I see this EVERY spoiler season. A card gets spoiled, a thread is started about the card. Most rave how great the card is and it's uses....
... Fast forward three or more months; the card is a buck or less, doesn't see constructed play on the tournament level, gets passed up in trade binders, and almost forgotten. The card sees fringe play in Commander and is mostly used around the kitchen table.
Can someone please explain why this happens? What exactly is the cycle of these cards to be so less deserving of being in YOUR deck?
I think the process is as follows:
1) People who can't brew look to netdecks for their competitive lists.
2) People who are competitive want to get ahead of the pack and secure their tourney cards as soon as possible
3) As there are no netdecks prior to release, this group must rely on their card evaluation skills.
4) As they are not brewers, their card evaluation skills are poor. This leads them to hype the wrong cards.
5) The first SCGs, GPs and PT happen. This group buy into the latest netdecks and forget all about the spoiler season
6) cycle repeats.
I also think that the competitive netdeck crowd have the greatest influence on prices, so as soon as their attention is lost the cards slump.
a lot of these cards are also, cutsie (as in it does a really cool thing in very specific situations that rarely happen aka it looks good at first but it's really nothing special). Hedron Alignment got an entire article about it on TCGplayer. We all knew it was trash but still, an entire article arguing in favor of this card. Wizards needs to advertise and a good way to do that is to hype up spoiler cards so, they ask big names to advertise them and they do it, and all press is good press with magic cards, talk about it enough and people will listen
Well this phenomenon happened since the inception of printed MTG spoilers, I guess it became similar to what happens to modern levels after Alliances, but I do remember people not evaluating cards properly during Ice Age as well, so probably it wasn't much different during the early days of the games. After all people tell stories about trading Shivan Dragons and Lord of the Pits over dual lands and even P9 cards during ABU times before their realize the proper power level of the those cards. I remember seeing spoilers from Alliances and people getting all crazy about Balduvian Horde.
However, people are pretty good at asserting power level of a set in general I believe. The public in general can err on evaluating certain individual cards, but I think folks are right about the set in general. It's hard to be right about every single major new card. During spoiler seasons, people wanna be hyped about, so we may turn off our rational senses on some potential cards for several reasons.
Probably the biggest factor is if a card is similar to a powerful/pet card of the past. Juzam Djinn to Balduvian Horde. Time Twist to Time Reversal/Days Undoing. Icy Manipulator to Ring of Gix. Tarmogoyf to Talara's Battalion. Blood Moon to Blood Sun. Gaea's Cradle to Growing Rites. Jester Cap to Grinning Totem (overhype inception as Jester Cap is also overhyped). Any Dark Confidant variant ever. Unique planeswalkers like Narset and Tibalt. Cards that we usually underestimate are usually cards we don't really have a good example in the past or we don't see the full picture in the metagame.
Some may be strange outliners like Aurelia's Fury. Maybe it fits the Tarmogoyf example. People missed out on the goyf boat so they had to jump on Battalion hype. I guess the same happened with Fury as people didn't wanna miss the Bonfire boat.
Iroas, God of Victory (and similar gods) was very hyped during its release. I guess there is nothing wrong with the hype of this card per se, but people didn't see that no T1 deck could used it properly.
Abyssal Persecutor and Skaab Ruinator are strange cases for me. Dunno in what case these one would fit. Maybe it attracts Colin Woods style of players. During its time I never understood the hype. They looked unplayable for me to justify their initial preorder price tags and articles.
Some are kinda success after the overhype period like Kozilek's Return, Temporal Mastery, and Swan Song. They did or still do see play in tournaments.
In the end of the day, it's hard to be right on every single card being spoiled, so being very wrong or misled (like Daybreak Ranger case) is naturally common behavior.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
... Fast forward three or more months; the card is a buck or less, doesn't see constructed play on the tournament level, gets passed up in trade binders, and almost forgotten. The card sees fringe play in Commander and is mostly used around the kitchen table.
Can someone please explain why this happens? What exactly is the cycle of these cards to be so less deserving of being in YOUR deck?
A good example is the DFC's from Ixalan. A few are getting some love, like Search for Azcanta. So, where's the love for Growing Rites of Itlimoc?
1) People who can't brew look to netdecks for their competitive lists.
2) People who are competitive want to get ahead of the pack and secure their tourney cards as soon as possible
3) As there are no netdecks prior to release, this group must rely on their card evaluation skills.
4) As they are not brewers, their card evaluation skills are poor. This leads them to hype the wrong cards.
5) The first SCGs, GPs and PT happen. This group buy into the latest netdecks and forget all about the spoiler season
6) cycle repeats.
I also think that the competitive netdeck crowd have the greatest influence on prices, so as soon as their attention is lost the cards slump.
Just my 2p
However, people are pretty good at asserting power level of a set in general I believe. The public in general can err on evaluating certain individual cards, but I think folks are right about the set in general. It's hard to be right about every single major new card. During spoiler seasons, people wanna be hyped about, so we may turn off our rational senses on some potential cards for several reasons.
Probably the biggest factor is if a card is similar to a powerful/pet card of the past. Juzam Djinn to Balduvian Horde. Time Twist to Time Reversal/Days Undoing. Icy Manipulator to Ring of Gix. Tarmogoyf to Talara's Battalion. Blood Moon to Blood Sun. Gaea's Cradle to Growing Rites. Jester Cap to Grinning Totem (overhype inception as Jester Cap is also overhyped). Any Dark Confidant variant ever. Unique planeswalkers like Narset and Tibalt. Cards that we usually underestimate are usually cards we don't really have a good example in the past or we don't see the full picture in the metagame.
Some may be strange outliners like Aurelia's Fury. Maybe it fits the Tarmogoyf example. People missed out on the goyf boat so they had to jump on Battalion hype. I guess the same happened with Fury as people didn't wanna miss the Bonfire boat.
Iroas, God of Victory (and similar gods) was very hyped during its release. I guess there is nothing wrong with the hype of this card per se, but people didn't see that no T1 deck could used it properly.
Abyssal Persecutor and Skaab Ruinator are strange cases for me. Dunno in what case these one would fit. Maybe it attracts Colin Woods style of players. During its time I never understood the hype. They looked unplayable for me to justify their initial preorder price tags and articles.
Some are kinda success after the overhype period like Kozilek's Return, Temporal Mastery, and Swan Song. They did or still do see play in tournaments.
In the end of the day, it's hard to be right on every single card being spoiled, so being very wrong or misled (like Daybreak Ranger case) is naturally common behavior.