Yeah, good job, WotC. Now, instead of having no way to get basic lands at Target, all new players have to do is drop $96 on twenty-four packs, and hope they pull the ones they need! Problem solved!
Give me a break. Does anyone really believe that there are people buying packs and getting frustrated because their store doesn't sell theme decks or tournament packs and they can't find anywhere else to buy them?
No. The intro packs for every expansion (not just large expansions) will do the bulk of this work. Boosters will pick up the slack.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the players who post on MTGSalvation disproportionately frequent hobby / gaming stores as their retailer of choice. Go to Target sometime and tell me what the selection is like on the card game rack. In my experience, it's not nearly as good as what you'd get in a hobby / gaming store - probably just a smattering of boosters. Better or worse, this is how the general public buys MtG product. WotC needs to get people playable product in whatever form they are buying it. Putting basic lands in boosters is the least they can do.
Really, even though some of these changes kinda rankle me as a player, I have to commend WotC for being flexible and adaptive to what I must assume are very strong market pressures. These guys know their stuff.
I agree with you here. I mean who cares if I get a land instead of my 35th copy of Pulling Teeth or hostile realm?
The problem is that they haven't said they're eliminating skill-testers (official euphemism for horrible cards like the 2 you mentioned.) So the basic land will replace the 13th-14th card.
We want the flavor of mythic rare to be something that feels very special and unique. Generally speaking we expect that to mean cards like Planeswalkers, most legends, and epic-feeling creatures and spells. They will not just be a list of each set's most powerful tournament-level cards.
We've also decided that there are certain things we specifically do not want to be mythic rares. The largest category is utility cards, what I'll define as cards that fill a universal function. Some examples of this category would be cycles of dual lands and cards like Mutavault or Char. That also addresses a long-standing issue that some players have had with certain rares like dual lands.
The way I read that, is that anything that really gets your blood pumping has potential to be a Mythic Rare, and some will be tournament level cards while others won't be.
Prime candidates to be Mythic Rares (if they had existed at the time they were printed):
Garruk (and the other planeswalkers)
Enduring Ideal (and the other epic spells)
Isaramu (and all the other cool legends, like Jitte)
The Beacons
And I would also expect that they'll use it for cards that may not be that great in constructed, but are huge pains to play against in limited. Cards like:
Loxodon Warhammer
Grave Pact
Plantinum Angel (although this clearly qualifies for other reasons too)
Razormane Masticore
Rhox
Royal Assassin
Troll Ascetic
It's a safe bet that some tournament caliber cards are going to hit Mythic Rare, the only question really is how many, and how much more expensive will they be on the secondary market.
Or a local store that sells at a similar price. My store sells packs for $2.39
Thanks for the link, they are so much cheaper online pretty much no matter where you go.
My problem is that we have two places in my town that sells Magic: A collectibles store and Wal-Mart. Both have them between 3.80 and 4 dollars.
Recently a store closed down around here that was sort of like a pawn shop. They sold booster packs and I was able to get some Urza's Destiny boosters for about 1.50 at that store because they had them out back and were just trying to get rid of them. I ended up with a booster Box of Urza's saga for $120.... and that was fun to crack... Double Morphling, Academy, Serra avatar, Cradle etc etc etc. But that store is now gone... sadness
Well I do understand why wizards are doing this, despite the fact that I've personally being playing magic for ages I do know a lot of younger players start of playing YuGiOh or Pokemon and that that group of people are the growth market for magic(and we need them, magic needs continual new players to replace those who leave) and those kinds of players are attracted by special foil rares and by mythic rares.
That said I really wish wizards could of thought of something different which would achieve the same results, this just feels like wizards have changed magic into one of the more "kiddy" card games.
The symbol color is pretty weird, why gold/red? if I was wizards i'd have done something in all 5 colors or reuse purple like the timeshifted symbol(but a more vivid better purple).
The plus side, normal rares become less rare and wizards said that staples like dual lands would remain normal rares which means it's easier to get those important playsets.
The downside, any mythic rare which actually is playable becomes incredibly expensive and hard to get, I shudder to think about the important premier events just after a new release if I'm trying to get a playset of a brand new mythic rare.
All in all i'm not a fan but it won't stop me playing magic.
