MTG Salvation

Tom, Mill runs Surgical Extraction and Extirpation to destroy combo decks.

Aggro tends to run a fair number of creatures, and Mill has several ways to deal with that. Ensnaring Bridge, Damnation and Crypt Incursion all deal ably with creature based aggro decks.

Just because you can't afford Blackcleave cliff's does not mean you cannot use another land. Smoldering Marsh, maybe? Lavaclaw Reaches has a great manland ability. Blood Crypt is fetchable.

These will get you by until BC is reprinted.

Or just run basics. They can't be Quartered or Ruined.

Am I the only one here collecting Masterpieces?

Masterpieces are going crazy atm. Sharp increases popping up all over, from Hazoret going from $60 to $140, Oblivion Stone from $45 to $99, and multiple others increasing from $5 to $10 all through the last 10 days. I'm scrambling to stay ahead of the spikes, and mostly succeeding.

The boat is sailing as we speak on this one, folks. Right now, the full set is $10,300. That is up $1K in 10 days. I'm guessing it will be over $15,000 by Christmas.

No it will not be reprinted any time soon. Wizards generally announce new releases a couple times a year, and as of right now, a card like Scapeshift is only reprintable in a Masters set. There are no Master sets on the currently announced timeline, which extends out roughly 6 months.

So, no one has any idea WHEN the next possible reprint set will be, and even if we did, we have no idea if Scapeshift will be included

Modern is becoming prohibitively expensive. This is a problem, because this is Magic's 'keeper' format. Kids play Standard and draft. When I say kids, I mean teenagers and college students. The draft is enough to get them the cards they need need for their commander. Not sure how Brawl will affect that. There comes a time when they tire of the constant flow of funds, and they mature. They will either sell out of the game and move on with their lives, or convert to Modern. It behooves Wizards to convert them to Modern, because a Modern player will stay with the game for a far longer time. They could convert to Commander, but WotC wants to be careful with that. Commander players are far more tenuously connected to the game. My commander group is rather rabid, but they pay little to no attention to what's going on with the game at large.

I'd say what WotC needs is a LOT more communication. And a standardized plan for reprints that is clearly communicated. A Modern Masters set every 2 years is a great idea. I find it hard to imagine they will ever run out of things to reprint, for 2 reasons:

1: Right now, the game is very wide open. The number of cards seeing demand is high. This is not 2015, where there were 5 or 6 'Tier 1' decks. We have dozens of decks that can spike a tournament into top 16 or 32 contention. Any of those could top 8 at any time.
Much as I hated it at the time, and still hate it, Splinter Twin ban was a smashing success for Modern.

2: Carried off successfully, a new program of openness is going to only increase players in the fold, which will keep demand steady and consistent, always resulting in upward pressure for reprints.

Wizards needs to get off their DRAFT nut, and realize, Draft is great to sell Standard products. Draft does not need to sell Masters products. I bought 4 cases of MM15, 4 cases of MM17 and 1 case of EMA, and it sure as hell was not to draft it. (And that is not even getting into the Standard cases I bought.)

Communication and consistency. Bring back Modern Masters. Tell us Modern Masters is NOT a drafting set. The sole reason is to introduce more copies of needed cards into the arena. If a land reaches $50, you can expect a reprint. That's not a promise of one, but expect one. If a planeswalker reaches $60, again, no promises, but start expecting. And so on. Clear communication about what their standards are for reprints will prevent the wild swingy buyouts that frustrate so many players. Reassure us that when the time comes to sell, we generally should get 40 to 50 cents on the dollar. You probably won't make a profit, but you also won't walk away with nothing.

Eliminating the draft aspect of the set completely removes a year of design time. All you have to do is calculate how much EV to add, and then go about picking cards that need a reprint, right down to the common and uncommon level. It allows you to ignore the need to upshift into Mythic 'because this at rare or uncommon will ruin the draft experience.'

Best of all, losing a year of design time gives you much greater flexibility in making late changes. Having uncommons worth $25 or $40 is one of those problems. Constantly being 2 or even 3 years out from being able to satisfy demand is NOT an option. When Goblin Lore or Mishra's Bauble start demanding stupid prices, you need to be able to say - Scratch Lightning Bolt and replace Goblin Guide with something else, we're shifting value and throwing in Bauble or Lore. Even if the set is supposed to go to the printers next Monday.

Keep Modern stable, and you will always be able to sell a master set that, because you eliminated the hours that go into crafting a draft format, is even easier and cheaper to make. You will better be able to control the prices of cards, and grow Modern as an 'After Standard' format. Standard is a format that depends on 'Daddy's money, or, sad as it is to say, student loan money. When the era of fiscal responsibility hits, and allowance money and student loans no longer pay for your entertainment, and a single constant expense is desirable, Modern should be cheap enough for former standard players to ease into. This is not just coming out of my rear end. I live in a college town, with 2 high schools of 2000+ students each. College students constantly comment about student loans money paying for their gaming and magic. I see players fade away as student loan money runs low in February and March. I see high schoolers quit as allowances get reduced or eliminated as parents cut off the flow and tell them to pay their own way. Suddenly these high schoolers decide in a big hurry that draft is expensive!


