It could be that the top decks 4cEnergy-Energy-Ramred are just too good for a regular speed control to get the right percentage wins. Maybe the new set will be a game changer for that /shrug
It's not so much that as it is that the tools you need to deal with Ramunap Red are just fundamentally different tools than what you need to deal with Energy. Sweeper in general are bad against a deck that has an Indestructible haster that can fling excess lands for damage, has lands that can fling about a quarter of your lands for damage repeatedly, and a Planeswalker that can deal damage continuously. Energy falls apart prettyy hard to Sweepers in Game 1, however the decks with sweepers available to them have no real way to combat Mono-Red effectively and vice-versa. It's a pretty viscious gate to get through, and that is largely because both decks have things that honestly shouldn't exist. Mono-Red aggro decks having such obscene late game with little investment is fundamentally a mistake, and Temur Energy having difficult too many annoying to answer creatures, and value on value cards (Rogue Refiner, in particular, is too much for too little).
The simple truth is that White has no effective way to deal with Aggro, and Red or Black has no effective way to deal with Energy. Couple that with no good card draw in Black or Red (OR really, any good CA engine), so you can't make B/W work or R/W work, and that going Esper slows you many base down far too much to deal with aggro; Going Jeskai makes your sweepers awkward due to too many fastlands to deal with Energy. This isn't a case of wanting a control that *does* answer everything; rather it's that no matter which way you go, you have no ability to deal with your bad match ups at all by virtue of choosing one color over another.
Also the problem with masters sets is the MSRP being set by the company. I already know what a smaller run of standard would look like because I'm actively playing two other games that have smaller print runs. The boxes might actually sell at 100-110 usd instead of being sold at barely any profit at all and people would actually be happy buying it.
Also they didn't over print Iconic Masters. What happened is a complete distribution disaster that turned into a self feeding loop due to a significant supply of the set going to big box retailers during holiday sales season. This completely annihilated the price on the booster packs as people were walking out with aggressively marked down packs while the local game stores got saddled with product they couldn't move without a loss. A lot of stores are just sitting on it because they don't want to sell for the prices being shown online, which is basically pointless because no one is even buying them at the low price point. On top of which this also hit around the time the entire drama wheel began to turn, which set wizards onto the current "we got to be part of the solution" tangent along with the quickly approaching Unstable release. Explorers of Ixalan and the new Merfolk vs Goblins barely had a chance to survive this.
The problem that people seem to fail to realize given the post I just saw in response to my own, is that wizards is over pricing and over printing the products. They could easily go to a different venue to improve the card quality and just cut the order, putting more money into making each box, and reduce the print run, which would increase confidence in the boxes and get more people buying them. Instead they are completely oversaturating the market like a bunch of inept monkeys because they want all the profits.
They absolutely do not care about your local game store, are only tossing bits and bobs their way to make themselves look a little better, and would totally sell everything to Big Box Retail if it meant they get more money. That is the impression they are leaving everyone with, and I feel it may be accurate.
Then people bemoan LGSs charging double triple MSRP.
Welcome to Magic, where people just like to whinge. The problem is that WotC listened to people's whinging, and followed the terrible advice people like you gave in the first place.. Players upset that the price of a Masters set is too high amd difficult to get ahold of? Here, lets make it more accessible and affordable! Now they whinge about supporting the game store, evem though these same valued customers *****ed about stores overcharging for MM four years ago, amd habe been buying cards hand over fist at TCGplayer.
Do not try to sell me Rudy's fake as crap LGS concern. He gives far less of a crap about the health of your LGS than WotC, whose financial livelihood depends on it. Rudy is peddling bullocks click bait nonsense, pure and simple. And you are eating that crap up. He is in the speculation market. Of bloody course he is going to sell you that underprinting product is a good thing, because that is how he makes money for pitys sake.
While selling Masters sets to big box stores is a boneheaded move, the entire damn reason they are doing it is because people were bemoaning getting ripped off by their LGSs because they were charging too much, and whinging about not being able to find it even if they didnt mind the price. So WotC decided to oblige, and now suddenly everyone comes out of the wood work to defend their stores. Never mind that these people loom to shark their store at every turn, never mind that people are buying from TCGplayer to save a dollar. No, no, now you suddenly care about the LGS. Bull. Bloody bull. Complete bull.served over a heaping lile of bulls.
... You do realize that they are over printing boxes and they could deliver better quality if they cut the run and use better paper and printers instead, right?
And then people complain that stores are charging over MSRP for a Masters set or Unstable. They underprinted the original MM, people *****ed because the packs were too expensive. They overprinted Iconic Masters, people *****ed because the prices on cards tanked. Stores have run out of Unstable, people ***** about not being able to draft it anymore. Wizards runs a second print run of Unstable, people are *****ing because there is going to be too much product. And while sometimes these are different groups of people, there are other times where I have seen the same person complain about both sides of it. WotC, to their credit, is *trying* to respond to what players actually want. It's just that by doing so, they create new unforseen problems. That said, I think a lot of players are getting way too damn entitled with a lot of things involving Masters Sets, and WotC just needs to ignore them. The people on the extreme are too damn demanding, and there is no way to make them happy. The Middle Ground they found with MM1 was pretty much where they needed to be and remain, regardless of those that complained about tanking prices or those that complained about too little product. Perhaps the print run of MM2015, while keeping the style of MM1. Like it or not, they can't just Chronicles out of a Master's set. That's exactly what happened with Iconic Masters. If you ever wonder why the reserved list exists, look no further than IMA. Almost an identical problem (However not quite to the same degree).
