That's another dollar rares. I understand that you get 2 rares in a pack but this doesn't belong in a premium product. They should just have made this set non-draft.
Imagine how pricy packs could get if they literally weren't gambling though
it looks like 2xm have the same distribution of junk cards through rarities as any other set but the ceiling for value is much higher.
i think the complaint is that people would prefer wotc to stop justifying putting low value cards in packs by "it's for draft" bs.
so here's my other issue with this reprint one high value card, then reprint one really low value card.
never even minding that its a premium product with a premium price tag... reprinting chaff like doomed necromancer ensures that the value of that card (and any other lower value reprint) can never, ever, climb in price. ever. the market just gets too saturated. so now you have cards that should be in the 2-3 dollar range that plummet to 25 cents and are just bulk - further solidifying that buying a booster is nothing more than a huge gamble where you either get something like skittles... or you might as well have just set fire to your cash. i don't think this is the right approach to reprints at all, even premium ones, as it devalues everything else around it to levels where you just won't bother.
which, between the pricing of packs and the lower quality inclusions, well we're seeing it with this set. the whales buy in, the rest of us walk away. which would be fine, except we also see the same things happening with standard legal sets, and supplemental products.
there needs to be a greater balance between prices. yes, wotc can't control the secondary market prices, but they can control whats reprint.
there was a time where you could trade a few lower priced rares for a higher priced one, but that hasn't really been the case in a long time because the price disparity is so huge in a lot of cases. you don't work back toward that balance by reprinting crap no one needs or wants, like doomed necromancer, or the inevitable talrand reveal. you all know its coming. god forbid that card not get a reprint.
this has also the effect that to compensate for lower gain from cards sold reasonably quickly as compared to cards that technically are worth something but people do not buy immediately due to market saturation) the shops will not drop prices of cards in actual demand as much. it's lose-lose situation for customers. :/
it's amazing how the diminishing campfire light harmonize with showcase frame.
really nice throwback to artwork from sets from time of original printing with that mogg on the left.
Karn still looks hideous, but I think less so in the whole image. It looks really cool when it's one big image. Love all the nods to old cards too. Very cool!
Des anybody know if the Tron lands are box toppers or more like the new Cultivate?
to me it looks like there is a lot less detail on individual cards than in previous tedin illustrations. like a lot less detail. on the other hand panorama looks like usual level of details, so... they just commisioned one piece and zoomed in?
I usually don't buy a lot of Masters packs, but I love pulling the chaff out of the boxes at the LGS a couple months after release. I know these aren't exactly chaff, but maybe I can find reasonably priced copies down the road now.
some of that "chaff" is worth something right due to scarcity now but will be a lot cheaper when people will crack packs and end up with them without demand. it's win for me as well because i would never buy those for their current price.
lux cannon?! Omg! Ive been wanting a reprint for years! I cant wait to run out and buy these packs for lux cannon! Take my entire paycheck!
....yeah no, **** off with this kind of garbage. Should have no place here.
Explosives is a good reprint, but also not expensive any more so uh.. still no ****s given
explosives are excellent reprint. not every rare needs to be jtms or something like that. explosives were hard to get and could be very expensive if meta shifted to decks using them. this will guarantee they will be available at low price for some time.
lux canon on the other hand... noone will buy this card from someone who pulled it. there is no reason for it to be in rare slot.
I'm surprised about pioneer. Unbaning Oath is fine but are there no other banlist moves that can help the format? The attendance have been dwindling for quite some time and I doubt that it is just because of lack of big paper tournaments and ability to play it in LGSs.
Are there any other moves planned to support pioneer?
Saying Uro should be banned and Splinter Twin unbanned is the funniest ***** I have ever heard.
Why do you find this funny?
While I do not think Uro should be outright banned it is slowly getting there. The ubiquity of this card means that formats homogenize and diversity decreases. It would not be a problem if the effects it provides allowed for diversity of uses, but they do not and the games involving this card become repetitive. I do not think that is what most players seek when they play this game.
At the same time Twin was unnecessarily banned (or rather it was banned to increase visibility of new cards) and it would be perfectly fine to unban it with current cardpool and meta.
That is not correct. Convoke always allowed you to tap creatures for color.
Originally, convoke was an additional cost that reduced the cost in mana. With the return of convoke in Magic 2015, the rules for convoke changed to their current form as an alternative way of paying a mana cost. This affects how it interacts with, for example, Eldrazi Spawn tokens' sacrifice-based mana ability (mana abilities must be activated before paying costs), and effects such as Trinisphere that care about total costs.
Convoke was significantly changed when it was reprinted. Initially only generic mana could be paid with convoke and now colored mana can be paid as well with matching creature.
That isn't what changed. They only changed that you could no longer "overpay" for a spell with Convoke, changing it from a cost reduction to a payment method. It was always able to pay for colored mana.
EDIT: Oh, Dunharrow got to it before me
Ah, I stand corrected. It happened quite long time ago and WotC does not use any versioning system on the rules.
This may be a stupid question but what happened with all the Gyruda, Doom of Depths hype? For a couple of days I couldn't escape the idea of turn 0 and turn 1 wins, and now it isn't a blip.
