- Card Slinger J
- Registered User
-
Member for 18 years, 1 month, and 9 days
Last active Thu, Mar, 28 2024 02:56:28
- 0 Followers
- 2,810 Total Posts
- 178 Thanks
-
2
Kilamandaros posted a message on Universes Beyond Officially Discontinued for MTG?Damn I got really excited for a moment that they were totally getting rid of them, can continue to dream...Posted in: The Rumor Mill -
2
Minoke posted a message on Universes Beyond Officially Discontinued for MTG?Remember, "premier" sets means 'Standard-legal'. And it was _always_ stated that UB would not be Standard-legal.Posted in: The Rumor Mill
AFR is an exception because, though it's not a Magic property, it IS a Wizards of the Coast property so it got to be Standard-legal. -
1
Dontrike posted a message on [MID] Wrenn and Promo Cards— Weekly MTG previewsPosted in: The Rumor MillQuote from Card Slinger J »Life from the Loam can get 3 lands back which is one Landfall trigger shy of dealing 4 damage to each opponent and planeswalker you don't control with Omnath.
Yes, but if you're casting Wrenn on turn 5, and assuming 5 mana at the time, then you can't Life From the Loam that turn as per your example. -
1
fleshrum posted a message on Is This Format Too Dependent on Online Resources?There has never been a need for internet resources. Even in the early days decklists for tournament play became quite centralized through other methods. In this format, where decks are increasingly designed for personal expression or interactive gameplay with a group of friends, there is absolutely no need for that. I'm sure we've all used it, but it isn't necessary by any stretch.Posted in: Commander (EDH)
Quote from FetalTadpole »Why would WOTC print a huge, unsearchable physical book that'll be out of date in a couple months? What a terrible idea.
cancelled -
2
megatog201 posted a message on Magus of the CrossroadsIt could be a 2/2 for only G if the ability says all other creatures have haste. Still functionally the same card as the crossroads and magus combined. Crossroads never gave itself haste except under very situational circumstances.Posted in: Custom Card Creation -
2
TheOnlyOne652089 posted a message on The Fate of the LGS, Paper Magic, and the Future of RetailThe biggest issue are the people themselves and the market changes in a drastic way.Posted in: Magic General
There clearly are a lot of people that just buy product online and never play anywhere outside with other people, just some selected few friends if at all.
That number is increasingly large and these people spend more money in the game.
Also, these people are "hidden" from the people that would seek out the social community of a store.
The "LGS community" is a group of players that is quite sadly dying out.
Its not growing in any big numbers, as the store itself is limited by space.
If people in a LGS dont spend much money there and only invest time, its less profitable.
If a store can ignore all that, including space for playing and just ship the product to a customer and receive cash, thats a much simpler and easier investment, so it pays in high revenue to kill the entire social aspect, as it doesnt bring in big money (while its incredible big for the health of the game to have it in the first place, people that actively want it, will bleed to keep it, but ultimately the entire game is changing away from it into a much more digital world, which frankly, is not the kind of Magic that builds a "strong" local community, its building a more broad de-socialized skeleton community).
----
Rudy is not new, and hes dealing with the Magic market in many iterations over the years and is capable to adapt to whatever is the current business model thats profitable. Some of his content videos have a lot of insight in the business that people would never get a glimpse otherwise.
He had a store as it was mandatory, now its just extra cost.
He did sell a lot of singles on ebay, now its much simpler to ship lots of sealed product (to god knows who is buying them, as i frankly dont know any Magic players that buys that many sealed product at all, so it has to go somewhere, but i cant say who exactly consumes it, as a lot of places just buy product to sell it, but someone has to be the actual end-customer to keep the product for good).
In huge areas a lot of people have to just order a bunch of sealed boxes for themselves. its private and hidden, if these players never get out to socialize in a LGS, nobody will know they exist, except the people they pay for the product.
So for a LGS community, these people basically dont exist, and the demands and needs of a LGS community basically dont exist for the hidden individuals, completely isolated groups.
