I tried playing Paradox engine in two different decks and both times the card strait up won me the game. All it requires is a couple mana rocks and some draw power. The first time I tried it, I was playing a wheel deck with Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix and Vial Smasher the Fierce. I think I had one or two rocks out with Kydele and that was enough. I decided to pull Paradox Engine from the deck after that.
My second attempt to use Paradox was in a Samut, Voice of Dissent deck with a bunch of creatures with tap abilities. I dropped Paradox and was able to win that turn with Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and a couple draw spells. I pulled it from the deck after that. The card is just too good and even without trying to build combo, it ends up doing exactly that.
I loved Prophet of Kruphix but it wasn't near as busted as Paradox Engine is. There were plenty of times where I didn't win with Prophet and even when I did, it typically took a full round of turns where my opponents had a chance to deal with Prophet. Paradox typically wins without instant speed removal.
In these two situations, replace PE with Umbral Mantle. Just as busted.
You could tap out to cast Prophet, then have mana available on opponents' turns to counter spells or cast more creatures. This made it so that your opponents needed to keep removal up to kill it when you tapped out. What would also happen is someone would clone it. PoK is bad for multiplayer, effectively giving you 4 turns for each of your opponents' turns.
If you tap out to cast PE, opponents will get the chance to destroy it. To win the turn you play it, you need to keep mana up, which makes the effective mana cost much higher. In this regard, it is no different than any other combo piece.
Not really. Umbral Mantle would only get me infinite colorless mana from Kydele. The thing that allowed me to keep my engine going was getting any color mana that I wanted from mana rocks in addition to insane amounts of colorless mana.
In my second example with Samut, I actually didn't draw paradox until 2nd main so had to come up with a win-con without combat. I ended up pinging everyone to death with Zhur-Taa Druid. The thing about paradox is that with a tiny bit of luck with card draw, it allows you to keep going until you can pull out a win con. I had enough card draw that I was able to finish everyone off with a pinger.
The other issue with paradox which I think others here have mentioned is that it really becomes solitaire magic which is fun for nobody.
I tried playing Paradox engine in two different decks and both times the card strait up won me the game. All it requires is a couple mana rocks and some draw power. The first time I tried it, I was playing a wheel deck with Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix and Vial Smasher the Fierce. I think I had one or two rocks out with Kydele and that was enough. I decided to pull Paradox Engine from the deck after that.
My second attempt to use Paradox was in a Samut, Voice of Dissent deck with a bunch of creatures with tap abilities. I dropped Paradox and was able to win that turn with Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and a couple draw spells. I pulled it from the deck after that. The card is just too good and even without trying to build combo, it ends up doing exactly that.
I loved Prophet of Kruphix but it wasn't near as busted as Paradox Engine is. There were plenty of times where I didn't win with Prophet and even when I did, it typically took a full round of turns where my opponents had a chance to deal with Prophet. Paradox typically wins without instant speed removal.
How about a new cycle of tri-fetchland that is only really good in Commander?
ie -
Bant fetch
Bant fetch comes into play tapped unless you commander is in the command zone.
Pay 1 Life, Sacrifice Bant fetch: Search your library for a Plains, Island, or Forest card and put it onto the battlefield.
----
Or something similar to ABUR duals but only strong in commander?
Swampy Forest
Land - Swamp Forest
Swampy Forest comes into play tapped unless your commander is in the command zone.
I agree with this 100%. After 2014 I realized that Wizards was only going to cater to noobs with these decks and would never include a decent amount of needed reprints. These products are chuck full of junk rares that have been printed many times before and every veteran commander player owns already. Sol Ring is great and all, but do we really need to own 20 copies of the same artwork? Heaven forbid they replace it with cards that are only expensive because of extreme scarcity like Mana crypt or Portal staples.
So once C14 came out you knew reprints would get worse? Sure C15 didn't bring it like C14, but C15 was far from bad.