Apparently tentacles are quite delicious and cats and foxes have eaten all of them.
But seriously, Gyruda is Charbelcher style nondeterministic glass cannon deck and it's easier to produce more consistent results with other decks. It's still a playable deck across the formats but not good enough to get to top places.
If we see signs of long-term health issues resulting from high metagame share of companion decks, we're willing to take steps up to or including changing how the companion mechanic works.
I think it's interesting they would consider this as an option. It's not uncommon for something like this in a digital-only card game, but it seems unexpected for Magic to change a mechanic after set release.
edit: I guess they did sort of change a mechanic post-release with Lifelink, but still my interpretation is that the change would be bigger than something like changing a mechanic from a triggered ability to a static ability. But like more of a power-level errata.
Convoke was significantly changed when it was reprinted. Initially only generic mana could be paid with convoke and now colored mana can be paid as well with matching creature.
It's incredibly scummy behavior to not ban companions in other formats as well. It's obvious that the same problem is visible in all formats with varying degree depending on the availability of cards that fulfill companion restriction and decks that can leverage having free additional card in starting hand.
The argument that there was enough data to warrant banning Lurrus in vintage and not enough data to ban anything in modern/pioneer/standard is laughable considering comparison between the number of matches that is being played in those formats.
Pretty much no surprises today. Lurrus getting nuked in older formats.
I do wonder what that means for Commander though since this is a very special case? I would imagine that the Committee might just put a star on this one and say you can totally play this in EDH, it's fine.
Wouldn’t surprised of Sheldon announces something like (exaggerating a little)
“Ok, we said everything banned in vintage is banned in edh but Lurrus is gonna be an exception.”
Why would they make things that complicated? Just read what they actually *did* do:
For this case, they aren't using the vintage ban list any more
So question is are all the conspiracies, antes, throw In the air, and Shahrazad to be added to the banned list for real now?
They already are. Which in itself is great as it aligns that list with other eternal formats but it irks me that this was yet another change (two if you count removing Lurrus from vintage list) that was caused by allowing mostly irrelevant mechanic to function in commander.
You can still play Goblin Game if you really want to have such silly effects though.
"Adapting our technology to best serve a modern framework mean some software and services must change. On May 27, 2020 we will be sunsetting Planeswalker Points and removing access to the Planeswalker Points website."
I hate the Flash ban. I played the card entirely fairly, never had anyone complain it was broken. If you try to break something, don't act surprised when it breaks. I really hope this is the only adjustment made for cEDH because we just want such different things from the format.
But it was ok for Flash to hang around for months.
Months? Sorry, but Flash has been hanging around for 24 years - first printed in 1996 in Mirage. It's older than the format and isn't a problem unless people deliberately try to break it.
To be precise Flash had functional erratas in the past so it was not functionally the same card through its whole history. Not that it matters to the issue at hand, move along.
Also I think they were referring to the time period after Hulk was unbanned in commander, although it would be more accurate to say "years".
Any chance there will be adjustments for the rules to allow hybrid cards to work as intended? Or is that particular subset of cards going to be stuck in legacy rules limbo forever?
Please, not this argument here. There are already hundreds of posts elsewhere discussing this and it boils down to one side arguing that by the rules they are multicolor that is simply easier to cast vs. another side saying "we want them anyway."
This. It's just that not enough people care about that to make it worth trying to change anything.
I really like the elegance of the change they made to accommodate Companions.
While this change is indeed very simple it does not adress all the issues. To be precise if read as written the color identity restriction does not affect companions as they are not part of the deck.
2. A card’s colour identity is its color plus the color of any mana symbols in the card’s rules text. A card’s colour identity is established before the game begins, and cannot be changed by game effects. The cards in a deck may not have any colours in their colour identity which are not in the colour identity of the deck’s commander.
3. A Commander deck must contain exactly 100 cards, including the commander.
I was waiting to see how they address that and after the announcement I wanted to ask about this in comments for their post but comments are disabled, and forums are no longer available.
Flash Hulk was hardly the biggest offender in "Five million ways to win with Thassa's Oracle Dot Deck." From the notes it seems like people have just been clamoring for Sheldon to ban flash and he's never even seen it go off. Which means my boy doesn't know about Demonic Consultation or Tainted Pact either. Basically Thassa's Oracle is always going to be a problem.
Banning flash is a good move. But I'm confused by the argumentation. Flash was played by much larger part of the community than, lets say, Iona. And yet, the post points out that flash was affecting only " small fraction of the Commander playerbase".
Generally companions will be very rarely used because average decks do not immediately meet their criteria and accommodating them usually requires bigger sacrifice than the benefit they provide. They are very interesting as restriction for building new decks but when the novelty wears off the number of decks that use them will rapidly fall. Same thing happened with partners before - initial rush when everyone who bought precon used partners, an now you see them mostly in competitive pods because they are not that strong in casual deck and good manabase for 4c decks is hard to get.
I have a bit unrelated question - why only english and french packs have this issue? I was under the impression that cards were printed locally for NA, EU, AP, etc. Are collectors boosters printed differently? I'm interested from cardstock perspective.
