As I have said before, Wotc just came off something like 4-6 years of record breaking sales. Every time something happens someone doesnt like they say Hasbro is forcing this or Wotc doesnt know what its doing. The market as a whole ebbs and flows. There are going to be highs and lows. But in the end they are a business. A business that has been in business for over 20 years.
We get it you dont like their way of doing things. You think they can do better. But they are going to do as they see fit.
I dont understand how you can honestly think if Wotc put out a Masters set for $99 MSRP a box, and LGS pumping up the price to the $200 mark or more depending on what is in the set is going to solve anything or could make them more money in the long run. Even if they opened up Masters sets to the big box stores, the big box stores will pump up the price. I have seen it with boxes of Standard set. LGS selling them for $100 a box and the big box stores selling for $150 or more. There is nothing Wotc can do to stop such actions either. Wotc depends on the LGS to not only sell their product, but give the players some place to play. If Wotc says if you dont sell sealed product for 'X' amount we wont supply you any more, there are other means to get sealed product, and if Wotc/DCI wants to take away sanctioning. Wotc just lost a place for players to play.
Opening the printing presses and flooding the market is going to kill the secondary, in turn hurting the LGS, in turn making less places for players to play.
The secondary market is the key. They need a secondary market that can keep the big LGS open as well as the smaller local ones open also.
LGS make nothing off running events. They make money off players needing cards for events and buying them. They make money off of the sale of sleeves and dice. Take away the main source of income for LGS and its going to hurt the game long term.
I am not saying Hasbro or Wotc hasnt made mistakes in the past 20 some years. But I trust them a hell of a lot more to run the company and keep the profits flowing then the player base.
There is nothing Wotc can do to stop such actions either.
Print more.
Your argument is understandable but when everyone from SCG to Timmy has complaints about card avaliability, you start to sound like Chicken Little in opposite day.
The largest stores aren't making as much money as they know they can because of card costs, a shrinking playerbase and the resserved list (and I don't even want to think about the storage costs of all the crap they have to crack to get the ONE good card WotC seems to be printing for every set nowadays). Small stores are getting out of MTG because of the shrinking playerbase, micromanaging from the WPN and being unable to compete with ebay prices or Card Kingdom/SCG/Troll & Toad sales.
Players are getting second thoughts about buying $20+ Standard mythics that may be banned in 3 months, find no value in drafting unless you crack the good mythic or a masterpiece, and are finding it ever harder to buy into non-rotating formats.
And you see the recent increase of repackaged product at big box stores? Turns out Magic isn't selling that hot there either.
Who actually benefits from the current state of Magic?
Scum, literally. The bottom dredgers among MTGFinance, "speculators" who hoard product, force spikes and even buy piracy with the intent of passing it as real. Those are the people who absolutelly need Magic singles to be as expensive as possible even if it means nobody gets to play.
Real speculators don't suffer a dime to make a dollar. Rudy just opened a store, bought a ton of unsellable DBZ boosters and is selling Aether Revolt booster boxes at near distributor prices to his patrons. All in the same month! That would bankrupt the average "speculator" a couple times over because those leeches don't even make money, they just complain relentlessly about every good print/reprint and make the game worse for everyone else.
At this point, making them lose so much money they'll never touch a game piece again is the best thing WotC can do to renew players and large clients' faith on their business model.
You guys seem to be under a delusion that Modern was created to be as an accessible alternative to standard.
That was never the case. WotC made it because they wanted to have one eternal format for the minority of heavily invested players that wouldn't be constrained like Legacy. And that's what it is. The presumption is not that you're buying a whole deck but rather that you've been buying cards for years and have many of them already in your collection.
It was never supposed to be a viable alternative for someone just starting with the hobby, because it doesn't help WotC keep the money flowing.
They would have to be insane, from a business perspective, to support Modern the same way they do Standard.
Also the value of modern/prices are on a downward trend across the board:
If you adjust for inflation you will find that modern has actually gotten cheaper because 600$ today is not the same as 600$ five years ago.
Modern wasn't intended to be an accessible alternative to Standard, but it happened anyway. I think the popularity of Modern is hurting Standard, in combination of course with how lackluster Standard has been lately. I also think that WotC isn't supporting Modern with card printings enough, given its popularity and the singles market is proportionately distorted.
You guys seem to be under a delusion that Modern was created to be as an accessible alternative to standard.
That was never the case. WotC made it because they wanted to have one eternal format for the minority of heavily invested players that wouldn't be constrained like Legacy. And that's what it is. The presumption is not that you're buying a whole deck but rather that you've been buying cards for years and have many of them already in your collection.
Umm... what? The point was to replace Extended... As for heavily invested players, the heavily invested players before Modern WERE the Legacy/Vintage players. And most of those players still play Legacy/Vintage. The upkeep costs on Legacy and Vintage are significantly less than Modern or Standard. Decks in Modern can go from Tier 1 to below Tier 2 in a comparable amount of time to Standard; many enfranchised players have better ways to spend their money than on that. That's why there's a low overlap between Legacy/Vintage players and Standard players.
And besides, there weren't a ton of people invested in the full spread of current day Modern staples but not earlier cards. There was no reason for that, beyond starting times as players, which were much more spread out at the time of the format's conception in 2011. Yes, the number of players had gone up at that point, but not nearly as much as after the release of Innistrad and the start of Modern. Keep in mind that Magic had flatlined and even started to decline between 2003 (the cutoff for Modern-legal sets) and 2008.
Modern is an appealing format for newer players. And I've found that the number of enfranchised players who disdain Modern (sometimes to the degree of not even considering it a real format) is much higher than one might expect for a format "designed for heavily invested players." Albeit that's anecdotal, but the fact that is anecdotal is less damning due to the lower number of enfranchised players and tighter community out there. I would go as far as to say that even if WotC may have had enfranchised players in mind, which I honestly do not believe is the case to the degree that you have suggested, they certainly created something that does not appear to be primarily targeted towards enfranchised players.
They use to and it didnt work for Wotc, the LGS or the player base. Some of the high print run sets are some of the lowest selling sets (Timespiral and Lorwyn blocks).
I disagree that this set up caters to the bottom feeders. If it did we wouldnt be seeing more and more LGS open.
Selling sealed product is not where the money is for the LGS. Also no matter what the LGS is selling the product for, they are still making money.
Quote from osieorb »
Umm... what? The point was to replace Extended... As for heavily invested players, the heavily invested players before Modern WERE the Legacy/Vintage players. And most of those players still play Legacy/Vintage. The upkeep costs on Legacy and Vintage are significantly less than Modern or Standard. Decks in Modern can go from Tier 1 to below Tier 2 in a comparable amount of time to Standard; many enfranchised players have better ways to spend their money than on that. That's why there's a low overlap between Legacy/Vintage players and Standard players.
This is why Wotc doesnt like Legacy and Vintage. The players rarely buy newer cards. If Wotc had to rely on those older format players to keep in business, the game would have died a long time ago.
Quote from thecasualoblivion »
Modern wasn't intended to be an accessible alternative to Standard, but it happened anyway. I think the popularity of Modern is hurting Standard, in combination of course with how lackluster Standard has been lately. I also think that WotC isn't supporting Modern with card printings enough, given its popularity and the singles market is proportionately distorted.
Standard can not be high level, an amazing format every season. It never has and never can be. If it was the power level of Standard would be higher then any other format there is.
