as one who immensely hated Scars of Mirrodin retcon and was immensely angry about the Elder Dragon fiasco in DTK, as one who valued purity and cohesiveness of the story, as a veteran of the MTG story since 1997 who has not many peers left here, I have to say that I do not quite understand the nerd-rage expressed here.
Laura Resnick's story was butchered from the very beginning, by the words of the author herself. Much of the book was left cut out on the floor. What was left of it was okay reading, but not something that I feel extremely compelled to read again. Agents of Artifice was another thing, that book was really good. Therefore, I have not a big problem when THIS particular book is retconned, if it is for the greater good and more interesting story. And it seems it is.
Tarkir block story was a trainwreck, and left me wondering whether the Magic lore can be saved. With Jenna's announcement last week, I have a good feeling about this, and I believe that this might indeed be a beginning of a new era for Magic stories.
And I will gladly sacrifice some details from a half-butchered novel from a discontinued product line for it. Funny that if there was a massive retcon of whatever happened in the pile of stinking dross what was Test of Metal, nobody would probably object here.
I liked this story, and I gladly accept it instead of the TPF origin story. I am looking forward to the rest of them.
If I'm not wrong, the last physical Novel was Test of Metal - It's a running joke to me that after Test of Metal, Tezzeret was introduced to the creative team and deployed to Mirrodin to perform the first major Clockworking/Retcon exercise. He hasn't been seen in the game since then because he's the one in charge of the Retcon department. Oh, Tarkir happened because Tezzeret wasn't around in the office that period of time, I suppose. He'll be back in the game proper after they're done retconning the details they want out of anything before Innistrad.
On the actual topic of retcon, ultimately I think it's best not to take anything too seriously as canon. Creative is really composed of a group of people (not one Tezzeret) and most of them probably weren't really involved in the crafting of the worlds & stories back then - Dominaria being pretty much left a "Temporal Mess Plane" and Ravnica running between statuses (Guilds/No Guilds) pretty much showed a new "transition" of the old and new. We were literally running aimlessly with not much of a story until Innistrad - even Zendikar and the Eldrazi were probably just an attempt to make a overarching story, but they didn't get it together until Innistrad and only started fixing that story with Tarkir (and BFZ).
Actually, even Bolas is a victim of that, his motivation is pretty much "restore his power", but when he's linked to something, it's pretty much to showcase his trickiness and power... and that's about it. He's an overarching villain instead of a story, but he sort of lacks purpose now. His history is too entrenched to the "old story" it's gonna be a task to attempt to bring that up to the current masses - it wasn't even that well-known back then. Even Ob-Nixilis has a better backstory and motivation than he does now.
We ought to have a Block dedicated to Bolas and his "new backstory". We're already losing (or lost) the "Elder Dragon" concept anyway, might as well really clean it all up in return for a true detailed backstory of Bolas and what True Elder Dragons should be like in the "New, fully-controlled by Wizards Creative Story".
Apparently back then they felt like 2/2 was as big as they'd let their tokens get, because this guy was so bad he didn't even pump his tribe. There isn't even a printed card which has him as his proper creature type (Zombie). He isn't totally useless though, because you can use Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth to make all zombies unblockable (yes all, so you have to be careful to not have this backfire).
To be fair, if you're playing Zombies, you'll most probably have a Swamp on the battlefield regardless, so Zombie Master is likely to backfire on you as long as there's a Zombie on the opposing side(s), regardless of whether Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is around or not. In fact, in multiplayer, since Urborg makes all other players equally vulnerable to Zombies, it makes it less likely to backfire on you.
The regeneration part is where it gets annoying when it comes to backfiring.
I actually like this card a lot, (a good chance of) unblockable and regeneration seems like a fair trade-off for a mere +1/+1 most lords give (and Zombies have plenty of others to supply them P/T anyway).
I don't think a single scry card was going to be all that difficult when there was only two Cxalted cards in MM2. It wouldn't have been difficult for them to have added something like Condescend, Viscera Seer, or Foresee. It is especially not hard when it seems like you only needed to have two instances of a keyword to be "in the set".
This is why I think the absence of Scry in MM2 was a conscious decision. MM2 consists of several mechanics with only a handful of cards with the mechanic on them. Scry could easily be one of them, but they purposely removed it from MM2, because they wanted Scry to appear non-consecutively for its evergreen Origins appearance.
Basically I think it went:
"Should Scry be in MM2?"
"We're going to feature it in Origins, so no Scry for MM2."
"Okay, no Scry cards then."
To them, the consideration wasn't about Visions, it was about the mechanic and its apperance in products.
It wasn't an issue exclusive to Scry - MM2 felt like it had too much Limited-Focused during design - the commons and uncommons were mainly cards that fit the Limited themes rather than the necessity of reprints. This does not apply to the rares, so we had stuff like Daybreak Coronet and 2 Exalted cards (that were at rare).
As the people above alluded to, the exclusion of Serum Visions in MM is all the more glaring considering the latest evergreen announcement. And their excuse of "unable to fit" is downright terrible when we could count the same category of cards with a few fingers.