----
Digital is quite frankly a different game.
I would argue the game we know as Magic is actually quite different depending on which group is playing it.
Paper Magic with actual cards in a store, has a very social community, new players, new people, for me thats much more important than the game itself.
People that like the game itself, but basically hate other players, also exist, and in the past they couldnt play the game in a LGS, so resorted to MTGO or played something else. Thats a pretty large group of people, the anti-social incels (not as a insult, but a broad description of what that group is made of).
You only really notice the existence of this group in the amount of extra revenue that WotC brings in, as you wont hear from them in a forum or anywhere else, as they actively avoid any social interactions with other people (but consume a lot of Magic online, youtube, twitch and all kinds of websites to generate traffic).
To play Magic in digital has no actual player social interaction, so that really speaks to this group, and thats a large increase of people that a former LGS net of shops simply did not speak to at all.
Tournament players that seek out competition are basically dead now, WotC scrubbed it.
Bigger tournaments in paper basically represented events like concerts, a Grand Prix was an event to meet even more people in person than a LGS.
Today people play digital and cant even know if the opponent is not just a bot, or halve asleep, or goes afk in the middle of the game, its not social at all, its just a time-wasting mechanism like so many mobile games and a lot of the computer game industry shifts into that gear already for quite some time.
----
What really boggles my mind is the fact that an LGS even has to go over a distributor at all, its completely avoidable today.
To compete in price tags with Amazon and the like is not working, and a LGS can really only provide one thing that Amazon is not, and thats the space to play the game.
WotC is not providing any support for stores to do that, and they lost any financial incentive to do so as well, and the LGS that still exist either have a extremely strong community with lots of disposable income, or they simply bleed money till they are gone.
----
For a lot of people that play Commander you can also cut them into subgroups that have different interests.
The nostalgic players dont really buy new product, just very few singles for a existing deck.
The revenue these players bring in is minimal.
Completely new players at least buy a bunch of product and if they are not aware to efficiently buy singles, they buy a lot of sealed product as they simply dont know better (yet, as very learns at some point, or leaves the game).
So yes, for WotC its much better to simply abandon existing players and seek out new players.
Its long time quite destructive to piss off old players, but the deal is, the old players are not the whale customers.
And then we get the increasingly more expensive "premium" products that is leeching even more money from people.
A lot of people had a mentality of "buy a box of a new set" and thats about it, they never spend more money on a set.
Some of them now buy a collectors box of a set, thats already more expensive and then they buy all Commander decks of a new set, thats like 4x the amount they spend before, and then they order some SecretLair boxes, and what not ... and if any of that money would actually be funneled into an LGS it would help a lot, but its quite simply not cutting, as WotC is at the same time taking customers away from a LGS with their own product (assume you have advertisment for digital in a LGS, like what?).
----
So the "endgame" is probably going to be that Magic is losing the LGS and WotC as a game will sell product themselves.
At that point, someone else might take over the LGS, might even be a new card game (which is hard to sell for nostalgia players, as abandoning a game you played for 20years is quite heartbreaking and nothing you just do out of the blue).
We already have new games that are quite profitable already.
Flesh and Blood is pushing in the LGS-market for Magic (but sadly i just dont like the game, so its not for me).
With rent going up for all city-areas having a space to play Magic is expensive.
People play in restaurants, fast-food chains, or anywhere with a table and space.
Its certainly not the same as a central hub LGS that acts like the defacto-go-to location for everyone.