Wizards makes mistakes, but keep in mind the people working there have to be pretty damn smart. They also happen to know the business pretty well. Let's wait and see how this plays out. It might suck, but it might not, and we really can't tell until it happens.
I'm not a math person so I don't understand how the MR distribution will end up equaling the rarity distribution of 10th and TSS, but if MaRo says it's true, and some people have done the math and say it's right, I'll take your word on it. I don't care that instead of a crappy common I'll be getting a land in a draft. I may actually be able to use the land :P. The thing that disappointed me most me is that the MR color is that weird orange-red instead of continuing with the happy Purple we had last time for someone that's equally rare. Purple also looked better.
This might be BS or what ever you wish to call it. But there is something i believe the wider community, and some people in every magical community, is missing. Magic is a game that unites players. Magic will not die no matter how radical the changes made to the game are because magic has something that no other game has, magic has a community, a thriving, powerful, enduring and fantastic community. This new rarity "Mythical Rare" is just a change, and changes aren't bad, the reason yugioh isn't having much success with their rarity is because they bring one out every year or two.
This is just a change, changes can be good, and if its not we will just have to take it on the chin, but this will not bring the death of the game, this will not even hurt the game. Do you really think that every decision R&D make does not go through the most critical of speculation? They have obviously come to the conclusion that this won't hurt the game, and if anything it'll help it.
So in other words, magic won't die because i highly doubt it is the cards that actually make magic the game it is today, its the people and secondly this new rarity might be fantastic, and if its not, then we just have to take a hit.
But one hit is not a lot in the wide spectrum of things.
Magic is a great game, has a great community and has great people creating it. Why would we not trust these great people?
I'm having a little trouble understanding...can someone explain how much 'more rare' these will be than rares currently are?
Your chances of getting Sarkhan Vol in 1 single pack of Alara is the same as your chances of getting Wrath of God in a single pack of 10th. It's also the same as your chances of getting Squire in a single pack of Time Spiral.
I can't believe we are losing a common to a land slot... Players have been playing with less land ans mroe invetive ways for years.
Ultra Rare... We should riot, like the entire forum, Wizards entire forum, the whole damn player base should riot...
So far it hasn't been this bad. Purple symbols were cool, snow cards where fine, they all fit a set flavor. Ultra Rares... you have go to be kidding me. I guess i'll have to change my avy to Rosewater pissing on the game with a red rare symbol... Its just so against everything we've come to love. What about the players they will lose in this? Are they really catering to Melvin that much??? I am upset, this is one of those things that could make players lose faith in the game. How is this going to be good for us, either A) they'll be hella powerful which will cause Bans, B) they'll be lil Tarmogoyf clones (i don't have an issue with him but 15 versions of him in terms of power?) C) they'll be junk, possibly D) some junk some good (runing the idea of an ULTRA-RARE!1!!) E) the will be impletmented into the normal powercurve still making them cost too much.
WHY!
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RnD during Time Spiral:
Rosewater: "Color Pie, WTF is that, If I want Black to be able to wrath, counter and have green creatures then I will damnit!"
Random RnD guy: "RED AKORMA! FTW!"
Gleemax: "Rosewater has broken out of my mind control!"
RnD after 2008:
MaRo: Hmm how do we fix the problems of pricing with cards like Tarmogoyf and Thoughtsieze
Random RnD Guy: OO lets make a new RED RARITY SYMBOL!
MARO: OMGWTFBBQ! Thats a great idea, we'll call it Mythic Rarity!
Gleemax: NOT AGAIN! CELEB
I don't really like the idea that the foil ratio is going up. I hate playing with them and no one will trade me for them because they won't play with them.
regarding the new standard for set size: let's face it, standard is way too freaking large a cardpool right now, even if half of those cards never see play. there will still be a sizable card pool for standard, and i am willing to bet that it will still have tons of variety. the smaller set sizes are likely a huge blessing in the development stage, streamlining the depth of testing to emphasize quality over quantity. it's a win-win situation (provided, of course, that R&D has continued to do the same quality job it's usually done).