Noticed how they revealed the FNM promo earlier than usual once we were all noticeably upset over Visions not being MM2? Only the announcement was made earlier - they planned the promo out way earlier, obviously. Visions was always intended to be the August FNM promo, right after Origins, the set that marks the point where Scry became evergreen was released. I think they saw it (Visions being a FNM promo) as a opportunity to celebrate Scry being evergreen with a valuable Modern Scry card. Clearly they didn't get the idea that we wanted Visions to be commonly-available, not as a promo - they probably thought we would go "Wow! They're printing Visions as a FNM promo to celebrate Scry's evergreen-status. Great Choice!" and then didn't include Scry (and it) in MM2 because they wanted it to "increase the excitement" when Scry hits evergreen and Visions as an FNM.
So basically, "Unable to fit" doesn't refer to "not adding a couple of cards with a mechanic into the set" like they did with Exalted. "Unable to fit" to them meant "We didn't want to add Scry itself to MM2 because it's going to be in Origins with its new evergreen-status and we want to contrast that by having the set before it not have Scry, otherwise the status doesn't feel new."
I'd better clarify that this is what I think the entire process behind Scry, Evergreen, MM2, Origins and the FNM promo is, because I'm pretty sure they know Visions is a valuable Modern card and they didn't accidentally miss it out - its exclusion in MM2, the FNM promo and the Scry evergreen-status were all linked and thought-out in their decisions. I may actually be completely wrong, but either way, the results have been a disaster for players in terms of the Visions card for Modern itself.
You can't say that because scry wasn't evergreen between 8th Edition and New Phyrexia it couldn't have been in the set. Wizards could have put any Modern-legal card from that time period into the set. There reason for not including Serum Visions was not that it would have been a bad card for the set or didn't need a reprint, but just because scry wasn't in the set. If scry was about to become evergreen, this shouldn't have been a problem and they could have just put in 1 scry card.
I think it's not a matter of Scry about to become evergreen, it's that I think they wanted Scry to start being evergreen at Origins, not at MM2, so it would have been a problem to put a single Scry card into MM2 if there wasn't a Scry theme in the set.
Menace was always a deciduous ability before the change, so I think that's how Stormblood Berserker could make it in, but with the old wording.
The whole 8th Edition to New Phyrexia "justification" was just what I could think up of, taking into account Fear was also in the set, despite being not evergreen (or deciduous).
Wait a minute. If Scry was becoming evergreen, then they can't even use their excuse for not including Serum Visions in Modern Masters 2! They said that they couldn't because Scry wasn't a mechanic in the set. If Scry is evergreen, that shouldn't matter!
Of course they can - it becomes an evergreen with Origins, so it didn't have the status for MM2
Except then they have to justify why they couldn't make Scry evergreen starting with MM2, which I don't think they can.
Actually I think it was "they didn't want to", not because "they couldn't". Most probably with the reason of "Modern Masters 2 was a Limited-Print supplementary set, not a good place to implement changes regarding mechanics affecting design for Standard sets onward. Besides, Scry was not an evergreen mechanic between 8th Edition and New Phyrexia. Fear was. That is why Stormblood Berserker didn't have Menace."
The game is supposed to continue through time with new cards coming out every few months. You want to go back in time and get a Tarmogoyf in a $3 booster? Tough luck, you weren't playing yet at that point. There will be new great, fun cards to play with in the current sets and the yet-to-be released sets that you can get in on. This is how it's supposed to be, how it always was. Cards in each set get more hard to obtain as time passes since the set was released. That's the nature of a game like this. There's no way to negate that linear aspect of the game without greatly altering a core element of the experience.
For example, if Legions packs now cost $30 each (I know they're still only around $6 - $8), you could say "I want to be able to get Akroma and I can't afford a bunch of $30 packs!" But if it was 2010 when you said that, you'd be able to get Iona in a $3.99 Zendikar pack. And if you missed that you could get an Avacyn in a $3.99 Avacyn Restored pack. The game goes on! You can't go back in time and counter the fact that cards from sets that are printed for a limited time will eventually become harder to get. That's part of the beauty of the game and the soul of its collectible side.
You need the state your definition of "The Game", I think. "There will be new great, fun cards to play with in the current sets" don't seem to apply to Vintage, Legacy or Modern most of the time. It only applies to Standard, Limited and EDH.
Exactly where is Magic going wrong though? I still see it producing 4 new sets a year like it has done way before the "Modern Supplementary" products we know today existed. "The Game" is still producing new great, fun cards to play with - except it's for Limited, Standard and EDH.
Yes, cards go out-of-print and are harder to get over time. If you weren't playing the game then, you wouldn't be able to get the card when it was at its lowest. "That's the part of the beauty of the game and the soul of its collectible side"... again, you need to define your meaning of "The Game" - beauty of what Game? You need to realize fundamentally each format is it's "own game" and that you can't describe the whole of Magic with the definition of one of them.