-
1
peteroupc posted a message on Question Regarding When to Copy Triggered AbilitiesWith Strionic Resonator's ability or Lithoform Engine's first ability, you can target a triggered ability only while it's on the stack (which means that ability must have triggered, gone on the stack, and not yet resolved or otherwise left the stack) (C.R. 115.1c, 113.1c). If the triggered ability has already resolved (or has already left the stack), that ability can't be targeted anymore.Posted in: Magic Rulings -
6
MoonliteKnight posted a message on Another Love your Local game store promosCan we just have the old border back for good already?Posted in: The Rumor Mill -
3
WizardMN posted a message on ALL Wheel Effects to Be Banned in Commander?!?C'mon man.....Posted in: Commander (EDH)
Obviously they aren't getting banned and the article is clear that this is just Sheldon musing on wheels being bad. Which, to some extent is true, but don't come in here with a clickbaity title because you want to stir up drama. They aren't getting banned and nothing suggests that the rest of the RC feels they are bad. Sheldon even goes out of his way to say that the rest of the RC may not share his viewpoint. Take this article for what it is: an insight into some of his personal thoughts and nothing more. His is allowed to have a personal opinion on something and the format doesn't have to change to suit those opinions (unless they are shared by enough of the RC/CAG). -
1
lookingupanddown posted a message on on MTGO........ The errata update we all been waiting for....Phyrexian Creature type update (added text version of cards)Gatherer has been updated with the Phyrexian creature type. Notable exception so far is Consecrated Sphinx, which remains just a Sphinx.Posted in: The Rumor Mill - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
1
This is literally the worst blatant attempt to push boxes to gambling addicts since Jace, the Mind Sculptor which was roughly sitting at around $200 at the time it was first printed in Worldwake. Granted, Jeweled Lotus isn't an auto-include though it is good enough to run in a majority of decks especially those who play cEDH. Whether the card is insanely broken or niche, it doesn't change the possibility that Wizards of the Coast printed this in order to move boxes because they care far more about short-term money than the long-term health of the format. That's the main problem not the cards themselves. Wizards of the Coast doesn't have as much insight into the format as the EDH / Commander Rules Committee does.
1
1
For those who may not remember back in the mid 2000's there was a Paper Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game made by Upper Deck called Marvel / DC Vs. System before it was re-branded as a Living Card Game with the same name. Shortly before it got discontinued for World of Warcraft TCG which eventually became known today as Hearthstone there were talks about incorporating other intellectual properties into the game aside from just Comic Books. The only franchise that made the cut was Hellboy before Vs. System was shortly discontinued there on after. I still held out for Todd McFarlane's Spawn to be incorporated however it just wasn't meant to be unfortunately.
1
What better than to spend less money on MTG's own lore when they can use other IP's every time they release a new product? Contrary to popular belief the games' own source material was on an upswing until after War of the Spark where they sort of just gave up shortly after. Of course it would cost Wizards of the Coast more time and money to license other IP's than it does for them to commission new artwork but If they split the profits however then it may not be a problem. Not to themselves of course but to us as a community.
Can you imagine the potential legal battles and lawsuits they might end up facing If they end up acquiring an IP that gets themselves into more trouble as a company? Would you want to continue to risk spending money on a hobby that mostly cares about profits over community? I sure wouldn't but that's the real danger that MTG faces right now IMO. Wizards of the Coast have managed to go unscathed from their recent legal battles but in the happenstance that Hasbro is no longer able to back them up I'm not so sure they'd be as lucky.
2
Combine that with the Rules Committee's recent stance on the Walking Dead Secret Lairs and it sets up a very dangerous precedent for Paper Magic going forward. I can't even fathom how much money everyone's already invested in the EDH / Commander format especially for those who own 5-10+ EDH decks or Cure for the Common Game on YouTube who owns 500+ EDH decks just to try to break a Guinness World Record as admirable as that goal is. The situation has already gotten as far as Mitch from Commander's Quarters attempting to re-brand the format into "Captain".
We went from "Elder Dragon Highlander" (EDH) to Wizards of the Coast re-branding the format as "Commander" only to re-brand it a third time with "Captain" which is really nothing more than a reskinned Commander format with rules separate from what the Rules Committee and Wizards of the Coast say. Let's not kid ourselves here we ALL knew this day was coming but we didn't want to admit to it. Wizards of the Coast is just salty that a community based format like EDH / Commander has been doing better than Standard which they fail to take responsibility for.