on the new rarity: i'm willing to bet that no more than 3 of the mythic rares in each set will be constructed-worthy. the majority of the mythics will be timmy and johnny cards and draft uber-bombs. all PW's at mythic is no problem too - let's face it, out of the five in lorwyn, how many saw consistent play in competitive standard? ONE. i doubt that ratio will change much in upcoming sets. also significant is their claim that foil mythics will be slightly more common than normal. in case no one noticed, the foil proportion was increased (from ~1/5 to ~1/4 foil/pack ratio) with shadowmoor - i think this change will remain with SoA, and it does make mythics SLIGHTLY less than twice as rare as normal rares. i doubt this will have a net effect on the secondary market other than perhaps a slight increase (if they print more constructed bombs at mythic than i think).
on lands in boosters, and the fat pack: yeah, whatever. with the changes to the fat pack, i feel less inclined to get the fat pack now since i will be getting plenty of lands through boosters, and there's not going to be a shelf-waster novel in there either (you know, in case i get really bored).
on the theme decks: excellent change. about time they realized that the hardcore players only buy up theme decks when there's a bomb rare (which, itself, is fairly rare). if their claim that the premium rare will be good (read: useful in constructed), they may actually sell some of those things, too. i'll be curious to see if the packaged boosters are rigged.
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Now playing Transformers: Legends. 27-time top tier finisher and admin of the TFL Wikia site.
I may be out of the game after Eventide. Here's my current Magic behavior: Every 3 months I buy every precon for the new set, and about once a year I buy a bunch of cheap cards and build a couple of gimmicky decks.
I am a big fan of the precon decks. It's fun just to play a precon against another precon. It's a way to play the game where my friends and I don't have to devote our lives to the game, and it guarantees that the decks will be of equal power levels. I don't think I'll have nearly as much fun with 40 card decks, 32 of them being annoying common cards.
Maybe Wizards doesn't like players like me, who don't constantly purchase boosters, but they are still getting over $200 per year out of me consistently, and that's pretty good money for just a card game. I'll try buying the Alara decks, but if I don't like them then I'm out.
I don't see the Mythical rares as a financial problem as much as the problem that will arise with power curve from these rares. With every set having 10-15 mythical rares, there will be pressure to make really cool rares, and those rares will end up more powerful then regular rares more often then not. As long as they stay on the same power level as normal rares, then it is not a bad idea.
For the issue of new players not being able to find lands, I think WotC should just release "Land Packs". Put 20 of each basic land with a foil of each or something out with each new expansion with retail price at like $5 or something. One random land in each booster isn't realistically going to solve anything. If someone really needs lands, having one land, likely the wrong color, isn't going to do much help.
Ultra Rare... We should riot, like the entire forum, Wizards entire forum, the whole damn player base should riot...
This is worth saying in big print....
MYTHIC RARES ARE NOT ULTRA RARES!
Ultra Rares generally have a rarity of 1 in every 500+ packs. Mythic rares have a rarity of 1 in 8 packs. Saying that Mythic Rares are common in rarity is about as close to the truth as saying they are Ultra Rares.
I think I will join the bandwagon and say "boo, Wizards, boo," when it comes to the idea of 'mythic' rare.. it only encourages us to buy more packs (with only 14 cards per pack.. and a land and a tip/token card.. >.>), and for casual players and those with tight budgets, it's going to be impossible to get those mythic rares consistently, which means we'll have to bend over backwards for them.
I can only hope the size of a booster box increases to compensate
The land packs would literally just be throwing away money, no store would get them in because they aren't worth it, I am guessing the power levels on these cards won't be raised, what reason is there for them to be?
I just hope that Wizards makes less jank rares and jank cards in general, as they are shrinking the card pool. With all the crap cards that have come out as of late, hopefully they will only print decent cards when the card pool for the set is 140 cards.
The babying and whining of this thread is really super pitiful guys, really, it is.
The reality is that these same guys have been giving us the game of magic in whatever form they may have it for 15 years. Lets look at MTG when it started in alpha, does magic look or play ANYTHING like it did back then? So many changes have been made since then, so many improvements, so much that they've done right has paid off and is making MTG continue to grow. Why do you just resist it entirely? I can't find anything in the list of changes something I could not get used to or even like in the future.
