Seems like WotC's only delaying the inevitable at this point since they know the Reserve List isn't going to sustain itself any longer for players to actually afford it which explains the recent rise of Chinese Counterfeits that are an existential threat to Paper Magic. What's even scarier is that WotC doesn't seem to have a problem with this even though the holo-stamp foils on modern Rares and Mythics suggest otherwise.
The stockholders obviously have their sights set on Arena which explains the current financial pressure to improve card quality for Paper Magic because they're probably afraid that the FTC will go after them once they're done investigating digital loot boxes. It's doubtful it will get very far due to how American legislation is. As for getting rid of MSRP, turns out it may be just as much of a threat towards the Singles Market as it is for Sealed Products.
Another reason for getting rid of the MSRP is probably retribution against Local Game Store owners for selling participation packs / cards online by hosting events that never really took place which explains why WotC kept releasing supplementary products to make up for the damage that these Local Game Store owners had made by being the straw that broke the camel's back in regards to their relationship with each other.
Stockholders want to see positive sales and profit margin growth. Arena/MTGO may have lower sales, for now, but the margin is likely much higher than paper. Paper has huge amount of sales but lower margin (compared to Arena/MTGO) mainly due to distribution costs. Distribution is really the piece that needs to be optimized in WotC's perspective to keep costs down to improve that margin. As more and more product gets distributed by big retailers (e.g. Walmart) and big online distributors (e.g. Amazon, eBay), the need for an LGS to distribute the product is becoming less. WotC can directly deal with Walmart and Amazon without the need of regional distributors to then distribute to an LGS and make the final sale.
The following numbers are just to illustrate my point. Let's assume the cost to make one Standard booster box landed is 10USD. WotC then sells booster box somewhere between 40-60USD to a regional distributor, the distributor will sell it for around 72USD. The LGS can then make the final sale at whatever price, let's say 95USD for an average Standard box. All of these numbers would be a percentage of an MSRP or whatever number they want. If WotC can cut out the middleman (regional distributor or LGS) then they can sell the box for more thus improving the margin. So Wotc sells box for around 72USD to Walmart or Amazon, and they can sell it directly for 95USD. That is a significant jump in margin and shareholders would rejoice. Having their own online store to sell will improve margins as well even with all the other costs associated with website maintenance and packaging. All of the website rumors and the loss of the MSRP is pointing to a distribution overhaul at WotC.
Players need a place to play the paper Magic yes, but WotC gets money from mainly sealed product sales. As long as product sells, they don't care where you play the game (kitchen table, library, lunch table, street corner, etc). The role of an LGS may be changing from a needed avenue to sell to the consumer to now direct-to-consumer.
Market sets the MSRP. If we refuse to buy packs at more than 3.99 MSRP is 3.99.
And yet if we refuse to buy at $3.99 they still try won’t go below a certain point so they can still make some profit. And they were already paying lower than $3.99 for packs so they could make profit. And WotC won’t sell below a certain point so they can still make a profit.
So what is the point of removing MSRP when the while point of it is to ensure that profits can be made by the involved parties?
FYI, there is a thread already in the General section on this topic. Seeing how boosters are rarely sold at MSRP from online markets at preorder or even now for current Standard, it makes MSRP redundant. Will this allow for some shady LGS price gouging, sure. However, people are more connected online to know what prices are and can shop elsewhere.
I feel this is part of typical corporate policy changes that should have minimal impact on the player. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out especially when more info comes out on future sets and the rumored online MtG marketplace that WotC is creating to sell product. I think that website will be more disrupting than removing MSRP for LGSs.
If WotC wants to sell more and more product on their own, they make stores competitors instead of distributors (which they are working on to sell from a website of their own in big numbers, which makes them a serious threat to any stores that might simply not be able to match their prices and absolutely not undercut them).
So simply removing MSRP does absolutely nothing, as it was meaningless to begin with.
