I feel like I´m usually one for calling out others for their negativity, but ... everything about this product is SO terrible. It´s such an ugly mess. The fact that availability is subject to an unreliable website and people have to ask on a forum to know what site it is, or you have to go to a GP, uneven distribution depending on location, horribly overprice luxury versions of existing cards, basically fake collectors´ items, tacked onto a regular booster box, the hoarding and secondary market exploitation that is sure to follow, the bypassing of local game stores, the watering down of the term Masterpiece ... I just think that everything is wrong with what they´re doing here.
Just to add this to the fire, this product is only being sold in the USA and Canada as far as I have heard. This means that scalpers are going to buy this in large quantity to sell for double to triple the cost of purchase to buyers outside of the country. So this product will vanish in the first ten minutes and most of it will not even end up going to the target buyers, and the kicker is that wizards could have just sold the product to out of country buyers and stopped this. I mean seriously, this is free money if they just printed more and shipped it to other countries.
With the Amazon deal I thought Wizards was being greedy and stupid, now I just think they are stupid.
You will also be able to buy it from channel Fireball so long as you are willing to go to one of their events to get it. Might also want to watch amazon too.
I am honestly curious as to why you want to get the item in question, are you simply wanting to get the limited edition cards for a collection?
I'm sick of the neowalkers a lot more than I am of Bolas. I think Bolas should kill a couple of them. Kill Domri, Dovin, Huatli, Samut, Tibalt, the other less iconic ones. Heck, why not kill Gideon too. Yawgmoth felt a lot more threatening and evil than some dragon with attitude. Back in the good old days, black was Satanic. The game felt a lot more serious. It's degenerated into a comic book.
They want to be marvel so hard that there are probably restraining orders involved.
And yeah I want more evil walkers running around along with more new walkers in general, that way you can take the Game of Thrones approach and just kill them at the drop of a hat. If the neo walkers are so much weaker than the old walkers then have the mana stones to show it by killing them at the same rate of this little piggy. Walkers should have never really become the focal point of the stories in the first place, get back to the actual worlds and have the walkers doing this nonsense in the background please.
You know, I honestly wonder why this game is moving towards being more conservative, especially the humans, when some of the popular stuff on TV can go full on graphic like Game of Thrones and the Walking Dead. It clearly shows that a mature consumer base has no true problem with sexy and bloody so long as there is an engaging plot.
Now it should be stated that there is a difference between objectification and art. The Statue of David and the Venus De Milo are art with no real ulterior motive behind them (as far as I know, I am not an arts major.) A good example of objectification would be those old Hardee's commercials were a scantily clad attractive person eats a burger in an attempt to get you to buy product. And yes if art is done wrong it can become a conduit of objectification, like with serum visions fnm card. But I do not ever remember Magic really using sexy to sell their product.
Lastly I think that this move to more conservative art makes the game less engaging and fun. Case and point is my favorite Legendary Radha, Heir to Keld. Her first card is just a perfect example of sexy confident woman without objectification. The angle and facial expression are perfect in empowering the character along with some awesome flavor text, heck even the angled art gave the feeling of see her through the eyes of a dead or dying man. But the New card Grand Warlord Radha feels flat and emotionless her pose is not dianamic and her facial expression makes her look she has zero emotion, even the flavor text is bland.
Honestly after seeing how unbalanced the guilds were I quickly decided not to participate in this event. It is really going to be just Dimir and Golgari playing, Dimir for winning and Golgari in hopes of getting that one cash card. All the other guild are way to weak in a limited setting, and they do not look all that great in constructed either.
A few years back I argued that Wizards should recognize the Second market and its effects on the game. Granted this was due to the fact I was already noticing the change in value across the rarities, but I still regret arguing that in light of the fact that Wizards appears to have noticed the second market in the wrong way.
..................Are we entering the Revenge of the Sith phase of Magic? Because I feel like screaming "you were supposed to be the chosen one!" at this game right now.
I have to wonder what the Survey's are telling Wizards.
I dont buy sealed.
I dont draft.
I dont play at my local.
I buy singles from my local.
I sell singles to my local.
I buy and play 99% of the time online.
Am I the outlier, or the trending increasing %?
They still do surveys??? I am honestly surprised if they do, because I personally thought they just put ether soaked rags on their faces and blurt out things.
Honestly I thought Wizards was just trying to do what they thought was for the best for magic, what they thought would be more fun. Now they are setting fire to the house and flipping off the people who helped them build a nearly 3 decade card empire............ Well I guess maybe it is more fun, for them at least.