What you're implying is the "playability" of the card should go out with time as well? Like in Standard? I can't play Faeries or Jund in Standard any more nor can I go back in time to play them again. But Modern is non-rotating, as are the Eternal Formats (and EDH). These formats, inherently, do not fit into your definition of "beauty of the game" - they aren't constantly changing.
Why not keep inventing new Modern staples for each era of Magic? Occasional reprints in new expansion sets are good, as well as a steady influx of new cards in each new set. You can play Modern without using any cards prior to the last few years if you weren't around before then and weren't able to get a lot of Zendikar, etc. The game is limitless, it's always expanding because new sets are being made, so we're always in different eras of the game as time goes on. With the Modern Masters mentality, Wizards could just decide to stop printing new sets, and as time goes on just keep coming out with reprint pools from all the cards that exist thus far. That's the road that Modern Masters hints towards.
"The game is limitless"
That statement is very wrong. Even MaRo states that Magic's resources are finite and they have to be very careful about using it. It is very easy to think that the game is limitless from a broad perspective, but did you work out the details when designing cards for the each format? Restrictions set in, and while it does breed creativity, restrictions still reduces possibilities.
"The Game" is still expanding because of this careful planning. If you went in and just designed thinking it is limitless, "The Game" will abruptly end when you reach that finite end. We're in different eras of "The Game" - only Standard is. There is no such thing as a "Modern Masters Mentality" - that mentality is the same for Modern, Vintage, Legacy. These three formats have not "been expanding because new sets are being made", at least, not from a occasional card or two at best.
"New Modern Staples for each era of Magic" Okay, how are you going to that? Increase the power levels cards in new sets to render the old ones obsolete? How far can you go with that plan? Ban old cards so people have to play with the new ones? That's called "Standard Rotation" and it's already a format on its own.
People want to play with cards from eras past that they didn't get the chance to. Just like you consider "The Game" evolving and changing to be "The Beauty of the Game", there are people that consider being able to experience eras past, "going back in time and freezing it all over" to be "The Beauty of Modern/Vintage/Legacy, the game".
Magic printed Modern Masters (and other Supplementary Products) to cater to these people, the same way they continue to produce 4 new sets for collectors like you.
"Wizards could just decide to stop printing new sets, and as time goes on just keep coming out with reprint pools from all the cards that exist thus far. That's the road that Modern Masters hints towards." - You're overimagining it - have you not seen the complains about "Limited Print Runs" everyone was having about MM but they weren't yielding to. It's like worrying that every set will be replaced with Commander: the Expansion since Wizards produce Commander products every year (and are a lot more generous with the print runs).
Actually, the reduced presence of Protection and the removal of Intimidate and Landwalk does make sense from a gameplay perspective.
Intimidate is essentially "Unblockable unless your opponent is playing the same color as you and/or has colorless creatures".
Landwalk is "Unblockable if you're playing a land of some kind (usually basic)", which does usually mean "Unblockable if you play a a certain color".
Protection is self-explanatory. It is also "Unblockable by creatures of the that color".
Essentially all three abilities are evasion "determined by color". Protection does a lot more, so I think that was why they moved it to a deciduous mechanic instead, since it does have a lot more applications other than merely evasion.
Well, seeing Limited is the #1 to Wizards...
Evasion "determined by color" feels quite "unfair" in Limited, where you would play a creature with Intimidate/Landwalk/Protection regardless of opposing decks because you just need the creature. It creates a scenario where you can be disadvantaged (or vice versa) for the choice of the color you and your opponent played in Limited. No, it doesn't turn the game completely one-sided since the game is still very interactive, but it doesn't halt the bad feeling that a card is particularly effective against you but not anyone else because of the colors you are playing and when the effectiveness comes in the form of "unblockable", it's only going to feel worse.
Being on creatures, they are not sideboard material like Celestial Purge. By granting evasion, they are not like other "Color-hate" creatures like Witchstalker, which can at least be dealt in combat (Direct removal may not be prevalent in all Limited decks/games, but combat almost always is). Without direct removal, you're simply left with taking damage from a creature that was unblockable because of the color you chose in a Limited Game (which you don't really have much of a choice when it comes to optimal deckbuilding).
I can see that by describing it, I make it sound like a very big problem when it is actually not - it doesn't actually happen in most Limited Games. But that doesn't stop the unpleasant feeling when it does happen and I think they just determined that the feeling isn't worth it.
Now we have Menace, evasion that will be "active" regardless of your opponent's deck, but your opponent can also deal with it with any deck (as long as they have the creatures, which they should in Limited, at least). From a purely mechanic standpoint, Menace is a more "balanced form of evasion for every Limited deck".
You may not be a winner, but you did pretty well overall. It could have been MUCH worse; I split a box where our only mythic was Tezzeret.
Yes. I'm aware my box could have easily been much worse, given how much more variable foils are compared to non-foils. Really thankful for the foils.