Yup...If they can sell direct-to-consumer they can set the price more competitively for example 89 USD plus shipping [maximizing profits by cutting out the middle/little guys]. However, on the rumored MtG HASBRO site, I'll be surprised if single boxes would be shipped or if you need to order a minimum 2 boxes or case just so there is no separate packaging costs incurred other than slapping on a label. That may be the sole reason why they keep the distributor model so people who just want to buy a single box, bundle, or decks can through their LGS.
The loss of MSRP is more of a problem with supplemental sets I think. For example if we never knew the MSRP for UMA, the market would have been all over the place initially before a consensus on the price was reached. Interestingly, the preorder price was about the same as other Master sets if you assume the box topper on average was worth $50. Now they are about 400 from the starting 280ish in December.
This will put pressure on the LGS to keep prices real low for sealed product if WotC is maintaining a "low" price point thus setting an arbitrary MSRP which can change depending on success of a product. What would be intriguing is if WotC would raise Standard box prices while in rotation because of chase/lottery cards or if it will remain static and subtly influence secondary market values to be lower while it's still being printed? I think players have been quite clear that competitive Standard can get quite expensive. Either way, WotC would potentially make more money because typical online buyers may prefer to get factory direct boxes because of a discount or something. I know I would buy from them if the box was $5 less than my preferred online retailer.
The reason people expect deaths, the reason people want certain characters to die, the reason people are tired of them...its the longest story arc they have had in some time.
Era 1: MTG had no original storyline, Alpha to Arabian Nights. (Less than a year)
Era 2: Antiquities to Apocalpyse featuring Urza, Phyrexia Storyline. (About 7 years)
Era 3: Odyssey to Future Sight featuring Jeska, Post-Urza Storyline. (About 5 years)
Era 4: Future Sight to War of the Spark(?) featuring Nicol Bolas and the Gatewatch, Mending Storyline. (12 or more years)
Obviously there has been plot points threaded through the Eras such as Phyrexia, Karn, Nicol Bolas, Urza, Jaya, Jhoira, Teferi, etc.
I don't hate the gatewatch members, but even I'm feeling the fatigue with their storyline. Hopefully "War of the Spark" is the end of this current era and the story can start more "fresh-faced".
I agree with your well laid out timeline and can't believe the story has been going on that long. Assuming the Bolas arc is ending in WAR, I wonder if we have heard/seen the next antagonist if the stories blend together.
Someone mentioned it before, but I hope Liliana is the last one standing and she double-crosses Bolas.
8 candles remain lit before they started to Snuff Out one-by-one. The top most one could represent Bolas and then second tier could be one of the Gatewatch that usurps Bolas to be the sole Planeswalker. The stained glass appears to show what color(s) each Planeswalker represents.
the only good thing on wizards is, that they constantly change, so there is chance, change might happen for the better in the future
They usually take a full year or two to collect data then act accordingly. Yes, they do change but you may have to suffer for a couple years before they make the corrections. In recent memory, the dropping of the Core Set at Origins to come back to Core Set 2019. Going from 3-set blocks to 2, to now 1-ish. Now it seems like they are changing how far in advance they announce future sets and experimenting with direct-to-consumer selling of premium products.
I know Maro has to be excited, because it's one of his jobs to promote MtG. It is the unusual high level of excitement he has from this Hackathon and then the Tweet, that is on par to the release of Unstable IMO.
There's so much hope for a direct-to-Modern product.
Yeah, I have to wonder about that too but not getting my hopes up. Sure you can make a supplemental set with a new card type, but I hope that is not enough to make it innovative. He commented in the same vlog; just because something was always done a certain way doesn't mean it has to be that way. Maybe next week we will have some other info from the Mothership since they just teased us with a new product coming. I find it unusual that Ultimate Masters and now this set basically came out of nowhere. After WotC sent out those Box Toppers to tease UMA, they came out and announced it and then started spoilers soon after. Seems like they are taking a different approach to announce new sets or at least supplemental sets than before. Less to get upset about if you don't know about it I guess.
I saw this Tweet the other day from TCC and then a follow-up from Maro that the February product IS one of the products he is excited about. I didn't see any thread on this, so I started one.
