I don't mind the current ban list for edh. But as someone who plays regular and competitive edh, I would like to see cedh given a bit of thought. Cards like Thassa's Oracle get printed and it wrecks the top end of the meta, but because it doesn't affect the rest nobody who manages the bans cares.
rc stated multiple times that the banlist is just a suggestion, baseline for how the format should look like. so banning something that is problematic to a small fraction of the meta is less probable. also i think giving more time to the meta to adjust is not a bad thing. to that point i think breach could stay a bit longer to see how meta develops. banning cards so quickly opens the way for lazy r&d and puts more financial burden on the players due to rapid meta changes.
Thalia in regular print costs about $7, so you are getting at least $28 value for a $30 product with a full playset.
It's tempting to look at Lair based on current value. Thalia has already dropped to $5 for NM copies on TCG in advance of this printing. Foils can now be found for around $10. This set is doubling the number of printings/versions from 4 to 8, so should expect to see significant drops in existing inventory as a result even with a limited print run - especially given the heads up to anyone interested in buying.
Encourage anyone thinking about Lairs in terms of current market value to go back and look at card prices before and after printings. Similar to other reprints existing cards take a huge beating with these things.
comparing foil printings from orginal set with printing from sl is like comparing apples to oranges. regular foils are special printings of a card so there are multiple versions of varying scarcity. printing from sl has only one version. it does not matter that it is shiny. it is still the most common printing from specific set.
people trying to compare regular foil to sl are the proof that wotcs attempts to increase percieved value are working. which is sad to see. it means that they can push further this line of product with artificialy increased value instead of providing actual reprints. at this pricepoint this do not decrease financial barrier to entry into the game. it also does not provide sufficient amount of reprints, for this particular card it does, but not for many others that are needed for non-standard formats.
regarding the artwork it looks great but i thought thalia had blonde hair not yellow. this color looks a bit weird to me.
The reason to buy these is to be able to create a fun gaming environment without drafting, so you get straight into the playing.
Think of it like paying extra for express delivery.
If you don't want to play with these cards in this format then I can understand that you don't care about this aspect and think you are getting ripped off. But, these packs are made specifically for mixing with another and playing. If that isn't what you want to do then buy cards in the format the does suit you, like singles. In these packs, the lands are not worthless, they are being paid for as part of the experience.
could you please explain to me then what kind of express delivery is this if you need two of those packs to play? it doesn't make sense if "getting stright to playing" is a priority.
the pricepoint also doesn't make sense when you compare this scam to fatpacks, bundles or whatewer are they called now. fatpacks cost more or less the same amount as the number of packs they contain. and on top of that you get lands, foil lands, box and some more junk.
and on top of that you get the artificial inflation by adding exclusive cards so whoever is buying this can delude themselves that they will open and get something valuable.
i suggest playing pack wars instead. your lgs will happily provide basics for that for free.
Jesus christ you miserable pill do you just want no one to ever play this game?
I just want fair pricings. shocking, i know
This is a card game, not a stock market. Go buy stocks! Way better roi. Or at least go do some real gambling instead.
I think they ment "not diminishing value with each new product / iteration of old product".
It's similar practice to food companies slowly decreasing the amount of product in the package while retaining the price and packaging. This kind of behavior is considered anti-consumer in civilized countries and unlawful in some. Here wotc is intending to provide less value to newer players compared to what they can get in normal booster packs. Newer players usually know less about how ev for mtg product works and therefore are the target for this product. Seeding this packs with few exclusive cards also creates the illusion of higher value by artificially inflating their price. This is also very consumer-unfriendly practice.
Still utterly fails to explain why it wasn't in Modern Horizons like tons of people were asking for but ok.
A better question would be to ask why anybody though Modern Horizons would be such a natural fit for it in the first place. The damn thing is near unprintable. For one, it's a relic. Not only does it predate the modern color pie, getting an effect normally reserved for white, it does so with a massive wall of text. The 2-part Oblivion Ring template has been dead for years, so there's no way something with it was going to end up in a product that was supposed to represent the future. All of that text exists to serve a weird aura/counter preservation mechanic that, respectively, results in a wall of text or has been written much more elegantly the few times it has appeared since Oubliette's printing. All told, the sheer number of reasons to not reprint it is damning. It would probably just be forgotten if it wasn't printed at common.