How many Masters set do you think they need to print before Wotc is supporting Modern? They support Modern just fine for those playing the format.
Modern wasn't intended to be an accessible alternative to Standard, but it happened anyway. I think the popularity of Modern is hurting Standard, in combination of course with how lackluster Standard has been lately. I also think that WotC isn't supporting Modern with card printings enough, given its popularity and the singles market is proportionately distorted.
The problem is that wizards is doing the complete opposite of what they need to do if they want standard to sell. They can't stop a format from being popular, they can only meet supply and reduce costs so that people playing that format will purchase more of the product they do make. It's much better to have audiences double dipping than having the player base getting fragmented between two formats, especially since buying a single card in modern can cost as much as buying an entire booster box of standard. If wizards wants to sell more standard, they need to bring modern prices on the high end cards down to allow that. Otherwise people won't be willing to dabble or experiment with new cards simply because they only have so much money to put into the game.
Lets face it, modern would be the most stagnant place ever if we didn't have free utilities like Cockatrice to experiment with deck builds, and if people could just afford to go pick up cards to experiment with, we'd have a more healthy paper magic economy than we got right now. But this involves a mind set that doesn't come naturally to people in the games industry right now. People these days seem to be caught in a "live fast, die young" type mentality, which leads to doing things like Modern Masters 2017 at 240 msrp and lottery cards in standard. The lottery cards themselves are going to wear thin eventually as people get used to them, so those are a stop gap cash out solution as well.
Also, as a quick reminder to everybody chatting in this naturally negative thread, at the end of the day, we are all concerned about the magic economy because it is a lifestyle game. It's something that became a part of our lives at some point and we don't want it to end because we cherish playing the game with friends and family (or sometimes to just collect the cards). I think sometimes we forget that when we talk about subjects in magic.
Edit: Also I think modern was actually started by players at least a year and a half prior to its introduction to the pro-tour. So wizards didn't create modern.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
This is why Wotc doesnt like Legacy and Vintage. The players rarely buy newer cards. If Wotc had to rely on those older format players to keep in business, the game would have died a long time ago.
The thing about stereotypes is that while they have some foundation in truth, they can also paint a not entirely accurate picture. You think enfranchised Legacy and Vintage players aren't actively buying cards from new sets? They'll buy boxes and singles, maybe not to the degree of a Standard player, but still to a comparable degree to a Modern player. I think I can fairly say that the average Vintage/Legacy player plays Limited now and again. Occasionally, you will see enfranchised Legacy and Vintage players who don't buy product for personal finance reasons (They had enough money to get into the format, but don't have the cash to play continuously.) On a tangential point, that is where a conundrum comes up. Most people don't have the money to maintain playing a format like Standard or Modern, or to get into Vintage or Legacy. If Modern doesn't want to price out both new players and a section of enfranchised players, lowering either maintenance cost or barrier to entry is the way to go, and barrier to entry is the one of those two which is better for Wizards to lower.
Obviously, I was talking from a future perspective, at the moment of Modern's creation. It stands to reason that those who consistently sink money into the game would be better positioned to play an eternal format vs those who just started and the gap can only grow larger. Kind of like how Frontier might become the same thing 10-15 years down the line if it takes off.
As for enfranchised players (aka those equipped to play Legacy or Vintage) disdaining modern, its only to be expected. Their formats are at best stagnating, at worst dying and their replacement invalidates a significant part of their collections, favorite strategies, pet cards etc. Anybody would be unhappy with that.
Fair, though older eternal formats have started to get more popular lately, especially due to and in respect to online play.
I know its appealing, because I'm one of those players as well. Well, I've been around MTG for a long time but I haven't played nearly as much as most. That said, the expectations voiced in this thread that Modern should be priced like Standard is just absurd. Both could conceivably be cheaper, and probably will get cheaper if the game continues to bleed players and by extension - demand. But making either cheaper overnight by 50% would be a disaster for MTG as a business.
And besides, there is no clear advantage to WotC to tank the price of singles. There would be a temporary boom in new players and returning old players but the audience for MTG, while large, is finite and growth is not guaranteed through price reduction. In fact, Magic showed greatest growth while being as expensive as ever - which indicates that price is not the primary barrier/motivator for people getting into the game or leaving it.
Yes, but...
There's something to be said for reducing the price of entry, and Modern is well-poised to do that. If you look at a format like Vintage, the barrier to entry is high, but when you remove the reserved list from the picture (which you can actually do pretty easily, especially given the prevalence of 10-to-15-proxy tournaments), the barrier to entry is pretty damn low. And Modern could do this with its more regular cards (Shocks and fetches at the least) to a higher degree than the Masters sets currently achieve. If someone is able to buy the base cards for a few different decks for a lower price, then the format is likely to grow. One way to do this would be to just price and print the Masters sets like normal expansions for only a year rather than the longer time of a Standard set, and include shocks or fetches relatively regularly. You're still not flooding the market with the cards; the set only comes out for a short time. But it's a better control on the market that pulls new players in without overly hurting collectors or stores. Well, it hurts some of the more scummy collectors/stores. But that's not a bad thing, now, is it?
I'm of the mind that if "collectors" are buying up sealed product for the reason of monopolizing the supply, that wizards should print the ever living daylight out of that product. Wotc is the one who controls the supply side of things, not the secondary market.
On the other hand, i'm pretty sure that none of us who care enough about the game to post on an online forum are the target market, or really even the secondary target market for wizards. Didn't some old article or something say that they aimed at the 4th grade comprehension level? Bit hard to find anything on the mothership in it's current state.
Something else to consider. Wizards can afford to annoy and piss off long time players, they/we are already hooked, and are considerably less likely to quit the game. It really does take a lot to get a long time player to quit out of frustration, like having multiple expensive decks banned in a row, a two deck format, or other drastic flaws in the game.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy
Death and Taxes Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
Why does standard to be "in control" why not (due the rotating nature of it) be the MOST powerful format just with a rotation theam? Print lighting bolt, perfect mana base, Dark ritual, Brainstorm, Counterspell,Sinkhole, Armagadon, wrath of god, Tarmagoyf. Dark Confident Just do it in waves where we go "Agro gets love, Combo gets love, Control gets love, Prison gets love, Mid range gets love, ect" Where we know each year is the "year of the XXXXXX style" they announce it and we can expect bonkers cards for that given strategy. Print it up in say 5 year chunks so we as players can know ok so I like deck type A and they deck type will be great next year so I gota slog through this year of deck type i don't care for getting a little love.
They could do it but you have to take into account what shocks/fetches (realistically, the greatest barrier to Modern play apart from a few stupidly expensive cards) are to WotC, and that is a guaranteed way to stimulate sales - the ultimate trump card to fix a bad set.
And at the same time a balance nightmare for standard, because the mana becomes so powerful and its much harder to keep the game "under control".
For both of those reasons they're stimulated to print good mana infrequently, because if they don't, these chase cards will stop being set sellers (like Khans had everyone buying packs left and right) on top of causing headaches in standard.
This is why IMO they came up with the inventions/expeditions etc. I interpret this in the following way: they're struggling to keep the old formula at a level that is profitable to their expectations. The first reboot was to introduce Mythics. The second reboot are these insert cards. So, even the chase mythic formula isn't working well anymore.