What we know is it's Modern focused and came from WotC's "Hackathon" that focuses on new product SKUs. Products like Modern Masters, Unstable, Conspiracy, and Battlebond all came out of meetings like these in the past. In his podcast "Hackathon" from February 2018 it's possibly the set he worked on and vaguely describing. The details I could gather that could be applicable to this set are: Future worlds, mechanical elements to support story, reevaluate basic choices. All the product ideas were binned in high/low potential to be a hit (e.g. double faced cards, etc) and high/low obstacle (e.g. can we physically print it now). There were 5 ideas in the HP/LO bin and would gather this set is from there if it were to ship this February.
He talks about double faced cards being a big hit, but not something they want all the time. What they developed is something like DF cards but not DF cards, and could possibly be used infrequently say every 3 years or so.
It's more speculation if it's a booster set or precons, but at least we know something is coming in February and likely has Modern reprints with some new card design that is likely to make it a big hit.
Corporations think almost exclusively in the short term. I don't mean this like R&D is only designing sets a few months in advance or something, but the actual corporate decision-makers don't really give a crap about anything except the immediate. Essentially corporations feel like they're obliged to say "yeah but next year is next year and we can get our quarterly bonuses now so let's cash in whatever we can to make that happen." Not a happy thing, but it's why corporations do the things they do.
Corporations have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximize shareholder value. Absolutely everything else, even making good products, is only ever a means to this end.
This is a very accurate post. If you stay at a company long enough, you will see this. I find that if you listen to the investor earning calls, you get a little more insight on your company.
I'm sure HASBRO said to WotC that they need to grow their digital product to compete with Hearthstone and if they had full confidence in MTGO they would have dumped more money into it. I bet there were lots of discussions on the problems with MTGO to make the decision to build a new program. I just hope they actually do open it up to Mac users as well.
Assumption 3: mtgo has a closure that is already more or less planned.
Prediction: wizards will have to do something to compensate people for mtgo. They're risk too much consumer confidence otherwise. How they decide to go about this is interesting conjecture.
Likelihood: I doubt wizards is going to purposefully close mtgo. There's too much risk without enough upside.
I don't think they are obligated to compensate if they shut down MTGO. I don't play MTGO so I'm unaware of its redemption policy, but I think they would try to convince you to migrate to Arena if/when an end date was given with some codes. Digital products are a weird thing since you pay-to-play, like if you were to play the physical game, but you retain nothing if the game just ends. Think of all the smartphone games people play. If the developer stops updating and no longer works on your phone, you lose out on any purchases you made. You are not made whole when digital products go under, that is the crux of digital versus physical games IMO. All the paper decks or board games will still be playable on my kitchen table in 25 years.
A $30+ card probably won't be reprinted in a commander precon. If it is reprinted it will be in a "wacky draft" booster pack set, as others have speculated.
Not to mention releasing it in a Commander Pre-Con will not really bring its price down substantially, so al lyou would really be doing is harming Commander players who wanted the deck that Oubliette came in.
Or it could be in a Signature Spellbook for Liliana? I personally hope it to be in a draft set and likely at uncommon if I had to guess.
I assume the lack of information for WAR or follow-up sets is story related to not blow the current story arc which would cause a distraction from the current standard. It's obvious the Bolas arc is ending, so after WAR is the time to make changes if any. After WAR I expect the next Core Set will be the next Standard set which doesn't get a lot of hype to begin with unless they are using it to bridge into a new story arc.
Maro also hinted that he is very excited about a couple sets this year that are innovative, and I speculate that it's going to generate a lot of hype or possibly disrupt some formats (don't worry RL will still be intact). We know it's not WAR and can assume Core 2020 is not what he's excited for.
RNA (January)
WAR (April)
Core 2020 (July-ish if coming a year after Core 2019)????
Unknown set (October-ish)???? Beginning of new story
Maybe 3 or 4 other supplemental products like:
1) Signature Spellbook: A given, but nothing novel to this to be excited about.
