MTG Salvation

I think that when you are playing magic every week, you need to compare it to other hobbies that take the same amount of dedication. You don't compare it to how much money you spend on Monopoly in a year, you could compare it to how much money you would spend on skiing (kit, lift-passes, transport, lodging if you don't live near a hill) etc.

Having said that, all cards should be reprinted frequently. The problem right now is that they are way behind in terms of where reprinting should have been. If they did reprint value-cards reasonably frequently, the drop would come before the value of the cards spirals out of control, and the loss to players who buy cards just before a reprint would not be as bad. It would also after a few years probably act as a downward push on prices, because people "know" that a reprint is somewhere around the corner and thus might not be willing to pay the most absurd prices.

Right now it is hard to be wizards, they don't want to drop prizes too much, but at the same time they want to increase availability and reduce the cost of entry. With Modern Masters they played it very safe, which is not really surprising. It could be that they are a bit more aggressive in the future, who knows.

I hope they hide jokes in the dialogue to pick up for players. For example, a scene where the infant future planeswalking hero is rocked to bed by his mother, gently reciting the Chub Toad rhyme.

I'd be very surprised if this does not suck. Might make money mind.

Fear the movie-stills arts on cards.

Re: actors, surely the pressing question is wether Mathew Perrry will reprise as Chandler ?

Quote from Wildfire393

Which is a shame. I like these lands a lot

Then RUN THEM!

Sorry for wheeling off-topic somewhat:

Not sure if this is what's going on here, but it is a common fallacy to equate "randomly distributed" with "reasonably evenly distributed". Such that one would not expect lands to lump together in a "random" deck. In reality however, random sequences have these "anomalies" all the time.

In fact, it is used in some security applications to differentiate man-made "random"-sequences from true random ones. E.g. if I were to write a "random" string of numbers, I would probably have a tendency to use each digit roughly the same number of times, not have a lot of instances of the same digit four-five times in a row, or very long sequences where a certain digit doesn't show up at all. The true analysis is of course a lot deeper, but a computer can tell the difference between human attempts at randomness and "true" randomness.

I think that is facinating. Randomness is facinating.


On-topic:
I think this makes a ton of sense:

Quote from magicmerl

So I think that while limited requires a greater range of skills, because of that those skills are not executed at as high a level.

Quote from Georg51 »

They come into play tapped, so they aren't too strong for Standard. However, I get the feeling they are coming in the next commander set.

The problem isn't that they're too strong for standard, the problem is that they step on green's territory. Why splash green to play farseek/rampant growth/sylvan caryatid/any 2 mana ramp card when you can stay in color and just play these mana rocks? It's more of a development issue. Now, maybe in a higher-than-average colorless environment that rewards mono-color, or with enough artifact hate, (hmmm) these might be printable. That said, I'd like to see them come back, but I'm not sure every color should have 2 cost ramp like that. (in standard)

Quote from Callahan09 »

I know MaRo put Horsemanship at an 8 on the Storm Scale... but I would love to see Horsemanship in Khans, and it definitely fits from a flavor perspective.

Horsemanship was created to be a functional replacement for Flying in a set where Flying didn't make sense in the flavor. Khans is a bottom-up block, and has the word "Dragons" in one of its set names. Its illogical to think that a block that is putting mechanics before flavor is going to use a mechanic designed for the express purpose of putting flavor over mechanics, quite aside from the fact that 99% of Dragons in MtG history have had the Flying Keyword, and having both keywords in a block makes zero sense.

Quote from DrendDragonspawn »

I want to point something out: Modern Masters replaced the multiplayer slot that year. It is not disingenuous to lump it in with other products that have held that slot. In addition, as both Modern Masters and Conspiracy are draft centric sets, it is furtermore not disingenuous to point out that we did, indeed, have two draft centric sets consecutively.

Draft not multiplayer... Pah. Try drafting by yourself. See how that works.

There is no multiplayer slot, there is a side product slot that has housed five very different products over the past five years. The popular assumption that a common factor of four of them is a defining feature of them all is undercut somewhat by the odd one out. On the basis that there were five very different products, one might argue that they are likely to do something different again, or perhaps one might lump Planechase 1 in with the June releases (Planechase was released in September 2009, before the current schedule was quite so settled) and ruin that precedent. I don't see any justification in concluding that they could not fill that slot with three consecutive draft products given that prior they had filled it with precons in three consecutive years (again, if you count original Planechase make that four consecutive years). It is disingenuous to act as though the only relevant considerations of Modern Masters and Conspiracy were, essentially, the manner in which they were distributed. The audience, tone and power levels of the two sets are completely different. More different, I'd argue, than Planechase and Archenemy yet nobody is expressing bewilderment that those two products were allowed to be released in consecutive years, followed by the also similar Commander and then another Planechase.

Comment Hidden

Quote from krishnath »

Quote from JovianHomarid »

Technically correct, but that doesn't make Modern Masters a multiplayer product.

All normal sets nowadays are made to draft; but we're hardly referring to Theros or M15 as multiplayer-expansions.

It was created specifically for drafting, which is why it contained, among other things, a crapton of thallids, rebels, and other cards to draft around, instead of just cards that where needed for modern.

All those multiplayer strategies, huh? There's no reason to call it a "multiplayer draft" if you're defining draft to necessarily be multiplayer. Conspiracy and Modern Masters are totally different sets and it's quite disingenuous to dismiss them as two "multiplayer draft" sets on the grounds that their the sole similarity is draft. By that logic they do at minimum four multiplayer draft sets a year anyway.

Birthing Pod would be banned ASPAP if it was simply shuffling alone. I think that while they may not like shuffling it isn't over the top. They banned Eggs out of existence because it took too long. I think that's the line we should look to. If everyone running Fetches was going 20 min past time then that would be something. But most decks are able to finish matches within the time allotted despite running a full suite of Fetches. Could that game be finished in half the time sans Fetches? Sure, probably. But it still gets done in the time allotted.

For the five old fogeys who cared, it looks like the stealth errata has been stealth removed.

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=6046

Looks like Recon is back to the ol' awesome card we know and love. Also this implies that thiswas NOT selected for a reprint in Khans.

Reading over the different opinions regarding selling FTV and other MTG product far above MSRP or not and it raised a few questions for me.

1) There seems to be a belief that selling FTV boxes at far above msrp helps LGSs stay in business. That said, wouldn't simply printing more and selling them at a fair amount rake in more cash by virtue of selling drastically more product vs selling only a few at sky high prices? Even if the profit was comparable between the two strategies, wouldn't the first option result in a much happier player base as they can actually afford all these cool cards and not feel left out?

2) Is it the general consensus that hoarding up any affordable boxes of sought after product like FTV then reselling at a profit later is a respectable or even desirable state of affairs? From my viewpoint this seems like it only hurts the MTG community as a whole while not benefiting WotC or the LGS/Shops. If WotC just had larger print runs of this stuff, assuming desirable cards were in it, WotC would make more as stores purchase up more stock and the LGSs benefit as they sell more product, have happier customers, etc.

Is there something I'm really missing about this situation? This whole setup seems detrimental to MTG. WotC aren't stupid though, so I assume there is a good reason that I just can't see.

These are foil versions of a regular card... if you want it so bad prepare to spend big money, don't forget you can get the exact same card a lot cheaper if you buy a regular booster pack version.