I got too busy listing my box and went off-track and forgot about the main point concerning drafting - I know 1 box is definitely not statistic material, but given how my non-foils fared and the value of my box was saved by the foils (which is as mentioned, a very variable factor) and as mentioned in the initial post, only about 8 packs held value worth the price of the pack, assuming that the 8 cards I mentioned weren't in the same packs (since I couldn't remember the composition of the packs).
This box was lucky that even if I didn't draft it and opened it, the total value would have been the same (pretty well overall), but had this box been opened and sold as single packs or used for (regular) drafts, only 1/3rd of the packs would "hold value or more".
Even more so in a draft, where each person opens 3 packs, pretty much only 1 card (Foil Kozilek) would carry enough value for all 3 packs. Even opening any of the other 7 cards would not cover 3 packs, meaning you either had to open some other (slightly) valuable card to make up for the difference, depending on which card you opened. A foil Smash to Smithereens may roughly cover a pack, but if you're drafting, you basically need to open a Mythic or the foil Remand from my box to make up for your draft costs.
It would be impossible for all players to be winners - only 1 card commands value over the entire 3 draft packs, and there are only other 7 cards that are worth around pack price or more. It would probably end up along the lines of "3 other people broke about even from their packs and the rest lost" or "1 other winner from combined packs, 1 other person who broke even, and the rest lost." That's about 1/4th to 1/8th a chance to be a "winner" by regular drafting - which is technically worse than opening packs (at 1/3rd) even.
This variance will hold true whether the box is decent, a winner or not (not counting wrongly packaged boxes, of course).
I wouldn't say what I did was the absolute correct choice (buying a box to draft and keeping all the cards), even if boxes do generally "balance out more", they still don't completely "balance out" and can still skew in both directions. It also prevents value-drafting since the cards will eventually belong to the owner anyway, so it gives a proper "taste" of the Limited format. So I do believe my choice was still the most optimal, at least from a Limited-Format perspective.
Definitely not a winner - I've got a below-average number of Mythics in a set where most of the values are in the Mythics. In fact if you took the numbers from the post above, I only got the average value in the commons and uncommons, my rares amount to about 2/3rd of the average box value and the Mythics, less than half of the average value. The total from the nonfoils would be about only $100 based on the information above.
Fortunately for me, my foils were quite a great lot:
I got the most expensive foil common and uncommon from my box, as well as 2 foil rares and a foil mythic. A rough estimate would be that the combined value of my foils is slightly higher than the combined value of my non-foils.
Since I pre-ordered a box before release (and I don't buy online), the total value I got would still be a loss, but not a terribly huge one. I'm okay with it and am glad the foils helped a lot in minimizing the losses, since I knew from the start I wanted to draft this set and usually the better decision is to get an entire box to draft with my playgroup (since I keep all the cards and the variance of an entire box is usually lower.)
I can't remember the composition of each pack (obviously), but assuming every single card worth about pack price is in a separate booster, only about 8 boosters (1/3rd of the box) would have contained a card that would pay for the pack.
Urgh, does anyone here have any experience in building an EDH-cube?
I may have mentioned this already, but I thought that building one would get rid of several problems at once:
1) I have piles of pretty foils, but no decks for them
2) I have piles of "that's kinda cool but not very comptetitive" cards that I'd like to use one day
3) It would liven up our meta. Drafting a deck and playing with it means that no one knows exactly what to expect and there won't be T1 infinite combos...
You should definitely head to the Community Thread over at the EDH section. Pretty sure there are quite a number of people with EDH-Cubes and willing to give advice there.
EDIT: Apparently they said there was en error when I posted, but the post still appears here fine, although it doesn't the thread itself doesn't update itself with this post as the latest post. Weird...
EDIT 2: Never mind, apparently the thread updated after I did the first edit wondering why it didn't.
I decided to take apart all but one of my EDH decks and put them in their own binder,this way I can figure out exactly what I ill need to order for my next deck. However,I don't see much point in taking a part my 99 mountain ashling deck lol
Take it apart last. It's always great to take apart a deck easy to take apart after taking apart and sorting out several EDH decks.
It wouldn't take you much longer to build it again anyway.
This one of those cards that feels like it needs both too much work and too much cost to get its effect going strong, which doesn't feel worth it.
Still looks potentially fun, it just feels like one could get a lot better results (and the same fun) from other cards for the same effort and cost put in.
"Slain, possibly permanently. The chaos-seeking satyr Planeswalker Xenagos broke into the realm of the gods by whipping up a mighty revel, joining the ranks of the gods himself. Elspeth struck him down for his insolent crime, using the Godsend weapon to destroy the upstart satyr in a dramatic battle in Nyx. Xenagos's body tumbled out of Nyx and collapsed onto the ground of Theros, lifeless and defeated. Whether he perished utterly, as Heliod hoped, or whether his essence descended into Theros's Underworld, as mortals on Theros usually do, is unknown. So Xenagos's true fate is so far uncertain."
So this is a case of Schrödinger's god!