I guess "decent amount" is all relative. You mention a few decent reprints but these are few and far between. We get maybe one or two per deck with the rest being junk rares. There isn't enough value for veteran commander players to justify buying all the decks. We are better off buying singles since most of the decks are filled with junk that only a new commander player would care about. It isn't necessarily a bad thing that these decks cater to new commander players. They just need something that caters to veteran players as well.
I think the main difference between Commander 2011 and 2013 with the last two sets is that back then, most Commander players didn't own 20 copies of Command Tower or Sol Ring so there was significant value to be gained by buying all the decks. I was thrilled when Commander 2013 came out because Sol Ring was sitting at $6-7 and Command Tower was at $5.
'11 was fantastic, '13 was very good. '14 was boring and filled with missed opportunities, '15 outside of the commanders was the same. Also thanks for taking the time in your response to make a personal attack Mr. Internet anonymity
I agree with this 100%. After 2014 I realized that Wizards was only going to cater to noobs with these decks and would never include a decent amount of needed reprints. These products are chuck full of junk rares that have been printed many times before and every veteran commander player owns already. Sol Ring is great and all, but do we really need to own 20 copies of the same artwork? Heaven forbid they replace it with cards that are only expensive because of extreme scarcity like Mana crypt or Portal staples.
The other problem is that when they design new commander staples that are good, they only include them in one or two decks. (eg - Command Beacon, Blade of Selves, Magus of the Wheel, Myriad Landscape (3), Arcane Lighthouse (3), Tempt with discovery) All-in-all, there is way too much junk in these decks. I'd prefer that they replace commander decks with a sealed commander product printed to demand if it means they would actually include some much needed format staples. (3.99 MSRP, not another overpriced masters set)
Some of these arguments here have gone so far to both sides of the bell curve it's just ridiculous. It's another summer, another Masters set, and another fail.
WotC still suffers with these sets from some bizarre identity crisis where they can't decide who this product is for, and basically screw it up for everyone. The set has a lot of filler and ridiculous rarity upgrades for limited, but it's so expensive and in short supply to feed a high number of drafts. It's got too many newer cards and chaff to feel like cube style drafting, and cubes don't require expensive cards, just good ones. We've got a good number of Legacy staples, but with the reserved list plus what wasn't included, prices on everything else in Legacy just went up, offsetting any benefit from the increased availability. Cross-format staples were not only avoided, they specifically targeted the Modern banned list for reprints to show off the 'diversity' of Legacy or whatever, which is fine, but leaves an entire segment of the fastest-growing format in the 'this product isn't for you' category. For Commander players, a good chunk of the best Commander cards came in at Mythic, so not drafting this set and just taking advantage of reduced-price singles is probably the only saving grace of the entire set.
Then you have all this talk about EV that pops up, and everyone wants to break out their Economics 101 textbook and dust it off. For everyone that thinks the packs cost too much, you're going to be right in 90% of cases (foil or Mythic lottery notwithstanding). To everyone that says a $10 pack of cards can't have a $20 EV without costing that much, you seem to be neglecting both equilibrium and averages. The way WotC has it set up now, they're packing 50 cent rares in with $80 mythics, and there's more of the former than the latter. It is not only possible, but probable that any given pack will not net you anywhere near the value you paid for it, which is why packs are notoriously a sucker's bet. Couple that with the fact that EV is not a concrete number. Prices on the cards in the set dip every time a Masters set releases. If you're going to say the EV on a pack is $7 for a $10 pack at release, at 2-3 weeks in that number can go to $4 or 5, depending on how many of the 'chase' cards were expensive based on rarity and not playability, and let's not forget that commons and uncommons usually take permanent reductions. By a month after release there's virtually no chance with these sets that you're going to crack a junk rare and have the rest of the cards make up the price tag on the pack. (This is even true of MM1, go crack a Skeletal Vampire, Lava Spike, and a Kitchen Finks, you're still nowhere near $20), so the pack become even MORE of a lottery. The short version of this conversation is EV is a shifting number that always shifts down, people need to stop holding it up on a pedestal to justify the insanely crappy card choices going into these sets, especially at the common/uncommon level.