Go sit down and play with all alpha and beta cards for the next week, then think about what would have happened if WOTC changed nothing and just kept reprinting versions of those same cards over and over. Changes under their eye have typically done nothing but help.
I agree with you here. I mean who cares if I get a land instead of my 35th copy of Pulling Teeth or hostile realm?
Yeah, except the land won't always replace the crappiest common in the pack; sometimes it will be the common you actually want. I know I'd be annoyed crack a pack and find an Island in place of a Mulldrifter or Oblivion Ring. I find the reasoning behind it a little strange. Do scrubs not buy enough precons and tourney packs (and soon, "intro packs") to get the land they need? Hell, just go to a prerelease and you can get all the lands you'll ever need for free from a communal land pile. Besides, basic land are becoming a thing of the past anyway; you can get all the rare duals you need for your deck for the low price of $100. (Grumble . . .)
This super-rare thing is just silly. MaRo says the "mythic rares" aren't any rarer than Time Spiral purples or Xth rares, which is true. However, this doesn't mean we can expect mythics to follow the same patterns on the secondary market. The big difference is that both TSP purples and Xth rares have been printed before. There was already at least another set's worth of each of those out there when they re-entered Standard/Extended. Players that wanted to get their Akroma on could just tap into the existing leftovers from her Legions days, when she was a normal rare. For these new rares, Alara will be the only source for them. When even Wrath, which has been around forever and only sees play in a few archetypes is still $10 at the barest minimum, and when the mythics will have the novelty and "wow" factor to add to any presumed demand based soley on card strength, you can bet a playset will cost some serious cash.
I think it needs to be looked at by how often a specific card will show up. In one booster box, 36 packs, thats 36 rares. Lets say you get one of each different rare per pack. Thats about 2 1/2 boxes to get one of each rare.
Now look at the mythic rares, 1 out of 8 packs = 4.5 mythic rares per box. Rounded up to 5, thats 3 boxes to get one of each mythic rare. Thats not too much more rare per card than regular rares.
Of course you would never get one of each rare from a box, you most likely get duplacates, but still this is like a statistical thing here.
Plus, it makes the other rares less rare, because now there are less total regular rares therefore you would only have to buy like 1.8 boxes to get 1 of each. (the 1.8 is a random guess, didnt feel like pulling out calculator again). The mythic rares is slightly more rare, but I don't think it will be enough to make our cards cost 100's of dollars per card lol.
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Land replacing common: Not a big deal, newer players need land. It makes drafting harder because you need to be more decisive in picking playables rather than taking the last 4-5 picks for granted. Not a big deal.
Less cards per year: The size of standard has been getting out of hand, we all know it. Cutting the # of cards in half is drastic but only 100 or so less than the old standard for non-core set years. This helps out newer players a lot by making the format changes less drastic and the amount of cards they need to pick up far less. Shouldn't really be a big deal.
Mythic rarity: This is the most controversial change. As many people have pointed out, the rarity is not all that much more than normal rares, we experienced this with timeshifteds and it worked out fine so why not this. This change is strengthened by the fact that the mythic rares will not be tournament staples, they will be mostly casual planeswalkers, legends, epic spells, etc. If a random mythic rare becomes widely played, it could cause problems with the secondary price market. Not as bad as everyone is making it out to be.
WotC has produced this game for 15 years and they have top employees working round the clock to ensure that they make the best game possible and at the same time make a profit as a company and attempt to enlarge their fanbase with each release. They really shouldn't lose too many hardcore players as a result of this, and they will bring in many more players to the game, allowing the game to revert back to a normal state in the future.
Ok, but if Sarkhan Vol has abilities on par with something like Garruk, at 4 CMC, wouldn't his 2nd market price be outrageous? Even at only twice as rare, he'd be around $40-$50 for 1, right?
No. The term "rare" has generally meant cards centered on the ratio 80-to-1; deviations in either direction haven't generally made much of a difference. Take the shocklands, for example: the price of each one is clearly set almost entirely by its value to decks, despite four of them being noticeably rarer than the others.
I'd expect these two rarities (mythics a little rarer than old rares, and new-rares a little more common) to differentiate from each other more, but even so there's no reason that should take place primarily on the top end. In general, the ceiling of a card's price is going to be set by the cost of pulling one from a pack -- if cards get expensive enough compared with the difficulty of pulling them, people will just buy boxes and recoup their investment based on the cards they pull. It's simply not sustainable for multiple cards at the mythic rarity to hold $40-50 values while in print.