I get this feeling that almost every planeswalker is going to enter a "uncertain fate", if we're going to the "Planeswalkers are the Superheroes of Magic", so that they can be brought back later when necessary.
Venser is the only exception, but that's because I think Venser is why they set the entire "uncertain fate" thing for Planeswalkers up. They aren't breaking their stand on "dead is dead", Yawgmoth and Venser won't be returning, but as of now most (if not all) planeswalkers will be suffering from "uncertain fates", since "uncertain fate doesn't mean not dead" and since the planeswalkers are heading in the superheroes direction, they can only be subjected to "uncertain fate".
Basically it's the dramatic version of the cold storage (where Tezzeret is chilling now without the drama) for planeswalkers.
So far, Ugin is the only exception, but considering his entire link to the Eldrazi, the entire Tarkir felt more like they did it to "introduce him to us" rather than to actually "bring him back" - they could have opted for some storyline where Ugin simply prepared the Hedron beforehand and healed/imprisoned himself and have Sarkhan release him without any of the time travel aspect, but I would imagine it would have less of an impact on us in terms of Ugin's characterization, especially with Sorin.
The following reflects only my opinion on the matter of the draft pick.
Yeah, but at the end of the day, what does winning the Grand Prix really get you?
At the point of drafting, there is no guarantee that picking the "correct" card for your deck will still guarantee you the win. Yes, it may have turned out that not picking the Burst Lightning might have caused Pascal to not win some games, but that was all in hindsight after the games have ended. Hypothetically there was no guarantee that he would have won or loss with or without the card - yes, it's a Top 8 of a Grand Prix, but it is still a Limited format - there are no guarantees.
The only guarantee then was the value of the Foil Goyf - the price of a Foil Goyf is a "guaranteed factor" - Foil Goyfs weren't going to drop to low prices because of MM2 and certainly not because of a Top 8 Grand Prix.
With that guarantee in mind, it becomes a matter of comparison - he could go for the better "play" pick and try to win this Grand Prix and make it into the World Championships, but not be able to attend another Grand Prix (I'm going by what he said), or he could go for the "guarantee" pick which in this case, provides him enough to attend another Grand Prix at least and he still might stand a chance to win this Grand Prix while he's at it.
To compare it vaguely with Video Games, it's like you're down to your last life and it's before the boss fight. The game offers you an extra credit, but at the cost of power when fighting the boss.
It's not a particularly good comparison, since in Magic's case, the "extra credit" provided can be exchanged for cash and unlike Video Games, "defeating the boss" may or may not even feel like a necessary requirement for you to proceed and/or enjoy the game.
If I'm not wrong, the last physical Novel was Test of Metal - It's a running joke to me that after Test of Metal, Tezzeret was introduced to the creative team and deployed to Mirrodin to perform the first major Clockworking/Retcon exercise. He hasn't been seen in the game since then because he's the one in charge of the Retcon department. Oh, Tarkir happened because Tezzeret wasn't around in the office that period of time, I suppose. He'll be back in the game proper after they're done retconning the details they want out of anything before Innistrad.
On the actual topic of retcon, ultimately I think it's best not to take anything too seriously as canon. Creative is really composed of a group of people (not one Tezzeret) and most of them probably weren't really involved in the crafting of the worlds & stories back then - Dominaria being pretty much left a "Temporal Mess Plane" and Ravnica running between statuses (Guilds/No Guilds) pretty much showed a new "transition" of the old and new. We were literally running aimlessly with not much of a story until Innistrad - even Zendikar and the Eldrazi were probably just an attempt to make a overarching story, but they didn't get it together until Innistrad and only started fixing that story with Tarkir (and BFZ).
Actually, even Bolas is a victim of that, his motivation is pretty much "restore his power", but when he's linked to something, it's pretty much to showcase his trickiness and power... and that's about it. He's an overarching villain instead of a story, but he sort of lacks purpose now. His history is too entrenched to the "old story" it's gonna be a task to attempt to bring that up to the current masses - it wasn't even that well-known back then. Even Ob-Nixilis has a better backstory and motivation than he does now.
We ought to have a Block dedicated to Bolas and his "new backstory". We're already losing (or lost) the "Elder Dragon" concept anyway, might as well really clean it all up in return for a true detailed backstory of Bolas and what True Elder Dragons should be like in the "New, fully-controlled by Wizards Creative Story".
To be fair, if you're playing Zombies, you'll most probably have a Swamp on the battlefield regardless, so Zombie Master is likely to backfire on you as long as there's a Zombie on the opposing side(s), regardless of whether Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is around or not. In fact, in multiplayer, since Urborg makes all other players equally vulnerable to Zombies, it makes it less likely to backfire on you.
The regeneration part is where it gets annoying when it comes to backfiring.
I actually like this card a lot, (a good chance of) unblockable and regeneration seems like a fair trade-off for a mere +1/+1 most lords give (and Zombies have plenty of others to supply them P/T anyway).