On the card stock issue: Wizards of the Coast isn't trying to kill paper magic. To understand how they think you have to take your feet out of the role of being a MtG fan and put them in the shoes of a major corporation (or Ainz Ooal Gown if you're a fan of the overlord manga). The end objective of Hasbro is to make as much money as possible, then use that money to make even more money. In a sense, they can be viewed as a person whose measure of self worth is based on how big they can make their bank account. Because the corporation as an entity is annexed from any sense of human mortality and need there is no true goal beyond "make lots of money".
Wizards of the Coast created MtG Arena because they recognized that MTGO is dated and made for poor streaming presentation. People here are thinking that Arena is being made for players, but in reality it is being built so that people can stream Magic the Gathering on social media like YouTube and Twitch. Why? Because even if someone isn't horribly familiar with the game, the sound effects, voice over work, and action on the screen make even the most lazy and boring stream of the game far more enjoyable to watch. MTGO, on the other hand, completely rides on the laurels of the person conducting the presentation. YouTube view counts and total time watched do not lie, people.
The card quality issue is also part of this money making mind set. The company wants to get away with the lowest quality printing and inking processes they can find while still producing something good enough that people will fork money over for, and I believe they have succeeded in that for the most part. People are complaining about card quality on youtube, but obviously this hasn't stopped droves of people from buying cards anyway, because how else is someone going to play the game? They got to keep up to date with the latest cards and decks, so to Hasbro it's basically a bunch of angry dogs on sticks trying to occasionally nip the owner. The dogs can try to nip them, but at the end of the day they are still eating the same dog food as before and probably in about the same quantity. Heck, if they have enough dogs they might even break the sales records on dog food.
So, basically people are kind of deluding themselves into thinking that they actually matter somehow to the company. The company doesn't care about morality, doesn't care about quality outside of cost efficiency, and doesn't care about individual people. What they do care about is the giant amorphous blob known as the consumer base that they draw money from and prod with sticks, the stockholders who want more money to inflate their sense of personal achievement, and that the people they hired up as part of this entire scheme are working their best to help achieve the objective of "make more money".
I mean, Tolarian Community College videos are kind of cute and appeal to people who are not really knowing of this, but the only way wizards is changing anything is if Hasbro goes bankrupt, the IP is set free to the wind, and by sheer luck some startup picks up the franchise and runs with it.
Kind of a nasty reality to have to type out, but I'm pretty sure there are tons of people that just don't understand this mindset and believe the company still has some kind of "we care about you" attitude with the surveys and such. Those survey's are information gathering used in statistical analysis. If someone puts a rant in the extra feedback box they might take it to someone further up the chain, but if whatever is posted there meets the expectations from risk assessment it's basically blowing hot air.
I think we will see changes before Hasbro goes bankrupt, we are seeing them now. Like you said companies only care about profit, so when Wizard's Magic starts losing profit as it is right now, things start moving. Latest quarterly came out and in the category Magic is in only Monopoly made an increase in profits while the rest of the category lost a collective 50 million in profit. I do not know how much of that is on Magic, but we can view some of Wizard's action to see how affected they are by it.
They spat out a bunch of different products which seem to have had mixed reviews at best, they are trying to cut out the middle man with selling specialty product on their web site but quickly cave to Channel fireball to try and sell them at the events too to pull in more event players. Then there is also the Amazon deal now. Wizards right now is trying to find every possible way to move as much sealed product they can as fast as they can. Not sure what the end result of this will be but I do not see LGSs doing better for it, and with them go the fan base as we lose out major meeting places.
What I think might happen in the end is if all this cash grabbing fails with complete disregard to the players, both pro and normal, Wizard's Magic might hit a major low. At such a point we might end up with Hasbro getting involved and possible restaffing to save the cash cow.
This power shift does is greatly increases the price for back bone cards needed for playing in constructed, Standard or Modern. When you have to pay over $20 for just one card, you really feel the burn when you have to pay for a play-set. Imagine how a new player would feel when told that in order to be competitive in standard constructed they would need to shell out $100 to 150 just to be considered competition. That possible new player would walk away from the game and then possibly slap their friend over the head for recommending the game.