I am a big fan of the precon decks. It's fun just to play a precon against another precon.
This is my biggest objection to these new announcements. While I understand the reasoning, I love precons -- they're a great way to play with friends who enjoy Magic but don't keep up with new set releases, or to drop $20 and get the feeling of the new set.
Bitterblossom was most likely designed as a marquee rare from the jump, and would maybe be a mythic rare under the new system.
Why? It doesn't really fit any of the criteria listed -- that is, it doesn't have any particular grandeur or "epicness" -- it's a small-scale Spike card that's good almost entirely due to efficiency.
But he basically did say that all Planeswalkers from here on out would use this rarity, so Garruk, already a $20 card, would end up probably between $40 and $50. Great.
Why would the price of one of these cards settle at twice what it would be for a "regular" rare, given their actual rates of distribution?
Perception of some mythic rare that becomes a tournament staple as a supposedly impossible to find "ultra rare" may drive the price up for a bit, but that bubble is going to burst as soon as people realize that such cards are no harder to get than it was to get anything back in the days they had large sets with 110 rares in them (i.e., Exalted Angel from Onslaught or Urza's Rage from Invasion back when that card was actually worth something).
Exactly. (Thanks for reminding me that until recently all rares in large sets were just about the rarity of these mythic rares; I had forgotten that particular shift.) These cards can't inflate that much by definition -- if you open two boxes, you'll get nine of them, so if even a few of these cards were selling online for $40-50 anyone could easily buy boxes and turn them over for more than their list price just selling off the mythics. About the only way something could happen like this is if the format warps so much that the demand goes way above the available supply and a huge surplus of players is waiting to buy them the second they're busted from packs -- which is a pretty uncommon occurrence even with tournament-staple cards.
And anyway, I'm a little lost as to why more people aren't celebrating the smaller set sizes -- that means less money being spent to keep up with Standard.
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the players who post on MTGSalvation disproportionately frequent hobby / gaming stores as their retailer of choice. Go to Target sometime and tell me what the selection is like on the card game rack. In my experience, it's not nearly as good as what you'd get in a hobby / gaming store - probably just a smattering of boosters. Better or worse, this is how the general public buys MtG product. WotC needs to get people playable product in whatever form they are buying it. Putting basic lands in boosters is the least they can do.
Really, even though some of these changes kinda rankle me as a player, I have to commend WotC for being flexible and adaptive to what I must assume are very strong market pressures. These guys know their stuff.
The problem is that they haven't said they're eliminating skill-testers (official euphemism for horrible cards like the 2 you mentioned.) So the basic land will replace the 13th-14th card.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
Prime candidates to be Mythic Rares (if they had existed at the time they were printed):
Garruk (and the other planeswalkers)
Enduring Ideal (and the other epic spells)
Isaramu (and all the other cool legends, like Jitte)
The Beacons
And I would also expect that they'll use it for cards that may not be that great in constructed, but are huge pains to play against in limited. Cards like:
Loxodon Warhammer
Grave Pact
Plantinum Angel (although this clearly qualifies for other reasons too)
Razormane Masticore
Rhox
Royal Assassin
Troll Ascetic
It's a safe bet that some tournament caliber cards are going to hit Mythic Rare, the only question really is how many, and how much more expensive will they be on the secondary market.
Thanks for the link, they are so much cheaper online pretty much no matter where you go.
My problem is that we have two places in my town that sells Magic: A collectibles store and Wal-Mart. Both have them between 3.80 and 4 dollars.
Recently a store closed down around here that was sort of like a pawn shop. They sold booster packs and I was able to get some Urza's Destiny boosters for about 1.50 at that store because they had them out back and were just trying to get rid of them. I ended up with a booster Box of Urza's saga for $120.... and that was fun to crack... Double Morphling, Academy, Serra avatar, Cradle etc etc etc. But that store is now gone... sadness
RB Olivia Voldaren RB
GB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons GB
BWR Queen Marchesa BWR
RW Anya, Merciless Angel RW
UW Bruna, Light of Alabaster UW
UB Wydwen, The Biting Gale UB
GU Momir Vig, simic visionary GU
WG Karametra, God of Harvests WG
WUBSydri, Galvanic GeniusWUB
Well I do understand why wizards are doing this, despite the fact that I've personally being playing magic for ages I do know a lot of younger players start of playing YuGiOh or Pokemon and that that group of people are the growth market for magic(and we need them, magic needs continual new players to replace those who leave) and those kinds of players are attracted by special foil rares and by mythic rares.
