On the topic specifically, I'm really hesitant to see what happens. If the judges win wotc may just disband the judge program, and that's the end of Organized Play. If WotC wins then I'm expecting a lot of judges to get culled.
Why would they end organized play? That's an unrealistic outcome. Tournaments create demand which helps sell product and the demand that tournaments far exceeds the cost of ensuring that judges are paid a minimum wage with basic protections.
There has been a long history of judge "compensation" being sketchy, with boxes that they don't claim full value of on taxes, promos that many don't claim on taxes, etc. They can and should pay a fair wage for the people who are a critical part of their overall marketing strategy, especially if they are going to exercise direct control as they did recently with suspensions over leaks.
I think it is way too early to make any sort of statement about shocks. I bought in Dec and prices haven't really moved up much since then (other than steam vents), but I didn't expect them to. People who are playing modern right now generally had their shocks already. When MMA2 releases in May and there are a lot of big modern tournaments shortly after, the modern player base should expand and would potentially move up the price of shocks slightly. Even then, the "high point" for shocks probably won't be until MMA3 in 2016 or 2017 and even that's probably only like 20 bucks. Then we might see a shockland reprint in something like Spring or Fall 2018 which would reset prices somewhat and begin the cycle again.
All this is assuming, of course, that wizards doesn't introduce lands that are better in modern than fetches + shocks.
Welp, we are at 680 and there isn't much time left until showtime. It's one thing when GP Brisbane only has a few hundred players. But a North American GP? I mean yeah, we can try to explain it away with all sorts of external, non-Magic related factors, but that's just not a great number no matter what the explanation.
I think the banlist changes hit interest in the GP pretty hard. A group of us had been planning to drive up to GP Vancouver for months but interest in modern and this GP specifically has died since 1/19. People who flew to GP Minneapolis last year have no interest in driving 3 hours to Vancouver this year.
There are still some people driving up from Seattle, but a LOT fewer than normal.
I think there's a middle ground between "competitive out of the box" + "worth hundreds of dollars" and completely not competitive + questionable if the value even hits MSRP. I took a look at the deck both with an eye towards value and an eye towards giving it as a gift and it didn't pass muster for either use.
I think the idea of a modern event deck is still valid, but the execution on that first attempt was pretty bad.
I'm sad to see Pod go, but on the flipside I feel free. I no longer have a debate about whether I'll spend the time/money to travel for modern tournaments, I no longer need to care at all about standard or any format, and I will be free of all the negative impacts of MTG on my wallet and my health. While MTG is hardly as bad as smoking, sitting on my ass for hours on end when I could be hiking or gardening or doing a lot of other hobbies that I also enjoy was probably not the best way to spend my time and money.
I loved Pod in standard. When it went to modern I switched to modern as my primary format. I even flew to another state to play a modern GP and did well enough to cash. While I realize this ban might be good for the format, I don't feel like I have a format that I want to play anymore so I am free to move on. I'm grateful that WotC did this before I booked tickets to the Charlotte GP, although it would have been fun to have one last GP in Vancouver.
I also suspect that lots of people will make statements and not really mean it and that's fine. I doubt that there will be any mass abandonment of modern and that's also fine. I've had a lot of fun in the past ~3 years and my absence will go unnoticed except by close friends. However, WotC has stated multiple times that they only care about statements made by a wallet, so continuing to spend money on this game just isn't possible for me personally.
I'll still go see the MTG live action movie whenever it comes out though!
Playing Abzan Constellation, I feel like I have a solid feel on every matchup except Sidisi Constellation/Whip. What cards (especially sideboard) do people like in that matchup? Anafenza seems solid if she doesn't get removed, but other than thoughtseize to remove their post sideboard walkers I'm not sure what other cards are "good".
Where will the price of KTK Polluted Delta be in one year?
The fetches tend to mimic their ABUR dual land counterparts, for the most part (except for the modern Zendikar fetch price explosion) and Underground Sea, which has almost always been the most expensive dual is now tied with Volcanic after an uptick by Volcanic and some downward action on the Sea. Expect Polluted Delta to behave accordingly.
This made sense when a lot of the fetchland use and all of the allied fetchland use was legacy in which UB is super popular. Legacy is now the 3rd most relevant format for fetchland/delta use and delta is close to irrelevant in standard and modern. I don't think it will plummet to wooded foothill prices, but it is the one that is most likely to drop another buck or two or not grow as much as strand.
Obviously if UB becomes more prevalent in the larger formats (modern/standard) then it will have potential to grow.
Where will the price of KTK Polluted Delta be in one year?
Delta seems by far the most likely to continue dropping, since it sees minimal modern and standard play. Hard to say where it will end up exactly, but seems likely to be lower compared to strand than it is today.
I used to swing by and give MTGO a try every 3 months or so before remembering their client is awful, I hate everything about it, and they obviously don't give two hoots about investing in their online offering. Since Hex started beta and has had playable draft tournaments earlier this year, I've just given up completely on MTGO. Bugs in Hex are less frequent, the game is fun, drafting is still fun even though we've had the same set for ages, and the interface is 923480239482 times better than MTGO despite limited dev resources.
Hex is also free to do things that you can't do with MTG because it wouldn't work in paper form. Some examples are permanent changes to cards, copying cards, putting your cards in your opponents deck, etc. I've also run into more and more people at paper MTG events that prefer Hex to MTGO.
Is it dying? I don't know. But I wonder what needs to happen before WotC really will give MTGO some attention and love. Because right now it is CLEAR that they don't care about software/digital stuff at all and they especially don't want to invest in MTGO beyond whatever they deem the minimum to suck cash out of players.
