cmon, dont you think you are being a bit sensationalist here? killing legacy? turning modern into legacy? how does anything about this product say that.
i get that some people wish wizards would flood the market and stamp down prices in a serious way, but its just an unrealistic expectation.
what we do know though is that this is more supply of some expensive cards, and prices of those cards will drop. we know this because its observable. the drop doesnt last forever, but wizards hasnt said they arent going to do value reprints in ancillary products anymore; but rather that they are shelving the masters line because it wasnt panning out as they hoped.
i mean we literally have people complaining about 300+ dollar 'premium' products being stupid. guess what? they are going away!
in short: the masters line being retired does not equate to the end of wizards caring about card availability. it just means they think they can address it in some other way.
Wizards thinks a lot of things. Wizards has been fairly consistently wrong about those things for almost 2 years now, unless those things have to do with Arena or Standard after the rotation. How much faith can I have as a Modern player in such a company, given their past actions this year and last?
The "evidence" is that there are no products I can think of they could print Fetches in. The Guild Kits had maybe 3 needed reprints. Is 3 reprints per set going to satisfy demand? In limited print run products? Not remotely. If people are going to play Magic as a *game*, not a financial investment, Wizards has been going about things the wrong way. I have little faith they will suddenly do a 180 and "figure out" how to solve Modern's current supply and pricing issues.
We have seen little evidence they will solve these issues. It is observable from the past few years that they either don't care, or are being mismanaged by HASBRO. What else can I think but, "Sucks to be me?"
The only thing that is ridiculous regarding this set is the comments and attempts to justify intellectual property price based on costs. I will remind you that any personal copy of music you listen or game you play costs literally zero to be delivered to you; yet you pay for it.
If you think that $300 is too much - well, guess what, just don't buy it. Whining about that is like going to Lamborghini forum and spending a day complaining that you cannot afford one.
There are 14 other cards in the pack, and this is virtually guaranteed to have one foil per pack.
If they put a high amount of playable staples it will be fine. I'll gladly pay $16-$18 CDN for one pack to get something I can just flip for value, etc.
It will be fine.
THE EV IS NOT THE PROBLEM. The health of the Modern format is the problem! If you guys are looking for 8 Whales sitting at a table to be the entirety of a GP, great! We'll watch it on Twitch, I guess, because even though I've done quite well in multiple Modern tournaments, I'm not going to keep dumping money into it if prices just go soaring as the supply fails to meet demand! If you want Modern to just be Legacy 2.0, this is how that happens.
People are angry because Wizards is essentially saying, "We're killing Legacy and turning Modern into Legacy 2.0, and we're going to try and make as much money off of you as we can while we do that." Modern players have been looking to make the format more approachable for newer players, and UMA does nothing to help with that. We're not running excel sheets to see how much money we can make off the newest Modern set; we're hoping it will drive down prices so we can try out more decks, or experiment with decks we've been previously unable to afford. I want my wife to be able to play her own style of deck; I want some of my friends to see if Modern is fun for them.
But no, GP "8 Whales" Madrid is apparently the future of the format now.
'just flood the market to lower prices, more people will play, and you will make more money'
i mean really? 'lets forego this obvious solution that makes us more money because...(what?)'.
Some possibilities:
1) Slowly increasing the trickle to more and more value per set would slowly increase quarterly profits as customers buy more of it, feeding into the usual corporate tactic of "increasing profits by setting quarterly goals that exceed the previous quarter's goals" in an artificial manner.
2) HASBRO has stock in one of the larger Secondary Market entities like SCG, and would lose money overall if they flooded the market and heavily tanked SCG or TCGPlayer's stock.
3) Mismanagement or some kind of corporate move by HASBRO with other effects in the industry that just happen to negatively affect us as the players and WotC as one of their IPs.
I mean, I can totally imagine there are logical reasons for WotC to be doing the things they've done this last year, and also be really irritated that there are easy solutions to how poorly Modern is being treated which are being ignored.
