MTG Salvation

Quote from Perodequeso »

If a store is truly a “game store”, especially in areas with larger populations, they’ll carry hundreds of different products. And it seems fairly apparent that they could survive without Magic. However, the Magic market is huge and it is in a stores interest to carry it.
Even Magic players play other games, and as a Magic player I’ll buy those other games at the stores I buy Magic.
I live in a small town and we have one LGS. At one point there were three, but the two that tried solely to survive on Magic didn’t.

The Comic Book Shop I used to go to that once served as an LGS relied heavily on Magic but because of how small their overhead is we haven't had anyone be able to play in the store since COVID-19 started two years ago. The only times that they're really active in terms of Magic was usually on Friday evenings and Saturdays but with the current threat of Comic Book Shops going extinct due to Marvel and DC's Woke Propaganda machine that they're trying to indoctrinate in today's youth I don't see it lasting much longer unfortunately.

Marvel and DC could completely gut Comic Book Shops entirely and still make tons of profit off of their Hollywood blockbuster films and with a push toward Digital there would no longer be any need of physically tangible Comic Books which more than likely won't have any affect on the Collector's Market for it ironically. I've known that Comic Book Shop that once served as an LGS for nearly 20 years and we had a really good community built up from it for awhile where as some folks I used to congregate there have either moved to other LGSs within the vicinity or moved on with life in general.

The real question is how different this current situation with LGSs, local distributors, and Double Masters 2022 is compared to the fallout we witnessed from Masters 25 and Iconic Masters where there weren't any hurdles to purchase product as we still had MSRP. Nowadays everything has gone up from shipping and transportation to where it's become increasingly harder to keep up with a luxury item like Paper Magic under economic turmoil. The reason why the absence of MSRP is bad in this scenario is that it gives LGSs too much leeway to markup prices that customers might not be able to afford thus losing sales in the process. When your local distributor is secluded to just Amazon fulfillment that makes it even harder for these LGSs to get the piece of the pie that they would've gotten under the local distributors that are now being thrown under the bus.

The recent trend of Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro pumping and dumping one Paper Magic product after another is really reflective of this instant gratification in our society that we've now become accustomed toward due to online algorithms and current market trends. Unfortunately it doesn't give these products enough time to appreciate in monetary value when it's an excuse to lower the cost to make them more affordable to purchase which was only made worse due to the inclusion of card variants with showcases, extended arts, and foils of that nature. It also affects the narrative of the MTG lore and how it's being disregarded because they know If they print cards with really good abilities then players and collectors will buy them. I feel as though the game itself is trying too hard to escape from it's own identity regarding it's own lore in an effort to be more sanitized and consumer friendly.

Granted this is all being done to make up for the absence of In-Person Organized Play events for Paper Magic on account of an ongoing global pandemic which is nearing it's end as we speak when we now have the implications of market inflation affecting how much players and collectors are willing to spend for Double Masters 2022 as opposed to what occurred with Masters 25 and Iconic Masters where real world events weren't that big of an issue as it is today. Additionally this is going to be a make it or break it moment for A LOT of Local Game Stores (LGSs) looking to cash out of their business for retirement instead of providing a public service for players to play at their venues In-Person where Pre-Orders for Double Masters 2022 are going to be through the roof as the LGSs that do survive from this are those that put local communities first over maximizing profit.

Those that put profit first over local communities were never fully committed to owning and operating a Local Game Store (LGS) because dealing with this sort of business model is supposed to be a labor of love not a side hustle. You don't take the money and run to close your business permanently just to leave players who are wanting to play with the cards they purchased under the rug. Yes the cost of transportation nowadays due to market inflation under terrible economic policies is really bad but that's no excuse to just throw the baby out of the bathwater. The smart thing to do as a LGS owner would be to order less product for Double Masters 2022 and not take as many Pre-Orders that would cause these businesses to sit on products they aren't able to sell for being too expensive and with the absence of MSRP that does tend to complicate this situation even more.

