MTG Salvation

Quote from idSurge »

With Digital growing in potential I can see Fetches hitting Standard again. Shuffling is irrelevant in Arena.

Also, playing without fetches sucks.

The fetchlands are too expensive on the secondary market to go through standard and the guys who are doing the management of the equity are really good at their jobs. We're seeing shocklands again because the supply and price point were good.

What will likely happen with the fetchlands is that when we go back to Zendikar again they will likely have a Zendikar masters box where they will put the expeditions for the fetchlands, Ancient Tomb, Eye of Ugin, etc, and we'll get the other half of the tango lands in the main set. I'm also suspecting they will number the prints so people will have a 1 of 200 or something printed on the expeditions. They do it with rare baseball cards and the like as well so it's the next logical step for collectors.

Quote from idSurge »

With Digital growing in potential I can see Fetches hitting Standard again. Shuffling is irrelevant in Arena.

Also, playing without fetches sucks.

Hopefully, this happens for the enemy fetches. They are in badly need of a Standard reprint.

Quote from Colt47 »

Quote from idSurge »

With Digital growing in potential I can see Fetches hitting Standard again. Shuffling is irrelevant in Arena.

Also, playing without fetches sucks.

The fetchlands are too expensive on the secondary market to go through standard and the guys who are doing the management of the equity are really good at their jobs. We're seeing shocklands again because the supply and price point were good.

Polluted Delta was $90 (!!!) before Khan's hit. Tarn was near $80 before its Masters reprint, and is about the same today.

They could 100% be reprinted in Standard.

Polluted Delta was $90 (!!!) before Khan's hit. Tarn was near $80 before its Masters reprint, and is about the same today.

the highest I've seen were 110 dollar for delta and 100 dollar flooded strands on SCG. Should never be allowed to happen again.

Quote from idSurge »

Quote from Colt47 »

Quote from idSurge »

With Digital growing in potential I can see Fetches hitting Standard again. Shuffling is irrelevant in Arena.

Also, playing without fetches sucks.

The fetchlands are too expensive on the secondary market to go through standard and the guys who are doing the management of the equity are really good at their jobs. We're seeing shocklands again because the supply and price point were good.

Polluted Delta was $90 (!!!) before Khan's hit. Tarn was near $80 before its Masters reprint, and is about the same today.

They could 100% be reprinted in Standard.

They will its just a matter of time

The problem is that you are all looking at this from a price relief standpoint in modern and not from the point of view of people who play mostly standard. No one liked the increase to the cost of standard when the fetches were introduced in Kahns. Additionally, the enemy fetches are not the same kind of beast as the allied fetchlands. While both have received one major printing prior to Kahns, enemy fetches see far more play than the allied ones and will hold + rebound much more strongly than the allied lands.

If they intend to reprint the enemy fetches in standard again, the expected thing they'd do is release them in a supplementary set first like Conspiracy to soften the price, then do a release in the standard legal set. Hitting it twice like that would cash in on the equity without burning bridges from deck costs.

But I mean, why would they reprint them in standard when they can keep making more money selling them in supplementary sets and luxury sets? They are 50+ dollars, rebound well from reprints, and are a great way to sell the overly expensive luxury products. Noble Hierarch, Snapcaster Mage, Cavern of Souls, etc, are also in this same category. Why reprint these through standard when they can be cultivated as a way to sell high priced products?

The cards that wizards will reprint in most typical products are cards that are expensive because of scarcity and are not played heavily. Runed Halo, Scapeshift, Crucible of Worlds, Rhys, the Redeemed, etc.

yeah the wildcard (huehue) you arent considering is arena.

without arena i agree that fetchlands are in the 'someday maybe' territory, along with some other high value reprints. however viewed through the lens of arena, stuff like raising the cost of standard is less of a factor because in the game there isnt a difference between a $1 rare and a $100 rare.