1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAwk6RiK_dE&
Now Commander's Quarters' take on the situation was actually hilarious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbex1dHw5MU
3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pXidDwNx0M
1
https://dsgcw.blogspot.com/2020/07/constraints.html Amen brother.
1
MTG Double Masters as well as many other Premium products have limited print runs to create that artificial scarcity with expensive cards that create short term supply so that when these cards spike in price again Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro as well as MTGFinance make more money off the demand for these cards by hoarding sealed Premium products to flip onto the Secondary Market to turn a profit later thus pricing out those who couldn't afford it. I assume that the Sports Card Industry back in the 90's were doing something similar by partaking in this kind of class warfare by pricing their own target demographic out of the market by catering to those who were wealthy and rich enough to afford it.
The marketing bubbles of other collectible items such as ty Beanie Babies show similar stories (which I used to collect as well but were no longer profitable due to how mass produced they were). Early collectors collect purely for the joy than the speculation. The supply of these items declined over time as most of them weren't kept in mint / near mint condition or they we're thrown out. The earliest versions were produced in limited supply due to low demand. Prices spike due to demand, then demand increases for new versions. Manufacturers increase production, speculators think that the new items will appreciate just like the old ones, and buyers stockpile them. Then they cash in and lower prices just to sell.
1
Mark Rosewater is the same person who thought Companions in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths were perfectly fine and a fair automatic eighth card and half of a combo and your deck was ready set to go in a non-interactive zone (looking at Planeswalker Emblems), I mean there's clearly nothing wrong with that! When it's been 27 years and you're THAT dense then you need to go. I mean look at the Storm Scale, it's a list of all the mechanics in the history of the game. Almost every single one from seven and up which means they're never bringing it back into Standard ever again were his creation. He doesn't know how to do math or limit things or promote fun gameplay users like, "POWER! POWER! WE WANT MORE POWER!" "PEOPLE LOVE POWER CARDS! POWER CARDS SELL!!!", and he drives out everything else and then because he doesn't want his pet cards to be stopped he then cuts all interaction to make sure there's no way to interact or stop them. Mark's done this for the last 10+ years, so now you kind of get the idea of why his influence as head designer has been problematic for the health of MTG.
A lot of these broken game mechanics are really about his ego cause If a game mechanic on the Storm Scale got an eight or nine because it was so hated by the MTG Community with so not acceptable gameplay, he wants to swing back around and take an extra shot at it so that he can say, "Well yeah I was a little rough the first time but we fixed it the second time. My mechanic that I created was great!" As much as I hate to admit this, Mark Rosewater is the Donald Trump of MTG where he's all about his ego and reputation and really doesn't give a crap about much else. As for his preferences for the game like doubling things and big giant splashy creatures? Yeah that's what goes now because he wants to, he doesn't care what you want when he wants what he wants. MTG now has the Yu-Gi-Oh! equivalent of the Extra Deck where you can grab just about anything you want and put it onto the battlefield for free potentially with the way Sideboards work nowadays instead of swapping cards from the Main Deck and Sideboard. Also Wizards of the Coast needs to move away from directly impacting deck construction which is something that works in EDH / Commander but not in Standard or Modern.
MaRo has been getting away with designing toxic infinite combos in Standard for the last four years that breaks a basic tenant of the game letting a card like Hostage Taker infinitely combo with itself because he's too dense to realize it. Don't let something infinitely combo with itself! In regards to Companions, don't let people start with eight cards in their opening hand! Don't let Standard have a Commander that also basically was a Companion. There's so many basic examples of breaking basic rules of the game and pushing power levels so high that it's something that Wizards of the Coast never would've done for balanced reasons. We almost have one example of this per Standard legal set. Perhaps Mark Rosewater should take the time to reflect on the mistakes he's made as a head designer for MTG that's been really detrimental on a competitive level more so than on a casual level. If a game mechanic players feel on the Storm Scale is more balanced than something that's 10 out of 10, that's better than players complaining, "I'm not going to play Standard until this bull crap rotates out".