I'm honestly just waiting for the giant "F U" at this point...will it be Amazon exclusive, so GREEDBRO can use a working website to sell their product for once, nonetheless screwing over every LGS that keeps the game running? Is it actually going to be a $20 Booster pack, with maybe 2x the Rare Slots or some such? Will it be a Mythic Edition II: Get F***ed Boogaloo?
I'll probably just keep expecting the worst to keep my expectations low, while PRAYING they make these WPN store Box Toppers.
Miracle mechanic is "Fair"? Cascade is fair?? LOL.
CoCo, Aether Vial, Blood Moon are fair? Haha, yeah, I agree there's a spectrum of Fair vs Unfair in Modern, and compared to KCI, those are all much closer to "Fair," but no "Good" deck in Modern is ACTUALLY 100% Fair, IMO.
Is MTGO quite a bit harder than Arena? Because I've been jamming this deck as on Arena, and I'm undefeated in multiple Competitive Constructed Leagues...
Also, is Surge just straight better than Diamond in the SB? Been running Diamond, thought it was decent, but Surge seems awesome!
I think the author's conclusion is incredibly misguided. The usual rhetoric of those who've never played Tron or KCI is always, "But muh deck-building restrictions!" Anyone who has played those decks know the restrictions are a laugh. It's like someone arguing a card has deck-building restrictions because it can only find cards made of card-board. What if you aren't playing those, guys??? Then it's a terrible card!!
So yeah, the usual defense of a card that acts as half a demonic tutor for a good portion of Tier 1 decks (as well as historically Tier 1 decks like Lantern). I'd love to see Stirrings go, myself; KCI is a terrible deck, and should never be Tier 1. Tron is not far behind, though they're obviously seeing 20 pieces of hate printed against them right now. Nonetheless, I'd be happy to see Blue Tron be the new Tron deck in Town, so yeah; please ban Stirrings.
Isnt that usually how it goes when something degenerate goes down in Modern? Play White or win faster then they can are generally the options.
My baseline has always been, "Can Skred or Jund stop this combo deck? If not, then it shouldn't be Tier 1." That has held true for pretty much all of Modern the past few years, until now. I'm sure WotC uses different measures to judge Format Health of specific decks and all, but that's just how I've seen it.
I mean, you say "a lot" of hate, but it's mostly just, "Do you have removal for Stony?" Anything else can be dealt with eventually. Damping Sphere, RiP, Teeg, and Leylines can be dealt with, while single-use GY hate like Relic is almost worthless, and then actual artifact removal IS basically worthless, and apparently Extraction type effects are worse than useless. Saffron kept a hand with 2x Extraction, Damping Sphere, and Abrade; totally lost.
It's basically just "Play White or lose to KCI" right now, and even sometimes then you lose anyway. I dislike that effect on the meta, personally.
Agree on KCI, but not because I dislike combo (especially combo that takes until Turn 4 average to win), but because of how it abuses Mana Abilities to defeat what should be good counters to it. Its resiliency is what makes me unhappy with it being a Deck To Beat, personally.
I would love to know how Skred Red does against Humans; every match I ever played with that deck against Tribal decks was absurdly one-sided, haha.
If Jund and Abzan return, they'll eat Humans alive. Bontu's/Damnation/Settle and oodles of single-target removal always shut down Tribal decks that don't have enough value engines.
looks like strasky wins GP stockholm with bant spirits (consecutive GP top8s). 9-28 decklists are up, looks like another UW control and jund deck missed out on tiebreakers.
bridgevine showing up for both GPs. relatively poor showing for humans in stockholm, but it did well in hong kong. similarly UW control didnt show up in hong kong, but had a dominating performance in stockholm.
some notably missing decks are hollow one, mardu pyro, kci, and tron. (i know tron top8'd, and there was a single hollow one list) both mardu and tron have been on a downswing, but kci and hollow one are a different story. not enough to draw any conclusions, but noteworthy nonetheless.
As I've said before, the hyper-focused Hollow One lists are very flawed once opponents understand how the deck works and are no longer caught unawares by it anymore. You need multiple angles of attack and more singular recursive threats than you need FREE BOIS.
Wizards thinks a lot of things. Wizards has been fairly consistently wrong about those things for almost 2 years now, unless those things have to do with Arena or Standard after the rotation. How much faith can I have as a Modern player in such a company, given their past actions this year and last?