The last time I truly felt there was power in the lower rarities was back when Avacyn Restored was in rotation. Using a cheapo soulbond deck I managed to go neck and neck with a max value Jund deck. I lost in the third game, but not once did I ever think to myself "That guy won because he poured buckets of money out for the best rares," I was thinking "Holy *****! This deck is so much fun, I wanna play with this again!" And that deck mainly had commons and uncommons in it with a few exceptions like wolfir silverheart, but he never really went high in price. I think that soulbond only cost me $50 to make and it was worth every penny.
A retailer said it best when he stated that if he had a choice between routinely having ten customers paying $100 each vs a hundred customers paying $10 each, he would pick the hundred. Why? Because it was more stable and reliable, it helped give the image of a successful business, and made the products he was selling look appealing while still affordable. Right now with magic we are moving towards the ten paying $100 each model, and its honestly not healthy. It is harder to get new blood in and stay in, actual card focused stores become far more reliant on the whales to keep themselves afloat, and when something does happen to a whale the effects can be devastating to the store. The only places that can thrive in this trend are big box stores because cards are a side business for them, and online stores since they can run their business from just about anywhere. And neither of the two will not be able to move the packs they have if there is no real value in those packs, since any knowledgeable player would know not to buy packs. So in the end moving the power/value to higher rarities and away from the lower is kinda hurting Wizards, because fewer consumers will buy the sealed merchandise and places to actually play the game could end up becoming rarities.
I know card price was not really the subject, but when the card power starts going to rare and mythic card there is a noticeable change in card prices.
They should have given the Boros Legion the Mechanic Soulbound or something similar. It is teamwork flavored and gives that old cop movie vibes of two cops working together to fight crime. Plus we could have explored an interesting mechanic.
Its Franchise Brands are LITTLEST PET SHOP, MAGIC: THE GATHERING, MONOPOLY, MY LITTLE PONY, NERF, PLAY-DOH and TRANSFORMERS.
...
Under its Game category, its Franchise Brands, MAGIC: THE GATHERING and MONOPOLY, headline its portfolio...
Forgive me but I cannot open the link from my phone.
I will agree that the loss of ToysRus played a part. But would it be a 50 million part? I would say no, that store had lost popularity some time ago so it's ability to move product would be small at best. As for the brands in the same catagory, with the exception of the petshop one since I have no clue about it, they are childhood staples that parents buy so I see them changing very little in sales. Monopoly is weird though, not sure why it is going up in sales.
But non the less I still say the pressure is still there from Hasbro (whether it is wizard's fault or not). And if Magic had been doing well, they would have stated it like they did with Monopoly. So at least we know Magic took a hit, we just don't know the numbers. But by going by how this set feels rushed and a bit too early for a return, I would still argue that there is some heat on the Dev team to pick up the lost revenue. And I just don't see this set doing that.
Creedmor pretty much took the words out of my mouth here, but I do want to add somethings.
I have to say is that Selesnya really needed to have 1/1 saprolings again, because it does not matter how fancy you make the token creatures when there is so much token hate in the room. Throw quality out the window and just use quantity already! I mean that seems to be Wizard's modus operandi at present anyway.
It also feels way too soon to have come back to Ravnica. Don't get me wrong, Ravnica is literally my childhood and I love it to death and this is probably true for a large portion of people in this forum. But this is what is making me concerned, we have come back to this plane three times now while other planes have not been seen for over a decade now. To me it feels less like this choice to return is less about story and more about the development team becoming more reliant on past success stories to stay alive. The set feels unbalanced to the point is feels a touch rushed with how pushed Dimir is and the other guilds feel under developed to the point they would need to bleed in Dimir mechanics just to feel competitive. It might have been better for this set to stay in development for a couple more years to balance out and for us the players to have more time to build anticipation for its eventual return.
Honestly it might have to do with how Hasbro's financial report for the first quarter of 2018 shows about a 20% drop in Magic sales, roughly a fifty million dollar drop. So there is a chance that the reason for this feeling of being rushed is because they felt some pressure to get results and they felt that Ravnica's pedigree might be the saving grace. Link is here for that report on the 20% drop in Magic sales: "Link".
Pretty sure that link never says Magic sales dropped 20%.
Just that their category was down 20%. Other games could have been the main driver of the decrease.
They mentioned Magic specifically first followed by Monopoly. Chances are those are the two biggest sellers of that catagory. I do not think Monopoly sells as much as Magic, when was the last time you saw someone even buy that board game? Chances are that that percentage is mainly Magic.
Link is here for that report on the 20% drop in Magic sales: "Link".
That's not Magic sales, it's the whole gaming category that's down 20%. Still probably doesn't bode well.