As for the fix itself - giving out random card of the three (distribution probability applies) with each collector booster seems like an easy enough to implement fix. Sure, it will decrease their collectibility but I do not think this is a bad thing. A lot of people are excited about those cards so making more people happy seems like a good idea. Especially now.
Most judges are pretty good. I've been to a lot of events and I trust that the few times people will try something they have a good chance of being caught.
But just to note, of course you CAN cheat. I've never said you can't. But there are always ways to cheat, and new ways with almost every set. I would say the most sketchy standard environment for shady plays was Khans of Tarkir with both manifest and morph at the same time. There was a lot of room for abuse, yet it all worked out. I'm just an optimist.
You could not abuse/cheat with morph/manifests with very little effort. In fact the rules required you to clearly mark which one is which.
With all companions except Lutri you can verify if opponent is not cheating as soon as offending card is put on the stack (or earlier if you have ways to reveal hidden information eg Duress). But with the otter you cannot do this in all situations. Opponent can still cast rule-breaking spell and you have no way of verifying if it breaks companion restriction.
Consider the following scenario: opponent casts Impact Tremors, casts Release to the Wind, casts Lutri. Wins the game. At no point you had a chance to verify that opponent did not cheat by having multiple copies of those cards while opponent could increase the probability of assembling them.
So right now in formats that could be interested in playing that card instead of UR having the best companion it has none. Good job. :/
i think the complaint is that people would prefer wotc to stop justifying putting low value cards in packs by "it's for draft" bs.
really nice throwback to artwork from sets from time of original printing with that mogg on the left.
lux canon on the other hand... noone will buy this card from someone who pulled it. there is no reason for it to be in rare slot.
Are there any other moves planned to support pioneer?
Why do you find this funny?
While I do not think Uro should be outright banned it is slowly getting there. The ubiquity of this card means that formats homogenize and diversity decreases. It would not be a problem if the effects it provides allowed for diversity of uses, but they do not and the games involving this card become repetitive. I do not think that is what most players seek when they play this game.
At the same time Twin was unnecessarily banned (or rather it was banned to increase visibility of new cards) and it would be perfectly fine to unban it with current cardpool and meta.
Ah, I stand corrected. It happened quite long time ago and WotC does not use any versioning system on the rules.
Apparently tentacles are quite delicious and cats and foxes have eaten all of them.
But seriously, Gyruda is Charbelcher style nondeterministic glass cannon deck and it's easier to produce more consistent results with other decks. It's still a playable deck across the formats but not good enough to get to top places.
It's incredibly scummy behavior to not ban companions in other formats as well. It's obvious that the same problem is visible in all formats with varying degree depending on the availability of cards that fulfill companion restriction and decks that can leverage having free additional card in starting hand.
The argument that there was enough data to warrant banning Lurrus in vintage and not enough data to ban anything in modern/pioneer/standard is laughable considering comparison between the number of matches that is being played in those formats.
You can still play Goblin Game if you really want to have such silly effects though.
More details here:
https://magic.gg/news/sunsetting-planeswalker-points
For players this boils down to requirement of having Wizards Account.
To be precise Flash had functional erratas in the past so it was not functionally the same card through its whole history. Not that it matters to the issue at hand, move along.
Also I think they were referring to the time period after Hulk was unbanned in commander, although it would be more accurate to say "years".
This. It's just that not enough people care about that to make it worth trying to change anything.
I was waiting to see how they address that and after the announcement I wanted to ask about this in comments for their post but comments are disabled, and forums are no longer available.
Banning flash is a good move. But I'm confused by the argumentation. Flash was played by much larger part of the community than, lets say, Iona. And yet, the post points out that flash was affecting only " small fraction of the Commander playerbase".
Generally companions will be very rarely used because average decks do not immediately meet their criteria and accommodating them usually requires bigger sacrifice than the benefit they provide. They are very interesting as restriction for building new decks but when the novelty wears off the number of decks that use them will rapidly fall. Same thing happened with partners before - initial rush when everyone who bought precon used partners, an now you see them mostly in competitive pods because they are not that strong in casual deck and good manabase for 4c decks is hard to get.
I have a bit unrelated question - why only english and french packs have this issue? I was under the impression that cards were printed locally for NA, EU, AP, etc. Are collectors boosters printed differently? I'm interested from cardstock perspective.
As for the fix itself - giving out random card of the three (distribution probability applies) with each collector booster seems like an easy enough to implement fix. Sure, it will decrease their collectibility but I do not think this is a bad thing. A lot of people are excited about those cards so making more people happy seems like a good idea. Especially now.
With all companions except Lutri you can verify if opponent is not cheating as soon as offending card is put on the stack (or earlier if you have ways to reveal hidden information eg Duress). But with the otter you cannot do this in all situations. Opponent can still cast rule-breaking spell and you have no way of verifying if it breaks companion restriction.
Consider the following scenario: opponent casts Impact Tremors, casts Release to the Wind, casts Lutri. Wins the game. At no point you had a chance to verify that opponent did not cheat by having multiple copies of those cards while opponent could increase the probability of assembling them.
So right now in formats that could be interested in playing that card instead of UR having the best companion it has none. Good job. :/