kind of sorry for bringing it up.
What's next? How about they eat Wizards and half the set's just blank cards. NO ONE WOULD SEE IT COMING!!!
Not sure what happened to magic, the past couple years worth of expansions have felt pretty terrible.
That being said. Did this version of DOTP NEED another exalted deck? And that one at that :(.
Seriously. Cards that recently appeared in commander and Planechase are the cards they felt were the things most Commander players really wanted? Really? REALLY? IF people want those cards they can get them. Shoehorning them into this product feels about as forced as Al Bundy trying to get a size 14 into a size 5. In the end I'm glad this was so short-printed that only the most insane of us will get a set. The sad thign is the only thing in this entire pack that was pretty cool was the life counter. It's cool in that, man that would be neat to have, sort of way. But not so neat that I'll pay $75 to get it...
Wizards. Really... You could have just not put anything out this year in that Premium Deck slot, we're all busy buying RTR cards anyhow. This is truly for people that hate having money. Can't wait to see what is in that Gift-pack for Christmas, or Modern Masters now.
So, while it's nice to see re-prints, the cost is just too damn high.
The public loves them some call of duty games and Madden football games and those are near worthless as soon as the newer ones come out. People still buy them because they want the new stuff and they want to be able to play with everyone else that plays with the new stuff. The idea that Magic would die if the cards were made worthless after they rotated is not true. If anything it would allow for things like Vintage, Legacy, and Modern to become more of a thing because access to cards would be less about can you afford them?
Sounds good to me.
The collectors are doing nothing for the game or Wizards. So why does Wizards cater to them so much. The people who actually play the game fall into two camps. Re-print Everything, and Re-print nothing. The re-print nothing group tends to feel slighted that they just payed $75 for a Goyf that ends up being reprinted and it goes down in value. They aren't so much mad that they now have something that's worth LESS money, but that they feel they over-payed. This also seems like some crazy concept that's new to Magic players and collectible nuts in general. People assume that because you have something that the value should always go up, when the rest of what we all own does the exact opposite. My car's never going to go up in value, My computer isn't going to go up in value, the food I bought isn't going to go up in value.
In the end making the game stress collectible more than game leads to situations where people buy things up at a low price then just sell it back to you at a high price, and how does that help Wizards attract people to a format? In the end the collectors actually do more harm to this game than anything else. They create an artificial value on cards by increasing the scarcity of the product, they don't contribute to the game and by raising prices actually deter people from playing, and they usually could care less about the health of the game and only about the health of their collection.
More than likely.
TO help justify the insane-o price tag.
Timmy's also tend to value big creatures over many other things so I get what your saying, and I wasn't saying they were noobs, but it's easier to give them a bad trade if the bad trade involves a big spell or creature they find interesting, regardless it's $$value.
I think a lot of people that come to this site assume everyone that plays the game is like them (myself included likely). Not everyone enjoys trading.
That kind of sets a terrible precedent on several levels. First allowing them to charge you more just because the cards are better admits that most cards in magic are in fact terrible and if you want better cards, even wizards is going to charge you more. Second if in fact this is something they do bi-annually or something, and your focus is eternal formats, why bother buying regular packs ever again? Why trudge through all the terrible they print year in and year out and just buy the "good cards" sure you'd miss out on standard, but if modern becomes a format everyone wants to play, then just get singles you like and wait for this modern stuff to come around again.
Just paying wizards more money because the cards are guaranteed better is not a good move. FTV and such get a pass because they go a bit of the extra mile on those and foil them in a certain way and that matters to some people. Besides Wizards has said time and time again that the motivation they have for making cards a certain rarity isn't money based (that's a whole different lie but they say it and we buy it). Charging more for cards you know is better points at that "mission statement" and laughs in it's face.
How wrong you are. While there are people that go to the stores with every bit of knowledge of the cards as they can get, there's still a large number of people, casual players, that have no freaking clue. They see things like Shiny demon that makes my opponent sac a creature to stop it from attacking as a better card than a stupid land that deals damage to me when it comes into play.
While a lot of us can see the bad trade there, the new player, or timmy player, can't or doesn't care and while you can say that's their fault, it's not. It's also a different discussion entirely. I'm kind of sorry for bringing it up.