Folks should be happy that Wizards is thinking at all about how to reprint the unreprintable, not get mad about not jamming cards where they obviously don't belong.
You are correct in every aspect. But don't you think that wotc should just said exactly what you said instead of repeating multiple times "we are working on it" without any indication that they do?
If they actually had no intent of reprinting it then yes. Saying it's an awful outdated card and they have no intent of reprinting it would have been a possible response. But apparently they want to reprint it so they said they are working on it. The problem is that they say "we are working on it" and people hear "it's in the next set" when what it means is "We've heard this a problem that we have interest in addressing but remember we work two years in the future so don't expect anything soon".
I think people make this assumption because wotc is doing a lot to spin hype and give away the least amount of information possible. I would understand if that was the first time wotc was not clear about Oubliette but exactly the same thing surfaces from time to time and wotc is not doing anything to make their statments clearer next time they say anything about reprinting this card. And other reprints as well for that matter.
For a normal set sure but who thought they wouldn't do full art lands for this? Unsets are where the idea first came from.
The only legal cards (in sanctioned formats) are the lands (and one of the whys casuals bought it in the first place). As a casual it is the seccond product with fullart lands he is getting this year. (assuming he is a casual)
Un sets are fun and all, but it's a pet project for Wizards that gets people to buy in with fancy lands. When you have a just released set with fancy lands and now this back to back, it's too much.
Just like everything else Wizards did in the last year and continues to do... People thought the lottery cards were bad. That was mild compared to all of this other stuff.
invention/expedition/whatever-those-were-called lottery was not inherently bad. if you treated those as a nice bonus to what you get in pack it was actually good. they were problematic when you take into account that people can have gambling problems. the fact that this is preconstructed product that contains limited number of those lands speaks a lot of how confident wotc is with the product. by which i mean not at all and feel the need to boost sales by making parts of it artificially scarce.
full art lands are always welcome but they lost all novelty for me. including this we have four products with full art lands in 12 months span. it's just not interesting anymore.
/edit
i have just noticed holostamp on those. why do they have it?
Which 12 month span had 4 full art land releases?
We have only had so many full art lands:
February 2020 - Unsanctioned
January 2020 - Theros Beyond Death
June 2019 - Modern Horizons (although technically these are Snow-covered full arts)
December 2017 - Unstable
July 2017 - Hour of Devastation
April 2017 - Amonkhet
Jan 2016 - Oath of the Gatewatch
Also, I am not really sure full art lands are boring. Each one of the above sets had wildly different art, composition and theme. It is not like we were given a bunch of generic looking islands.
The Amonket full art lands showed the plane at Bolas' height of power, while the Hours ones featured the same scene but at sunset with the destroyed/crumbling architecture.
The unstable lands had no borders.
Theros Nyx lands do not feature terrain at all.
Unsanctioned lands have a unique frame.
Modern Horizons has snow-covered lands.
If anything, the only "generic" ones are the Battle for Zendikar ones (and even they still have Hedrons and floating rocks and junk).
Secret Lairs also had full art lands. That should make it four.
What I'm trying to say is not that they are boring but that as they become more and more common they are losing what they were intended to be - the feel of uniqueness. Instead of genuine rarity (they were released every few years) we get artificial scarcity (why are not all lands in this product full art at that price point? it would even be cheaper to use only one design for lands in unsanctioned but they decided to use multiple.)
Still utterly fails to explain why it wasn't in Modern Horizons like tons of people were asking for but ok.
A better question would be to ask why anybody though Modern Horizons would be such a natural fit for it in the first place. The damn thing is near unprintable. For one, it's a relic. Not only does it predate the modern color pie, getting an effect normally reserved for white, it does so with a massive wall of text. The 2-part Oblivion Ring template has been dead for years, so there's no way something with it was going to end up in a product that was supposed to represent the future. All of that text exists to serve a weird aura/counter preservation mechanic that, respectively, results in a wall of text or has been written much more elegantly the few times it has appeared since Oubliette's printing. All told, the sheer number of reasons to not reprint it is damning. It would probably just be forgotten if it wasn't printed at common.
Folks should be happy that Wizards is thinking at all about how to reprint the unreprintable, not get mad about not jamming cards where they obviously don't belong.