I think they deem the Master set "enough" to keep modern profitable, but their primary preoccupation is how to keep standard going and therefore don't expect we'll be getting more than what we already get for the foreseeable future. If standard turns a corner and starts thriving we (as in Modern players) may get a bone.
They shouldn't be planning on making bad sets, they need ALL the sets to be good, have alittle faith in your product. Its a crunch that Wizards should not need at all.
The thing about stereotypes is that while they have some foundation in truth, they can also paint a not entirely accurate picture. You think enfranchised Legacy and Vintage players aren't actively buying cards from new sets? They'll buy boxes and singles, maybe not to the degree of a Standard player, but still to a comparable degree to a Modern player. I think I can fairly say that the average Vintage/Legacy player plays Limited now and again. Occasionally, you will see enfranchised Legacy and Vintage players who don't buy product for personal finance reasons (They had enough money to get into the format, but don't have the cash to play continuously.) On a tangential point, that is where a conundrum comes up. Most people don't have the money to maintain playing a format like Standard or Modern, or to get into Vintage or Legacy. If Modern doesn't want to price out both new players and a section of enfranchised players, lowering either maintenance cost or barrier to entry is the way to go, and barrier to entry is the one of those two which is better for Wizards to lower.
Okay, fair enough. I will say they are not buying product in an amount that will keep the game in business. Unlike Standard and limited do that keep the game continuing.
Lowering the money barrier, means lowering the price of cards, which will hurt LGS and players lose places to play. Yes some LGS will survive, but to what extent? Will the likes of SCG and TCG have the ability to continue supporting the game at the levels they have been for years now? Probably not.
Its a catch 22 situation. I think Wotc has been doing a good job of slowly lowering prices of staples in Modern through the printing of Masters sets along with other supplemental products. Maybe not fast enough for some, but they are working to appease both the LGS and the player base. 2 groups with in the game that actually need very different things from the game, almost opposite things that fight against each other.
Quote from Colt47 »
Also I think modern was actually started by players at least a year and a half prior to its introduction to the pro-tour. So wizards didn't create modern.
Nope, the player created format was Overextended which was a very different format then Modern. Some liked Overextended more, others didnt. I was not a fan of Overextended. Different cut off for sets. Much higher power level, much closer to Legacy lite then Modern is, something I dont believe Modern should be.
Forgive me if this has been said, but this is my thought.
Magic should be a building process. A new player should get an intro deck that interests him. He experiments and finds a color/combo he likes, and then builds on it. He cracks packs, buys supplements, and gets needed singles. Soon, he has a Standard FNM deck. He plays it, works out the kinks, invests more, and gets a decent deck he can tournament with. Eventually, standard rotates and, when it does, he takes his deck, refines it further with legacy cards, and gets a modern deck to refine and play.
It doesn't work like that.
Intro product is worthless. Its worthless as a teaching tool, its absolutely worthless in starting a collection. By the time you graduate from learning the rules, those jank commons and overpriced rares and just wasted cardboard. To play FNM or tournaments, you need to start over and be prepared to spend bank to build a manabase and invest in the only cards that count; mythics and rares. And when rotation comes, you can toss those now worthless mythics and rares to the trash because none of your standard cards (baring a few rare exceptions) are going to cut it in Modern. Moving form Standard to Modern is starting over from scratch, again.
There is a lot of reasons for that. The NWO of jank cards that fill boosters and intro packs. The shift play towards big monsters and weak spells. The modern reprint policy of limited prints in supplement products. R&D being afraid of cards that counter, burn, grow, ramp, hate, or wipe too effectively, meaning older cards see higher value than modern cards. The fact that WotC assumes only Standard Draft when designing cards, which causes emergency bannings and most of your draft-chaff. Its kowtowing the secondary market. Simply put, WotC wants Magic to be a game you have to start over again and again, each time costing you hundreds if not thousands to do.
Nope, the player created format was Overextended which was a very different format then Modern. Some liked Overextended more, others didnt. I was not a fan of Overextended. Different cut off for sets. Much higher power level, much closer to Legacy lite then Modern is, something I dont believe Modern should be.
I'm sort of wondering if that is going to be Frontiers fate as well. I've got a feeling wizards would want to annex old baggage completely if they started a new format themselves, which would probably include all the fetchlands and such. The only issue is I can't see them doing that as they would have to effectively kill modern completely. I really don't think they are even capable of doing that at this point.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Forgive me if this has been said, but this is my thought.
Magic should be a building process. A new player should get an intro deck that interests him. He experiments and finds a color/combo he likes, and then builds on it. He cracks packs, buys supplements, and gets needed singles. Soon, he has a Standard FNM deck. He plays it, works out the kinks, invests more, and gets a decent deck he can tournament with. Eventually, standard rotates and, when it does, he takes his deck, refines it further with legacy cards, and gets a modern deck to refine and play.
It doesn't work like that.
Intro product is worthless. Its worthless as a teaching tool, its absolutely worthless in starting a collection. By the time you graduate from learning the rules, those jank commons and overpriced rares and just wasted cardboard. To play FNM or tournaments, you need to start over and be prepared to spend bank to build a manabase and invest in the only cards that count; mythics and rares. And when rotation comes, you can toss those now worthless mythics and rares to the trash because none of your standard cards (baring a few rare exceptions) are going to cut it in Modern. Moving form Standard to Modern is starting over from scratch, again.
There is a lot of reasons for that. The NWO of jank cards that fill boosters and intro packs. The shift play towards big monsters and weak spells. The modern reprint policy of limited prints in supplement products. R&D being afraid of cards that counter, burn, grow, ramp, hate, or wipe too effectively, meaning older cards see higher value than modern cards. The fact that WotC assumes only Standard Draft when designing cards, which causes emergency bannings and most of your draft-chaff. Its kowtowing the secondary market. Simply put, WotC wants Magic to be a game you have to start over again and again, each time costing you hundreds if not thousands to do.
I compleatly agree. Also Intro Decks have been HORRABLE, I can count on one hand how many intro decks (precons) were worth buying at all, (and even that was because they had a good moeny rare the intro deck it self was mostly jank) I would LOVE to see Intro decks that say have a 50-60% chance of being competive at a FNM. Not win the whole thing odiously but being able to put up say 2/X or 3/X would be enough. I think only two could do this the original Megrim one (if you bought two of em you had a solid black discard deck for the time) and Stoneforge Mystic banned one except if you use the exact pre con for legal reasons one. (which had alot to do with power of the banned card in question). I want to see more pre cons that are "almost" viable decks or decks that with only minor tweaking could be T1 decks.
Wait.. are some of you guys seriously worried about whether LGS stores survive or not?
LGS stores come and go. Some stick around for decades, but many many more last for a few years or even less.
There are three LGS stores within about ten minutes from me. Both have been around at least two decades. Yet for those stores, I can recall at least three other locations that are now gone. If I think back to 1993, I can recall dozens and dozens of stores in every city I visited or lived that are now gone. A location at a popular mall now an empty field. A popular location behind a video store. Another nicknamed the Purina store (due to it's vicinity to the factory). A hole in the wall place at a beach. One that specialized in Japanese imports. One closed his B&M and sells online exclusively.
It goes on and on.
It's rarely good when LGS goes out business. But the closure of any collection of LGS isn't a crushing event. WotC could start packaging gold bars in their booster packs and LGSes arestill going to go out business.