This is why I think the absence of Scry in MM2 was a conscious decision. MM2 consists of several mechanics with only a handful of cards with the mechanic on them. Scry could easily be one of them, but they purposely removed it from MM2, because they wanted Scry to appear non-consecutively for its evergreen Origins appearance.
Basically I think it went:
"Should Scry be in MM2?"
"We're going to feature it in Origins, so no Scry for MM2."
"Okay, no Scry cards then."
To them, the consideration wasn't about Visions, it was about the mechanic and its apperance in products.
It wasn't an issue exclusive to Scry - MM2 felt like it had too much Limited-Focused during design - the commons and uncommons were mainly cards that fit the Limited themes rather than the necessity of reprints. This does not apply to the rares, so we had stuff like Daybreak Coronet and 2 Exalted cards (that were at rare).
Noticed how they revealed the FNM promo earlier than usual once we were all noticeably upset over Visions not being MM2? Only the announcement was made earlier - they planned the promo out way earlier, obviously. Visions was always intended to be the August FNM promo, right after Origins, the set that marks the point where Scry became evergreen was released. I think they saw it (Visions being a FNM promo) as a opportunity to celebrate Scry being evergreen with a valuable Modern Scry card. Clearly they didn't get the idea that we wanted Visions to be commonly-available, not as a promo - they probably thought we would go "Wow! They're printing Visions as a FNM promo to celebrate Scry's evergreen-status. Great Choice!" and then didn't include Scry (and it) in MM2 because they wanted it to "increase the excitement" when Scry hits evergreen and Visions as an FNM.
So basically, "Unable to fit" doesn't refer to "not adding a couple of cards with a mechanic into the set" like they did with Exalted. "Unable to fit" to them meant "We didn't want to add Scry itself to MM2 because it's going to be in Origins with its new evergreen-status and we want to contrast that by having the set before it not have Scry, otherwise the status doesn't feel new."
I'd better clarify that this is what I think the entire process behind Scry, Evergreen, MM2, Origins and the FNM promo is, because I'm pretty sure they know Visions is a valuable Modern card and they didn't accidentally miss it out - its exclusion in MM2, the FNM promo and the Scry evergreen-status were all linked and thought-out in their decisions. I may actually be completely wrong, but either way, the results have been a disaster for players in terms of the Visions card for Modern itself.
I think it's not a matter of Scry about to become evergreen, it's that I think they wanted Scry to start being evergreen at Origins, not at MM2, so it would have been a problem to put a single Scry card into MM2 if there wasn't a Scry theme in the set.
Menace was always a deciduous ability before the change, so I think that's how Stormblood Berserker could make it in, but with the old wording.
The whole 8th Edition to New Phyrexia "justification" was just what I could think up of, taking into account Fear was also in the set, despite being not evergreen (or deciduous).
Actually I think it was "they didn't want to", not because "they couldn't". Most probably with the reason of "Modern Masters 2 was a Limited-Print supplementary set, not a good place to implement changes regarding mechanics affecting design for Standard sets onward. Besides, Scry was not an evergreen mechanic between 8th Edition and New Phyrexia. Fear was. That is why Stormblood Berserker didn't have Menace."
You need the state your definition of "The Game", I think. "There will be new great, fun cards to play with in the current sets" don't seem to apply to Vintage, Legacy or Modern most of the time. It only applies to Standard, Limited and EDH.
Exactly where is Magic going wrong though? I still see it producing 4 new sets a year like it has done way before the "Modern Supplementary" products we know today existed. "The Game" is still producing new great, fun cards to play with - except it's for Limited, Standard and EDH.
Yes, cards go out-of-print and are harder to get over time. If you weren't playing the game then, you wouldn't be able to get the card when it was at its lowest. "That's the part of the beauty of the game and the soul of its collectible side"... again, you need to define your meaning of "The Game" - beauty of what Game? You need to realize fundamentally each format is it's "own game" and that you can't describe the whole of Magic with the definition of one of them.
What you're implying is the "playability" of the card should go out with time as well? Like in Standard? I can't play Faeries or Jund in Standard any more nor can I go back in time to play them again. But Modern is non-rotating, as are the Eternal Formats (and EDH). These formats, inherently, do not fit into your definition of "beauty of the game" - they aren't constantly changing.
"The game is limitless"
That statement is very wrong. Even MaRo states that Magic's resources are finite and they have to be very careful about using it. It is very easy to think that the game is limitless from a broad perspective, but did you work out the details when designing cards for the each format? Restrictions set in, and while it does breed creativity, restrictions still reduces possibilities.
"The Game" is still expanding because of this careful planning. If you went in and just designed thinking it is limitless, "The Game" will abruptly end when you reach that finite end. We're in different eras of "The Game" - only Standard is. There is no such thing as a "Modern Masters Mentality" - that mentality is the same for Modern, Vintage, Legacy. These three formats have not "been expanding because new sets are being made", at least, not from a occasional card or two at best.