You are correct in every aspect. But don't you think that wotc should just said exactly what you said instead of repeating multiple times "we are working on it" without any indication that they do?
gavin was saying exactly the same thing months ago. still no details. i expect it to be in limitedvrun product like lair and not drop in price. this way i can only be positively suprised.
and anyway we needed that reprint when mbc was considerable part of pauper meta. now it's too late. there is not a lot of mbc in the meta and oubliette become more of a meme / poster child of how bad wotc reprint policy is.
I think he mean "on any product" cause full art lands were a big factor on the huge sales from Unglued, Unhinged, Zendikar(original) and Worldwake, Battle for Zendikar and Oath, etc (from a casual stand point(people that buy 10 boosters each set, more or less)) Now, since Battle for zendikar we had them in Amonkhet and hour, Unstable, the judge ones and other promos, Snow fullart, Nyx fullart. Maybe he is in a fatigue for fullart lands.
Fullart lands are always welcome but ye they are really pushing theirs sales with fullart lands now (Theros collector's boosters and normal boosters, this, etc )
Also, just for people to be aware: Every pack with the 5 30 cards decks comes with 5 fullart foil (1 for each basic land) and 5 non foil fullart (1 for each type) the lands inside the decks looks to be normal lands.
For a normal set sure but who thought they wouldn't do full art lands for this? Unsets are where the idea first came from.
The only legal cards (in sanctioned formats) are the lands (and one of the whys casuals bought it in the first place). As a casual it is the seccond product with fullart lands he is getting this year. (assuming he is a casual)
Un sets are fun and all, but it's a pet project for Wizards that gets people to buy in with fancy lands. When you have a just released set with fancy lands and now this back to back, it's too much.
Just like everything else Wizards did in the last year and continues to do... People thought the lottery cards were bad. That was mild compared to all of this other stuff.
invention/expedition/whatever-those-were-called lottery was not inherently bad. if you treated those as a nice bonus to what you get in pack it was actually good. they were problematic when you take into account that people can have gambling problems. the fact that this is preconstructed product that contains limited number of those lands speaks a lot of how confident wotc is with the product. by which i mean not at all and feel the need to boost sales by making parts of it artificially scarce.
full art lands are always welcome but they lost all novelty for me. including this we have four products with full art lands in 12 months span. it's just not interesting anymore.
/edit
i have just noticed holostamp on those. why do they have it?
Unsanctioned was fully spoilered at cracked.com of all places.
Which involved loading a ton of ads when I viewed it. I'm wondering how much of a business decision this was. Also the Forbes spoiler a while back.
fortunately my browser addons removed them.
recently we had a lot of official news come through such websites. it's clearly marketing decision and i do not support it. mostly because i do not visit those websites but i also do not enjoy the amount of data they are trying to extort from my browser.
some good stuff was already mentioned. there are some counters that you can use: Avoid Fate Imp's Mischief
but trying to win counter war with blue player who knows what they are doing is not a winning proposition.
instead i would recommend making for opponent impossoble to use counters with stuff like: Autumn's Veil Cavern of Souls Insist Prowling Serpopard Savage Summoning Defense Grid
black have also somee cellent hand attack spells to get rid of problematic cards in opponents hand.
cards granting indestructible/hexproof/shroud/protection are usefull but they are one-shot so permanent based protection would be better. for example Asceticism but CMC of those is usually high.
As a lot of people have pointed out this should have been Relentless Rats instead of Rat Colony. Also this should have been split into two packages - one with 10+ copies of Relentless Rats / Rat Colony and second one with the rest (plus tokens for copies of Pack Rat, which are missing). Having only five copies of a card that you want to run 15+ is insulting to me as a customer. :/
I do like the SCG style art on products that aren't actual cards, but this stuff is just too silly for black border.
It's fine. Some people will like the style some won't. Apparently enough people wanted the cute cats one or cartoony gobbos one that they went with this kind of style. Personaly I also don't think this style fits the theme but, meh, I just don't care anymore.
That's just warping the meta though. If every viable deck has to include the same set of counters to one or two decktypes, you end up with matches that might as well just be two players flipping a coin since they play out the same way over and over.
One of my biggest pet peeves in ban discussions is when people talk about counterplay as if it were, by its very existence, a valid rebuttal to a ban argument. The fact that a card or strategy is beatable is irrelevant because every strategy in the game is beatable if things go good enough for one player or bad enough for the other. If a bannable card or deck actually does reach the point of being unbeatable, then the metagame has problems deeper than what can be solved with a few bans.