like nobody though onslaught fetches were going to be reprinted in a standard set...until they were. as much as you say people grumbled about the cost of standard at the time, the period where khans was standard legal was successful/popular. in fact i dont think its unreasonable to claim that more people felt secure buying into the format at the time because of the fetches since they were getting in on the ground floor for cards that were almost guaranteed to hold long term value.

also, one of the stated reasons for fetches not seeing standard printings is that dealing with non stop shuffling is a pain in the ass. but, again, arena means this matters less.

its plausible that wizards will decide to move the arena format in a different direction (for the mana base) for the sake of identity. but i do think that if wizards is envisioning a fetch + shock format, and they already have the shocks around, then they might go out of their way to move up the timeline for reprinting so the format can hit the ground running.

for example one of the appeals of a non-rotating format is that cards will likely retain their usefulness past whatever standard season (yeah i know, obvious). wizards could therefore use the printings of the fetchlands as a selling point to get people into a new game they are desperately trying to promote right now. essentially saying 'hey get in on arena now and you can take part in collecting a mana-base that is almost guaranteed to be the gold-standard indefinitely'. arena may be dirt cheap compared to paper, but ive seen people already express dismay at having to grind from the ground up each season. that won't change for standard, it is what it is, but a consolation would be knowing that your arena-modern mana is set.

does that make any sense? or am i just over thinking things?

Quote from Colt47 »

But I mean, why would they reprint them in standard when they can keep making more money selling them in supplementary sets and luxury sets? They are 50+ dollars, rebound well from reprints, and are a great way to sell the overly expensive luxury products. Noble Hierarch, Snapcaster Mage, Cavern of Souls, etc, are also in this same category. Why reprint these through standard when they can be cultivated as a way to sell high priced products?

I could pay a good amount for other cards.. goyfs for example.. took half a year to complete the set, as there are no good substitute for him. But will not do that for the enemy fetches. The allied colored ones are a decent budget alternative. Sure, there are a few times died from the untapped Overgrown Tomb because Bloostained Mire cannot fetch the basic forest in my BG deck. However, it's not worth buying a playset 50$ verdant catacombs just to increase my chances a little in FNM.

Though have to be thankful I guess... to those highly competitive people who bought my tarns and arid mesa.

Quote from tronix »

yeah the wildcard (huehue) you arent considering is arena.

without arena i agree that fetchlands are in the 'someday maybe' territory, along with some other high value reprints. however viewed through the lens of arena, stuff like raising the cost of standard is less of a factor because in the game there isnt a difference between a $1 rare and a $100 rare.

like nobody though onslaught fetches were going to be reprinted in a standard set...until they were. as much as you say people grumbled about the cost of standard at the time, the period where khans was standard legal was successful/popular. in fact i dont think its unreasonable to claim that more people felt secure buying into the format at the time because of the fetches since they were getting in on the ground floor for cards that were almost guaranteed to hold long term value.

also, one of the stated reasons for fetches not seeing standard printings is that dealing with non stop shuffling is a pain in the ass. but, again, arena means this matters less.

its plausible that wizards will decide to move the arena format in a different direction (for the mana base) for the sake of identity. but i do think that if wizards is envisioning a fetch + shock format, and they already have the shocks around, then they might go out of their way to move up the timeline for reprinting so the format can hit the ground running.

for example one of the appeals of a non-rotating format is that cards will likely retain their usefulness past whatever standard season (yeah i know, obvious). wizards could therefore use the printings of the fetchlands as a selling point to get people into a new game they are desperately trying to promote right now. essentially saying 'hey get in on arena now and you can take part in collecting a mana-base that is almost guaranteed to be the gold-standard indefinitely'. arena may be dirt cheap compared to paper, but ive seen people already express dismay at having to grind from the ground up each season. that won't change for standard, it is what it is, but a consolation would be knowing that your arena-modern mana is set.

does that make any sense? or am i just over thinking things?

I don't know what the mind set is of the people who are truly in charge of the vetoing process at Wizards of the Coast with sets so I don't have any good way to really argue an absolute. I think that from a point of chance, we are far more likely to see mid-power lands inspired by the top tier rather than the top tier in standard simply based on good business practice.

