It's good to see them go back on bad decisions but it's still kind of troubling that they were able to make such an obviously bad decision in the first place. Seriously, is there anyone outside of Wizards who thought this was a good idea?
I suspect another reason Iconic Masters failed is just plain fatigue with these overpriced reprint sets. I think a lot of people have had enough of spending $10 per booster just to get mostly filler cards because Wizards is too afraid of reprinting needed cards in reasonable quantities. 2 Masters sets along with Unhinged and all of the normal Standard product and Commander in a year is a bit much.
Initial impressions are that this is "Master's edition: we're not f*(&ing around this time".
Good. I hope this can abate some of the fears people had about masters sets after Iconic Masters.
Every single Masters set in the past has had a chorus of unbridled hype as the first most valuable cards are revealed that cooled to big disappointment once the entire set was revealed. You shouldn't take this to be any indication of how the full set will look. Calm the hype.
What's everyone complaining about if they don't want the card or believe it is very good? The market will adjust if demand truly is that low. If, however, you believe the card is good, but believe the price shouldn't be high because it isn't seeing competitive play right now, then you likely do not understand how the secondary market works.
Please explain how the secondary market works, oh wise one.
It's not that difficult, honestly. The price of any given card is based on lots of factors and its presence in tier 1 decks in specific moments is only one of them. If that were the case, Tarmogoyf would have drastically fallen multiple times and Siege Rhino would have been a >10$ staple in KTK Standard.
Kumena is a Merfolk lord, and Merfolk have an evergreen appeal: people are thus willing to pay a lot to grab it and build their beloved deck. Moreover, even if right now the deck doesn't really have all the tools to consistently beat other tier 1s, it has another year and a half to get the spotlight. Zombies were a thing only after Amonkhet, after all...and what was the best card in the deck? The one which is more similar to Kumena...
It would be easy to go on and become boring, but I hope it's clear enough. What I want to point out is that I'm not saying I like all of this: it's just how the system works, and it won't change until the whole community changes... which won't happen. We're only partially smart apes after all.
Current tier 1 competitive play isn't the only factor in card price, but it's by far the biggest when we're talking about new in print sets. And it's not like Merfolk isn't just not tier 1, it's barely a blip in the Standard meta and even there it isn't a full playset. Modern Merfolk isn't really including many copies either, among the subset going to U/G. As for tribal appeal, Merfolk is a second tier tribe in terms of popularity at best, and I say this as someone who has been playing Merfolk in Modern for years. There is no precedent for a card like this to be worth as much as it is. Sorry, but the potential for a tribal legend to maybe be competitively viable in the future isn't enough to sustain a card that no one is playing at the top of a new set 2 weeks after launch. Zombies are a much more popular, more casual viable tribe, and by this point after SoI release Relentless Dead's price had already started to crater as people realized zombies weren't going to be a thing yet. This smells like speculation, not just natural market forces.
I can routinely do well at my LGS using Stompy with good draws and careful play. Modern is diverse enough that as long as your deck is trying to do something reasonably powerful and doesn't fold like a cheap suit to common answers, you should be fine. HOWEVER, when I bring my Tron deck with 4 Karns sitting at like $70 apiece, or my Burn deck with a couple hundred dollars worth of lands, my odds are much better, and those costs are prohibitive to a lot of players. I always tell people, I have been playing Modern since very shortly after it became a format. I got some staples at the very start, I predicted what a few to have price jumps would be, I bought things (including my Karns) immediately after reprints, at their absolute floors......and it's a good thing, because as i tell people now, if i were just getting into the format after abandoning a garbage fire Standard, i WOULD NOT be able to play my favorite decks. I don't play the Eldrazi version of Tron, my Eldrazi are limited to Titans, but in part because of recent sins by Wizards, I could sell my Tron deck for probably double what I have in it....which does NOT make me happy. Half my LGS would drop t3 Karn if they could afford it. as someone who owns 4 Karns, PLEASE Wizards, reprint the darn thing. if it is printed at rare and never goes above $20 again? wonderful! I have no plans to sell mine, I don't care what my collection is worth in theory, it would literallt just mean that more people could enjoy it and i could get a couple more for EDH.
Yeah but Magic absolutely must have perpetually increasing secondary market prices in order to survive! I know this is true because a bunch of pundits who stand to gain financially if secondary market prices increase say so. Also, one time in 1995 cards were reprinted and it was bad.
What's everyone complaining about if they don't want the card or believe it is very good? The market will adjust if demand truly is that low. If, however, you believe the card is good, but believe the price shouldn't be high because it isn't seeing competitive play right now, then you likely do not understand how the secondary market works.
Please explain how the secondary market works, oh wise one.
How in the world is this the most valuable card in the set? Modern Merfolk barely wants to touch him, Standard Merfolk isn't really a thing, and I can't imagine the handful of people dying to play Merfolk in Commander are driving demand that much. Another example of how ridiculous the secondary market is getting.
There probably is a real chance that a bunch of morons who got inconceivably lucky speculating on cryptocurrencies will then go try to "invest" their money in another massively overvalued bubble but I don't think Wizards is all that concerned about it. They've basically washed their hands of the Reserve List and Paper Legacy is more or less a dead format at this point so I can't imagine what impact more speculation will have. If anything it will make the bubble burst faster.
I also am soured on Branchwalker based on my experience with the card, so I don't recommend folks go that route either.
I hear this alot, and from a theoretical point of view, it just seems wierd (because the card seems to be essentially Silvergill Adept.
