MTG Salvation

It's going around that it's because AFR didn't do well, according to Mark Rosewater it's doing well, it's just that it's doing really well with those that like it (D&D fans), so as a very profitable niche product, it makes more sense as supplemental products. Plus D&D settings just fit Commander better then Standard IMHO.

According to Mark Rosewater AFR is one of the best selling MtG sets ever.

Quote from motleyslayer »

I feel that it was a super niche product, that had interesting crossover. Just as you said it's probably better suited for a non standard set

It looks like I was right about Forgotten Realms being better suited to Supplemental Commander products, because May or June 2022 we are getting Commander Legends: Battle For Baldur's Gate.

We knew about that 11 days after this thread was made, and it was a little over a month after the release of AFR. I believe it was even explained then that it was to fit all the stuff they couldn't put into the main set to avoid getting too complex. I agree, in that I don't think it's likely we see another D&D set in Standard, but that's more because WotC has other crossovers to do, a story to try and tell, and Standard sets are a limited commodity.

I'm okay with this, honestly I don't quite get why it needed to be a D&D set. Most of the stuff printed isn't D&D specific (beholders as an example) and anything that is can just show up in Magic normally. Many of the D&D cards weren't well thought out or represented well. Tarrasque wasn't good, Deck of Many Things should have been an addon gameplay thing like Archenemy, and then you had things like Shocking Grasp and Ray of Enfeeblement which were nothing like they should have been.

I'd much rather have had a Core Set where we could get reprints.

Quote from Dontrike »

I'd much rather have had a Core Set where we could get reprints.

Except Core Sets don't sell which is why they stuck with The List for reprints despite the pull rates being awful. Paper Magic is at a point now where reprints are unable to keep up with Secondary Market demand because it ends up resulting in sealed products with these reprints becoming too expensive to where Hasbro is making less money for their shareholders. So they're forced to cut corners by settling for cheaper reprints like in recent Commander Pre-Cons because that's the only way they can make more money where with more expensive reprints they're making less money. Now in a singles market perspective, reprints are also getting more expensive due to a severe drought of supply in popular Commander staples as a result of no Organized Play events at LGSs no thanks to COVID. With most of the Paper Magic community being incentivized to play Commander more than other formats it's causing Whales to buy out sealed product for Standard sets that they can easily flip on the open market. This in return pushes most of the competitive players over to Arena where they're actually getting less instead of more because nothing is tangible in digital like it is in paper.

Even If you use ChannelFireball and TCGPlayer to directly support LGSs they're still losing money to Secret Lairs which they can't even get from their local distributors unless it's from Secret Lairs that failed to meet their online purchase window. It explains why LGSs rarely ever get a back stock of Secret Lairs because depending on how popular some are, they NEVER get an inventory of them to sell out in public or the copies that were never bought online get thrown away or recycled. This can also cause the price of certain reprints to go up in price on the Secondary Market. Supply Chain issues are also another major factor for the rise of demand for Paper Magic and Hasbro isn't patient enough to allow Wizards of the Coast to do more print runs of previous sets and products like Time Spiral Remastered and Jumpstart when they have to stay on schedule with every release. Failure isn't an option for Hasbro, so Wizards of the Coast is stuck with the "pump and dump" business mentality unless there's a shakeup within the company soon. They've literally set the stage to where anyone who becomes the new CEO for Wizards of the Coast is going to be Chris Cocks' lapdog with him at the head of Hasbro.

Quote from Lord Gyor of Dark Pleasures »

According to Mark Rosewater AFR is one of the best selling MtG sets ever.

Sure. Of course it is. According to Mark Rosewater, every set is one of the best selling MtG sets ever.

Quote from Morphling »

Quote from Lord Gyor of Dark Pleasures »

According to Mark Rosewater AFR is one of the best selling MtG sets ever.

Sure. Of course it is. According to Mark Rosewater, every set is one of the best selling MtG sets ever.

In fairness if a game were increasing in popularity then every subsequent set would at least have a good chance of being the new best selling set ever.