My hypothesis is that back in 2012-2014 wizards of the coast did a lot of experimenting and data collecting with the game, since any good business planner is going to want to have the main revenue stream live as long as possible. The big mistake a lot of people make is thinking that this is composed of a scale that has two points: Card Supply and Player Satisfaction. Really, it has three to four points of balance.

1) Card Supply
2) Player Satisfaction
3) Distributor Satisfaction
4) Store Satisfaction

Modern has literally been their workhorse in this data collecting endeavor. It exploded onto the field when they backed it, card prices shot through the roof and online deck techs quickly proliferated as people engaged in the arms race to the top. So naturally, to test the limits of how this beast works, they had to push it until it broke and I'm not just talking about the format deck balance: They wanted to test the limits of how far they could push sealed product prices and get away with it, as well as how deep could they dig with the market on product releases.

I could elaborate on the above, but I think everyone who comes to this forum already knows the history of sheer product proliferation over the last four years that all tied into modern in some way. What is happening now is that the company is retiring the Masters product line and is inventing a new one to replace it using the information gathered from the masters series releases.

My expectation is that wizards is going to use all the information they can gather from their partners like Channel Fireball, tournament registrations, and sealed product sales to separate all cards into tiers, then use that system to determine how to reprint the cards. We are already seeing this with Core 2019 and Battlebond: The reprints in those sets see play, but they are not the top tier of necessity in their respective formats.

Quote from Colt47 »

Quote from tronix »

yeah the wildcard (huehue) you arent considering is arena.

without arena i agree that fetchlands are in the 'someday maybe' territory, along with some other high value reprints. however viewed through the lens of arena, stuff like raising the cost of standard is less of a factor because in the game there isnt a difference between a $1 rare and a $100 rare.

like nobody though onslaught fetches were going to be reprinted in a standard set...until they were. as much as you say people grumbled about the cost of standard at the time, the period where khans was standard legal was successful/popular. in fact i dont think its unreasonable to claim that more people felt secure buying into the format at the time because of the fetches since they were getting in on the ground floor for cards that were almost guaranteed to hold long term value.

also, one of the stated reasons for fetches not seeing standard printings is that dealing with non stop shuffling is a pain in the ass. but, again, arena means this matters less.

its plausible that wizards will decide to move the arena format in a different direction (for the mana base) for the sake of identity. but i do think that if wizards is envisioning a fetch + shock format, and they already have the shocks around, then they might go out of their way to move up the timeline for reprinting so the format can hit the ground running.

for example one of the appeals of a non-rotating format is that cards will likely retain their usefulness past whatever standard season (yeah i know, obvious). wizards could therefore use the printings of the fetchlands as a selling point to get people into a new game they are desperately trying to promote right now. essentially saying 'hey get in on arena now and you can take part in collecting a mana-base that is almost guaranteed to be the gold-standard indefinitely'. arena may be dirt cheap compared to paper, but ive seen people already express dismay at having to grind from the ground up each season. that won't change for standard, it is what it is, but a consolation would be knowing that your arena-modern mana is set.

does that make any sense? or am i just over thinking things?

I don't know what the mind set is of the people who are truly in charge of the vetoing process at Wizards of the Coast with sets so I don't have any good way to really argue an absolute.

Yet here you go...

My hypothesis is that back in 2012-2014 wizards of the coast did a lot of experimenting and data collecting with the game, since any good business planner is going to want to have the main revenue stream live as long as possible. The big mistake a lot of people make is thinking that this is composed of a scale that has two points: Card Supply and Player Satisfaction. Really, it has three to four points of balance.

Baseless speculation? Check.

I could elaborate on the above, but I think everyone who comes to this forum already knows the history of sheer product proliferation over the last four years that all tied into modern in some way. What is happening now is that the company is retiring the Masters product line and is inventing a new one to replace it using the information gathered from the masters series releases.