I disagree that this set up caters to the bottom feeders. If it did we wouldnt be seeing more and more LGS open...
Just to close a couple years afterwards.
That's the song and dance of this decade. LGS shows up, it doesn't immediately make as much money as they thought they would, they pump the prices in desperation and end up closing as their few regulars leave.
LGS can't survive on singles now that any rat kid with a credit card can sell singles on ebay for lower. There's been 47 LGS in my city since I starded playing during Invasion block. There's 19 now. 2 of them have been around since I starded playing and one more is celebrating their 10 years anniversary this september.
These stores have a couple things in common:
All of them have singles avaliable but none hold more than a couple playsets of money for long.
All of them sell online and have an in-town delivery service.
All of them sell Pokemon, RPG rulebooks, minis and board games. None sell YGO! or "gone by next week" anime TCGs.
All of them have extremelly competitive buylists for store credit.
All of them sell snacks.
At many of the other stores you won't see people staying for a single second more than FNM lasts, and many don't even have people show up to sit and play unless it's an RPTQ or pre-release. At these three stores you see people parked there all day long playing, having fun, and spending a ridiculous ammount of cash on boosters, accessories and food.
Good LGS will last even if singles prices collapse. The rest? Those were gonna close anyway.
I disagree that this set up caters to the bottom feeders. If it did we wouldnt be seeing more and more LGS open...
Just to close a couple years afterwards.
That's the song and dance of this decade. LGS shows up, it doesn't immediately make as much money as they thought they would, they pump the prices in desperation and end up closing as their few regulars leave.
LGS can't survive on singles now that any rat kid with a credit card can sell singles on ebay for lower. There's been 47 LGS in my city since I starded playing during Invasion block. There's 19 now. 2 of them have been around since I starded playing and one more is celebrating their 10 years anniversary this september.
These stores have a couple things in common:
All of them have singles avaliable but none hold more than a couple playsets of money for long.
All of them sell online and have an in-town delivery service.
All of them sell Pokemon, RPG rulebooks, minis and board games. None sell YGO! or "gone by next week" anime TCGs.
All of them have extremelly competitive buylists for store credit.
All of them sell snacks.
At many of the other stores you won't see people staying for a single second more than FNM lasts, and many don't even have people show up to sit and play unless it's an RPTQ or pre-release. At these three stores you see people parked there all day long playing, having fun, and spending a ridiculous ammount of cash on boosters, accessories and food.
Good LGS will last even if singles prices collapse. The rest? Those were gonna close anyway.
Going to agree with this. All the LGS in my area that still survive have been selling board games, renting out space for video game tournaments, and generally run more events for different card games than actually selling singles for those games. Also, Pokemon has been a better money maker than MtG for the last year and a half thanks to the pins and figures adding so much value to the boxes.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Forgive me if this has been said, but this is my thought.
Magic should be a building process. A new player should get an intro deck that interests him. He experiments and finds a color/combo he likes, and then builds on it. He cracks packs, buys supplements, and gets needed singles. Soon, he has a Standard FNM deck. He plays it, works out the kinks, invests more, and gets a decent deck he can tournament with. Eventually, standard rotates and, when it does, he takes his deck, refines it further with legacy cards, and gets a modern deck to refine and play.
It doesn't work like that.
Intro product is worthless. Its worthless as a teaching tool, its absolutely worthless in starting a collection. By the time you graduate from learning the rules, those jank commons and overpriced rares and just wasted cardboard. To play FNM or tournaments, you need to start over and be prepared to spend bank to build a manabase and invest in the only cards that count; mythics and rares. And when rotation comes, you can toss those now worthless mythics and rares to the trash because none of your standard cards (baring a few rare exceptions) are going to cut it in Modern. Moving form Standard to Modern is starting over from scratch, again.
There is a lot of reasons for that. The NWO of jank cards that fill boosters and intro packs. The shift play towards big monsters and weak spells. The modern reprint policy of limited prints in supplement products. R&D being afraid of cards that counter, burn, grow, ramp, hate, or wipe too effectively, meaning older cards see higher value than modern cards. The fact that WotC assumes only Standard Draft when designing cards, which causes emergency bannings and most of your draft-chaff. Its kowtowing the secondary market. Simply put, WotC wants Magic to be a game you have to start over again and again, each time costing you hundreds if not thousands to do.
I compleatly agree. Also Intro Decks have been HORRABLE, I can count on one hand how many intro decks (precons) were worth buying at all, (and even that was because they had a good moeny rare the intro deck it self was mostly jank) I would LOVE to see Intro decks that say have a 50-60% chance of being competive at a FNM. Not win the whole thing odiously but being able to put up say 2/X or 3/X would be enough. I think only two could do this the original Megrim one (if you bought two of em you had a solid black discard deck for the time) and Stoneforge Mystic banned one except if you use the exact pre con for legal reasons one. (which had alot to do with power of the banned card in question). I want to see more pre cons that are "almost" viable decks or decks that with only minor tweaking could be T1 decks.
]
Truth is wizards shouldn't be bothering to make intro decks or planeswalker decks at all. The logic they have is that since good cards sell too well to the 20%, they'll just make absolute crap products that don't sell well so that we never have issues with supply as consumers... and then we have supply shortages on cards that we actually play, so to solve that they make masters sets that are priced at 240 msrp that only a marginal few actually buy...
Sweet mercy when I write this out this sounds like the Wily Coyote from Looney Toons ordered an instruction manual from Acme on how to be successful. Also, for those not familiar with Wily Coyote cartoons, that is a bad thing.
Even the deckbuilders toolkit is garbage. I guess wizards just wants everyone playing limited and pretending they don't print mythics and rares? We're all paying for this insanity right now. Maybe we should all find a different hobby...
Also, while I'm working on double sleeving my cards here and it's on my mind, someone needs to go to Wizards HQ and tell them to stop printing double sided cards. I'm freaking dying here with these things because having to flip the things involves either owning TWO sets of the card, or pulling out the sleeving token, pulling out the card from the outer sleeve, and then resleeving in the now flipped position. I don't even want to get started with the Exodia transformer stuff going on with some of the other cards.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I used to blame WotC for the intro decks being poor but now I don't. The few times that they tried to give starting players value in them by printing a fetch and CoCo, they were dismantled for parts en masse by stores and sold for profit without ever getting into the hands of players. After seeing this, the people at WotC probably were quite angry with the results and decided to print only crap in those decks.
See, the point of the decks is to draw new players into the game, not for stores to make a killing - and even though WotC made money on paper (because they sold a ton of them), the idea of the product is to make money on a different axis, by growing the player base. Not to pursue short term profit, particularly not when the majority of the profit goes to the secondary market, hoarders, and collectors.
Its practically impossible to balance the value in these products in such a way that they don't instantly become the targets of speculation - because they remove all the gambling elements from the game as soon as the decklist is up. AFAIK they printed a ton of them and even that didn't help.
They could do better if they were smart, but it would require making them out of older cards. There are a lot of very playable, competitive and borderline competitive cards that aren't worth a lot of money. I'm a budget player, they are my stock in trade. You could build a deck out of these easy, but you wouldn't be able to do this for the current set because you'd have to look into the future.
Personally I'm surprised that selling RPG books is still a thing. Super easy to pirate, and print - extremely expensive to keep buying if its a large, established franchise. Slow to replace/use up if you're actually using them instead of just sticking them on shelves (like me).