Lastly, since I mentioned card choice, I am solidly convinced WotC is trying to either sabotage themselves by flipping off the community or really is so inept as to not make proper choices based on response. I mean, Wrath of God over Damnation? People have been screaming for a Damnation reprint for 4 years or more at this point, what the hell is the holdup? This was a perfect opportunity. Wouldn't it have made more sense with what White is doing in this set to have included Ravages of War, and let black have Damnation? Snapcaster and Tarmogoyf are Legacy staples, but we needed Control Magic at rare and Argothian Enchantress at Mythic. Really? You're sure about that? Where the hell is Lotus Petal? I know the whole spiel, 'they gotta save something for the next set', but we've been saying that for years and the best they do is maybe trickle 1 or 2 while the other 30 we're asking for get more expensive every year. It's just plain dumb to trust this company anymore. They don't even seem to be looking to sell packs to us, they just want their product bought in bulk by SCG and let the secondary market have it's way with us.
A couple of comments. I generally agree with you that EV is a moving target. It's consistently changing right up until sets are released. However, as we saw with MM1 if EV is significantly higher than MSRP, the secondary market will just adjust upwards and you will still pay about EV pricing regardless of MSRP. People make decisions based on whatever available information they have. Rarely do you have complete and perfect information to make decisions, so you go with what you know. Based on EV being a generally accepted methodology, it's the primary guideline that retailers are using to set prices on these reprint sets. At least with these, there's really only one shot. They have typically sold out pretty quick. I think people stick to EV because it is a good predictor of what the street cost of boxes will be.
On the lottery aspect of EMA, I think it's kind of how Magic works all around. You can make the same claim for SOI, or BFZ or just about any standard print set that Wizards' has released. I'm not really sure what you were expecting or hoping for, but even in standard 80% of the packs you open lose money too.
I actually think its an OK move not to put Damnation here. I'd rather it show up in Conspiracy 2 that has a full print run, or if push comes to shove, MM3 would be adequate. As much as I'd like to see Damnation here, I think it'll spice up MM3 limited to have wraths in sealed. Keeping EV in mind does limit some of Wizards' choices in cards. I know that you're not a fan of this methodology, but we already saw what happens when EV and MSRP don't match up. This does mean that Wizards simply will not load up the set with every power card that we could ever want in it. It's a tradeoff.
On Wizards sabotaging themselves and not knowing what they are doing, I respectfully disagree. They've managed to not only stay in business for over 20 years. They have managed to grow from essentially nothing into what is generally considered the best TCG in existence (arguable with Yu-Gi-Oh!). They have to balance several groups whose interests directly conflict with one another (collectors wanting rare and valuable cards, with high prices versus players who want everything cheap and accessible), grow the game, keep their retailers sustainable (major places for many to play the game), and keep their overlords (Hasbro) happy. We may not understand, like, or agree with the decisions they make but to think they are purposely screwing up their business model or giving the bird to those who purchase their game doesn't make sense. If that were the case, the game simply would stop growing, and eventually die. All evidence currently points to the direct opposite.
The correct way to adjust to MM1's slightly higher EV would have been to do a much higher print run. If the print run were 5x the print run of MM1 then the EV would drop with increased availability and we'd have a nice happy medium where customers pay MSRP or slightly below MSRP like they do for most MTG products. The secondary market only adjusted upward because the product was printed in such limited supply.
Instead of simply increasing supply and keeping price and quality the same, they got greedy as they realized that price elasticity of demand could handle a price hike, even with a higher print run. $7.99 was already a bit ridiculous for the same exact cardboard that they sell for 3.99 but $10 for a pack of cardboard is just insane and unfortunately there's enough people willing to pay that much.