That said I really wish wizards could of thought of something different which would achieve the same results, this just feels like wizards have changed magic into one of the more "kiddy" card games.
The symbol color is pretty weird, why gold/red? if I was wizards i'd have done something in all 5 colors or reuse purple like the timeshifted symbol(but a more vivid better purple).
The plus side, normal rares become less rare and wizards said that staples like dual lands would remain normal rares which means it's easier to get those important playsets.
The downside, any mythic rare which actually is playable becomes incredibly expensive and hard to get, I shudder to think about the important premier events just after a new release if I'm trying to get a playset of a brand new mythic rare.
All in all i'm not a fan but it won't stop me playing magic.
Machius proudly supports R_E's right to Rumour!
MTGO account name: FSM
MTGO rating: 1795
This might be BS or what ever you wish to call it. But there is something i believe the wider community, and some people in every magical community, is missing. Magic is a game that unites players. Magic will not die no matter how radical the changes made to the game are because magic has something that no other game has, magic has a community, a thriving, powerful, enduring and fantastic community. This new rarity "Mythical Rare" is just a change, and changes aren't bad, the reason yugioh isn't having much success with their rarity is because they bring one out every year or two.
This is just a change, changes can be good, and if its not we will just have to take it on the chin, but this will not bring the death of the game, this will not even hurt the game. Do you really think that every decision R&D make does not go through the most critical of speculation? They have obviously come to the conclusion that this won't hurt the game, and if anything it'll help it.
So in other words, magic won't die because i highly doubt it is the cards that actually make magic the game it is today, its the people and secondly this new rarity might be fantastic, and if its not, then we just have to take a hit.
But one hit is not a lot in the wide spectrum of things.
Magic is a great game, has a great community and has great people creating it. Why would we not trust these great people?
Thanks
Seeing lands in packs sucks, I guess they're trying to phase out Tournament Packs.
Your chances of getting Sarkhan Vol in 1 single pack of Alara is the same as your chances of getting Wrath of God in a single pack of 10th. It's also the same as your chances of getting Squire in a single pack of Time Spiral.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
Ultra Rare... We should riot, like the entire forum, Wizards entire forum, the whole damn player base should riot...
So far it hasn't been this bad. Purple symbols were cool, snow cards where fine, they all fit a set flavor. Ultra Rares... you have go to be kidding me. I guess i'll have to change my avy to Rosewater pissing on the game with a red rare symbol... Its just so against everything we've come to love. What about the players they will lose in this? Are they really catering to Melvin that much??? I am upset, this is one of those things that could make players lose faith in the game. How is this going to be good for us, either A) they'll be hella powerful which will cause Bans, B) they'll be lil Tarmogoyf clones (i don't have an issue with him but 15 versions of him in terms of power?) C) they'll be junk, possibly D) some junk some good (runing the idea of an ULTRA-RARE!1!!) E) the will be impletmented into the normal powercurve still making them cost too much.
WHY!
Rosewater: "Color Pie, WTF is that, If I want Black to be able to wrath, counter and have green creatures then I will damnit!"
Random RnD guy: "RED AKORMA! FTW!"
Gleemax: "Rosewater has broken out of my mind control!"
RnD after 2008:
MaRo: Hmm how do we fix the problems of pricing with cards like Tarmogoyf and Thoughtsieze
Random RnD Guy: OO lets make a new RED RARITY SYMBOL!
MARO: OMGWTFBBQ! Thats a great idea, we'll call it Mythic Rarity!
Gleemax: NOT AGAIN!
CELEB
Your still here, iam still here, no one has left yet so what proof is there that people will?