I will absolutely admit that they are doing too much auxiliary product; I have no damn clue why they created Explorers of Ixalan. It serves zero purpose, and I would have assumed that they learned their lesson from Arena of the Planeswalkers. I feel the 'Member-Berry crowd with Archenemy and Planechase convinced them that players were willing to buy auxiliary products game-modes, however they should have remembered how ridiculously, incredibly, ludicrously terribly those sold. I also think they are cramming too much draft product in a year, which should be obvious.
The challenger decks are a fine concept, however I think the price point is $5 too high, and they are making 1-2 too many different ones. Event decks, when constructed well, *did* work. Notably, the ones with SFM and GG were actually somewhat reasonable FNM-level decks that could do reasonably powerful things out of the box, and wins some games.
That said, none of this really has anything to do with card quality at all. It seems strange to think, but realize that all of these were made with the concept that they would sell well in mind. They didn't just cut quality of card stock to make room for this crap. The alleged card quality issues are almost assuredly completely divorced from this.
I am by no means giving them a pass on their mistakes; anyone who wants to look into my posting history will see that I have a long and storied history with rallying against WotC's decisions, and harsh criticism (up to and including suggesting some of the R&D team get fired for their idiocy). That said, I am also not just going to join the wank-fest of bemoaning every little thing that comes my way, particularly when the situation is far, far more complicated that people give it credit for.
There are tons of other places wizards of coasts could cut fat, why card quality?
Ypu are assuming that was the intent, while it could just have easily beem the result. It could just as easily been Cardimundi that made the change in order for *them* to have competitive pricing amd keep the various contracts they have, amd WotC very well may not have known a major change was made. It is possible, as well, that Cardamundi's supplier has changed their cardstock formula. There are a lot of reasons why this seemingly happened, amd franctly qe have no damn idea where in the line it came from. WotC doesn't own the damn print facilities, nor the suppliers to said facilities. If this is some change in that front, it would be damn near possible for WotC to fix it in anything approaching a quick time frame.
Frankly, you assume they tried to smeakily pass bad card quality by their customers, when the reality is that they cery well could have mot known this was going to be an issue. Equally, givem they are hiring what is essentially a high level QA position, I have to assume they are trying to fix the problem, amd said problem is far more structural that you seem to assume.
Someone very likely tried to cut corners. I think it is patently absurd to automatically assume it is WotC when there are multiple steps of suppliers and manufafturers involved.
... You do realize that they are over printing boxes and they could deliver better quality if they cut the run and use better paper and printers instead, right?
And then people complain that stores are charging over MSRP for a Masters set or Unstable. They underprinted the original MM, people *****ed because the packs were too expensive. They overprinted Iconic Masters, people *****ed because the prices on cards tanked. Stores have run out of Unstable, people ***** about not being able to draft it anymore. Wizards runs a second print run of Unstable, people are *****ing because there is going to be too much product. And while sometimes these are different groups of people, there are other times where I have seen the same person complain about both sides of it. WotC, to their credit, is *trying* to respond to what players actually want. It's just that by doing so, they create new unforseen problems. That said, I think a lot of players are getting way too damn entitled with a lot of things involving Masters Sets, and WotC just needs to ignore them. The people on the extreme are too damn demanding, and there is no way to make them happy. The Middle Ground they found with MM1 was pretty much where they needed to be and remain, regardless of those that complained about tanking prices or those that complained about too little product. Perhaps the print run of MM2015, while keeping the style of MM1. Like it or not, they can't just Chronicles out of a Master's set. That's exactly what happened with Iconic Masters. If you ever wonder why the reserved list exists, look no further than IMA. Almost an identical problem (However not quite to the same degree).
I will absolutely admit that they are doing too much auxiliary product; I have no damn clue why they created Explorers of Ixalan. It serves zero purpose, and I would have assumed that they learned their lesson from Arena of the Planeswalkers. I feel the 'Member-Berry crowd with Archenemy and Planechase convinced them that players were willing to buy auxiliary products game-modes, however they should have remembered how ridiculously, incredibly, ludicrously terribly those sold. I also think they are cramming too much draft product in a year, which should be obvious.
The challenger decks are a fine concept, however I think the price point is $5 too high, and they are making 1-2 too many different ones. Event decks, when constructed well, *did* work. Notably, the ones with SFM and GG were actually somewhat reasonable FNM-level decks that could do reasonably powerful things out of the box, and wins some games.
That said, none of this really has anything to do with card quality at all. It seems strange to think, but realize that all of these were made with the concept that they would sell well in mind. They didn't just cut quality of card stock to make room for this crap. The alleged card quality issues are almost assuredly completely divorced from this.
I am by no means giving them a pass on their mistakes; anyone who wants to look into my posting history will see that I have a long and storied history with rallying against WotC's decisions, and harsh criticism (up to and including suggesting some of the R&D team get fired for their idiocy). That said, I am also not just going to join the wank-fest of bemoaning every little thing that comes my way, particularly when the situation is far, far more complicated that people give it credit for.
Clearly the only way a business can improve profits is by cutting quality of product?
You either cut costs of production or increase the price of the product. You would lose your damn mind if WotC increased the price per pack to $5. You are losing yourndamn mind because the qualkty has seemingly gone down. People would lose their damn mind if WotC started outsourcing.