"New Modern Staples for each era of Magic" Okay, how are you going to that? Increase the power levels cards in new sets to render the old ones obsolete? How far can you go with that plan? Ban old cards so people have to play with the new ones? That's called "Standard Rotation" and it's already a format on its own.
People want to play with cards from eras past that they didn't get the chance to. Just like you consider "The Game" evolving and changing to be "The Beauty of the Game", there are people that consider being able to experience eras past, "going back in time and freezing it all over" to be "The Beauty of Modern/Vintage/Legacy, the game".
Magic printed Modern Masters (and other Supplementary Products) to cater to these people, the same way they continue to produce 4 new sets for collectors like you.
"Wizards could just decide to stop printing new sets, and as time goes on just keep coming out with reprint pools from all the cards that exist thus far. That's the road that Modern Masters hints towards." - You're overimagining it - have you not seen the complains about "Limited Print Runs" everyone was having about MM but they weren't yielding to. It's like worrying that every set will be replaced with Commander: the Expansion since Wizards produce Commander products every year (and are a lot more generous with the print runs).
EDIT: Fixed spelling errors.
Intimidate is essentially "Unblockable unless your opponent is playing the same color as you and/or has colorless creatures".
Landwalk is "Unblockable if you're playing a land of some kind (usually basic)", which does usually mean "Unblockable if you play a a certain color".
Protection is self-explanatory. It is also "Unblockable by creatures of the that color".
Essentially all three abilities are evasion "determined by color". Protection does a lot more, so I think that was why they moved it to a deciduous mechanic instead, since it does have a lot more applications other than merely evasion.
Well, seeing Limited is the #1 to Wizards...
Evasion "determined by color" feels quite "unfair" in Limited, where you would play a creature with Intimidate/Landwalk/Protection regardless of opposing decks because you just need the creature. It creates a scenario where you can be disadvantaged (or vice versa) for the choice of the color you and your opponent played in Limited. No, it doesn't turn the game completely one-sided since the game is still very interactive, but it doesn't halt the bad feeling that a card is particularly effective against you but not anyone else because of the colors you are playing and when the effectiveness comes in the form of "unblockable", it's only going to feel worse.
Being on creatures, they are not sideboard material like Celestial Purge. By granting evasion, they are not like other "Color-hate" creatures like Witchstalker, which can at least be dealt in combat (Direct removal may not be prevalent in all Limited decks/games, but combat almost always is). Without direct removal, you're simply left with taking damage from a creature that was unblockable because of the color you chose in a Limited Game (which you don't really have much of a choice when it comes to optimal deckbuilding).
I can see that by describing it, I make it sound like a very big problem when it is actually not - it doesn't actually happen in most Limited Games. But that doesn't stop the unpleasant feeling when it does happen and I think they just determined that the feeling isn't worth it.
Now we have Menace, evasion that will be "active" regardless of your opponent's deck, but your opponent can also deal with it with any deck (as long as they have the creatures, which they should in Limited, at least). From a purely mechanic standpoint, Menace is a more "balanced form of evasion for every Limited deck".
For 1 a turn, you get to keep your hand, since the dragon only triggers on your end step.
Yes. I'm aware my box could have easily been much worse, given how much more variable foils are compared to non-foils. Really thankful for the foils.
I got too busy listing my box and went off-track and forgot about the main point concerning drafting - I know 1 box is definitely not statistic material, but given how my non-foils fared and the value of my box was saved by the foils (which is as mentioned, a very variable factor) and as mentioned in the initial post, only about 8 packs held value worth the price of the pack, assuming that the 8 cards I mentioned weren't in the same packs (since I couldn't remember the composition of the packs).
This box was lucky that even if I didn't draft it and opened it, the total value would have been the same (pretty well overall), but had this box been opened and sold as single packs or used for (regular) drafts, only 1/3rd of the packs would "hold value or more".
Even more so in a draft, where each person opens 3 packs, pretty much only 1 card (Foil Kozilek) would carry enough value for all 3 packs. Even opening any of the other 7 cards would not cover 3 packs, meaning you either had to open some other (slightly) valuable card to make up for the difference, depending on which card you opened. A foil Smash to Smithereens may roughly cover a pack, but if you're drafting, you basically need to open a Mythic or the foil Remand from my box to make up for your draft costs.
It would be impossible for all players to be winners - only 1 card commands value over the entire 3 draft packs, and there are only other 7 cards that are worth around pack price or more. It would probably end up along the lines of "3 other people broke about even from their packs and the rest lost" or "1 other winner from combined packs, 1 other person who broke even, and the rest lost." That's about 1/4th to 1/8th a chance to be a "winner" by regular drafting - which is technically worse than opening packs (at 1/3rd) even.
This variance will hold true whether the box is decent, a winner or not (not counting wrongly packaged boxes, of course).
I wouldn't say what I did was the absolute correct choice (buying a box to draft and keeping all the cards), even if boxes do generally "balance out more", they still don't completely "balance out" and can still skew in both directions. It also prevents value-drafting since the cards will eventually belong to the owner anyway, so it gives a proper "taste" of the Limited format. So I do believe my choice was still the most optimal, at least from a Limited-Format perspective.