There is always a lottery aspect to sealed product but there is a drastic difference in paying $90 for something with an EV of $75 and paying $250 for something with an estimated value of under $200. First off, there are other value additives to sealed product such as limited or the thrill of opening a new set which helps fill in the gap of price and EV. Masters products don't really add much extra value in that area even though the price and EV gap are wider. The other problem is that with masters products you typically either win big or lose bad since they seem to have a bad habit of putting most of the value in mythics. Losing bad on a $250 dollar premium product is much worse than getting a stinker box from a standard set.
Looking back 20 years is a poor method of evaluating Wizard's recent decisions. Masters sets are a newer thing and just go to show how Wizards has become greedier in recent years. Rather than print sufficient quantities of format staples, they wait until they get so expensive that they are afraid of offending collectors by printing the card at a sufficient quantity. See Wasteland as an example of a card that should be at most a $5 uncommon had they reprinted it a long time ago as they should have. Only in recent years have we seen the massive price spikes, buyouts, and large amount of speculation that contributes to the mtg bubble. Only time will tell if Wizard's new greedier strategy will pay off or whether it'll ultimately lead to the bubble bursting.
I'd love to see a singleton format version of Legacy. Even keeping the reserve list, there would still be less demand for duals with only one of each allowed per deck. It would be like playing 60 card commander without a general.
The solution to this is that they need to create another Commander product. They can call it Commander Masters, Commander's Arsenal, or whatever name they choose. The point is, Commander needs its own sealed booster product. With sealed product, they can include cool reprints like Sneak Attack, Demonic Tutor, Necropotence, Imperial Recruiter, Consecrated Sphinx, Stranglehold, as well as many other staples without worrying about the availability of the product. A booster set will lower the prices of these cards but won't completely tank the prices like shoving them all in precons would. The other obvious advantage of this approach is that it'll allow them to add foil versions of a lot of cards that currently don't have foils, including most of the commanders from the various commander decks.
You misinterpreted my post. I am well aware that they already printed a supplemental product called Commander's Arsenal and I'm not suggesting they create something similar. My point was that they need a booster pack based product that is printed to demand in order to give us the reprints that we want to see. When I referenced Commander's Arsenal and Commander Masters I was simply giving examples of names that they could call the set.
There are two glaring flaws with the Commander decks.
The first is that with each year's Commander decks, it becomes increasingly apparent that Wizards isn't going to give us the high dollar reprints that we want in these decks. Sure, they may have legitimate reasons for this as they worry that availability will be scarce but since the decks are printed to demand anyway, I think the bigger issue here is that Wizards worries about tanking the prices of cards if anyone can just buy decks that are guaranteed to contain a lot of high value reprints.
The second flaw is that these decks are clearly designed for new EDH players. The decks contain way too many junk rares and cheap staples that although are nice to have for EDH, are probably something that every experienced EDH player already has enough of. Making decks color specific, theme based, and actually playable severely limits the cards they can include in the decks. Personally, I really don't care for playable decks every year. Sure, I may play the precons a couple times before taking them apart which is fun and all, but I'd much rather see more quality EDH reprints and new generals of all color combos every year.
The solution to this is that they need to create another Commander product. They can call it Commander Masters, Commander's Arsenal, or whatever name they choose. The point is, Commander needs its own sealed booster product. With sealed product, they can include cool reprints like Sneak Attack, Demonic Tutor, Necropotence, Imperial Recruiter, Consecrated Sphinx, Stranglehold, as well as many other staples without worrying about the availability of the product. A booster set will lower the prices of these cards but won't completely tank the prices like shoving them all in precons would. The other obvious advantage of this approach is that it'll allow them to add foil versions of a lot of cards that currently don't have foils, including most of the commanders from the various commander decks.
An approach like this is the only way I see us getting a lot of these reprints anytime soon. If you look at the current release structure of sets, there is exactly ONE set every other year where we have the possibility of getting some of the older reprints and that is the summer set on years where they don't do modern masters (conspiracy). The Commander decks will never fill this void for reasons already explained. Standard sets always have to take into account the power level of certain cards in standard and cards have to follow the story line (eg - They aren't going to stick a Dominaria card in an Innistrad block).