So if peoe don't want to pay more, and are vehememtly agaimst any cost cutting measure in production, them where the hell do you think they are going to make up profitability? Something has to damn well give, and you wanting it all indicates to me you have no bloody clue how capitalistic markets actually work. Which do you wamt? Outsourcing? Higher prices? Decreased quality? You do not get it all.
At this point they have little to lose themselves unless there are politics we are not aware of. I'm guessing they are dealing with the latter.
Contracts, legal matterz ,distribution lines, optics. You name it. Let me ask youbsomething: What would publicly happen to a US company outsourcing production to a foreign printing facility instead of remaining in the US, for cost reasons? WotC would get absolutely eviscerated in the current political climate, by the same crowd that follows Rudy and Jeremy no less because WotC isn't supporting US amd local businesses. The cost of a pack has also not gone up pretty much at all, meaning that increased production costs from inflation alone are not being recouped by the margins. Adjusted for inflation, a pack in 1994-2000 should cost $5.25 today. Yet the same crowd that whinges about card quality are also the moaners about pack prjce increases.
WotC is backed into a corner they simply have no outs for given the demands people are making from them. They can't maintain profitability if they keep the prices stagnant while also keeping quality stagnant. Yet the same people bemoan both when they happen. And it is the same group that would bemoan outsourcing.
People whom think this crap is simple are fundamentally wrong. It is not. There are multiple contradictory factors at play, and people want two mutually exclusive outcomes to occur at the same time. It is damn well ridiculous.
I have no idea if Rudy and other social media outlets are being honestly ignorant of this crap or are willfully misleading their audiences for whatever purpose, but this nonsense is truly ridiculous. WotC isn't cutting the quality on cards kust because they can and because they are being evil greedy monsters.
Do the people at wotc live in a box in the remote reaches of central Africa? I'm just curious at this point.
I'm just not seeing how a company can be blind to the level that we are seeing in the wake of all the thanksgiving drama. To encourage happiness with the game they need to price products fairly and recognize that the secondary market is a result of the primary market, not an extension of it.
It's almost as if they don't actually care about encouraging happiness, but are only trying to appeal to a certain demographic.
Anyway. Anyone here watching Rudy's latest videos about inside trading? Legit or is he just trolling? Kind of makes me want to stop playing Magic if true.
A shred of truth with a whole lot of hot air surrounding it. The aort of information he is giving is nothing particularly controvertial (and I question whether he is actually accurately giving thenfull story), and is largely available to most people whom deal with distributors. Its just that people likely didn't realize what the slips were saying ornhowntonuse said information. Its hardly nefarious insider trading, and more individuals making informed decisions based on plinformation gathered from packing slips.
Do the people at wotc live in a box in the remote reaches of central Africa? I'm just curious at this point.
Howso?
If referring to needed changes to help standard, realize that the Play Design team post-dates Kaladesh; they were barely able to sneak Abrade into Hour witb the time they had.
If rederring to card stock issues, they very much know of it, and are very much trying to sort it out. It is likely that the problem has to do witb the print facilities they contract with, and the supply line there in. It is entirely possible that something has changed in theanufacturing process that is completely removed from WotC decision making.
If talking about the online nonsense, they do not give two flying craps what a relatively obscure online personality does in the short term, particularly given the outlets he has chosen to go to for exposure openly mock and deride the hobby from the start. He has less than 5,000 followers on twitter. The horror.
If talking about the emdless run of product, tjey would have to be fools to keep it up. I foresee that after next uear, tje sort of endless new product runs will taper down. Why after next year? Because they already have it planned out that far, to the point of no return.
If talkkng about the poster, and insinuating it is wasting time on something that doesnt matter while they ignore other issues, realize that saod poster is literally the least they could do, requires almost no effort, is a quick process, and is far easier to handle than other problems which are structural in nature rather than cosmetic. They are not ignoring those problems. They are just difficult problems to sort out, amd take massive amounts of effort, resources, and time to fix. Which they are doing if you at all pay attention.
There are very good legal and business related reasons why they do not talk about these issues publicly. That said, jist because they do not openly discuss them does not mean they are ignoring them. Amybody who is at all intellectually honest can see that several moves they have made in recent months are meant to directly fix the problems people bring up. The problem is that people want instant gratification these days, amd that is just not realistic at all. It is people with no knowledge of the industry being armchair CEOs.
Edit: I want to get ahead of this and dispel certain notions before they start. There is a certain contingent whom have looked at Hasbro's stock prices, seen they went down recently, and then pat themselves on the back as knowing what is going on. After all, if Hasbro can't sell toys during Christmas, what are they doing, amirite? Well, if you are an armchair imvestor without amy kmowledge of the imdustry, this makes sense. If you have the actual isight to compare this year's data to last year and the year before, you notice that this happens every damn year at this exact time, to a near identical amount (about a $6 drop in stocks in the middle of December, every December, for years straight).Why is this? People have already finished their holiday shopping. Sales slip because a lot of people are not buying gifts, as said gifts are already umder the tree. They pick up again in January once the Holiday-fervor is over. Investors who do not wamt to wait a full year to actualize their investments at the next high start selling stock, which imcreases supply of stick temporarily. Long-term invesors wait for the market to bottom out around the 15th, and then buy up stock at the cheapest they can for the forseeable future, amd wait for next year to sell out. Wash, rinse, repeat for years on end. The moral of this stroy is that there are a lot of people who have no functioning knowledge of hiw stocks work at all, let alone how market fluctuations work or why they happen. Do not listen to those people. Anyone who tries to common sense their way through such a comolicated subject is fundamentally wrong.