I can't imagine how anyone makes money of the things.
Same way arbooks do. Printing them in utter ***** quality is cheap, but if you actually want to look at the pretty pictures it's gonna cost you more to print in quality paper at a good resolution than just buying the thing.
I used to blame WotC for the intro decks being poor but now I don't. The few times that they tried to give starting players value in them by printing a fetch and CoCo, they were dismantled for parts en masse by stores and sold for profit without ever getting into the hands of players. After seeing this, the people at WotC probably were quite angry with the results and decided to print only crap in those decks.
Maybe if they were common rather than a legendary once in a lifetime occurrence, this wouldn't happen.
Magic seems to be the only game that can't give it's players easy access to tournament cards, why?
Most modern players really aren't entitled, it's just they are trying to give advice to people on how to build format legal decks at a budget tier that puts them at a clear disadvantage against players who have the established cards due to the costs. Mostly because 90% of the time modern players just want someone to actually play against one way or another and getting new players into the format even on a barrel scraping level is better than nothing. Unfortunately, this doesn't always work out too well for the person who got told they can build X in modern and then get themselves totally blown out by the guy with the established 500+ dollar deck.
I would say entitled in the sense that WotC seems more interested in maintaining the value of the singles market than making life easier for people starting up in Modern from scratch.
Wizards is ranked as one of the worst companies in the united states when it comes to employment and customer satisfaction (I promise if I find the article again I'll link it). The card prices are completely unnatural outside of the restricted list and are a result of the companies notorious mistake of not supporting magic correctly during its post recession growth period. On top of which, looking at Google shows that they clearly had no clue of the impact supporting modern officially was going to have and exploded the prices due to not enough cardboard on the second hand market.
So in a nutshell, I agree with that sentiment.
The singles market has felt unnatural for a while now. I can remember back to the early days when I started where a lot more uncommons were worth something and tournament quality rares could be had for $5-10. Non-competitive cards were worth something a lot of the time. I started playing during 4E/Alliances, and it was still mostly true during Apocalypse/Odyssey when I stopped playing for the second time. When I came back during Mirrodin block things were different, only tournament cards were worth money, and I could pick up non-tournament singles for almost nothing and competitive cards were more expensive than previously. This wasn't the case before, but has been the case more or less ever since. I'm curious why this is, I never really looked into the why;
Garbage cards across the board. I read an article by Maro awhil back that talks about how every set has to have bad cards to make the good cards good. Fair enough, but I think the designs don't necessarily reflect that. WotC seems so worried about the power levels of commons/uncommons to rare/mythics that they end up with almost all junk for C and U and, because every set needs bad cards, hardly any R or M's worth having. Because, you know, you have to have bad rares to make the good rares good. And when an interesting and fun Common or Uncommon does float to the top such as Felidar Guardian, WotC feels an apology is in order.
I'm not saying commons should always be powerful cards, but rather WotC painted themselves into a corner with conflicting design ideals.
Basically wizards wants all of the cards in your deck at the highest rarity possible and preferably in play sets.
I used to blame WotC for the intro decks being poor but now I don't. The few times that they tried to give starting players value in them by printing a fetch and CoCo, they were dismantled for parts en masse by stores and sold for profit without ever getting into the hands of players. After seeing this, the people at WotC probably were quite angry with the results and decided to print only crap in those decks.
See, the point of the decks is to draw new players into the game, not for stores to make a killing - and even though WotC made money on paper (because they sold a ton of them), the idea of the product is to make money on a different axis, by growing the player base. Not to pursue short term profit, particularly not when the majority of the profit goes to the secondary market, hoarders, and collectors.
Its practically impossible to balance the value in these products in such a way that they don't instantly become the targets of speculation - because they remove all the gambling elements from the game as soon as the decklist is up. AFAIK they printed a ton of them and even that didn't help.
They could do better if they were smart, but it would require making them out of older cards. There are a lot of very playable, competitive and borderline competitive cards that aren't worth a lot of money. I'm a budget player, they are my stock in trade. You could build a deck out of these easy, but you wouldn't be able to do this for the current set because you'd have to look into the future.
To be frank the problem isn't even WoTC at this point with the dismantling of products. The problem is that the LGS model is broken and they need money so badly to stay afloat they have to cannibalize any product that has value. The only solution wizards could come up with was to only put value cards in randomized packs so it forces both the LGS owners and the players on the same level with RNG determining what they get. Part of this is also due to the death of "casual night" for MTG. Wizards pushed competitive play so hard that now everyone basically walks into FNM like prize fighters, which is why commander is currently the go to casual format instead of traditional 60 card magic. No one builds 60 card decks anymore and takes them to the LGS to play casually unless they actually know the people they are playing.
If I were going to run an LGS it would probably be a component of a mainstream business like a Bistro or diner. Combo Starbucks or Panera with rooms in the back dedicated for card game tournaments, a trades table, and various products needed to handle the games like sleeves instead of going whole hog into tabletop gaming and other details. People could come buy a coffee, lunch, dinner, whatever, then go in back and play in the facilities, or just stop by and stick around to surf the web or something.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Nope, the player created format was Overextended which was a very different format then Modern. Some liked Overextended more, others didnt. I was not a fan of Overextended. Different cut off for sets. Much higher power level, much closer to Legacy lite then Modern is, something I dont believe Modern should be.
I'm sort of wondering if that is going to be Frontiers fate as well. I've got a feeling wizards would want to annex old baggage completely if they started a new format themselves, which would probably include all the fetchlands and such. The only issue is I can't see them doing that as they would have to effectively kill modern completely. I really don't think they are even capable of doing that at this point.
I believe it was stated if Wotc made another format it wouldnt have any fetches.
If I were going to run an LGS it would probably be a component of a mainstream business like a Bistro or diner. Combo Starbucks or Panera with rooms in the back dedicated for card game tournaments, a trades table, and various products needed to handle the games like sleeves instead of going whole hog into tabletop gaming and other details. People could come buy a coffee, lunch, dinner, whatever, then go in back and play in the facilities, or just stop by and stick around to surf the web or something.
So you want to regress back to the late 90s. Players fighting for space to play among customers not there for Magic. It was terrible back then, it would be terrible now too. Its bad enough Magic players have to fight for space with Pokemon and Yugiho. Cant imagine having to deal with non gamers on top of that.
I disagree that this set up caters to the bottom feeders. If it did we wouldnt be seeing more and more LGS open...
Just to close a couple years afterwards.
That's the song and dance of this decade. LGS shows up, it doesn't immediately make as much money as they thought they would, they pump the prices in desperation and end up closing as their few regulars leave.
LGS can't survive on singles now that any rat kid with a credit card can sell singles on ebay for lower. There's been 47 LGS in my city since I starded playing during Invasion block. There's 19 now. 2 of them have been around since I starded playing and one more is celebrating their 10 years anniversary this september.
These stores have a couple things in common:
All of them have singles avaliable but none hold more than a couple playsets of money for long.
All of them sell online and have an in-town delivery service.
All of them sell Pokemon, RPG rulebooks, minis and board games. None sell YGO! or "gone by next week" anime TCGs.
All of them have extremelly competitive buylists for store credit.
All of them sell snacks.