You do know that data collection is a regular practice of any corporation, right? It's not like they used to throw darts at a board to make decisions and suddenly decided to use statistical data one day after R&D went to go see 'Moneyball' together.

My expectation is that wizards is going to use all the information they can gather from their partners like Channel Fireball, tournament registrations, and sealed product sales to separate all cards into tiers, then use that system to determine how to reprint the cards. We are already seeing this with Core 2019 and Battlebond: The reprints in those sets see play, but they are not the top tier of necessity in their respective formats.

Sure why not. But what does any of this have to do with Arena?

Quote from Joban8 »

Quote from Colt47 »

Quote from tronix »

yeah the wildcard (huehue) you arent considering is arena.

without arena i agree that fetchlands are in the 'someday maybe' territory, along with some other high value reprints. however viewed through the lens of arena, stuff like raising the cost of standard is less of a factor because in the game there isnt a difference between a $1 rare and a $100 rare.

like nobody though onslaught fetches were going to be reprinted in a standard set...until they were. as much as you say people grumbled about the cost of standard at the time, the period where khans was standard legal was successful/popular. in fact i dont think its unreasonable to claim that more people felt secure buying into the format at the time because of the fetches since they were getting in on the ground floor for cards that were almost guaranteed to hold long term value.

also, one of the stated reasons for fetches not seeing standard printings is that dealing with non stop shuffling is a pain in the ass. but, again, arena means this matters less.

its plausible that wizards will decide to move the arena format in a different direction (for the mana base) for the sake of identity. but i do think that if wizards is envisioning a fetch + shock format, and they already have the shocks around, then they might go out of their way to move up the timeline for reprinting so the format can hit the ground running.

for example one of the appeals of a non-rotating format is that cards will likely retain their usefulness past whatever standard season (yeah i know, obvious). wizards could therefore use the printings of the fetchlands as a selling point to get people into a new game they are desperately trying to promote right now. essentially saying 'hey get in on arena now and you can take part in collecting a mana-base that is almost guaranteed to be the gold-standard indefinitely'. arena may be dirt cheap compared to paper, but ive seen people already express dismay at having to grind from the ground up each season. that won't change for standard, it is what it is, but a consolation would be knowing that your arena-modern mana is set.

does that make any sense? or am i just over thinking things?

I don't know what the mind set is of the people who are truly in charge of the vetoing process at Wizards of the Coast with sets so I don't have any good way to really argue an absolute.

Yet here you go...

My hypothesis is that back in 2012-2014 wizards of the coast did a lot of experimenting and data collecting with the game, since any good business planner is going to want to have the main revenue stream live as long as possible. The big mistake a lot of people make is thinking that this is composed of a scale that has two points: Card Supply and Player Satisfaction. Really, it has three to four points of balance.

Baseless speculation? Check.

I could elaborate on the above, but I think everyone who comes to this forum already knows the history of sheer product proliferation over the last four years that all tied into modern in some way. What is happening now is that the company is retiring the Masters product line and is inventing a new one to replace it using the information gathered from the masters series releases.

You do know that data collection is a regular practice of any corporation, right? It's not like they used to throw darts at a board to make decisions and suddenly decided to use statistical data one day after R&D went to go see 'Moneyball' together.

My expectation is that wizards is going to use all the information they can gather from their partners like Channel Fireball, tournament registrations, and sealed product sales to separate all cards into tiers, then use that system to determine how to reprint the cards. We are already seeing this with Core 2019 and Battlebond: The reprints in those sets see play, but they are not the top tier of necessity in their respective formats.

Sure why not. But what does any of this have to do with Arena?

We all speculate, Joban. Even your cutting into my statements ultimately is rooted in a form of speculation, which is why I try not to shoot others ideas down anymore to whatever degree of success I can personally muster.

I haven't made a statement on how I think arena could factor into this, because the history of discussion on it has gone in varying directions as the game has been developed. It does feel as if wizards corporate feels modern is potentially a decrepit format and that cashing in on it indefinitely is impossible. They want to build new equity with newer cards, so I'd imagine they don't want to create the exact same format over again online.