The lands also ensure the value variance of packs is really low - which I strongly prefer to lottery packs.
Absolutely agree. I quit drafting and buying boxes a long time ago because every single time, I lost money. How is it I can draft, win prize packs, and still not break even? Last time I opened three prize packs, and all six of my packs totaled only $6 - which means I lost $10 in the draft. I got sick of that and started buying singles only.
Then Unstable came along, with guaranteed value in every pack - I drafted and bought a box for the first time in a very long time. I had a blast playing with the wacky cards, I sold the lands to pay for a big chunk of it, and now I have a bunch of fun cards to build an Un-Cube with so I can play them all over again.
Hence, it's not silver bordered that's a commercial succes, it no border.
And why can't it be both? I didn't want the set for the land - I actually don't like the frameless look, and I sold all of the basics to pay for 75% of the box price - I wanted the wacky silver bordered cards. They were the success to me. But as I said above, the guaranteed value and lack of lottery variance made it actually worth buying sealed product rather than just ordering singles.
Personally, I think that is the lesson Wizards needs to learn from this set: don't pack all the value in three chase cards; try to spread it more evenly, and people will be more willing to buy.
I'm starting to see why they may not have done it and it is a complete misunderstanding of what value actually means. People aren't talking about monetary value or the power of the card, we're talking about the depth of play the card has. I'm starting to think that NWO might have been the worst decision wizards ever made in the history of the entire game. I know they are worried about accessibility, but the entire problem is that they pushed all the cards with complexity to them into the rare slot and sometimes maybe one or two uncommons. Heck, the big factor as to why Cut // Ribbons was not instant speed is because it can be played from the graveyard, which would have made that card have a lot of lines of play that aren't immediately apparent.
Maybe what we want is the ability to discover things again?
I feel that the notion that NWO specifically is to blame is not right. Both Innistrad and RtR were post-NWO, and both of those are well regarded draft formats; the former considered one of the best draft formats of all time.
The problem is that they have gone way, way, way too far down the rabbit hole. There are merits to NWO, and it didn't arise out of a vacuum. While a lot of experience players look at Time Spiral all whisty-eyed, the truth is that it was utterly miserable for newer players to play.
The problem is a few fold, and I don't think NWO specifically is the problem, even if NWO led to the path we are on. There are good things that have come from NWO, after all. There are also bad things. I feel that the power creep you have seen at common/uncommon is an indirect result pushing too far down NWO order territory; when you remove a lot of complexity from commons/uncommons, you have to make up for the lost power potential somewhere. So you push them a bit in their stats. They are not constructed all-stars, obviously, but when something like [[Nessian Courser]] isn't immediately played in green because it's just not good enough, the power level of the format has been skewed too heavily. And that is a large part because you no longer get to choose between Courser and a somewhat weaker creature with relevant text, you get to choose between Courser and something that is just plain better than courser (Essentially).
That said, there are things I think they are being just flat wrong with in terms of limited, that carries over into constructed. Uncommon good removal should exist. Doom Blade is not warping, at all, particularly in modern formats where Grizzly Bears are utterly unplayable, and not worth considering most of the time due to them being too weak. I am of the opinion that players should want to play every card they pick, not feel like they are forced to have it. The draft formats feel very canned, without room for variation. The archetypes are just too narrowly defined, and too many cards are just not functional outside of said archetype.
It has certainly aged better than people anticipated. Most decks in the format are influenced in no small part by either Amonkhet or HoD. as for Cut/Ribbons, the problem right now with the card is that there just isn't a home for it. It's actually a pretty good card overall, but without a good R/B/x deck, there just isn't a home for it. It's a card I feel would benefit significantly from something like Read the Bones in the format for midrange lists, or some sort of R/B aggro list. Given that Ramunap Red would be the starting point for such a list, the problem is that there isn't any reason to go that route. RR is just doing fine right now. Which leaves a sort of Midrange-Control shell, however there just isn't any good card draw in Black right now. Read the Bones would be fantastic.
Exactly. For example, one of those teams refer to this guy as the boss. Almost every tournament, tuesday, thursday, friday and sunday, there is at least one of them in top 4. I mean yeah they are good players, but one or two free rounds here and there against one of your teammates always helps,
Only with better releases will Wizzards be able to help us out and hopefully attract more costumers and incentivate shops to open.
Jeez I'm even considering my next house to be in the center (close to work and mtg shops lol)
There was a bonanza of stores opening up following the surge of players post-Innistrad. Unfortunately, even under the best of circumstances game stores will close simply due to the markets being volatile, the margins being low, and the profits being almost non-existent; couple this with the need for a lot of space, which isn't cheap, and the general failure of most private ventures, and it's just not a functional business in most cases. While we have seen a downtick in players, a big part of this has a lot more to do with unrealistic expectation by a lot of people (Wizards and Hasbro included), as well as just general attrition. Every game regardless of platform eventually drops players, and Magic has honestly not been dropping at any rate faster than others from what I've seen. The real problem Magic is having isn't that players are *leaving*, which is natural to a degree and to be expected, it's that players aren't *joining* to replace the lost players at a high enough rate. To be honest, Wizards is pretty good at retaining its current customer base. It's just generally awful right now at player acquisition. How a company can get away with effectively refusing to advertise one of their flagship brands to the wider public is beyond me. Almost their entire advertising budget exists to advertise to already somewhat engaged players through the inserts in packs, to the advertisements during Grand Prix's, to the various things they do at events.