At many of the other stores you won't see people staying for a single second more than FNM lasts, and many don't even have people show up to sit and play unless it's an RPTQ or pre-release. At these three stores you see people parked there all day long playing, having fun, and spending a ridiculous ammount of cash on boosters, accessories and food.
Good LGS will last even if singles prices collapse. The rest? Those were gonna close anyway.
I guess time will tell.
We have had an explosion of LGS as of late, the last 12-18 months. All have solid player attendance. In the past 5 years all we have seen is LGS open, I think one closed in that time, but its because the owner got caught doing some things he wasnt suppose to be and Wotc took his sanctioning.
Of the things you mention
These stores have a couple things in common:
All of them have singles avaliable but none hold more than a couple playsets of money for long.
All of them sell online and have an in-town delivery service.
All of them sell Pokemon, RPG rulebooks, minis and board games. None sell YGO! or "gone by next week" anime TCGs.
All of them have extremelly competitive buylists for store credit.
All of them sell snacks.
All LGS support all card games in my area.
The minis market just isnt here. There was one LGS that had them on the shelves for a few months, but never sold one.
I would also like to know what you mean by competitive buy lists. All the stores around here are 50% of cards TCG mid for store credit. Some stores wont buy for cash at all, but if they do, its usually 25-30% of TCG mid. With rates like that, they are more or less forcing players to compete against them on line.
Singles, sealed product, snacks and Magic supplies are what keep each and every LGS in my area going. If the Magic secondary collapsed, so would almost all the LGS. It would be who has the most money to ride it out to who stayed open.
Nope, the player created format was Overextended which was a very different format then Modern. Some liked Overextended more, others didnt. I was not a fan of Overextended. Different cut off for sets. Much higher power level, much closer to Legacy lite then Modern is, something I dont believe Modern should be.
I'm sort of wondering if that is going to be Frontiers fate as well. I've got a feeling wizards would want to annex old baggage completely if they started a new format themselves, which would probably include all the fetchlands and such. The only issue is I can't see them doing that as they would have to effectively kill modern completely. I really don't think they are even capable of doing that at this point.
I believe it was stated if Wotc made another format it wouldnt have any fetches.
If I were going to run an LGS it would probably be a component of a mainstream business like a Bistro or diner. Combo Starbucks or Panera with rooms in the back dedicated for card game tournaments, a trades table, and various products needed to handle the games like sleeves instead of going whole hog into tabletop gaming and other details. People could come buy a coffee, lunch, dinner, whatever, then go in back and play in the facilities, or just stop by and stick around to surf the web or something.
So you want to regress back to the late 90s. Players fighting for space to play among customers not there for Magic. It was terrible back then, it would be terrible now too. Its bad enough Magic players have to fight for space with Pokemon and Yugiho. Cant imagine having to deal with non gamers on top of that.
Well, considering there is a place that is basically a retro arcade that caters events right in my own area, I think the business idea is sound. Unfortunately, as the owner of said establishment told me one time during the Christmas event I attended there it was a combination of luck and timing that made the place possible. (Look up Level 257, it's a really cool place to go visit if you want to experience those old arcade cabinets again... and drink booze and have a slice of pizza).
We're living in a time where an LGS has to be more than just an LGS to really stick unless it's a major place like Card Kingdom. Small LGS basically are struggling to even stay alive.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
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We get it you dont like their way of doing things. You think they can do better. But they are going to do as they see fit.
I dont understand how you can honestly think if Wotc put out a Masters set for $99 MSRP a box, and LGS pumping up the price to the $200 mark or more depending on what is in the set is going to solve anything or could make them more money in the long run. Even if they opened up Masters sets to the big box stores, the big box stores will pump up the price. I have seen it with boxes of Standard set. LGS selling them for $100 a box and the big box stores selling for $150 or more. There is nothing Wotc can do to stop such actions either. Wotc depends on the LGS to not only sell their product, but give the players some place to play. If Wotc says if you dont sell sealed product for 'X' amount we wont supply you any more, there are other means to get sealed product, and if Wotc/DCI wants to take away sanctioning. Wotc just lost a place for players to play.
Opening the printing presses and flooding the market is going to kill the secondary, in turn hurting the LGS, in turn making less places for players to play.
The secondary market is the key. They need a secondary market that can keep the big LGS open as well as the smaller local ones open also.
LGS make nothing off running events. They make money off players needing cards for events and buying them. They make money off of the sale of sleeves and dice. Take away the main source of income for LGS and its going to hurt the game long term.
I am not saying Hasbro or Wotc hasnt made mistakes in the past 20 some years. But I trust them a hell of a lot more to run the company and keep the profits flowing then the player base.
Your argument is understandable but when everyone from SCG to Timmy has complaints about card avaliability, you start to sound like Chicken Little in opposite day.
The largest stores aren't making as much money as they know they can because of card costs, a shrinking playerbase and the resserved list (and I don't even want to think about the storage costs of all the crap they have to crack to get the ONE good card WotC seems to be printing for every set nowadays). Small stores are getting out of MTG because of the shrinking playerbase, micromanaging from the WPN and being unable to compete with ebay prices or Card Kingdom/SCG/Troll & Toad sales.
Players are getting second thoughts about buying $20+ Standard mythics that may be banned in 3 months, find no value in drafting unless you crack the good mythic or a masterpiece, and are finding it ever harder to buy into non-rotating formats.
And you see the recent increase of repackaged product at big box stores? Turns out Magic isn't selling that hot there either.
Who actually benefits from the current state of Magic?
Scum, literally. The bottom dredgers among MTGFinance, "speculators" who hoard product, force spikes and even buy piracy with the intent of passing it as real. Those are the people who absolutelly need Magic singles to be as expensive as possible even if it means nobody gets to play.
Real speculators don't suffer a dime to make a dollar. Rudy just opened a store, bought a ton of unsellable DBZ boosters and is selling Aether Revolt booster boxes at near distributor prices to his patrons. All in the same month! That would bankrupt the average "speculator" a couple times over because those leeches don't even make money, they just complain relentlessly about every good print/reprint and make the game worse for everyone else.
At this point, making them lose so much money they'll never touch a game piece again is the best thing WotC can do to renew players and large clients' faith on their business model.
And adjusting for wages the price has gone up.
Umm... what? The point was to replace Extended... As for heavily invested players, the heavily invested players before Modern WERE the Legacy/Vintage players. And most of those players still play Legacy/Vintage. The upkeep costs on Legacy and Vintage are significantly less than Modern or Standard. Decks in Modern can go from Tier 1 to below Tier 2 in a comparable amount of time to Standard; many enfranchised players have better ways to spend their money than on that. That's why there's a low overlap between Legacy/Vintage players and Standard players.
And besides, there weren't a ton of people invested in the full spread of current day Modern staples but not earlier cards. There was no reason for that, beyond starting times as players, which were much more spread out at the time of the format's conception in 2011. Yes, the number of players had gone up at that point, but not nearly as much as after the release of Innistrad and the start of Modern. Keep in mind that Magic had flatlined and even started to decline between 2003 (the cutoff for Modern-legal sets) and 2008.
Modern is an appealing format for newer players. And I've found that the number of enfranchised players who disdain Modern (sometimes to the degree of not even considering it a real format) is much higher than one might expect for a format "designed for heavily invested players." Albeit that's anecdotal, but the fact that is anecdotal is less damning due to the lower number of enfranchised players and tighter community out there. I would go as far as to say that even if WotC may have had enfranchised players in mind, which I honestly do not believe is the case to the degree that you have suggested, they certainly created something that does not appear to be primarily targeted towards enfranchised players.