2) Precons: CMD decks are likely but maybe other format Precons for other formats?, unlikely this is what they are excited about too
3) Stand-alone non-Standard sets: These sets as we know them are not enough to get Maro and WotC excited IMO, unless they break from the traditional MtG gameplay with a new back making a completely new MtG game/format. Now that would be exciting! I only bring this up, because people loved the Un-sets which are not tournament legal cards and exist in their own silver bordered environment. Conspiracy, Battlebond, and Masters were similar that these were only legal in formats in which they are legal in (good way to get reprints for formats). If they supported a newly backed game within the game with 1 or 2 supplemental sets a year, you can get the foundation of a new game/format and fix all the problems they inadvertently developed over the past 25 years. Add to the fact that it will be easier to use in Arena since this would be new pack sales for a non-rotating format that is separate from Standard.
It's baseless speculation on my part on what I described, but I agree that it is unusual for WotC to be this quiet for upcoming sets. They have a lot riding on Standard and they don't want to spoil any new storylines when the old one is wrapping up. Maybe something else happens in WAR than what we expect Deus ex machina? We have to trust that WotC is doing this with the best intentions for the game and their profit.
Trusted Advisor is really really good here. Not only does he reset Minister of Inquiries, since the new guy gets around summoning sickness, you can tap, bounce, play, and tap again. That's half your deck in one turn.
I'm not a rules expert by any means, but would that work to get TWO taps from the same Minister to pay for the ability in between upkeep and draw steps?
502.3. No player receives priority during the untap step, so no spells can be cast or resolve and no abilities can be activated or resolve. Any ability that triggers during this step will be held until the next time a player would receive priority, which is usually during the upkeep step. (See rule 503, “Upkeep Step.”)
At the beginning of the upkeep step, if you place the bounce trigger first on the stack from Trusted Advisor targeting Minister, then put Persistent Petitioners ability on the stack; you TAP Minister, Petitioners, Advisor, and you still need one other "advisor card" to pay the cost to resolve the ability. To me it looks like you need one more "advisor card" on the board (so 4 cards minimum are needed to play the ability of Petitioners during upkeep).
I'll reiterate a likely setup that's within reason.
T1: Mutavault, play Aether Vial
T2: Island, play a 1CMC Minister from Vial in main phase or opponents next end step, cast Persistent Petitioners [2 total "advisors" on battlefield plus mutavault] fully tapped out for mana though
T3: UNTAP, play 1CMC Advisor from Vial in upkeep (tick Vial up to 2 on stack first). Activate Mutavault and tap all creatures to play Petitioners ability. Mill 12 with 3 "advisor" cards plus Mutavault during upkeep. DRAW step. Continue play.
T4: UNTAP, Trusted Advisor trigger on stack targeting Minister, activate Petitioners ability (tapping all the same advisors and mutavault from T3), Vial in a 2CMC "advisor" if you want or Manic Scribe to be target for future bounce back. Resolve stack to play 2CMC "advisor"/Manic Scribe if you did (mill 3), mill 12, bounce back Minister. You milled 24 or 27 by T4 DRAW step and have 1 or 2 Persistent Petitioners, 1 Trusted Advisor, and 1 Mutavault at least in play now and probably 2 untapped lands if you didn't miss a land drop.
Again, please correct me if I'm not resolving these cards correctly in Modern based deck. I would think you would not need more than 8 Petitioners, plus draw like Visions of Beyond and good mill Archive Trap and Glimpse the Unthinkable. By turn 4, half of your opponents deck will be in the graveyard and likely scooped unless it feeds into their strategy.
For a Modern deck I see this using a Merfolk like build with Aether Vial being essential to cheat our Advisors.
T1. Mutavault, play Aether Vial
T2. Island, cheat in a 1CMC Advisor like Minister of Inquiries, play Persistent Petitioners
T3. land, cheat in any Advisor (1 or 2CMC). Pay for Mutavault and tap all Advisors to mill 12. You still have a U to play something or save for a Spell Pierce. If you played 2 Advisors this turn you could technically mill for 15 if you use Minister of Inquiries ability.
T4: Continue to mill and control magic.