It's funny that you mention Modern Masters in your post without actually dealing with the fact that modern masters is how the hypothetical commander booster would work in reality. Two things would happen:
1. Wizards would limit the most desirable reprints to mythic. You can see this with Tarmogoyf's status in Modern Masters. This serves too purposes: It drives sales, and it keeps the set from negatively affecting prices too much, which seems to be a high concern for wizards.
2. Resellers would sell packs at many times the recommended sale price, because the expected value of the packs would be many times any reasonable price.
A Commander Masters would not succeed in lowering prices given wizard's current price maintaining priority and scummy reseller behavior.
Good points. Wizards would need to stop this nonsense of limited print runs and just print the dang cards to demand. I can live with them charging 6-8 bucks MSRP a pack for a premium product as long as there is value in the set to justify it but if they don't print cards to demand then the MSRP is meaningless. Assuming a set is printed to demand, it would be impossible for resellers to price gouge in the long run because eventually some resellers are going to cave and cut their prices to the lowest possible price while still maintaining profitability. (See commander decks just before release compared to commander decks six months later as a prime example)
There are two glaring flaws with the Commander decks.
The first is that with each year's Commander decks, it becomes increasingly apparent that Wizards isn't going to give us the high dollar reprints that we want in these decks. Sure, they may have legitimate reasons for this as they worry that availability will be scarce but since the decks are printed to demand anyway, I think the bigger issue here is that Wizards worries about tanking the prices of cards if anyone can just buy decks that are guaranteed to contain a lot of high value reprints.
The second flaw is that these decks are clearly designed for new EDH players. The decks contain way too many junk rares and cheap staples that although are nice to have for EDH, are probably something that every experienced EDH player already has enough of. Making decks color specific, theme based, and actually playable severely limits the cards they can include in the decks. Personally, I really don't care for playable decks every year. Sure, I may play the precons a couple times before taking them apart which is fun and all, but I'd much rather see more quality EDH reprints and new generals of all color combos every year.
The solution to this is that they need to create another Commander product. They can call it Commander Masters, Commander's Arsenal, or whatever name they choose. The point is, Commander needs its own sealed booster product. With sealed product, they can include cool reprints like Sneak Attack, Demonic Tutor, Necropotence, Imperial Recruiter, Consecrated Sphinx, Stranglehold, as well as many other staples without worrying about the availability of the product. A booster set will lower the prices of these cards but won't completely tank the prices like shoving them all in precons would. The other obvious advantage of this approach is that it'll allow them to add foil versions of a lot of cards that currently don't have foils, including most of the commanders from the various commander decks.
An approach like this is the only way I see us getting a lot of these reprints anytime soon. If you look at the current release structure of sets, there is exactly ONE set every other year where we have the possibility of getting some of the older reprints and that is the summer set on years where they don't do modern masters (conspiracy). The Commander decks will never fill this void for reasons already explained. Standard sets always have to take into account the power level of certain cards in standard and cards have to follow the story line (eg - They aren't going to stick a Dominaria card in an Innistrad block).
You can get these at Walmart, so I'm not sure price-gouging is the concern...
Do yourself a favor and find an Atlas. Then you will see there is more to the world than the US of A.
What's with the attack? His point is valid even if there aren't Walmarts where you live. Having them available at Walmart and the fact that Commander decks are printed to demand guarantees that stores won't be able to price gouge after the initial demand at release. The low price would trickle down to you since a lot of ebayers will ship to International buyers.
What they should do with these decks is include value cards but properly balance them so that stores don't get stuck with so many copies of the less desirable decks like the blue decks from last year.
If they had included enemy fetches in these (with some other cards to balance out the non blue decks) then here's how things would have played out.
1. The hype machine would driven thousands of amateur speculators to buy as many decks as possible thinking they could get rich quick.
2. Prices for enemy fetches drop with the increase in availability.
3. More decks are printed to meet the high demand and the fetches bottom out to the $7-10 range just like the Khans fetches did several months ago.