Granted, Arena is going to help with this, but it baffles me to no end that they have apparently made it against the TOS to stream the Beta of it, and it is at least a year or two down the road before it officially launches.
While I think we have a large enough engaged population so as to be able to ride out the slow times ahead to maintain generally good profitability for Magic (Thus securing it's foreseeable safety for the future), I also don't see the game getting significantly better in the short term as far as player populations are concerned. I do thoroughly anticipate the boom that comes from Arena, however, particularly if it's an engaging platform for Magic. People just need to be cautiously optimistic instead of crazy optimistic this go around.
I like Lightning and Abrade better than Push. But I like all the other cards you get with Black, Duress, Vraska'a Contempt, Scarab God, Essence Extraction. That is the main reason I am going with Esper this weekend. And being able to switch to full UB control after sideboard is very appealing to me. This may end up terrible but I have a good feeling about this. Right now I am just trying out a ton of different stuff to see what feels the best.
I found the red splash gives you a somewhat better game against Mono-Red, while the Black splash gives you better game against the rest of the field. The problem is that you are still just fairly unfavored against Mono-Red, so I'm not sure it's the best choice. The Black splash is notably more important in the Mirror, and mostly neutralish against Energy (When compared to the Red splash). I would honestly give the slight edge to Black, for no other reason that there really anything you can do post sideboard to make the red match up favorable, but there is plenty you can do to make other match ups more favorable if you go black.
Smaller game = no one plays
We're already seeing their flagship game (standard, which sells product) not firing on a regular basis.
Why do people think paper magic dies with Maro? Where's the evidence of that? Any links to statements Chris has made to indicate he's going to destroy the paper game?
Diversification leads to greater profits not narrowing and specializing. I hope Chris isn't so stupid as to believe digital is the only future for mtg because he'll kill it completely inside 3 years.
0% chance. Synergistic effects are strong. Omni channel customers provide more revenue. MTGO has higher margins, but cross selling is the way to go. Look for codes or something in upcoming packs for Arena. That gives you incentive to play both.
Pretty much this is what I'm expecting to some degree. While it's far too early to anticipate the card economy of the game itself, I think it's safe to assume that they are going to ditch the current MTGO scheme. While it's certainly very profitable, it also is inflexible and requires the cost of the digital product to be the same as physical product due to allowing trading digital for physical product. This severely limits, for logistical and financial reasons, the ability to do cross-platform promotions and the like. I think that'll be gone completely with Arena, opening it up to stuff like this as well as significantly decreasing the "cost" of playing Arena to a point similar to Hearthstone.
The real question will not be what happens to Paper Magic, but rather what happens to MTGO; I don't think they can have two online platforms trying to perform similar things. They may just let MTGO die naturally or they may force it to die. Either way, given what we know about what they plan for Arena I just don't think it will survive.
Smaller game = no one plays
We're already seeing their flagship game (standard, which sells product) not firing on a regular basis.
Why do people think paper magic dies with Maro? Where's the evidence of that? Any links to statements Chris has made to indicate he's going to destroy the paper game?
Diversification leads to greater profits not narrowing and specializing. I hope Chris isn't so stupid as to believe digital is the only future for mtg because he'll kill it completely inside 3 years.
Fun fact: Magic used to be a fraction of its current size and still soldiered on. It has gone through far worse crunches in the past, to the point where product was barely being sold and attendance was decimated.
While Magic has seen a downturn in sales this year, I would hardly call it Apocalyptic. They are still putting a lot of money into physical cards, and are hiring both what appears to be a QA position for physical cards as was as a design position that pays close to 100k/year. If they actually felt that the game was dying, or were planning a straight move to Digital Only, or were even contemplating doing that, this wouldn't be the case. A downturn in sales is a far cry from failing, as the game is still easily one of their most profitable brands.
Other sets you are guaranteed at least one foil basic per box, this set? Not even.
Sorry, but can you provide a source where wizards guaranteed anything about the content of a boosterbox other than the contend of the sums of the packs?
You're cute.
Sorry, I should have said "guaranteed" in quotes for you literalists.
There has not been a box I have ever opened or ever seen opened that does not contain a foil basic. Yes, mathematically (and please don't try and play the odds games with me, I work in the casino industry) and technically you COULD get a box that does not have one. You can also be struck by lightning while having sex with your favorite porn star on top of an elephant at Trump's impeachment celebration.
There should, on average, be only between 5-7 foils per box. There are, in regular sets, 260-ish cards. There are typically 20 different basic lands.
Lands should be 1 out of every 13 or 14 foils, as amy given foil is generally assumed to be just as rare as any other foil, regardless of rarity (each card showing up once per sheet). You should typically open a foil basic once every 2-3 boxes.
It's not so much that as it is that the tools you need to deal with Ramunap Red are just fundamentally different tools than what you need to deal with Energy. Sweeper in general are bad against a deck that has an Indestructible haster that can fling excess lands for damage, has lands that can fling about a quarter of your lands for damage repeatedly, and a Planeswalker that can deal damage continuously. Energy falls apart prettyy hard to Sweepers in Game 1, however the decks with sweepers available to them have no real way to combat Mono-Red effectively and vice-versa. It's a pretty viscious gate to get through, and that is largely because both decks have things that honestly shouldn't exist. Mono-Red aggro decks having such obscene late game with little investment is fundamentally a mistake, and Temur Energy having difficult too many annoying to answer creatures, and value on value cards (Rogue Refiner, in particular, is too much for too little).