Edit: also, I'm saying I haven't made a statement recently on it. There is a lot to process right now for myself because a lot of the conclusions involve reviewing what was released over the last few years in paper.

Two questions..

1. Why is Vivien Reid 30$ right now?

2. Did Path to Exile spike a little? Now 7-8$... the last ones I bought a few months ago were only 4-5$ range.

Vivien Reid is played as a 2-3 of in the most popular deck at the Pro Tour, and she is from the Core 2019 summer set which has low value, so it wasn't opened or drafted much. High demand, low supply.

Ok, I see now. Thanks for the info.

The entirety of modern feels soft right now. There should be a lot of singles entering the market from people freeing money up for the new masters set. Also, it sounds like the print run is bigger than masters 2017.

I would say that Vivien Reid's price is closer to $23, so the $30 price may be local or a store markup. I'm assuming it's because of Standard's GB decks.

Sad thing is that it was a card that I considered speculating on when I saw her at $6 because big Green planeswalkers usually hit a high price in Standard unless there is a replacement, but I just thought that Vivien was just not that good. Ragrets...

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

I would say that Vivien Reid's price is closer to $23, so the $30 price may be local or a store markup. I'm assuming it's because of Standard's GB decks.

Sad thing is that it was a card that I considered speculating on when I saw her at $6 because big Green planeswalkers usually hit a high price in Standard unless there is a replacement, but I just thought that Vivien was just not that good. Ragrets...

What happened with you there?

I mean card advantage, conditional removal, good ult, high loyalty, not overpriced in terms of CMC. From a lore perspective I couldn't care less about here. In my opinion just another generic green mage but as a card she is obviously not bad. She has the things that make a planeswalker good.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

I would say that Vivien Reid's price is closer to $23, so the $30 price may be local or a store markup. I'm assuming it's because of Standard's GB decks.

Sad thing is that it was a card that I considered speculating on when I saw her at $6 because big Green planeswalkers usually hit a high price in Standard unless there is a replacement, but I just thought that Vivien was just not that good. Ragrets...

Yeah, I guess you're right. I saw the 30$ price at SCG, and prices are sometimes inflated there.

Was planning to try Vivien in Ponza, thinking she is still 10 dollars... I guess the testing would have to wait until her price goes down.

Quote from Galerion »

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

I would say that Vivien Reid's price is closer to $23, so the $30 price may be local or a store markup. I'm assuming it's because of Standard's GB decks.

Sad thing is that it was a card that I considered speculating on when I saw her at $6 because big Green planeswalkers usually hit a high price in Standard unless there is a replacement, but I just thought that Vivien was just not that good. Ragrets...

What happened with you there?

I mean card advantage, conditional removal, good ult, high loyalty, not overpriced in terms of CMC. From a lore perspective I couldn't care less about here. In my opinion just another generic green mage but as a card she is obviously not bad. She has the things that make a planeswalker good.

I've been trying to speculate less and actually avoid it nearly completely in Standard because I have to know Standard to speculate correctly. And I don't want to know Standard. I haven't really enjoyed Standard for longer than I would admit to. It's part of the reason that players call me that Modern dude.

I just figured that Wizards would print a better Green planeswalker, thus one would be around $4-6 and the other around $20. I did not even really look at the abilities that carefully or thoroughly to be 100% honest.

Vivian Reid is completely replaceable and hardly a factor in Modern. Core 2019 was a dismally opened set and the singles from the set are incredibly volatile. The mythics from that set are going to go through some of the most dramatic shifts in price that we've seen in ages because of just how badly it was opened. The cards that have modern value from core 2019 are not that expensive right now because the archetypes they slot in are not currently a thing in standard.