And more to the point those 4 options are so synical its not funny, what if they are reasonably priced and good huh?
on the new rarity: i'm willing to bet that no more than 3 of the mythic rares in each set will be constructed-worthy. the majority of the mythics will be timmy and johnny cards and draft uber-bombs. all PW's at mythic is no problem too - let's face it, out of the five in lorwyn, how many saw consistent play in competitive standard? ONE. i doubt that ratio will change much in upcoming sets. also significant is their claim that foil mythics will be slightly more common than normal. in case no one noticed, the foil proportion was increased (from ~1/5 to ~1/4 foil/pack ratio) with shadowmoor - i think this change will remain with SoA, and it does make mythics SLIGHTLY less than twice as rare as normal rares. i doubt this will have a net effect on the secondary market other than perhaps a slight increase (if they print more constructed bombs at mythic than i think).
on lands in boosters, and the fat pack: yeah, whatever. with the changes to the fat pack, i feel less inclined to get the fat pack now since i will be getting plenty of lands through boosters, and there's not going to be a
shelf-wasternovel in there either (you know, in case i get really bored).on the theme decks: excellent change. about time they realized that the hardcore players only buy up theme decks when there's a bomb rare (which, itself, is fairly rare). if their claim that the premium rare will be good (read: useful in constructed), they may actually sell some of those things, too. i'll be curious to see if the packaged boosters are rigged.
The MirroCube - 420 card Mirrodin themed cube
And if I've offended you, I'm sorry, but maybe you need to be offended. But here's my apology and one more thing...
I am a big fan of the precon decks. It's fun just to play a precon against another precon. It's a way to play the game where my friends and I don't have to devote our lives to the game, and it guarantees that the decks will be of equal power levels. I don't think I'll have nearly as much fun with 40 card decks, 32 of them being annoying common cards.
Maybe Wizards doesn't like players like me, who don't constantly purchase boosters, but they are still getting over $200 per year out of me consistently, and that's pretty good money for just a card game. I'll try buying the Alara decks, but if I don't like them then I'm out.
For the issue of new players not being able to find lands, I think WotC should just release "Land Packs". Put 20 of each basic land with a foil of each or something out with each new expansion with retail price at like $5 or something. One random land in each booster isn't realistically going to solve anything. If someone really needs lands, having one land, likely the wrong color, isn't going to do much help.
This is worth saying in big print....
MYTHIC RARES ARE NOT ULTRA RARES!
Ultra Rares generally have a rarity of 1 in every 500+ packs. Mythic rares have a rarity of 1 in 8 packs. Saying that Mythic Rares are common in rarity is about as close to the truth as saying they are Ultra Rares.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
I can only hope the size of a booster box increases to compensate
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Ryttare Kelasin Luna Orelinalei
The reality is that these same guys have been giving us the game of magic in whatever form they may have it for 15 years. Lets look at MTG when it started in alpha, does magic look or play ANYTHING like it did back then? So many changes have been made since then, so many improvements, so much that they've done right has paid off and is making MTG continue to grow. Why do you just resist it entirely? I can't find anything in the list of changes something I could not get used to or even like in the future.
Go sit down and play with all alpha and beta cards for the next week, then think about what would have happened if WOTC changed nothing and just kept reprinting versions of those same cards over and over. Changes under their eye have typically done nothing but help.
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[Team Revolution]
Yeah, except the land won't always replace the crappiest common in the pack; sometimes it will be the common you actually want. I know I'd be annoyed crack a pack and find an Island in place of a Mulldrifter or Oblivion Ring. I find the reasoning behind it a little strange. Do scrubs not buy enough precons and tourney packs (and soon, "intro packs") to get the land they need? Hell, just go to a prerelease and you can get all the lands you'll ever need for free from a communal land pile. Besides, basic land are becoming a thing of the past anyway; you can get all the rare duals you need for your deck for the low price of $100. (Grumble . . .)
This super-rare thing is just silly. MaRo says the "mythic rares" aren't any rarer than Time Spiral purples or Xth rares, which is true. However, this doesn't mean we can expect mythics to follow the same patterns on the secondary market. The big difference is that both TSP purples and Xth rares have been printed before. There was already at least another set's worth of each of those out there when they re-entered Standard/Extended. Players that wanted to get their Akroma on could just tap into the existing leftovers from her Legions days, when she was a normal rare. For these new rares, Alara will be the only source for them. When even Wrath, which has been around forever and only sees play in a few archetypes is still $10 at the barest minimum, and when the mythics will have the novelty and "wow" factor to add to any presumed demand based soley on card strength, you can bet a playset will cost some serious cash.