The simple truth is that White has no effective way to deal with Aggro, and Red or Black has no effective way to deal with Energy. Couple that with no good card draw in Black or Red (OR really, any good CA engine), so you can't make B/W work or R/W work, and that going Esper slows you many base down far too much to deal with aggro; Going Jeskai makes your sweepers awkward due to too many fastlands to deal with Energy. This isn't a case of wanting a control that *does* answer everything; rather it's that no matter which way you go, you have no ability to deal with your bad match ups at all by virtue of choosing one color over another.
Then people bemoan LGSs charging double triple MSRP.
Welcome to Magic, where people just like to whinge. The problem is that WotC listened to people's whinging, and followed the terrible advice people like you gave in the first place.. Players upset that the price of a Masters set is too high amd difficult to get ahold of? Here, lets make it more accessible and affordable! Now they whinge about supporting the game store, evem though these same valued customers *****ed about stores overcharging for MM four years ago, amd habe been buying cards hand over fist at TCGplayer.
Do not try to sell me Rudy's fake as crap LGS concern. He gives far less of a crap about the health of your LGS than WotC, whose financial livelihood depends on it. Rudy is peddling bullocks click bait nonsense, pure and simple. And you are eating that crap up. He is in the speculation market. Of bloody course he is going to sell you that underprinting product is a good thing, because that is how he makes money for pitys sake.
While selling Masters sets to big box stores is a boneheaded move, the entire damn reason they are doing it is because people were bemoaning getting ripped off by their LGSs because they were charging too much, and whinging about not being able to find it even if they didnt mind the price. So WotC decided to oblige, and now suddenly everyone comes out of the wood work to defend their stores. Never mind that these people loom to shark their store at every turn, never mind that people are buying from TCGplayer to save a dollar. No, no, now you suddenly care about the LGS. Bull. Bloody bull. Complete bull.served over a heaping lile of bulls.
Ypu are assuming that was the intent, while it could just have easily beem the result. It could just as easily been Cardimundi that made the change in order for *them* to have competitive pricing amd keep the various contracts they have, amd WotC very well may not have known a major change was made. It is possible, as well, that Cardamundi's supplier has changed their cardstock formula. There are a lot of reasons why this seemingly happened, amd franctly qe have no damn idea where in the line it came from. WotC doesn't own the damn print facilities, nor the suppliers to said facilities. If this is some change in that front, it would be damn near possible for WotC to fix it in anything approaching a quick time frame.
Frankly, you assume they tried to smeakily pass bad card quality by their customers, when the reality is that they cery well could have mot known this was going to be an issue. Equally, givem they are hiring what is essentially a high level QA position, I have to assume they are trying to fix the problem, amd said problem is far more structural that you seem to assume.
Someone very likely tried to cut corners. I think it is patently absurd to automatically assume it is WotC when there are multiple steps of suppliers and manufafturers involved.
And then people complain that stores are charging over MSRP for a Masters set or Unstable. They underprinted the original MM, people *****ed because the packs were too expensive. They overprinted Iconic Masters, people *****ed because the prices on cards tanked. Stores have run out of Unstable, people ***** about not being able to draft it anymore. Wizards runs a second print run of Unstable, people are *****ing because there is going to be too much product. And while sometimes these are different groups of people, there are other times where I have seen the same person complain about both sides of it. WotC, to their credit, is *trying* to respond to what players actually want. It's just that by doing so, they create new unforseen problems. That said, I think a lot of players are getting way too damn entitled with a lot of things involving Masters Sets, and WotC just needs to ignore them. The people on the extreme are too damn demanding, and there is no way to make them happy. The Middle Ground they found with MM1 was pretty much where they needed to be and remain, regardless of those that complained about tanking prices or those that complained about too little product. Perhaps the print run of MM2015, while keeping the style of MM1. Like it or not, they can't just Chronicles out of a Master's set. That's exactly what happened with Iconic Masters. If you ever wonder why the reserved list exists, look no further than IMA. Almost an identical problem (However not quite to the same degree).
I will absolutely admit that they are doing too much auxiliary product; I have no damn clue why they created Explorers of Ixalan. It serves zero purpose, and I would have assumed that they learned their lesson from Arena of the Planeswalkers. I feel the 'Member-Berry crowd with Archenemy and Planechase convinced them that players were willing to buy auxiliary products game-modes, however they should have remembered how ridiculously, incredibly, ludicrously terribly those sold. I also think they are cramming too much draft product in a year, which should be obvious.
The challenger decks are a fine concept, however I think the price point is $5 too high, and they are making 1-2 too many different ones. Event decks, when constructed well, *did* work. Notably, the ones with SFM and GG were actually somewhat reasonable FNM-level decks that could do reasonably powerful things out of the box, and wins some games.
That said, none of this really has anything to do with card quality at all. It seems strange to think, but realize that all of these were made with the concept that they would sell well in mind. They didn't just cut quality of card stock to make room for this crap. The alleged card quality issues are almost assuredly completely divorced from this.