They use to and it didnt work for Wotc, the LGS or the player base. Some of the high print run sets are some of the lowest selling sets (Timespiral and Lorwyn blocks).
I disagree that this set up caters to the bottom feeders. If it did we wouldnt be seeing more and more LGS open.
Selling sealed product is not where the money is for the LGS. Also no matter what the LGS is selling the product for, they are still making money.
This is why Wotc doesnt like Legacy and Vintage. The players rarely buy newer cards. If Wotc had to rely on those older format players to keep in business, the game would have died a long time ago.
Standard can not be high level, an amazing format every season. It never has and never can be. If it was the power level of Standard would be higher then any other format there is.
How many Masters set do you think they need to print before Wotc is supporting Modern? They support Modern just fine for those playing the format.
The problem is that wizards is doing the complete opposite of what they need to do if they want standard to sell. They can't stop a format from being popular, they can only meet supply and reduce costs so that people playing that format will purchase more of the product they do make. It's much better to have audiences double dipping than having the player base getting fragmented between two formats, especially since buying a single card in modern can cost as much as buying an entire booster box of standard. If wizards wants to sell more standard, they need to bring modern prices on the high end cards down to allow that. Otherwise people won't be willing to dabble or experiment with new cards simply because they only have so much money to put into the game.
Lets face it, modern would be the most stagnant place ever if we didn't have free utilities like Cockatrice to experiment with deck builds, and if people could just afford to go pick up cards to experiment with, we'd have a more healthy paper magic economy than we got right now. But this involves a mind set that doesn't come naturally to people in the games industry right now. People these days seem to be caught in a "live fast, die young" type mentality, which leads to doing things like Modern Masters 2017 at 240 msrp and lottery cards in standard. The lottery cards themselves are going to wear thin eventually as people get used to them, so those are a stop gap cash out solution as well.
Also, as a quick reminder to everybody chatting in this naturally negative thread, at the end of the day, we are all concerned about the magic economy because it is a lifestyle game. It's something that became a part of our lives at some point and we don't want it to end because we cherish playing the game with friends and family (or sometimes to just collect the cards). I think sometimes we forget that when we talk about subjects in magic.
Edit: Also I think modern was actually started by players at least a year and a half prior to its introduction to the pro-tour. So wizards didn't create modern.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The thing about stereotypes is that while they have some foundation in truth, they can also paint a not entirely accurate picture. You think enfranchised Legacy and Vintage players aren't actively buying cards from new sets? They'll buy boxes and singles, maybe not to the degree of a Standard player, but still to a comparable degree to a Modern player. I think I can fairly say that the average Vintage/Legacy player plays Limited now and again. Occasionally, you will see enfranchised Legacy and Vintage players who don't buy product for personal finance reasons (They had enough money to get into the format, but don't have the cash to play continuously.) On a tangential point, that is where a conundrum comes up. Most people don't have the money to maintain playing a format like Standard or Modern, or to get into Vintage or Legacy. If Modern doesn't want to price out both new players and a section of enfranchised players, lowering either maintenance cost or barrier to entry is the way to go, and barrier to entry is the one of those two which is better for Wizards to lower.
Fair, though older eternal formats have started to get more popular lately, especially due to and in respect to online play.
Yes, but...
There's something to be said for reducing the price of entry, and Modern is well-poised to do that. If you look at a format like Vintage, the barrier to entry is high, but when you remove the reserved list from the picture (which you can actually do pretty easily, especially given the prevalence of 10-to-15-proxy tournaments), the barrier to entry is pretty damn low. And Modern could do this with its more regular cards (Shocks and fetches at the least) to a higher degree than the Masters sets currently achieve. If someone is able to buy the base cards for a few different decks for a lower price, then the format is likely to grow. One way to do this would be to just price and print the Masters sets like normal expansions for only a year rather than the longer time of a Standard set, and include shocks or fetches relatively regularly. You're still not flooding the market with the cards; the set only comes out for a short time. But it's a better control on the market that pulls new players in without overly hurting collectors or stores. Well, it hurts some of the more scummy collectors/stores. But that's not a bad thing, now, is it?
On the other hand, i'm pretty sure that none of us who care enough about the game to post on an online forum are the target market, or really even the secondary target market for wizards. Didn't some old article or something say that they aimed at the 4th grade comprehension level? Bit hard to find anything on the mothership in it's current state.
Something else to consider. Wizards can afford to annoy and piss off long time players, they/we are already hooked, and are considerably less likely to quit the game. It really does take a lot to get a long time player to quit out of frustration, like having multiple expensive decks banned in a row, a two deck format, or other drastic flaws in the game.
Death and Taxes
Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron
Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
They shouldn't be planning on making bad sets, they need ALL the sets to be good, have alittle faith in your product. Its a crunch that Wizards should not need at all.
Okay, fair enough. I will say they are not buying product in an amount that will keep the game in business. Unlike Standard and limited do that keep the game continuing.
Lowering the money barrier, means lowering the price of cards, which will hurt LGS and players lose places to play. Yes some LGS will survive, but to what extent? Will the likes of SCG and TCG have the ability to continue supporting the game at the levels they have been for years now? Probably not.
Its a catch 22 situation. I think Wotc has been doing a good job of slowly lowering prices of staples in Modern through the printing of Masters sets along with other supplemental products. Maybe not fast enough for some, but they are working to appease both the LGS and the player base. 2 groups with in the game that actually need very different things from the game, almost opposite things that fight against each other.
Nope, the player created format was Overextended which was a very different format then Modern. Some liked Overextended more, others didnt. I was not a fan of Overextended. Different cut off for sets. Much higher power level, much closer to Legacy lite then Modern is, something I dont believe Modern should be.
Magic should be a building process. A new player should get an intro deck that interests him. He experiments and finds a color/combo he likes, and then builds on it. He cracks packs, buys supplements, and gets needed singles. Soon, he has a Standard FNM deck. He plays it, works out the kinks, invests more, and gets a decent deck he can tournament with. Eventually, standard rotates and, when it does, he takes his deck, refines it further with legacy cards, and gets a modern deck to refine and play.
It doesn't work like that.
Intro product is worthless. Its worthless as a teaching tool, its absolutely worthless in starting a collection. By the time you graduate from learning the rules, those jank commons and overpriced rares and just wasted cardboard. To play FNM or tournaments, you need to start over and be prepared to spend bank to build a manabase and invest in the only cards that count; mythics and rares. And when rotation comes, you can toss those now worthless mythics and rares to the trash because none of your standard cards (baring a few rare exceptions) are going to cut it in Modern. Moving form Standard to Modern is starting over from scratch, again.
There is a lot of reasons for that. The NWO of jank cards that fill boosters and intro packs. The shift play towards big monsters and weak spells. The modern reprint policy of limited prints in supplement products. R&D being afraid of cards that counter, burn, grow, ramp, hate, or wipe too effectively, meaning older cards see higher value than modern cards. The fact that WotC assumes only Standard Draft when designing cards, which causes emergency bannings and most of your draft-chaff. Its kowtowing the secondary market. Simply put, WotC wants Magic to be a game you have to start over again and again, each time costing you hundreds if not thousands to do.