4. The speculators cry because their decks are only worth MSRP.
But only in the United States and anywhere else lucky enough to have MtG at big box stores. That's what several of us have said in regard to high demand legacy reprints.
Look at what happened with the BfZ fat packs. People in the US can get them for retail price. I can't find them here in NZ.
It's not hate, it's the truth for us players outside the US.
BFZ fat packs are not printed to demand. The only reason sellers were able to price gouge with these was because Wizards announced that they'd be a limited print run. Same goes with FtV sets.
You can get these at Walmart, so I'm not sure price-gouging is the concern...
Do yourself a favor and find an Atlas. Then you will see there is more to the world than the US of A.
What's with the attack? His point is valid even if there aren't Walmarts where you live. Having them available at Walmart and the fact that Commander decks are printed to demand guarantees that stores won't be able to price gouge after the initial demand at release. The low price would trickle down to you since a lot of ebayers will ship to International buyers.
What they should do with these decks is include value cards but properly balance them so that stores don't get stuck with so many copies of the less desirable decks like the blue decks from last year.
If they had included enemy fetches in these (with some other cards to balance out the non blue decks) then here's how things would have played out.
1. The hype machine would driven thousands of amateur speculators to buy as many decks as possible thinking they could get rich quick.
2. Prices for enemy fetches drop with the increase in availability.
3. More decks are printed to meet the high demand and the fetches bottom out to the $7-10 range just like the Khans fetches did several months ago.
4. The speculators cry because their decks are only worth MSRP.
Imperial Recruiter and Imperial Seal please. Before jumping all over me about there being no way Wizards prints such high value cards. The only reason the prices are inflated so much on these is because they are in extremely rare printed sets (P3K and Judge). Look at past reprints in commander decks and FTV where the reprint isn't worth 1/10th of the P3K version and even after reprinting, the originals still retained a lot of their value.
Really disappointed, was hoping for allied colors, I have zero interest in enemy colored cards :/
You've gotta be kidding. There are so many options for ally colored already. What they really needed was either wedge or four colored with an enemy colored legend in each.
Number of available generals by color combo
Ally:
UW: 24
GW: 23
GR: 19
RB: 22
UB: 22
I would like to see:
+ Colorless deck
+ new 5-colored general (some tribe maybe, rebels, allies, something)
+ Enemy dual colored decks
+ 4 colored generals
+ Reprints of expensive cards
What I DONT want to see:
- Generals utilizing commander tax (yes, Marath, Jeleva and Prossh)
- Generals ignoring commander tax (im pointing on you Derevi)
I couldn't have said it better. I think this is what a lot of EDH players want to see.
Not really. Umbral Mantle would only get me infinite colorless mana from Kydele. The thing that allowed me to keep my engine going was getting any color mana that I wanted from mana rocks in addition to insane amounts of colorless mana.
In my second example with Samut, I actually didn't draw paradox until 2nd main so had to come up with a win-con without combat. I ended up pinging everyone to death with Zhur-Taa Druid. The thing about paradox is that with a tiny bit of luck with card draw, it allows you to keep going until you can pull out a win con. I had enough card draw that I was able to finish everyone off with a pinger.
The other issue with paradox which I think others here have mentioned is that it really becomes solitaire magic which is fun for nobody.
My second attempt to use Paradox was in a Samut, Voice of Dissent deck with a bunch of creatures with tap abilities. I dropped Paradox and was able to win that turn with Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and a couple draw spells. I pulled it from the deck after that. The card is just too good and even without trying to build combo, it ends up doing exactly that.
I loved Prophet of Kruphix but it wasn't near as busted as Paradox Engine is. There were plenty of times where I didn't win with Prophet and even when I did, it typically took a full round of turns where my opponents had a chance to deal with Prophet. Paradox typically wins without instant speed removal.
ie -
Bant fetch
Bant fetch comes into play tapped unless you commander is in the command zone.