I am by no means giving them a pass on their mistakes; anyone who wants to look into my posting history will see that I have a long and storied history with rallying against WotC's decisions, and harsh criticism (up to and including suggesting some of the R&D team get fired for their idiocy). That said, I am also not just going to join the wank-fest of bemoaning every little thing that comes my way, particularly when the situation is far, far more complicated that people give it credit for.
You either cut costs of production or increase the price of the product. You would lose your damn mind if WotC increased the price per pack to $5. You are losing yourndamn mind because the qualkty has seemingly gone down. People would lose their damn mind if WotC started outsourcing.
So if peoe don't want to pay more, and are vehememtly agaimst any cost cutting measure in production, them where the hell do you think they are going to make up profitability? Something has to damn well give, and you wanting it all indicates to me you have no bloody clue how capitalistic markets actually work. Which do you wamt? Outsourcing? Higher prices? Decreased quality? You do not get it all.
Contracts, legal matterz ,distribution lines, optics. You name it. Let me ask youbsomething: What would publicly happen to a US company outsourcing production to a foreign printing facility instead of remaining in the US, for cost reasons? WotC would get absolutely eviscerated in the current political climate, by the same crowd that follows Rudy and Jeremy no less because WotC isn't supporting US amd local businesses. The cost of a pack has also not gone up pretty much at all, meaning that increased production costs from inflation alone are not being recouped by the margins. Adjusted for inflation, a pack in 1994-2000 should cost $5.25 today. Yet the same crowd that whinges about card quality are also the moaners about pack prjce increases.
WotC is backed into a corner they simply have no outs for given the demands people are making from them. They can't maintain profitability if they keep the prices stagnant while also keeping quality stagnant. Yet the same people bemoan both when they happen. And it is the same group that would bemoan outsourcing.
People whom think this crap is simple are fundamentally wrong. It is not. There are multiple contradictory factors at play, and people want two mutually exclusive outcomes to occur at the same time. It is damn well ridiculous.
I have no idea if Rudy and other social media outlets are being honestly ignorant of this crap or are willfully misleading their audiences for whatever purpose, but this nonsense is truly ridiculous. WotC isn't cutting the quality on cards kust because they can and because they are being evil greedy monsters.
A shred of truth with a whole lot of hot air surrounding it. The aort of information he is giving is nothing particularly controvertial (and I question whether he is actually accurately giving thenfull story), and is largely available to most people whom deal with distributors. Its just that people likely didn't realize what the slips were saying ornhowntonuse said information. Its hardly nefarious insider trading, and more individuals making informed decisions based on plinformation gathered from packing slips.
Howso?
If referring to needed changes to help standard, realize that the Play Design team post-dates Kaladesh; they were barely able to sneak Abrade into Hour witb the time they had.
If rederring to card stock issues, they very much know of it, and are very much trying to sort it out. It is likely that the problem has to do witb the print facilities they contract with, and the supply line there in. It is entirely possible that something has changed in theanufacturing process that is completely removed from WotC decision making.
If talking about the online nonsense, they do not give two flying craps what a relatively obscure online personality does in the short term, particularly given the outlets he has chosen to go to for exposure openly mock and deride the hobby from the start. He has less than 5,000 followers on twitter. The horror.
If talking about the emdless run of product, tjey would have to be fools to keep it up. I foresee that after next uear, tje sort of endless new product runs will taper down. Why after next year? Because they already have it planned out that far, to the point of no return.
If talkkng about the poster, and insinuating it is wasting time on something that doesnt matter while they ignore other issues, realize that saod poster is literally the least they could do, requires almost no effort, is a quick process, and is far easier to handle than other problems which are structural in nature rather than cosmetic. They are not ignoring those problems. They are just difficult problems to sort out, amd take massive amounts of effort, resources, and time to fix. Which they are doing if you at all pay attention.
There are very good legal and business related reasons why they do not talk about these issues publicly. That said, jist because they do not openly discuss them does not mean they are ignoring them. Amybody who is at all intellectually honest can see that several moves they have made in recent months are meant to directly fix the problems people bring up. The problem is that people want instant gratification these days, amd that is just not realistic at all. It is people with no knowledge of the industry being armchair CEOs.
Edit: I want to get ahead of this and dispel certain notions before they start. There is a certain contingent whom have looked at Hasbro's stock prices, seen they went down recently, and then pat themselves on the back as knowing what is going on. After all, if Hasbro can't sell toys during Christmas, what are they doing, amirite? Well, if you are an armchair imvestor without amy kmowledge of the imdustry, this makes sense. If you have the actual isight to compare this year's data to last year and the year before, you notice that this happens every damn year at this exact time, to a near identical amount (about a $6 drop in stocks in the middle of December, every December, for years straight).Why is this? People have already finished their holiday shopping. Sales slip because a lot of people are not buying gifts, as said gifts are already umder the tree. They pick up again in January once the Holiday-fervor is over. Investors who do not wamt to wait a full year to actualize their investments at the next high start selling stock, which imcreases supply of stick temporarily. Long-term invesors wait for the market to bottom out around the 15th, and then buy up stock at the cheapest they can for the forseeable future, amd wait for next year to sell out. Wash, rinse, repeat for years on end. The moral of this stroy is that there are a lot of people who have no functioning knowledge of hiw stocks work at all, let alone how market fluctuations work or why they happen. Do not listen to those people. Anyone who tries to common sense their way through such a comolicated subject is fundamentally wrong.