I'm sort of wondering if that is going to be Frontiers fate as well. I've got a feeling wizards would want to annex old baggage completely if they started a new format themselves, which would probably include all the fetchlands and such. The only issue is I can't see them doing that as they would have to effectively kill modern completely. I really don't think they are even capable of doing that at this point.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I compleatly agree. Also Intro Decks have been HORRABLE, I can count on one hand how many intro decks (precons) were worth buying at all, (and even that was because they had a good moeny rare the intro deck it self was mostly jank) I would LOVE to see Intro decks that say have a 50-60% chance of being competive at a FNM. Not win the whole thing odiously but being able to put up say 2/X or 3/X would be enough. I think only two could do this the original Megrim one (if you bought two of em you had a solid black discard deck for the time) and Stoneforge Mystic banned one except if you use the exact pre con for legal reasons one. (which had alot to do with power of the banned card in question). I want to see more pre cons that are "almost" viable decks or decks that with only minor tweaking could be T1 decks.
LGS stores come and go. Some stick around for decades, but many many more last for a few years or even less.
There are three LGS stores within about ten minutes from me. Both have been around at least two decades. Yet for those stores, I can recall at least three other locations that are now gone. If I think back to 1993, I can recall dozens and dozens of stores in every city I visited or lived that are now gone. A location at a popular mall now an empty field. A popular location behind a video store. Another nicknamed the Purina store (due to it's vicinity to the factory). A hole in the wall place at a beach. One that specialized in Japanese imports. One closed his B&M and sells online exclusively.
It goes on and on.
It's rarely good when LGS goes out business. But the closure of any collection of LGS isn't a crushing event. WotC could start packaging gold bars in their booster packs and LGSes arestill going to go out business.
That's the song and dance of this decade. LGS shows up, it doesn't immediately make as much money as they thought they would, they pump the prices in desperation and end up closing as their few regulars leave.
LGS can't survive on singles now that any rat kid with a credit card can sell singles on ebay for lower. There's been 47 LGS in my city since I starded playing during Invasion block. There's 19 now. 2 of them have been around since I starded playing and one more is celebrating their 10 years anniversary this september.
These stores have a couple things in common:
All of them have singles avaliable but none hold more than a couple playsets of money for long.
All of them sell online and have an in-town delivery service.
All of them sell Pokemon, RPG rulebooks, minis and board games. None sell YGO! or "gone by next week" anime TCGs.
All of them have extremelly competitive buylists for store credit.
All of them sell snacks.
At many of the other stores you won't see people staying for a single second more than FNM lasts, and many don't even have people show up to sit and play unless it's an RPTQ or pre-release. At these three stores you see people parked there all day long playing, having fun, and spending a ridiculous ammount of cash on boosters, accessories and food.
Good LGS will last even if singles prices collapse. The rest? Those were gonna close anyway.
Going to agree with this. All the LGS in my area that still survive have been selling board games, renting out space for video game tournaments, and generally run more events for different card games than actually selling singles for those games. Also, Pokemon has been a better money maker than MtG for the last year and a half thanks to the pins and figures adding so much value to the boxes.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Truth is wizards shouldn't be bothering to make intro decks or planeswalker decks at all. The logic they have is that since good cards sell too well to the 20%, they'll just make absolute crap products that don't sell well so that we never have issues with supply as consumers... and then we have supply shortages on cards that we actually play, so to solve that they make masters sets that are priced at 240 msrp that only a marginal few actually buy...
Sweet mercy when I write this out this sounds like the Wily Coyote from Looney Toons ordered an instruction manual from Acme on how to be successful. Also, for those not familiar with Wily Coyote cartoons, that is a bad thing.
Even the deckbuilders toolkit is garbage. I guess wizards just wants everyone playing limited and pretending they don't print mythics and rares? We're all paying for this insanity right now. Maybe we should all find a different hobby...
Also, while I'm working on double sleeving my cards here and it's on my mind, someone needs to go to Wizards HQ and tell them to stop printing double sided cards. I'm freaking dying here with these things because having to flip the things involves either owning TWO sets of the card, or pulling out the sleeving token, pulling out the card from the outer sleeve, and then resleeving in the now flipped position. I don't even want to get started with the Exodia transformer stuff going on with some of the other cards.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
They could do better if they were smart, but it would require making them out of older cards. There are a lot of very playable, competitive and borderline competitive cards that aren't worth a lot of money. I'm a budget player, they are my stock in trade. You could build a deck out of these easy, but you wouldn't be able to do this for the current set because you'd have to look into the future.
Maybe if they were common rather than a legendary once in a lifetime occurrence, this wouldn't happen.
Magic seems to be the only game that can't give it's players easy access to tournament cards, why?
To be frank the problem isn't even WoTC at this point with the dismantling of products. The problem is that the LGS model is broken and they need money so badly to stay afloat they have to cannibalize any product that has value. The only solution wizards could come up with was to only put value cards in randomized packs so it forces both the LGS owners and the players on the same level with RNG determining what they get. Part of this is also due to the death of "casual night" for MTG. Wizards pushed competitive play so hard that now everyone basically walks into FNM like prize fighters, which is why commander is currently the go to casual format instead of traditional 60 card magic. No one builds 60 card decks anymore and takes them to the LGS to play casually unless they actually know the people they are playing.
If I were going to run an LGS it would probably be a component of a mainstream business like a Bistro or diner. Combo Starbucks or Panera with rooms in the back dedicated for card game tournaments, a trades table, and various products needed to handle the games like sleeves instead of going whole hog into tabletop gaming and other details. People could come buy a coffee, lunch, dinner, whatever, then go in back and play in the facilities, or just stop by and stick around to surf the web or something.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I believe it was stated if Wotc made another format it wouldnt have any fetches.
So you want to regress back to the late 90s. Players fighting for space to play among customers not there for Magic. It was terrible back then, it would be terrible now too. Its bad enough Magic players have to fight for space with Pokemon and Yugiho. Cant imagine having to deal with non gamers on top of that.
I guess time will tell.
We have had an explosion of LGS as of late, the last 12-18 months. All have solid player attendance. In the past 5 years all we have seen is LGS open, I think one closed in that time, but its because the owner got caught doing some things he wasnt suppose to be and Wotc took his sanctioning.
Of the things you mention
All LGS support all card games in my area.
The minis market just isnt here. There was one LGS that had them on the shelves for a few months, but never sold one.
I would also like to know what you mean by competitive buy lists. All the stores around here are 50% of cards TCG mid for store credit. Some stores wont buy for cash at all, but if they do, its usually 25-30% of TCG mid. With rates like that, they are more or less forcing players to compete against them on line.
Singles, sealed product, snacks and Magic supplies are what keep each and every LGS in my area going. If the Magic secondary collapsed, so would almost all the LGS. It would be who has the most money to ride it out to who stayed open.
Well, considering there is a place that is basically a retro arcade that caters events right in my own area, I think the business idea is sound. Unfortunately, as the owner of said establishment told me one time during the Christmas event I attended there it was a combination of luck and timing that made the place possible. (Look up Level 257, it's a really cool place to go visit if you want to experience those old arcade cabinets again... and drink booze and have a slice of pizza).
We're living in a time where an LGS has to be more than just an LGS to really stick unless it's a major place like Card Kingdom. Small LGS basically are struggling to even stay alive.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!