Unless I'm missing a key card, T3 would be the earliest you can mill 12 using this card. I would consider running Trusted Advisor to bounce back the Minister to recharge the energy or use cards like Merrow Witsniper, Faerie Miscreant for clunky draw or Manic Scribe. Running Arcane Adaptation wouldn't be a bad thing in this case. Splashing gets you Glimpse the Unthinkable which should be auto include unless you wanted to stay mono blue.
I have been interested in Pauper of late and wished we had alternatives to "come into play tapped." Pauper is obviously a slower format, but I see Pauper as Legacy lite. "Come into play tapped" will slow the game, but I think Painlands e.g Brushland can be modified to common to offer an alternative play style.
Stockholders want to see positive sales and profit margin growth. Arena/MTGO may have lower sales, for now, but the margin is likely much higher than paper. Paper has huge amount of sales but lower margin (compared to Arena/MTGO) mainly due to distribution costs. Distribution is really the piece that needs to be optimized in WotC's perspective to keep costs down to improve that margin. As more and more product gets distributed by big retailers (e.g. Walmart) and big online distributors (e.g. Amazon, eBay), the need for an LGS to distribute the product is becoming less. WotC can directly deal with Walmart and Amazon without the need of regional distributors to then distribute to an LGS and make the final sale.
The following numbers are just to illustrate my point. Let's assume the cost to make one Standard booster box landed is 10USD. WotC then sells booster box somewhere between 40-60USD to a regional distributor, the distributor will sell it for around 72USD. The LGS can then make the final sale at whatever price, let's say 95USD for an average Standard box. All of these numbers would be a percentage of an MSRP or whatever number they want. If WotC can cut out the middleman (regional distributor or LGS) then they can sell the box for more thus improving the margin. So Wotc sells box for around 72USD to Walmart or Amazon, and they can sell it directly for 95USD. That is a significant jump in margin and shareholders would rejoice. Having their own online store to sell will improve margins as well even with all the other costs associated with website maintenance and packaging. All of the website rumors and the loss of the MSRP is pointing to a distribution overhaul at WotC.
Players need a place to play the paper Magic yes, but WotC gets money from mainly sealed product sales. As long as product sells, they don't care where you play the game (kitchen table, library, lunch table, street corner, etc). The role of an LGS may be changing from a needed avenue to sell to the consumer to now direct-to-consumer.
FYI, there is a thread already in the General section on this topic. Seeing how boosters are rarely sold at MSRP from online markets at preorder or even now for current Standard, it makes MSRP redundant. Will this allow for some shady LGS price gouging, sure. However, people are more connected online to know what prices are and can shop elsewhere.
I feel this is part of typical corporate policy changes that should have minimal impact on the player. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out especially when more info comes out on future sets and the rumored online MtG marketplace that WotC is creating to sell product. I think that website will be more disrupting than removing MSRP for LGSs.
Yup...If they can sell direct-to-consumer they can set the price more competitively for example 89 USD plus shipping [maximizing profits by cutting out the middle/little guys]. However, on the rumored MtG HASBRO site, I'll be surprised if single boxes would be shipped or if you need to order a minimum 2 boxes or case just so there is no separate packaging costs incurred other than slapping on a label. That may be the sole reason why they keep the distributor model so people who just want to buy a single box, bundle, or decks can through their LGS.
The loss of MSRP is more of a problem with supplemental sets I think. For example if we never knew the MSRP for UMA, the market would have been all over the place initially before a consensus on the price was reached. Interestingly, the preorder price was about the same as other Master sets if you assume the box topper on average was worth $50. Now they are about 400 from the starting 280ish in December.
This will put pressure on the LGS to keep prices real low for sealed product if WotC is maintaining a "low" price point thus setting an arbitrary MSRP which can change depending on success of a product. What would be intriguing is if WotC would raise Standard box prices while in rotation because of chase/lottery cards or if it will remain static and subtly influence secondary market values to be lower while it's still being printed? I think players have been quite clear that competitive Standard can get quite expensive. Either way, WotC would potentially make more money because typical online buyers may prefer to get factory direct boxes because of a discount or something. I know I would buy from them if the box was $5 less than my preferred online retailer.