The "evidence" is that there are no products I can think of they could print Fetches in. The Guild Kits had maybe 3 needed reprints. Is 3 reprints per set going to satisfy demand? In limited print run products? Not remotely. If people are going to play Magic as a *game*, not a financial investment, Wizards has been going about things the wrong way. I have little faith they will suddenly do a 180 and "figure out" how to solve Modern's current supply and pricing issues.
We have seen little evidence they will solve these issues. It is observable from the past few years that they either don't care, or are being mismanaged by HASBRO. What else can I think but, "Sucks to be me?"
THE EV IS NOT THE PROBLEM. The health of the Modern format is the problem! If you guys are looking for 8 Whales sitting at a table to be the entirety of a GP, great! We'll watch it on Twitch, I guess, because even though I've done quite well in multiple Modern tournaments, I'm not going to keep dumping money into it if prices just go soaring as the supply fails to meet demand! If you want Modern to just be Legacy 2.0, this is how that happens.
People are angry because Wizards is essentially saying, "We're killing Legacy and turning Modern into Legacy 2.0, and we're going to try and make as much money off of you as we can while we do that." Modern players have been looking to make the format more approachable for newer players, and UMA does nothing to help with that. We're not running excel sheets to see how much money we can make off the newest Modern set; we're hoping it will drive down prices so we can try out more decks, or experiment with decks we've been previously unable to afford. I want my wife to be able to play her own style of deck; I want some of my friends to see if Modern is fun for them.
But no, GP "8 Whales" Madrid is apparently the future of the format now.
Some possibilities:
1) Slowly increasing the trickle to more and more value per set would slowly increase quarterly profits as customers buy more of it, feeding into the usual corporate tactic of "increasing profits by setting quarterly goals that exceed the previous quarter's goals" in an artificial manner.
2) HASBRO has stock in one of the larger Secondary Market entities like SCG, and would lose money overall if they flooded the market and heavily tanked SCG or TCGPlayer's stock.
3) Mismanagement or some kind of corporate move by HASBRO with other effects in the industry that just happen to negatively affect us as the players and WotC as one of their IPs.
I mean, I can totally imagine there are logical reasons for WotC to be doing the things they've done this last year, and also be really irritated that there are easy solutions to how poorly Modern is being treated which are being ignored.
"New Urborg art not edgy enough for Volrath! More at 11."
I'll probably just keep expecting the worst to keep my expectations low, while PRAYING they make these WPN store Box Toppers.
CoCo, Aether Vial, Blood Moon are fair? Haha, yeah, I agree there's a spectrum of Fair vs Unfair in Modern, and compared to KCI, those are all much closer to "Fair," but no "Good" deck in Modern is ACTUALLY 100% Fair, IMO.
Also, is Surge just straight better than Diamond in the SB? Been running Diamond, thought it was decent, but Surge seems awesome!
So yeah, the usual defense of a card that acts as half a demonic tutor for a good portion of Tier 1 decks (as well as historically Tier 1 decks like Lantern). I'd love to see Stirrings go, myself; KCI is a terrible deck, and should never be Tier 1. Tron is not far behind, though they're obviously seeing 20 pieces of hate printed against them right now. Nonetheless, I'd be happy to see Blue Tron be the new Tron deck in Town, so yeah; please ban Stirrings.
My baseline has always been, "Can Skred or Jund stop this combo deck? If not, then it shouldn't be Tier 1." That has held true for pretty much all of Modern the past few years, until now. I'm sure WotC uses different measures to judge Format Health of specific decks and all, but that's just how I've seen it.
It's basically just "Play White or lose to KCI" right now, and even sometimes then you lose anyway. I dislike that effect on the meta, personally.
I would love to know how Skred Red does against Humans; every match I ever played with that deck against Tribal decks was absurdly one-sided, haha.
As I've said before, the hyper-focused Hollow One lists are very flawed once opponents understand how the deck works and are no longer caught unawares by it anymore. You need multiple angles of attack and more singular recursive threats than you need FREE BOIS.