This is because ban (and nerf, in other games) decisions are based in the metagame, which should take a much wider view of the game than what players get in a game-to-game basis. It's perfectly possible for a strategy that feels 'fair' game-to-game to be a metagame black hole (as was the case of Splinter Twin), or a deck that feels totally broken in individual games to not make a splash in the broader meta (like Neoform combo decks). As such, questions of whether and how a deck can be beaten are not near as important as the question of what effect a deck has on the metagame.
while i do not agree with splinter twin example but you are correct about everything else.
i might add that while there is a lot of answers to problematic cards/combos the problem is that most of them are not maindeck cards. no one sane would maindeck lost legacy or return to nature. cards like thoughtseize can be maindecked but they do nothing against topdecks and library manipulation. also filling your deck with answers after sideboarding dilutes your deck and lets your opponents do other stuff their deck is trying to accomplish unimpeded.
people trying to compare regular foil to sl are the proof that wotcs attempts to increase percieved value are working. which is sad to see. it means that they can push further this line of product with artificialy increased value instead of providing actual reprints. at this pricepoint this do not decrease financial barrier to entry into the game. it also does not provide sufficient amount of reprints, for this particular card it does, but not for many others that are needed for non-standard formats.
regarding the artwork it looks great but i thought thalia had blonde hair not yellow. this color looks a bit weird to me.
the pricepoint also doesn't make sense when you compare this scam to fatpacks, bundles or whatewer are they called now. fatpacks cost more or less the same amount as the number of packs they contain. and on top of that you get lands, foil lands, box and some more junk.
and on top of that you get the artificial inflation by adding exclusive cards so whoever is buying this can delude themselves that they will open and get something valuable.
i suggest playing pack wars instead. your lgs will happily provide basics for that for free.
It's similar practice to food companies slowly decreasing the amount of product in the package while retaining the price and packaging. This kind of behavior is considered anti-consumer in civilized countries and unlawful in some. Here wotc is intending to provide less value to newer players compared to what they can get in normal booster packs. Newer players usually know less about how ev for mtg product works and therefore are the target for this product. Seeding this packs with few exclusive cards also creates the illusion of higher value by artificially inflating their price. This is also very consumer-unfriendly practice.
What I'm trying to say is not that they are boring but that as they become more and more common they are losing what they were intended to be - the feel of uniqueness. Instead of genuine rarity (they were released every few years) we get artificial scarcity (why are not all lands in this product full art at that price point? it would even be cheaper to use only one design for lands in unsanctioned but they decided to use multiple.)
and anyway we needed that reprint when mbc was considerable part of pauper meta. now it's too late. there is not a lot of mbc in the meta and oubliette become more of a meme / poster child of how bad wotc reprint policy is.
full art lands are always welcome but they lost all novelty for me. including this we have four products with full art lands in 12 months span. it's just not interesting anymore.
/edit
i have just noticed holostamp on those. why do they have it?
recently we had a lot of official news come through such websites. it's clearly marketing decision and i do not support it. mostly because i do not visit those websites but i also do not enjoy the amount of data they are trying to extort from my browser.
Avoid Fate
Imp's Mischief
but trying to win counter war with blue player who knows what they are doing is not a winning proposition.
instead i would recommend making for opponent impossoble to use counters with stuff like:
Autumn's Veil
Cavern of Souls
Insist
Prowling Serpopard
Savage Summoning
Defense Grid
black have also somee cellent hand attack spells to get rid of problematic cards in opponents hand.
cards granting indestructible/hexproof/shroud/protection are usefull but they are one-shot so permanent based protection would be better. for example Asceticism but CMC of those is usually high.
It's fine. Some people will like the style some won't. Apparently enough people wanted the cute cats one or cartoony gobbos one that they went with this kind of style. Personaly I also don't think this style fits the theme but, meh, I just don't care anymore.
i might add that while there is a lot of answers to problematic cards/combos the problem is that most of them are not maindeck cards. no one sane would maindeck lost legacy or return to nature. cards like thoughtseize can be maindecked but they do nothing against topdecks and library manipulation. also filling your deck with answers after sideboarding dilutes your deck and lets your opponents do other stuff their deck is trying to accomplish unimpeded.