Pay 1 Life, Sacrifice Bant fetch: Search your library for a Plains, Island, or Forest card and put it onto the battlefield.
----
Or something similar to ABUR duals but only strong in commander?
Swampy Forest
Land - Swamp Forest
Swampy Forest comes into play tapped unless your commander is in the command zone.
I guess "decent amount" is all relative. You mention a few decent reprints but these are few and far between. We get maybe one or two per deck with the rest being junk rares. There isn't enough value for veteran commander players to justify buying all the decks. We are better off buying singles since most of the decks are filled with junk that only a new commander player would care about. It isn't necessarily a bad thing that these decks cater to new commander players. They just need something that caters to veteran players as well.
I think the main difference between Commander 2011 and 2013 with the last two sets is that back then, most Commander players didn't own 20 copies of Command Tower or Sol Ring so there was significant value to be gained by buying all the decks. I was thrilled when Commander 2013 came out because Sol Ring was sitting at $6-7 and Command Tower was at $5.
I agree with this 100%. After 2014 I realized that Wizards was only going to cater to noobs with these decks and would never include a decent amount of needed reprints. These products are chuck full of junk rares that have been printed many times before and every veteran commander player owns already. Sol Ring is great and all, but do we really need to own 20 copies of the same artwork? Heaven forbid they replace it with cards that are only expensive because of extreme scarcity like Mana crypt or Portal staples.
The other problem is that when they design new commander staples that are good, they only include them in one or two decks. (eg - Command Beacon, Blade of Selves, Magus of the Wheel, Myriad Landscape (3), Arcane Lighthouse (3), Tempt with discovery) All-in-all, there is way too much junk in these decks. I'd prefer that they replace commander decks with a sealed commander product printed to demand if it means they would actually include some much needed format staples. (3.99 MSRP, not another overpriced masters set)
The correct way to adjust to MM1's slightly higher EV would have been to do a much higher print run. If the print run were 5x the print run of MM1 then the EV would drop with increased availability and we'd have a nice happy medium where customers pay MSRP or slightly below MSRP like they do for most MTG products. The secondary market only adjusted upward because the product was printed in such limited supply.
Instead of simply increasing supply and keeping price and quality the same, they got greedy as they realized that price elasticity of demand could handle a price hike, even with a higher print run. $7.99 was already a bit ridiculous for the same exact cardboard that they sell for 3.99 but $10 for a pack of cardboard is just insane and unfortunately there's enough people willing to pay that much.
There is always a lottery aspect to sealed product but there is a drastic difference in paying $90 for something with an EV of $75 and paying $250 for something with an estimated value of under $200. First off, there are other value additives to sealed product such as limited or the thrill of opening a new set which helps fill in the gap of price and EV. Masters products don't really add much extra value in that area even though the price and EV gap are wider. The other problem is that with masters products you typically either win big or lose bad since they seem to have a bad habit of putting most of the value in mythics. Losing bad on a $250 dollar premium product is much worse than getting a stinker box from a standard set.
Looking back 20 years is a poor method of evaluating Wizard's recent decisions. Masters sets are a newer thing and just go to show how Wizards has become greedier in recent years. Rather than print sufficient quantities of format staples, they wait until they get so expensive that they are afraid of offending collectors by printing the card at a sufficient quantity. See Wasteland as an example of a card that should be at most a $5 uncommon had they reprinted it a long time ago as they should have. Only in recent years have we seen the massive price spikes, buyouts, and large amount of speculation that contributes to the mtg bubble. Only time will tell if Wizard's new greedier strategy will pay off or whether it'll ultimately lead to the bubble bursting.
You misinterpreted my post. I am well aware that they already printed a supplemental product called Commander's Arsenal and I'm not suggesting they create something similar. My point was that they need a booster pack based product that is printed to demand in order to give us the reprints that we want to see. When I referenced Commander's Arsenal and Commander Masters I was simply giving examples of names that they could call the set.