But it all comes back to communication and consistency.

Those 9 cases I bought of MM15, MM17 and EMA?

Gone.

I sold out of the game because I cannot handle the inconsistent nature of WotC. They can't decide how to handle rotation. They can't decide how many sets should be in a block. After 25 years, they can't figure out that formats work best when it is Rock, Paper, Scissors. They can't decide of Modern should be a Pro Tour or not. They made 'graveyard matters' blocks with no way to deal with graveyards. They made 'Energy matters' with no way to deal with energy. They can't decide how to handle something as simple as rewards for showing up to their events. They keep screwing up the simplest things. They can't figure out how to #paythepros. Constantly, from the moment I started playing on the eve of MM25, it has been a consistency of poor decisions, half tracks and backtracks from WotC. And now they can't even be smart enough to not kill the cash cow that was the Masters series. I'm burned out. Too much whiplash. I'm done. I have 2 modern decks, 1 legacy deck, and I play Commander 90% of the time. And I have every expectation they are going to continue to grab control of that format just so they can screw it all up like they do everything else.

My hell, they do ONE thing right, in introducing an investment level of cards like the Masterpiece series, and sure enough, doing what they do best, they screw it up. They make the ugliest cards in the history of collectible, customizable or trading card games.
They are so bad you literally cannot read them. They look nothing like a Magic card. A kid walking down the street would never pick it up and say, 'Hey! Magic!' Hell, the Reddit boards STILL get players asking 'What is this card I got in my Amonkhet pack? It's in some foreign language?'

Masterpieces were a fantastic idea. It sucked the value of a box all the way up to the collectors of the game. That, in turn, made Standard a lot cheaper to play, and Drafts a LOT more entertaining. There was the small drawback that your box EV was a lot lower if you didn't have a Masterpiece, but Standard players play draft, they don't much buy boxes. Allowances don't quite stretch that far.

And then, to compound the stupidity, they did away Masterpieces with the vague, 'We aren't doing them anymore, but we can always bring it back if we like!' More of the same inconsistent excrement I've come to expect, and leads everyone to say, 'They'll be back next time they have a bad set that needs something to sell it.'

Communication. It's really easy. Set a standard on reprints, and tell us. Do not mess with what works, aka Modern Masters. Quit changing all your formats. Do not jerk us around with rash decisions that you have to reverse 6 months later.

But what do I know? I do know this: I don't buy cases any more. WotC managed to slay this golden goose/whale.

Worse manabase, Push hits most of the stuff Path is needed for, and other than Path, what does white give us, really?

I think Green is perhaps worth splashing for, for Blossoming Defense to protect Crab.

I don't get the love for Fraying Sanity/Manic Scribe.

IMO you are better off replacing them with Ensnaring Bridge/Snapcaster Mage/more Surgical Extraction or Extirpate.

I'm starting a database to track Masterpieces. The numbers are alarming. I may need to secure a number of my missing pieces, it looks like quite a few are set to spike Sol Ring/Mox Opal/Polluted Delta style. Got to get in front of that.

I'm working on assembling the Masterpiece set. I've had to bite the bullet in the last 36 hours and buy a Polluted Delta and Sol Ring, despite not being ready yet. I'm going to have to wait and see if Mox Opal comes down. If not, Ouch.

I also picked up an Ancient Tomb, I think that's going to be the next one to break $225. I already own Scalding Tarn - not sure why that has not taken off yet. It's a set that has huge potential - potential being met far soon then I had anticipated.

How much potential? I think this set could very easily double in price over the next year. While I have not looked at every card, and need to, supply is rapidly drying up, and a lot of these have less than 10 - 20 copies available on TCGplayer. A couple hundred dollar and you can reset the price point at triple the current price. It is ripe for manipulation, and I think someone or someones are doing just that.

Actually, I think an organizational chart would be massively helpful, showing everyone's relationship to everyone else, who reports to who, and who does what, exactly. Where does Forsythe sit in relation to Maro, Hagon, Duke, Stoddard and so on.

Anyone have one?

Top end Masterpieces are taking off. The time to buy is almost over, I think.

At some point, you have to concede your time has passed, and rather than trying to convert the world, you consolidate and aim for retention.

You aim for headlines in 20 years like 'How A Physical Game Survived In A Digital Age'.

You do it with MM17, not IMA and A25.

Except it will not be based around Modern, as the Modern Masters have been. Modern may be a popular mess for a couple years.

A week of silence.....

What's the consensus of Dampening Sphere for Mill? Do we need the help against Storm? (Mill pretty much rolls Tron.)