Now look at the mythic rares, 1 out of 8 packs = 4.5 mythic rares per box. Rounded up to 5, thats 3 boxes to get one of each mythic rare. Thats not too much more rare per card than regular rares.
Of course you would never get one of each rare from a box, you most likely get duplacates, but still this is like a statistical thing here.
Plus, it makes the other rares less rare, because now there are less total regular rares therefore you would only have to buy like 1.8 boxes to get 1 of each. (the 1.8 is a random guess, didnt feel like pulling out calculator again). The mythic rares is slightly more rare, but I don't think it will be enough to make our cards cost 100's of dollars per card lol.
RIDE FOR THE FALL OF HIS POWER FIGHTING THE STORM, THE ROAR OF THE THUNDER, ALLY OF THE SUN AND THE MOON... GREAT SWORDMASTER RULE!
Land replacing common: Not a big deal, newer players need land. It makes drafting harder because you need to be more decisive in picking playables rather than taking the last 4-5 picks for granted. Not a big deal.
Less cards per year: The size of standard has been getting out of hand, we all know it. Cutting the # of cards in half is drastic but only 100 or so less than the old standard for non-core set years. This helps out newer players a lot by making the format changes less drastic and the amount of cards they need to pick up far less. Shouldn't really be a big deal.
Mythic rarity: This is the most controversial change. As many people have pointed out, the rarity is not all that much more than normal rares, we experienced this with timeshifteds and it worked out fine so why not this. This change is strengthened by the fact that the mythic rares will not be tournament staples, they will be mostly casual planeswalkers, legends, epic spells, etc. If a random mythic rare becomes widely played, it could cause problems with the secondary price market. Not as bad as everyone is making it out to be.
WotC has produced this game for 15 years and they have top employees working round the clock to ensure that they make the best game possible and at the same time make a profit as a company and attempt to enlarge their fanbase with each release. They really shouldn't lose too many hardcore players as a result of this, and they will bring in many more players to the game, allowing the game to revert back to a normal state in the future.
norbert88
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No. The term "rare" has generally meant cards centered on the ratio 80-to-1; deviations in either direction haven't generally made much of a difference. Take the shocklands, for example: the price of each one is clearly set almost entirely by its value to decks, despite four of them being noticeably rarer than the others.
I'd expect these two rarities (mythics a little rarer than old rares, and new-rares a little more common) to differentiate from each other more, but even so there's no reason that should take place primarily on the top end. In general, the ceiling of a card's price is going to be set by the cost of pulling one from a pack -- if cards get expensive enough compared with the difficulty of pulling them, people will just buy boxes and recoup their investment based on the cards they pull. It's simply not sustainable for multiple cards at the mythic rarity to hold $40-50 values while in print.
This is my biggest objection to these new announcements. While I understand the reasoning, I love precons -- they're a great way to play with friends who enjoy Magic but don't keep up with new set releases, or to drop $20 and get the feeling of the new set.
Why? It doesn't really fit any of the criteria listed -- that is, it doesn't have any particular grandeur or "epicness" -- it's a small-scale Spike card that's good almost entirely due to efficiency.
Why would the price of one of these cards settle at twice what it would be for a "regular" rare, given their actual rates of distribution?
Exactly. (Thanks for reminding me that until recently all rares in large sets were just about the rarity of these mythic rares; I had forgotten that particular shift.) These cards can't inflate that much by definition -- if you open two boxes, you'll get nine of them, so if even a few of these cards were selling online for $40-50 anyone could easily buy boxes and turn them over for more than their list price just selling off the mythics. About the only way something could happen like this is if the format warps so much that the demand goes way above the available supply and a huge surplus of players is waiting to buy them the second they're busted from packs -- which is a pretty uncommon occurrence even with tournament-staple cards.
And anyway, I'm a little lost as to why more people aren't celebrating the smaller set sizes -- that means less money being spent to keep up with Standard.