Quote from Dontrike »

Surprised they didn't use this art in a Secret Lair.

Surprised that they don't use this kind of art outside Secret Lairs.

Quote from TetzaHexloq »

Quote from Rosy Dumplings »

I guess that I’m confused what you are asking?

Just dont engage Cardslinger, he/she has a general dislike of Mtg, It's evident from the negativity in every post.

Really? Just because I view MTG with a critical lens doesn't mean I dislike it. I criticize MTG because I want the game to be better than the way Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro are currently managing it right now. This is where people often times misunderstand me.

Unfortunately I don't think the global supply chain issues that attributed to a 9% inflation rate increase will EVER go back to the way it was before. We may have just witnessed the largest exodus of workers / employees in world history due to mask / vaccine mandates, people retiring much earlier for their 401k's, as well as food shortages and famine globally. Global shipping is in shambles because they can't find enough people willing to distribute product and If they do then they're making less than what their companies would owe them under less turbulent circumstances.

How does this affect Paper Magic? Since we have less truck drivers to help distribute sealed product that means more delays with product releases as well as more manufacturing errors in recent products to where the print quality isn't what it once was but it did seem to get better though. Players who order card singles online will probably get more snail mail from the post office because even they're suffering from staff shortages like everyone else. Local Game Stores (LGSs) can't even break even anymore without losing sales to Secret Lair drops that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro refuses to let them sell publicly.

With the way things are going right now it's gonna make 1929 seem like Happy Fun Day at Six Flags. People are going to be wishing they stocked up on things that actually matter like food, water, guns, and ammunition. Why waste that money on a luxury item like Paper Magic? Not gonna sugarcoat it but I think we're going to be in for some really tough times ahead. We're already in a mild recession due to rising market inflation but at least it's not as bad as it was in 2008 when the global economy was in free fall.

My LGS didn't carry the singles I wanted from Streets of New Capenna so I went ahead and bought two of the new Commander Pre-Cons ($49.99 MSRP) containing a few cards I wanted but it was well worth it IMO. I was lucky enough to Buy List some of the stuff from the Pre-Cons and made close to $30 in Store Credit to purchase other cards I needed that they actually had singles for. Would've been nicer If they already had the singles in stock so that I wouldn't of had to buy the Pre-Cons, some of which according to my friends had some misprint issues where they bought the new Grixis Pre-Con which was basically, "Oops, all Spells!" compared to another Pre-Con which was "Oops, all Lands!"

You got one Pre-Con and it only included half of the cards it was supposed to where I've heard some cases where there were double the number of rares that normally wouldn't be in there including duplicates of cards that aren't basic lands as in the case with some of the Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Pre-Cons. But yeah the quality control for the Streets of New Capenna Commander Pre-Cons was insane. Fortunately I didn't have that happen to me when I bought mine last Saturday but for my friend I felt bad enough that I offered the lands I wasn't using to complete the actual Pre-Con since one of them was the Grixis deck and he declined my offer since he had better lands to build with it already in his inventory.

Last I checked, Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro got rid of MSRP when they partnered with Amazon in order to sell direct-to-consumer with Secret Lairs only exacerbating the problem further. The cost of card singles going up within the Secondary Market is more to do with inflation rather than Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro trying to cut corners by relying less on Print Media. Reserve List buyouts aren't as active as they once were because it's costing collectors too much in order to keep up with which was bound to happen eventually even when they were easier to purchase back when the U.S. Government was handing out Stimulus Checks as a result of the global pandemic two years ago.

You also have a situation where Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro could be reprinting less cards outside of Secret Lairs in order to create more artificial scarcity to increase prices not just for cards that haven't had another reprint but to also cater to Whales who are wanting to flip sealed product for a quick buck. It also doesn't help that the budgets they use to commission specific artwork for Magic cards have actually been going more toward Secret Lairs and Showcase cards leaving the regular cards to be less desirable and causes Local Game Stores (LGSs) to potentially lose money that could otherwise save their own businesses. So Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro can't blame ALL their Magic: The Gathering Print Media woes on inflation.