I feel that the notion that NWO specifically is to blame is not right. Both Innistrad and RtR were post-NWO, and both of those are well regarded draft formats; the former considered one of the best draft formats of all time.
The problem is that they have gone way, way, way too far down the rabbit hole. There are merits to NWO, and it didn't arise out of a vacuum. While a lot of experience players look at Time Spiral all whisty-eyed, the truth is that it was utterly miserable for newer players to play.
The problem is a few fold, and I don't think NWO specifically is the problem, even if NWO led to the path we are on. There are good things that have come from NWO, after all. There are also bad things. I feel that the power creep you have seen at common/uncommon is an indirect result pushing too far down NWO order territory; when you remove a lot of complexity from commons/uncommons, you have to make up for the lost power potential somewhere. So you push them a bit in their stats. They are not constructed all-stars, obviously, but when something like [[Nessian Courser]] isn't immediately played in green because it's just not good enough, the power level of the format has been skewed too heavily. And that is a large part because you no longer get to choose between Courser and a somewhat weaker creature with relevant text, you get to choose between Courser and something that is just plain better than courser (Essentially).
That said, there are things I think they are being just flat wrong with in terms of limited, that carries over into constructed. Uncommon good removal should exist. Doom Blade is not warping, at all, particularly in modern formats where Grizzly Bears are utterly unplayable, and not worth considering most of the time due to them being too weak. I am of the opinion that players should want to play every card they pick, not feel like they are forced to have it. The draft formats feel very canned, without room for variation. The archetypes are just too narrowly defined, and too many cards are just not functional outside of said archetype.
There was a bonanza of stores opening up following the surge of players post-Innistrad. Unfortunately, even under the best of circumstances game stores will close simply due to the markets being volatile, the margins being low, and the profits being almost non-existent; couple this with the need for a lot of space, which isn't cheap, and the general failure of most private ventures, and it's just not a functional business in most cases. While we have seen a downtick in players, a big part of this has a lot more to do with unrealistic expectation by a lot of people (Wizards and Hasbro included), as well as just general attrition. Every game regardless of platform eventually drops players, and Magic has honestly not been dropping at any rate faster than others from what I've seen. The real problem Magic is having isn't that players are *leaving*, which is natural to a degree and to be expected, it's that players aren't *joining* to replace the lost players at a high enough rate. To be honest, Wizards is pretty good at retaining its current customer base. It's just generally awful right now at player acquisition. How a company can get away with effectively refusing to advertise one of their flagship brands to the wider public is beyond me. Almost their entire advertising budget exists to advertise to already somewhat engaged players through the inserts in packs, to the advertisements during Grand Prix's, to the various things they do at events.
Granted, Arena is going to help with this, but it baffles me to no end that they have apparently made it against the TOS to stream the Beta of it, and it is at least a year or two down the road before it officially launches.
While I think we have a large enough engaged population so as to be able to ride out the slow times ahead to maintain generally good profitability for Magic (Thus securing it's foreseeable safety for the future), I also don't see the game getting significantly better in the short term as far as player populations are concerned. I do thoroughly anticipate the boom that comes from Arena, however, particularly if it's an engaging platform for Magic. People just need to be cautiously optimistic instead of crazy optimistic this go around.
I found the red splash gives you a somewhat better game against Mono-Red, while the Black splash gives you better game against the rest of the field. The problem is that you are still just fairly unfavored against Mono-Red, so I'm not sure it's the best choice. The Black splash is notably more important in the Mirror, and mostly neutralish against Energy (When compared to the Red splash). I would honestly give the slight edge to Black, for no other reason that there really anything you can do post sideboard to make the red match up favorable, but there is plenty you can do to make other match ups more favorable if you go black.
Pretty much this is what I'm expecting to some degree. While it's far too early to anticipate the card economy of the game itself, I think it's safe to assume that they are going to ditch the current MTGO scheme. While it's certainly very profitable, it also is inflexible and requires the cost of the digital product to be the same as physical product due to allowing trading digital for physical product. This severely limits, for logistical and financial reasons, the ability to do cross-platform promotions and the like. I think that'll be gone completely with Arena, opening it up to stuff like this as well as significantly decreasing the "cost" of playing Arena to a point similar to Hearthstone.
The real question will not be what happens to Paper Magic, but rather what happens to MTGO; I don't think they can have two online platforms trying to perform similar things. They may just let MTGO die naturally or they may force it to die. Either way, given what we know about what they plan for Arena I just don't think it will survive.
Fun fact: Magic used to be a fraction of its current size and still soldiered on. It has gone through far worse crunches in the past, to the point where product was barely being sold and attendance was decimated.
While Magic has seen a downturn in sales this year, I would hardly call it Apocalyptic. They are still putting a lot of money into physical cards, and are hiring both what appears to be a QA position for physical cards as was as a design position that pays close to 100k/year. If they actually felt that the game was dying, or were planning a straight move to Digital Only, or were even contemplating doing that, this wouldn't be the case. A downturn in sales is a far cry from failing, as the game is still easily one of their most profitable brands.
There should, on average, be only between 5-7 foils per box. There are, in regular sets, 260-ish cards. There are typically 20 different basic lands.
Lands should be 1 out of every 13 or 14 foils, as amy given foil is generally assumed to be just as rare as any other foil, regardless of rarity (each card showing up once per sheet). You should typically open a foil basic once every 2-3 boxes.