My mistake, but I would argue that Magic makes up the lion's portion of that revenue. So even if Magic only had 50% of that income (and lets be honest here, magic would be more than that) that would still be 25 million dollars in lost profit, so Hasbro be triggered for sure.
And no it does not bode well at all, in fact it kinda explains some of the actions Wizards has made recently. They spat out a ton of different products recently with possibly Dominaria and Battlebond being the most well received, the former being due to Richard Garfield (original creator) playing a major part in making the Dominaria set, not sure about the later other than reprints since I did not play it. But none the less, this most likely is making the dev team for magic nervous. They are losing noticeable profits which means that the products they are putting out are not selling and one of the only sets actually being seen positive this year is the one made by the original creator.
So this set and the next couple after it might decide what happens to magic in the future, or more accurately what will happen to the people currently running the dev department. Hence again I will say that this set feels unbalanced and rushed. Limited will be painful to watch, either you run black or blue Dimir cards in your deck or get curb stomped. Boros might put up a fight but I doubt it since its back bone cards are all high rarity, and Selesnya is just dead due to similar rarity issues plus bad token choices. I am not sure what will happen in standard, but considering how similar to scry is to servail, I would gamble Dimir colors will be prevalent till it rotates out.
Just to add this to the fire, this product is only being sold in the USA and Canada as far as I have heard. This means that scalpers are going to buy this in large quantity to sell for double to triple the cost of purchase to buyers outside of the country. So this product will vanish in the first ten minutes and most of it will not even end up going to the target buyers, and the kicker is that wizards could have just sold the product to out of country buyers and stopped this. I mean seriously, this is free money if they just printed more and shipped it to other countries.
With the Amazon deal I thought Wizards was being greedy and stupid, now I just think they are stupid.
I am honestly curious as to why you want to get the item in question, are you simply wanting to get the limited edition cards for a collection?
They want to be marvel so hard that there are probably restraining orders involved.
And yeah I want more evil walkers running around along with more new walkers in general, that way you can take the Game of Thrones approach and just kill them at the drop of a hat. If the neo walkers are so much weaker than the old walkers then have the mana stones to show it by killing them at the same rate of this little piggy. Walkers should have never really become the focal point of the stories in the first place, get back to the actual worlds and have the walkers doing this nonsense in the background please.
Now it should be stated that there is a difference between objectification and art. The Statue of David and the Venus De Milo are art with no real ulterior motive behind them (as far as I know, I am not an arts major.) A good example of objectification would be those old Hardee's commercials were a scantily clad attractive person eats a burger in an attempt to get you to buy product. And yes if art is done wrong it can become a conduit of objectification, like with serum visions fnm card. But I do not ever remember Magic really using sexy to sell their product.
Lastly I think that this move to more conservative art makes the game less engaging and fun. Case and point is my favorite Legendary Radha, Heir to Keld. Her first card is just a perfect example of sexy confident woman without objectification. The angle and facial expression are perfect in empowering the character along with some awesome flavor text, heck even the angled art gave the feeling of see her through the eyes of a dead or dying man. But the New card Grand Warlord Radha feels flat and emotionless her pose is not dianamic and her facial expression makes her look she has zero emotion, even the flavor text is bland.
A few years back I argued that Wizards should recognize the Second market and its effects on the game. Granted this was due to the fact I was already noticing the change in value across the rarities, but I still regret arguing that in light of the fact that Wizards appears to have noticed the second market in the wrong way.
..................Are we entering the Revenge of the Sith phase of Magic? Because I feel like screaming "you were supposed to be the chosen one!" at this game right now.
They still do surveys??? I am honestly surprised if they do, because I personally thought they just put ether soaked rags on their faces and blurt out things.
Honestly I thought Wizards was just trying to do what they thought was for the best for magic, what they thought would be more fun. Now they are setting fire to the house and flipping off the people who helped them build a nearly 3 decade card empire............ Well I guess maybe it is more fun, for them at least.
I think we will see changes before Hasbro goes bankrupt, we are seeing them now. Like you said companies only care about profit, so when Wizard's Magic starts losing profit as it is right now, things start moving. Latest quarterly came out and in the category Magic is in only Monopoly made an increase in profits while the rest of the category lost a collective 50 million in profit. I do not know how much of that is on Magic, but we can view some of Wizard's action to see how affected they are by it.