The Magic Historian (a.k.a. Mike Hatcher) did a rant video about how bad Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro messed up on the MTG lore for Streets of New Capenna on his other YouTube Channel titled 'Hatcher' If you haven't checked it out yet. To sum up his argument for this set in terms of it's lore is literally telling people to turn their brains off and buy the cards. It's frustrating when Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro won't tell us what's actually going on within the MTG lore and leaves us guessing throughout each new set release unless it's on their official website. I get that they stopped writing print novels and stuck with posting the MTG lore on their official website though I can't help but feel that it leads to more questions than answers.

For the Magic Historian to get THAT upset about the MTG lore involving why Elspeth and Ob-Nixilis are on New Capenna leads me to believe that Hasbro gave Wizards of the Coast not as much of a budget to work with where they don't have as much time to work on world building new sets when they're forced to meet deadline after deadline just to increase Hasbro's profit margins. It's led to a lot of the recent wallet fatigue and set stagnation we've seen over the years. I do care enough about the MTG lore enough to where I liked how things developed with how the Weatherlight crew defeated Yawgmoth and the Phyrexians back when Wizards of the Coast had a bigger budget to work with and didn't just make money machine go brrr just for the sake of it.

Reddit doesn't even feel like a Message Board Forum when it's really just a platform for people with short attention spans who don't have time to read walls of text much like the rest of Social Media that reward that kind of bad behavior such as Facebook and Tik Tok for example. YouTube on the other hand has at least made an honest effort for constructive criticism since content creators can convey what they say more in a video than posting in the comment section. That's more than I can say about Twitch which is really for a niche group of content creators that would get shutdown by YouTube on the spot.

I feel as though this thread has less to do about MTG and more about how Cancel Culture is steering society in the wrong direction especially after what happened at the Oscars with Will Smith and Chris Rock recently. I do however believe that the MTG community as a whole has been divided for some time now yet at the same time not as much with more players putting aside their differences and enjoy playing MTG which is what we should be doing. What I'm tired of are MTG players who easily get ensnared into scandals due to mistakes they've made in the past where their Internet history is used against them.

The problem here seems to be that WoTC has too many formats to support. Back in the "old days", when Standard was THE entry point to MTG, you had Standard (Type 2), Vintage (Type 1), and Extended (Type 1.X). Type 1.5 (Legacy) wasn't really a thing up until the last 16-19 years give or take. That was it. So sets were then catered to the Standard dynamic more than it is now with, what, Modern, EDH, Explorer, Pioneer, Pauper, limited...that's a lot of formats to create content for.

So unless you want an even bigger deluge of specialty products, standard isn't going to be getting the attention it deserves so long as other money-earning formats exist.

Yes and it shows their utter indecisiveness and indifference to actually nuturing Standard, Pioneer and Modern by not doing so.

Makes little difference anyway, they have stupidly announced they are only going to have a "yearly" ban right after rotation. (Rotation in itself is its own ban you dunderheads at WotC) Then 3 weeks after a set releases they will have a potential ban from that set.

Oh yeah that will solve it. They are clueless, absolutely clueless.

i don't think this will fix anything at all.

its not that sets rotate too quickly, its that there isn't an emphasis on standard any more and there are just too many damn products competing for the same time and money.

i also think that its going to make for an exceptionally stagnant environment because sets are so formulaic now. every set has a 4-5 mana white board wipe, every set has a 3 mana cancel, every set gets a shock, an edict, etc

if they really wanted to solve the problem they'd re-emphasize standard by supporting competitive high level play accessible to all not just pros. they should also eliminate all supplemental products except for collectors boosters and commander precons as these all compete for your money. do one major reprint set per year thats standard legal. bake reprints into standard level sets. bake meaningful nonstandard reprints into the commander precons and especially collectors boosters, as well as new commander cards. eliminate set boosters, jumpstart, commander specific sets, even the masters sets really should be standard support that has reprints that filter into other formats.

we need the flow of product to diminish and we need actual support for the format. no one has been complaining it rotates too fast for the past few years because we get a new set/product every single month so why even bother with standard.