I agree with your well laid out timeline and can't believe the story has been going on that long. Assuming the Bolas arc is ending in WAR, I wonder if we have heard/seen the next antagonist if the stories blend together.
Someone mentioned it before, but I hope Liliana is the last one standing and she double-crosses Bolas.
They usually take a full year or two to collect data then act accordingly. Yes, they do change but you may have to suffer for a couple years before they make the corrections. In recent memory, the dropping of the Core Set at Origins to come back to Core Set 2019. Going from 3-set blocks to 2, to now 1-ish. Now it seems like they are changing how far in advance they announce future sets and experimenting with direct-to-consumer selling of premium products.
Yeah, I have to wonder about that too but not getting my hopes up. Sure you can make a supplemental set with a new card type, but I hope that is not enough to make it innovative. He commented in the same vlog; just because something was always done a certain way doesn't mean it has to be that way. Maybe next week we will have some other info from the Mothership since they just teased us with a new product coming. I find it unusual that Ultimate Masters and now this set basically came out of nowhere. After WotC sent out those Box Toppers to tease UMA, they came out and announced it and then started spoilers soon after. Seems like they are taking a different approach to announce new sets or at least supplemental sets than before. Less to get upset about if you don't know about it I guess.
https://twitter.com/maro254/status/1092137659101675520
I saw this Tweet the other day from TCC and then a follow-up from Maro that the February product IS one of the products he is excited about. I didn't see any thread on this, so I started one.
What we know is it's Modern focused and came from WotC's "Hackathon" that focuses on new product SKUs. Products like Modern Masters, Unstable, Conspiracy, and Battlebond all came out of meetings like these in the past. In his podcast "Hackathon" from February 2018 it's possibly the set he worked on and vaguely describing. The details I could gather that could be applicable to this set are: Future worlds, mechanical elements to support story, reevaluate basic choices. All the product ideas were binned in high/low potential to be a hit (e.g. double faced cards, etc) and high/low obstacle (e.g. can we physically print it now). There were 5 ideas in the HP/LO bin and would gather this set is from there if it were to ship this February.
He talks about double faced cards being a big hit, but not something they want all the time. What they developed is something like DF cards but not DF cards, and could possibly be used infrequently say every 3 years or so.
It's more speculation if it's a booster set or precons, but at least we know something is coming in February and likely has Modern reprints with some new card design that is likely to make it a big hit.
Moved to Speculation - Wildfire393
This is a very accurate post. If you stay at a company long enough, you will see this. I find that if you listen to the investor earning calls, you get a little more insight on your company.
I'm sure HASBRO said to WotC that they need to grow their digital product to compete with Hearthstone and if they had full confidence in MTGO they would have dumped more money into it. I bet there were lots of discussions on the problems with MTGO to make the decision to build a new program. I just hope they actually do open it up to Mac users as well.
I don't think they are obligated to compensate if they shut down MTGO. I don't play MTGO so I'm unaware of its redemption policy, but I think they would try to convince you to migrate to Arena if/when an end date was given with some codes. Digital products are a weird thing since you pay-to-play, like if you were to play the physical game, but you retain nothing if the game just ends. Think of all the smartphone games people play. If the developer stops updating and no longer works on your phone, you lose out on any purchases you made. You are not made whole when digital products go under, that is the crux of digital versus physical games IMO. All the paper decks or board games will still be playable on my kitchen table in 25 years.
Or it could be in a Signature Spellbook for Liliana? I personally hope it to be in a draft set and likely at uncommon if I had to guess.
Maro also hinted that he is very excited about a couple sets this year that are innovative, and I speculate that it's going to generate a lot of hype or possibly disrupt some formats (don't worry RL will still be intact). We know it's not WAR and can assume Core 2020 is not what he's excited for.
RNA (January)
WAR (April)
Core 2020 (July-ish if coming a year after Core 2019)????
Unknown set (October-ish)???? Beginning of new story
Maybe 3 or 4 other supplemental products like:
1) Signature Spellbook: A given, but nothing novel to this to be excited about.