Simple question, I'd like to be able to buy M:tG boosters, decks and boxes at Wal-Mart like americans can, not because our stores are greedy or unaccessible, but because our distributor is an utter ********. According to many store owners the country is only getting two runs of KTK boxes and then we're done, for example.
If your stores are so bad, why not just order from an online source? If you don't want to pay SCG prices, then use the auction site everyone uses or some other location. As a MTG player, I am SUPER glad that Walmart isn't an easy source of cheap boosters because that would reduce the revenue available for LGSs which are necessary for magic to thrive. Selling to Walmart would be a bad long term idea for WOTC and they seem very aware of it.
Fun to see this actually happen. People have been sad about not being able to short onslaught fetches for like a year, so I'm not sure how much sympathy there can be for people who ate a big loss here. If you wanted to get out, there's been an opportunity to do so for a very long time.
The $10 vs $20 bet is interesting, but everyone is getting too impressed with recent fetchland values. They were high recently not only because they were useful in large quantities in decks, but because there were only 5. I wouldn't bother with misty rainforest for my melira pod deck if Windswept Heath was an option, and now I don't care about misty rainforest (at least for that deck).
I'd guess the Jan 1 price for fetches to vary between $10 and $15, will have to look back to see how people did in a few months
I fail to see any downside. This will require a whole lot less driving, modern prelims all year round instead of just 2x a year during the modern PTQ season, and a much better local experience. Modern is my favorite format and I'm fairly happy with all the changes.
I hate trading/selling/buying on the new site and have essentially stopped doing any of that here. A side effect of that I think is that I swing by this part of the forum a lot less.
I think it will be interesting to see what happens if the modern IQ starts drawing more people than the legacy main event. Modern seems to be growing very quickly along with the playerbase while legacy seems to be growing a lot slower. This seems like a smart way to test the waters and get a feel for modern appeal with minimal impact to their current open structure.
Why would they end organized play? That's an unrealistic outcome. Tournaments create demand which helps sell product and the demand that tournaments far exceeds the cost of ensuring that judges are paid a minimum wage with basic protections.
There has been a long history of judge "compensation" being sketchy, with boxes that they don't claim full value of on taxes, promos that many don't claim on taxes, etc. They can and should pay a fair wage for the people who are a critical part of their overall marketing strategy, especially if they are going to exercise direct control as they did recently with suspensions over leaks.
All this is assuming, of course, that wizards doesn't introduce lands that are better in modern than fetches + shocks.
I think the banlist changes hit interest in the GP pretty hard. A group of us had been planning to drive up to GP Vancouver for months but interest in modern and this GP specifically has died since 1/19. People who flew to GP Minneapolis last year have no interest in driving 3 hours to Vancouver this year.
There are still some people driving up from Seattle, but a LOT fewer than normal.
I think the idea of a modern event deck is still valid, but the execution on that first attempt was pretty bad.
I loved Pod in standard. When it went to modern I switched to modern as my primary format. I even flew to another state to play a modern GP and did well enough to cash. While I realize this ban might be good for the format, I don't feel like I have a format that I want to play anymore so I am free to move on. I'm grateful that WotC did this before I booked tickets to the Charlotte GP, although it would have been fun to have one last GP in Vancouver.
I also suspect that lots of people will make statements and not really mean it and that's fine. I doubt that there will be any mass abandonment of modern and that's also fine. I've had a lot of fun in the past ~3 years and my absence will go unnoticed except by close friends. However, WotC has stated multiple times that they only care about statements made by a wallet, so continuing to spend money on this game just isn't possible for me personally.
I'll still go see the MTG live action movie whenever it comes out though!
This made sense when a lot of the fetchland use and all of the allied fetchland use was legacy in which UB is super popular. Legacy is now the 3rd most relevant format for fetchland/delta use and delta is close to irrelevant in standard and modern. I don't think it will plummet to wooded foothill prices, but it is the one that is most likely to drop another buck or two or not grow as much as strand.
Obviously if UB becomes more prevalent in the larger formats (modern/standard) then it will have potential to grow.
Delta seems by far the most likely to continue dropping, since it sees minimal modern and standard play. Hard to say where it will end up exactly, but seems likely to be lower compared to strand than it is today.
Hex is also free to do things that you can't do with MTG because it wouldn't work in paper form. Some examples are permanent changes to cards, copying cards, putting your cards in your opponents deck, etc. I've also run into more and more people at paper MTG events that prefer Hex to MTGO.
Is it dying? I don't know. But I wonder what needs to happen before WotC really will give MTGO some attention and love. Because right now it is CLEAR that they don't care about software/digital stuff at all and they especially don't want to invest in MTGO beyond whatever they deem the minimum to suck cash out of players.
If your stores are so bad, why not just order from an online source? If you don't want to pay SCG prices, then use the auction site everyone uses or some other location. As a MTG player, I am SUPER glad that Walmart isn't an easy source of cheap boosters because that would reduce the revenue available for LGSs which are necessary for magic to thrive. Selling to Walmart would be a bad long term idea for WOTC and they seem very aware of it.
The $10 vs $20 bet is interesting, but everyone is getting too impressed with recent fetchland values. They were high recently not only because they were useful in large quantities in decks, but because there were only 5. I wouldn't bother with misty rainforest for my melira pod deck if Windswept Heath was an option, and now I don't care about misty rainforest (at least for that deck).
I'd guess the Jan 1 price for fetches to vary between $10 and $15, will have to look back to see how people did in a few months