Standarded.

Seriously though. I actually kind of like this? I mean most of us barely play paper standard these days (thanks Arena!) but in the event that we are imposed playing more often (especially at RCQs), I guess that's fine? Cards already have longevity now because of Pioneer so I'm not super sure that this is the solution. But hey, Dr. Hewey told me first, and I'll give this guy a shot.

The way they've been designing sets lately, almost makes you think that they should just scrap standard anyways and convert the showcase format to Commander anyways.

People are still upset about the violation of consumer confidence with Magic 30th. Only to have someone who legally acquired a product in advance, through human error (otherwise litigation would be involved and announced, as it was with the theft of the Ixalan sheet) become an example of corporate flex on a lone, lowly consumer with nothing more than a minor YouTube channel, relative to a billion dollar industry exercising its privilege (within the context of lacking a legal leg to stand on, no less). It's an unfortunate narrative from a PR perspective for WOTC, before factoring in the Pinkerton's historical record, Oldschoolmagic clearly being a patron of the game that happened upon a meager opportunity of minimal benefit few would resist regardless, or the sight of his wife crying at the door when thugs appeared to repossess legal product they weren't entitled to relinquish, through intimidation.

It's just not a good look.

You know what would have been a favorable approach? Realizing the guy is clearly a fan of the game, that there was a mistake, and cultivating something positive by offering him an alternative opportunity (like spoiling future cards on his channel, growing his viewership through an approved and amicable manner, for example) and alternative product, in exchange for what he purchased early. Thus preserving the integrity of their consumer base while diffusing a regrettable, but not illegal, situation. Brute force and resentment was selected instead, and the fields were salted behind them. After M30, people are rightfully disgusted.

Quote from ThyLordQ »

A guy ruins the marketing of a single set of 50 cards half a month in advance and he deserves to have notorious extra judicial thugs visit him personally?

This is how far they're willing to go for the sake of 50 cards in a hyper-niche supplemental set?

I mean you have to put this in the historical context of MTG cards being stolen and leaked every single set sometimes to an absurd, entire-uncut-sheets-stolen-from-factories degree. This is from a corporate standpoint a total disaster and a consistent IP violation that usurps their entire control over their own products.

The whole point of retaining security companies like the pinkertons is to investigate internal affairs like this (including unionization) and the goal of this investigation is definitely not just taking down this one youtuber but determining who his supplier is, who is at best in violation of of their sales license. It's not like they just hired the pinkertons to do this.

Standard (or any other format) would be better if they would also RESTRICT cards as well as ban certain cards. Some cards could be restricted to ONE copy. This would effectively ban it but potentially keep it around.

The Wandering Emperor and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker are prime examples of cards that should be restricted in Standard.

It would also serve to lower their stupidly inflated prices in paper as well.

more unimpressive inclusions.

the mythic isn't worth all that much to begin with, and this will kill its price.

fiery justice has been done to death and needs to be downshifted. is this card even played... anywhere? like at all?

Just play cards that punish sacrificing. Viridian Revel, Disciple of the Vault, Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest, Mayhem Devil. It's not hard. Just use some damn creativity before you institute a playgroup-wide ban over salt.

You can cast Heliod regardless of your devotion to white. Heliod doesn't say, for example, "Cast this spell only if your devotion to white is five or greater".

In general, you can cast your commander from the command zone even if it isn't a creature spell and even if it won't be a creature upon entering the battlefield (review C.R. 903.8).