They spat out a bunch of different products which seem to have had mixed reviews at best, they are trying to cut out the middle man with selling specialty product on their web site but quickly cave to Channel fireball to try and sell them at the events too to pull in more event players. Then there is also the Amazon deal now. Wizards right now is trying to find every possible way to move as much sealed product they can as fast as they can. Not sure what the end result of this will be but I do not see LGSs doing better for it, and with them go the fan base as we lose out major meeting places.
What I think might happen in the end is if all this cash grabbing fails with complete disregard to the players, both pro and normal, Wizard's Magic might hit a major low. At such a point we might end up with Hasbro getting involved and possible restaffing to save the cash cow.
As for when, next spring since Wizards is going to be under some pressure for the next three quarters.
The last time I truly felt there was power in the lower rarities was back when Avacyn Restored was in rotation. Using a cheapo soulbond deck I managed to go neck and neck with a max value Jund deck. I lost in the third game, but not once did I ever think to myself "That guy won because he poured buckets of money out for the best rares," I was thinking "Holy *****! This deck is so much fun, I wanna play with this again!" And that deck mainly had commons and uncommons in it with a few exceptions like wolfir silverheart, but he never really went high in price. I think that soulbond only cost me $50 to make and it was worth every penny.
A retailer said it best when he stated that if he had a choice between routinely having ten customers paying $100 each vs a hundred customers paying $10 each, he would pick the hundred. Why? Because it was more stable and reliable, it helped give the image of a successful business, and made the products he was selling look appealing while still affordable. Right now with magic we are moving towards the ten paying $100 each model, and its honestly not healthy. It is harder to get new blood in and stay in, actual card focused stores become far more reliant on the whales to keep themselves afloat, and when something does happen to a whale the effects can be devastating to the store. The only places that can thrive in this trend are big box stores because cards are a side business for them, and online stores since they can run their business from just about anywhere. And neither of the two will not be able to move the packs they have if there is no real value in those packs, since any knowledgeable player would know not to buy packs. So in the end moving the power/value to higher rarities and away from the lower is kinda hurting Wizards, because fewer consumers will buy the sealed merchandise and places to actually play the game could end up becoming rarities.
I know card price was not really the subject, but when the card power starts going to rare and mythic card there is a noticeable change in card prices.
Forgive me but I cannot open the link from my phone.
I will agree that the loss of ToysRus played a part. But would it be a 50 million part? I would say no, that store had lost popularity some time ago so it's ability to move product would be small at best. As for the brands in the same catagory, with the exception of the petshop one since I have no clue about it, they are childhood staples that parents buy so I see them changing very little in sales. Monopoly is weird though, not sure why it is going up in sales.
But non the less I still say the pressure is still there from Hasbro (whether it is wizard's fault or not). And if Magic had been doing well, they would have stated it like they did with Monopoly. So at least we know Magic took a hit, we just don't know the numbers. But by going by how this set feels rushed and a bit too early for a return, I would still argue that there is some heat on the Dev team to pick up the lost revenue. And I just don't see this set doing that.
They mentioned Magic specifically first followed by Monopoly. Chances are those are the two biggest sellers of that catagory. I do not think Monopoly sells as much as Magic, when was the last time you saw someone even buy that board game? Chances are that that percentage is mainly Magic.
My mistake, but I would argue that Magic makes up the lion's portion of that revenue. So even if Magic only had 50% of that income (and lets be honest here, magic would be more than that) that would still be 25 million dollars in lost profit, so Hasbro be triggered for sure.
And no it does not bode well at all, in fact it kinda explains some of the actions Wizards has made recently. They spat out a ton of different products recently with possibly Dominaria and Battlebond being the most well received, the former being due to Richard Garfield (original creator) playing a major part in making the Dominaria set, not sure about the later other than reprints since I did not play it. But none the less, this most likely is making the dev team for magic nervous. They are losing noticeable profits which means that the products they are putting out are not selling and one of the only sets actually being seen positive this year is the one made by the original creator.
So this set and the next couple after it might decide what happens to magic in the future, or more accurately what will happen to the people currently running the dev department. Hence again I will say that this set feels unbalanced and rushed. Limited will be painful to watch, either you run black or blue Dimir cards in your deck or get curb stomped. Boros might put up a fight but I doubt it since its back bone cards are all high rarity, and Selesnya is just dead due to similar rarity issues plus bad token choices. I am not sure what will happen in standard, but considering how similar to scry is to servail, I would gamble Dimir colors will be prevalent till it rotates out.