Quote from tronix »

yeah the wildcard (huehue) you arent considering is arena.

without arena i agree that fetchlands are in the 'someday maybe' territory, along with some other high value reprints. however viewed through the lens of arena, stuff like raising the cost of standard is less of a factor because in the game there isnt a difference between a $1 rare and a $100 rare.

like nobody though onslaught fetches were going to be reprinted in a standard set...until they were. as much as you say people grumbled about the cost of standard at the time, the period where khans was standard legal was successful/popular. in fact i dont think its unreasonable to claim that more people felt secure buying into the format at the time because of the fetches since they were getting in on the ground floor for cards that were almost guaranteed to hold long term value.

What do you mean no one thought Onslaught fetches would be reprinted in a Standard set? Lots of people were predicting that would happen, especially towards the end of Theros block when the fetchlands were due to rotate out.

Although I should point out, as I frequently have, that Standard prices were fine--or, more accurately, weren't any worse than they typically were--when the fetchlands were in Standard until they had the baffling idea to put the battlelands in the same Standard as them (without any actual hatred on the interaction, to boot). That caused their price to spike, and spike hard because all of a sudden you'd be running a whole lot more of them. Beforehand, you'd only bother with fetchlands that were in your decks' colors, but with the battlelands suddenly manabases were looking more like that of Modern's, where people are running more fetchlands because they have incentive to run fetchlands that aren't fully in their decks' colors. Even worse, there was no hate for this interaction, no Blood Moon, no Leonin Arbiter, not even a Burning Earth, so people went even more crazy and you had 4-color decks running around that of course were running even more fetchlands (the closest thing we had to a hate card was freaking Crumble to Dust).

also, one of the stated reasons for fetches not seeing standard printings is that dealing with non stop shuffling is a pain in the ass. but, again, arena means this matters less.

As noted, this wasn't an issue until they brought in the battlelands. When it was just the fetchlands, you'd maybe draw one or two a game and thus there wouldn't be much shuffling. But WOTC's bright idea to bring the fetchland+battleland combo into Standard suddenly made people run a lot more fetchlands which resulted in more shuffling.

If not for the fetchland+battleland interaction, there would've been few complaints about the fetchlands in Standard. Sadly, WOTC are sufficiently incompetent that it's likely they lesson they became convinced that all this meant fetchlands shouldn't return to Standard, rather than the correct lesson which would be "don't put fetchlands and fetchable dual lands into Standard simultaneously, and if you're going to, at least put some hate for the interaction".

Quote from Colt47 »

Vivian Reid is completely replaceable and hardly a factor in Modern. Core 2019 was a dismally opened set and the singles from the set are incredibly volatile. The mythics from that set are going to go through some of the most dramatic shifts in price that we've seen in ages because of just how badly it was opened. The cards that have modern value from core 2019 are not that expensive right now because the archetypes they slot in are not currently a thing in standard.

I'm after her ability to destroy artifacts and enchantments... as a catch all answer against people in our FNM who use ensnaring bridge and worship. Well, pirate Vraska has a similar ability, but I can't use Vraska in RG Ponza... so I really have to wait for Vivien to go down in price.

Thoughts on best time to buy Assassin's Trophy (other than pre-order)? I play Jund, Burn, Storm and a collection of other GB or Ux based decks in Modern, but I haven't played very much recently. I can wait on it if we think it'll drop, but if this is the lowest then I might as well pull the trigger.

Quote from rcwraspy »

Thoughts on best time to buy Assassin's Trophy (other than pre-order)? I play Jund, Burn, Storm and a collection of other GB or Ux based decks in Modern, but I haven't played very much recently. I can wait on it if we think it'll drop, but if this is the lowest then I might as well pull the trigger.

It's been on a pretty steady decline, but I imagine it will settle soon. It sees play in one of the most popular standard archetypes and there is a lot of speculation about eternal formats so people will be grabbing them as it drops. I'd expect 15 to be its bottom until it rotates personally.

I think the market might go through some adjustment given what I've heard of attendance at the last few GPs. I didn't think that wizards would double dip into the pain train twice and that last year would have been the height of drama, but the second wave of animosity from the ultimate masters is palpable at my locals. Two folks just said they had enough of this and sold out of their collections. These are modern players mind you and not standard players.