In situations where a +1/+1 counter + "scry" has the same value as a non-land card (and when you are never paying the silvergill tax) they are exactly equal.
It's probably because the +1/+1 counter doesn't mean anything in the format.
It's not even close to Silvergill Adept. Always getting a card to your hand that is unknown to your opponent is much better than sometimes getting a land in your hand and sometimes getting a +1/+1 counter and giving your opponent a bunch of information with very little control over how it all plays out. The fact that you have to reveal the card is honestly a pretty big downside over Adept. It gives your opponent a lot to work with. The +1/+1 counter can be relevant sometimes but the unreliability is a strike against it.
As for Admiral's Order, it's complete trash in my opinion. 3 mana is way too much for a counterspell and the 1 mana mode is far too narrow and too easy to play around, especially if your opponent sees it coming. I'd rather have Dispel and be able to use it before declare attackers or on my opponent's turn since that's what Order is going to be the vast majority of the time.
You can hate somebody for their views/speech/actions, but you CANNOT act on that hate in a vigilante matter. There are proper avenues to follow, and when you choose not to and act on those impulses, you are no different than the person you are acting out against.
Ultimately, this is not a matter the public needs to be involved in or needs to solve.
The problem here is that the "opposing" side is already very active in their harmful behavior. At a certain point inaction becomes unacceptable, allowing hugely negative groups and individuals (see: Jeremy) to have a truly untoward effect on how our subculture is perceived. To the outside we're already a masculine dominated, often-aggressive, and socially awkward bundle of "nerds." Adding this kind of hateful behavior to what we're known for isn't something that the community should allow, nonsensical hyperbole examples entirely aside.
Your use of the word "harmful" to justify your censorship is actually..harmful. I believe the most harmful thing in Magic is to force people to police themselves to suit your emotions. I believe the language of "we can strive to be better" means "we should suppress disagreement and be more like me." I think your worldview is one of censorship, and I also believe that there are many greater ills on the planet than "harmful actions" of Magic players and conservatives. Like socialism, and ISIS.
Aren't we supposed to be trying not to bring politics into this discussion?
No, you see, it's only bringing politics in to the discussion when we're talking about things that I don't like and can't easily argue against.
Magic is too ******* expensive. They've been catering to the "MTG Finance" crowd and the "collectors" for too long and now no one wants to actually play the game.
Oh, and you should remove the video link. It's not necessary for this discussion and it would be nice if reactionary YouTube morons didn't get undeserved ad revenue.
I wouldn't be surprised if the set was named/renamed by the Marketing department after it was mostly designed, to be honest. It's just another Masters set, they're all basically the same.
Boy, those decklists need a lot of work. I pre-ordered it with the plan to take the money rares for Commander and rebuild the decks to be a little more consistent. It looks fun, but like most precons, I shake my head at some card choices. I mean - Borderland Ranger in the dinosaur deck rather than Ranging Raptors?
Don't forget that while Kopala's protection is usually not quite as good as Kira's, Kopala is getting pumped by all of your lords and triggers Reejerey which puts more pressure on and hopefully kills faster.
Every single Masters set in the past has had a chorus of unbridled hype as the first most valuable cards are revealed that cooled to big disappointment once the entire set was revealed. You shouldn't take this to be any indication of how the full set will look. Calm the hype.
Current tier 1 competitive play isn't the only factor in card price, but it's by far the biggest when we're talking about new in print sets. And it's not like Merfolk isn't just not tier 1, it's barely a blip in the Standard meta and even there it isn't a full playset. Modern Merfolk isn't really including many copies either, among the subset going to U/G. As for tribal appeal, Merfolk is a second tier tribe in terms of popularity at best, and I say this as someone who has been playing Merfolk in Modern for years. There is no precedent for a card like this to be worth as much as it is. Sorry, but the potential for a tribal legend to maybe be competitively viable in the future isn't enough to sustain a card that no one is playing at the top of a new set 2 weeks after launch. Zombies are a much more popular, more casual viable tribe, and by this point after SoI release Relentless Dead's price had already started to crater as people realized zombies weren't going to be a thing yet. This smells like speculation, not just natural market forces.
Yeah but Magic absolutely must have perpetually increasing secondary market prices in order to survive! I know this is true because a bunch of pundits who stand to gain financially if secondary market prices increase say so. Also, one time in 1995 cards were reprinted and it was bad.
Please explain how the secondary market works, oh wise one.
It's not even close to Silvergill Adept. Always getting a card to your hand that is unknown to your opponent is much better than sometimes getting a land in your hand and sometimes getting a +1/+1 counter and giving your opponent a bunch of information with very little control over how it all plays out. The fact that you have to reveal the card is honestly a pretty big downside over Adept. It gives your opponent a lot to work with. The +1/+1 counter can be relevant sometimes but the unreliability is a strike against it.
As for Admiral's Order, it's complete trash in my opinion. 3 mana is way too much for a counterspell and the 1 mana mode is far too narrow and too easy to play around, especially if your opponent sees it coming. I'd rather have Dispel and be able to use it before declare attackers or on my opponent's turn since that's what Order is going to be the vast majority of the time.
No, you see, it's only bringing politics in to the discussion when we're talking about things that I don't like and can't easily argue against.
Oh, and you should remove the video link. It's not necessary for this discussion and it would be nice if reactionary YouTube morons didn't get undeserved ad revenue.
Borderland Ranger really needed a reprint, don't you know.