2) Precons: CMD decks are likely but maybe other format Precons for other formats?, unlikely this is what they are excited about too
3) Stand-alone non-Standard sets: These sets as we know them are not enough to get Maro and WotC excited IMO, unless they break from the traditional MtG gameplay with a new back making a completely new MtG game/format. Now that would be exciting! I only bring this up, because people loved the Un-sets which are not tournament legal cards and exist in their own silver bordered environment. Conspiracy, Battlebond, and Masters were similar that these were only legal in formats in which they are legal in (good way to get reprints for formats). If they supported a newly backed game within the game with 1 or 2 supplemental sets a year, you can get the foundation of a new game/format and fix all the problems they inadvertently developed over the past 25 years. Add to the fact that it will be easier to use in Arena since this would be new pack sales for a non-rotating format that is separate from Standard.
It's baseless speculation on my part on what I described, but I agree that it is unusual for WotC to be this quiet for upcoming sets. They have a lot riding on Standard and they don't want to spoil any new storylines when the old one is wrapping up. Maybe something else happens in WAR than what we expect Deus ex machina? We have to trust that WotC is doing this with the best intentions for the game and their profit.
I'm not a rules expert by any means, but would that work to get TWO taps from the same Minister to pay for the ability in between upkeep and draw steps?
502.3. No player receives priority during the untap step, so no spells can be cast or resolve and no abilities can be activated or resolve. Any ability that triggers during this step will be held until the next time a player would receive priority, which is usually during the upkeep step. (See rule 503, “Upkeep Step.”)
At the beginning of the upkeep step, if you place the bounce trigger first on the stack from Trusted Advisor targeting Minister, then put Persistent Petitioners ability on the stack; you TAP Minister, Petitioners, Advisor, and you still need one other "advisor card" to pay the cost to resolve the ability. To me it looks like you need one more "advisor card" on the board (so 4 cards minimum are needed to play the ability of Petitioners during upkeep).
I'll reiterate a likely setup that's within reason.
T1: Mutavault, play Aether Vial
T2: Island, play a 1CMC Minister from Vial in main phase or opponents next end step, cast Persistent Petitioners [2 total "advisors" on battlefield plus mutavault] fully tapped out for mana though
T3: UNTAP, play 1CMC Advisor from Vial in upkeep (tick Vial up to 2 on stack first). Activate Mutavault and tap all creatures to play Petitioners ability. Mill 12 with 3 "advisor" cards plus Mutavault during upkeep. DRAW step. Continue play.
T4: UNTAP, Trusted Advisor trigger on stack targeting Minister, activate Petitioners ability (tapping all the same advisors and mutavault from T3), Vial in a 2CMC "advisor" if you want or Manic Scribe to be target for future bounce back. Resolve stack to play 2CMC "advisor"/Manic Scribe if you did (mill 3), mill 12, bounce back Minister. You milled 24 or 27 by T4 DRAW step and have 1 or 2 Persistent Petitioners, 1 Trusted Advisor, and 1 Mutavault at least in play now and probably 2 untapped lands if you didn't miss a land drop.
Again, please correct me if I'm not resolving these cards correctly in Modern based deck. I would think you would not need more than 8 Petitioners, plus draw like Visions of Beyond and good mill Archive Trap and Glimpse the Unthinkable. By turn 4, half of your opponents deck will be in the graveyard and likely scooped unless it feeds into their strategy.
T1. Mutavault, play Aether Vial
T2. Island, cheat in a 1CMC Advisor like Minister of Inquiries, play Persistent Petitioners
T3. land, cheat in any Advisor (1 or 2CMC). Pay
T4: Continue to mill and control magic.
Unless I'm missing a key card, T3 would be the earliest you can mill 12 using this card. I would consider running Trusted Advisor to bounce back the Minister to recharge the energy or use cards like Merrow Witsniper, Faerie Miscreant for clunky draw or Manic Scribe. Running Arcane Adaptation wouldn't be a bad thing in this case. Splashing
Common Painland cycle