Non-foil cards I got from my box that hold some value (or at least see some play in Modern):
3x Vines of Vastwood
3x Smash to Smithereens
Eldrazi Temple
Simic Growth Chamber
Cranial Plating
Electrolyze
Lightning Bolt
Remand
Mirran Crusader
Hurkyl's Recall
Creakwood Liege
Eye of Ugin
Daybreak Coronet
Splinter Twin
Spellskite
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Definitely not a winner - I've got a below-average number of Mythics in a set where most of the values are in the Mythics. In fact if you took the numbers from the post above, I only got the average value in the commons and uncommons, my rares amount to about 2/3rd of the average box value and the Mythics, less than half of the average value. The total from the nonfoils would be about only $100 based on the information above.
Fortunately for me, my foils were quite a great lot:
Evolving Wilds
Mana Leak
Telling Time
Smash to Smithereens
Dispatch
Remand
Ghost Council of Orzhova
Puppeteer Clique
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
I got the most expensive foil common and uncommon from my box, as well as 2 foil rares and a foil mythic. A rough estimate would be that the combined value of my foils is slightly higher than the combined value of my non-foils.
Since I pre-ordered a box before release (and I don't buy online), the total value I got would still be a loss, but not a terribly huge one. I'm okay with it and am glad the foils helped a lot in minimizing the losses, since I knew from the start I wanted to draft this set and usually the better decision is to get an entire box to draft with my playgroup (since I keep all the cards and the variance of an entire box is usually lower.)
I can't remember the composition of each pack (obviously), but assuming every single card worth about pack price is in a separate booster, only about 8 boosters (1/3rd of the box) would have contained a card that would pay for the pack.
EDIT: Added Card Tags
You should definitely head to the Community Thread over at the EDH section. Pretty sure there are quite a number of people with EDH-Cubes and willing to give advice there.
EDIT: Apparently they said there was en error when I posted, but the post still appears here fine, although it doesn't the thread itself doesn't update itself with this post as the latest post. Weird...
EDIT 2: Never mind, apparently the thread updated after I did the first edit wondering why it didn't.
Take it apart last. It's always great to take apart a deck easy to take apart after taking apart and sorting out several EDH decks.
It wouldn't take you much longer to build it again anyway.
Still looks potentially fun, it just feels like one could get a lot better results (and the same fun) from other cards for the same effort and cost put in.
I get this feeling that almost every planeswalker is going to enter a "uncertain fate", if we're going to the "Planeswalkers are the Superheroes of Magic", so that they can be brought back later when necessary.
Venser is the only exception, but that's because I think Venser is why they set the entire "uncertain fate" thing for Planeswalkers up. They aren't breaking their stand on "dead is dead", Yawgmoth and Venser won't be returning, but as of now most (if not all) planeswalkers will be suffering from "uncertain fates", since "uncertain fate doesn't mean not dead" and since the planeswalkers are heading in the superheroes direction, they can only be subjected to "uncertain fate".
Basically it's the dramatic version of the cold storage (where Tezzeret is chilling now without the drama) for planeswalkers.
So far, Ugin is the only exception, but considering his entire link to the Eldrazi, the entire Tarkir felt more like they did it to "introduce him to us" rather than to actually "bring him back" - they could have opted for some storyline where Ugin simply prepared the Hedron beforehand and healed/imprisoned himself and have Sarkhan release him without any of the time travel aspect, but I would imagine it would have less of an impact on us in terms of Ugin's characterization, especially with Sorin.
Yeah, but at the end of the day, what does winning the Grand Prix really get you?
At the point of drafting, there is no guarantee that picking the "correct" card for your deck will still guarantee you the win. Yes, it may have turned out that not picking the Burst Lightning might have caused Pascal to not win some games, but that was all in hindsight after the games have ended. Hypothetically there was no guarantee that he would have won or loss with or without the card - yes, it's a Top 8 of a Grand Prix, but it is still a Limited format - there are no guarantees.
The only guarantee then was the value of the Foil Goyf - the price of a Foil Goyf is a "guaranteed factor" - Foil Goyfs weren't going to drop to low prices because of MM2 and certainly not because of a Top 8 Grand Prix.
With that guarantee in mind, it becomes a matter of comparison - he could go for the better "play" pick and try to win this Grand Prix and make it into the World Championships, but not be able to attend another Grand Prix (I'm going by what he said), or he could go for the "guarantee" pick which in this case, provides him enough to attend another Grand Prix at least and he still might stand a chance to win this Grand Prix while he's at it.
To compare it vaguely with Video Games, it's like you're down to your last life and it's before the boss fight. The game offers you an extra credit, but at the cost of power when fighting the boss.
It's not a particularly good comparison, since in Magic's case, the "extra credit" provided can be exchanged for cash and unlike Video Games, "defeating the boss" may or may not even feel like a necessary requirement for you to proceed and/or enjoy the game.