Good points. Wizards would need to stop this nonsense of limited print runs and just print the dang cards to demand. I can live with them charging 6-8 bucks MSRP a pack for a premium product as long as there is value in the set to justify it but if they don't print cards to demand then the MSRP is meaningless. Assuming a set is printed to demand, it would be impossible for resellers to price gouge in the long run because eventually some resellers are going to cave and cut their prices to the lowest possible price while still maintaining profitability. (See commander decks just before release compared to commander decks six months later as a prime example)
The first is that with each year's Commander decks, it becomes increasingly apparent that Wizards isn't going to give us the high dollar reprints that we want in these decks. Sure, they may have legitimate reasons for this as they worry that availability will be scarce but since the decks are printed to demand anyway, I think the bigger issue here is that Wizards worries about tanking the prices of cards if anyone can just buy decks that are guaranteed to contain a lot of high value reprints.
The second flaw is that these decks are clearly designed for new EDH players. The decks contain way too many junk rares and cheap staples that although are nice to have for EDH, are probably something that every experienced EDH player already has enough of. Making decks color specific, theme based, and actually playable severely limits the cards they can include in the decks. Personally, I really don't care for playable decks every year. Sure, I may play the precons a couple times before taking them apart which is fun and all, but I'd much rather see more quality EDH reprints and new generals of all color combos every year.
The solution to this is that they need to create another Commander product. They can call it Commander Masters, Commander's Arsenal, or whatever name they choose. The point is, Commander needs its own sealed booster product. With sealed product, they can include cool reprints like Sneak Attack, Demonic Tutor, Necropotence, Imperial Recruiter, Consecrated Sphinx, Stranglehold, as well as many other staples without worrying about the availability of the product. A booster set will lower the prices of these cards but won't completely tank the prices like shoving them all in precons would. The other obvious advantage of this approach is that it'll allow them to add foil versions of a lot of cards that currently don't have foils, including most of the commanders from the various commander decks.
An approach like this is the only way I see us getting a lot of these reprints anytime soon. If you look at the current release structure of sets, there is exactly ONE set every other year where we have the possibility of getting some of the older reprints and that is the summer set on years where they don't do modern masters (conspiracy). The Commander decks will never fill this void for reasons already explained. Standard sets always have to take into account the power level of certain cards in standard and cards have to follow the story line (eg - They aren't going to stick a Dominaria card in an Innistrad block).
BFZ fat packs are not printed to demand. The only reason sellers were able to price gouge with these was because Wizards announced that they'd be a limited print run. Same goes with FtV sets.
What's with the attack? His point is valid even if there aren't Walmarts where you live. Having them available at Walmart and the fact that Commander decks are printed to demand guarantees that stores won't be able to price gouge after the initial demand at release. The low price would trickle down to you since a lot of ebayers will ship to International buyers.
What they should do with these decks is include value cards but properly balance them so that stores don't get stuck with so many copies of the less desirable decks like the blue decks from last year.
If they had included enemy fetches in these (with some other cards to balance out the non blue decks) then here's how things would have played out.
1. The hype machine would driven thousands of amateur speculators to buy as many decks as possible thinking they could get rich quick.
2. Prices for enemy fetches drop with the increase in availability.
3. More decks are printed to meet the high demand and the fetches bottom out to the $7-10 range just like the Khans fetches did several months ago.
4. The speculators cry because their decks are only worth MSRP.
You've gotta be kidding. There are so many options for ally colored already. What they really needed was either wedge or four colored with an enemy colored legend in each.
Number of available generals by color combo
Ally:
UW: 24
GW: 23
GR: 19
RB: 22
UB: 22
Enemy:
UG: 6
UR: 7
RW: 10
WB: 8
GB: 13
Shard:
Bant: 10
Esper: 12
Grixis: 13
Naya: 9
Jund: 10
Wedge:
Jeskai: 5
Temur: 6
Mardu: 5
Sultai: 5
Abzan: 5
Four colored: 0
Five colored: 12
I couldn't have said it better. I think this is what a lot of EDH players want to see.