It's one thing that MaRo should focus on because the game loses a buttload of money and that's what effects people in the most negative possible way. All we're asking for is the game to function on a fair and basic level instead of Mark always printing cards that are too game breaking. Because of how he's restructured Play Design and Card Design, there's now less people at Wizards of the Coast to tell him "No" and now we have Companion and all these other broken ideas. They make the game less functional and more digital to fit within the context of Arena as they're much harder to track. What we really need are more MTG playtesters and designers to tell Mark "No" or just let him leave the company and have somebody else do his job for him because nobody at Wizards of the Coast could do his job as head designer of MTG worse except for Aaron Forsythe as the buck stops with him when it comes to MTG design. So him and Mark need to go. When you look at declining MTG sales numbers and that Wizards of the Coast is releasing Double Masters to make up for all the financial losses in Standard, they can only stall and fudge the numbers to make the math look good for awhile until somebody catches on and they're like, "How's our core product doing?"
In the last Hasbro Stock Earnings Report, Wizards of the Coast had to take MTG and Monopoly by putting them into the same category to not make it look like MTG was losing mountains of money at the time it was. In other words Wizards of the Coast is lying and fudging their reports on MTG to Hasbro and they don't care as long as their bottom line is like, "Oh look we made money", which is why they've been getting away with greedier and greedier bull crap as they break Standard worse and worse and are driving competitive players away in droves in favor of casual players who play EDH / Commander and now unfortunately they have COVID-19 to hide behind as they could use that as any excuse for anything for any amount of time. Rightfully so, but at the same time Standard is at the worst place it's ever been. So If Hasbro were to really take a closer look at Wizards of the Coasts' business operations, customer satisfaction, and other factors they're all are about to go off a cliff. If they stop doing greedy crap to make up for all the money they're losing then they would make some changes. Papa Hasbro would step in and start handing out pink slips.
They'd be like, "Wait a minute, did we just hear that you don't hire any African Americans even as contracted artists and then at the same time the head of the Judge Program said that they don't want more Caucasian males and they're not welcome to the Judge Program?" "Pardon me, what? Whose running this company into the ground or straight into an iceberg?", Hasbro needs to hear the truth. Apparently Wizards of the Coast CEO Chris Cocks was behind all the greedy selfish "Cut the Local Game Store (LGS) for Secret Lair". They may have also brought in somebody saying, "Hey make more money, maximize this, you're not doing well enough" and then a bunch of their pushed power level stuff was a direct result of Hasbro saying, "Make more money" and then giving Wizards of the Coast really poor advice on how to do it because nobody in management doesn't seem to know how to run a Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game. So the whole, "Why aren't we selling more high powered Standard cards to EDH / Commander players or Modern players?" Their answer is "Up the power level." So it's either basically Hasbro's fault or they're completely ignorant of it and Wizards of the Coasts' management is sweeping it under the rug and not letting them know what's really going on by just making the numbers for their shareholders and stock brokers look pretty.
There's absolutely no accountability for mistakes at Wizards of the Coast as it was 100% verified by former employees of Wizards of the Coast on Glassdoor. So If you've been working there for 10 years you can make all the mistakes you want, nobody's allowed to call you out on it, If you do you're fired and giant mistakes by Mark Rosewater, Aaron Forsythe, or CEO Chris Cocks, upper management are never addressed, they're not brought up in meetings about how they can avoid doing this before. It's basically that you're kept quiet about it or you lose your job. That's literally hundreds of former employees at Wizards of the Coast that say how the company operates. They don't behave like a normal company would. They're such egotistical stuck-up jerks who never want to be reminded of the mistakes they make, they think they can do absolutely nothing wrong, they're the perfect person for the job, and that they know everything and nobody's smarter than them which "Welcome to Seattle". That's the attitude over there. Because of that nothing in MTG ever gets fixed. Nothing gets changed. The same mistakes get made over and over. The same anti-consumer crap keeps happening, they keep losing players and it never gets addressed or fixed.