I don't remember WotC ever printing or reprinting something to make their retail price go down. When they print FTV, it's pretty much to make older cards more accessible to newer players as well as catering to the nostalgic crowd.
They reprint stuff to drive their sales up. Never to drive prices down.
But WotC doesn't make money off singles trading (if they do, this is a HUGE moral problem). I'd also guess that Ravnica block boxes are probably disappearing too.
They've already caused the prices to fluctuate twice (Extended->Standard x2->Modern). And a reprint for standard won't cause an immediate price drop, those prices might rise at first on the news that they're back.
Had an awesome deck during a M11 draft, Primeval Titan, Fauna Shaman, Obsinate Baloth, and a slew of red burn cards. Playing against a mono-blue kid. Begin smashing his face in, he drops a Mind Control near the end on my Titan, too late as I Lightning Bolt face to win. He tells me he had two other Mind Controls but never drew them. I decide to sideboard out the three rares I mentioned.
Game two starts and my little guys start popping and dropping him. Game wraps up after a while and my opponent says, "Shoot, I had two MC's in my hand, but you never dropped any of those cards." I reveal the three were in my sideboard box and his jaw just drops.
A few things I noticed about the addition of Tamiyo:
There are now five female walkers. (As far as placed on cards) The fun tidbit is that they are all mono-colored and none share colors. I see this as more of a "we have four, lets round everything out with the blue one" as opposed to a very calculated move on WotC's part.
The female walkers have all been well developed and intertwined into Magic's plot. Chandra is used in a manner that defines the color red, bursting in long enough to advance the plot (like causing trouble for Jace or Gideon, or being an unknowing pawn of Mr. Bolas). Elspeth tends to stand by the side with the Mirrodin Trio, but when she decides to make her presence known, you know it. Nissa looks to branch many of the storylines, while Liliana absolutely dominates her storyline. Tamiyo is new, but the tidbit about her being curious certainly fits blue.
While Liliana is the only female planeswalker which is a villain, the evil:good ratio for females (1:3) nearly matches the males (3:8)
I was slacking a little bit this week (3/30/12), but here they are for this week. I'll get the next one sooner. This time around I divided up the Wolf Run Ramp decks based on whether they focused on more green and Dungrove Elder or more red and Huntmaster of the Fells. There are a few differences between the Birthing Pod Decks that might justify sorting the playstyles. If someone wants to clarify the major ones, please do.
Deck_Name (4-0)s / (3-1)s / % of (4-0)s / % of Metagame
I think you need to diversify your deck classifications. Lumping Mage Blade, Delver variants, and U/W Control all together, for example, is a very bad way to figure out a decks metagame share. Each is a very different deck, with very different playstyles, and usually different results.
I do apologize for not seperating this out a bit more, but it takes a while to export all of the data Wizards gives to an excel file and sort through all of it. I've also not played standard for a while, so taking a look at this data was somewhat of a way to familiarize myself. Decks are sorted first by what colors they contain and the number of unique creatures/other_spells they have (for instance most Birthing Pod decks had 20 unique creatures, but it's identifier was the 4x Birthing Pod).
The biggest error I made when making this first list was combining Tempered Steel Decks and UB decks containing Grand Arbiter. The second of course was combining decks that shared colors but not strategies (UW Delver with more general UW control decks for example). Although in making the second mistake it was merely because one of the decks was statistically insignificant (WU Control in this example). The third error I only noticed today was that W/x Tokens (As opposed to earlier B/W Tokens) is it's own format.
Maybe I'm a little more optimistic than the rest on the forum, but couldn't this be a good thing? Most of the problems have been from giving a "author" a sense of direction, saying "good luck", and after being given a fruitcake saying "well, lets see what happens".
I've noticed that Savor the Flavor has been pretty good recently in explaining the story, is it possible that they have decided to cancel the crappy books and instead tell the story in parts in a weekly segment like they did the comics way back when?
The ones consuming and producing most of the fantasy products are men, it's only natural that male characters would get more exposure. It sucks that in most fantasy brands the main reason why female characters sells is that they remove some aspects of clothing in them, but at least we are seeing more female characters that are presented as powerful and not damsels in distress.
I don't think MTG is gender biased and I'm sure they'll introduce more female planeswalkers in the future.
I'm a guy btw.
I'm a guy too, I think most people on this site are.
I'd guess its more of a "you play cards of people you would want to be", and as most of us are guys, we see ourselves being them.
As for damsels in distress, I think you can argue all of them but Chandra could be considered one. Liliana has her demon contract, Nissa doomed Zendikar, and Elspeth is/was/retcon traumatized by phyrexians. At least most of them have the abilities to fight them (except for Nissa, who's power is xenophobia)
I quit about a month ago, and thought I would be back for MoP. Then I heard the last raid boss was going to be Garrosh. That pretty much ruined it for me. I'm not a huge Garrosh fan, but Blizzard just did the equivalent of someone yelling "Vader is Luke's Father!" just before Empire Strikes Back started.
I'd support a red/white Gideon, but probably not a blue/white gideon. From what i've seen, and I could be wrong, he's a fighter and not a thinker.
Koth would definitely be mono red, but I didn't think he walked from nph. Don't really know the story.
Not sure why Nissa is g/b. I'd see here as g/w before g/b... :/
Anyhow, to make a pw we need to know why they are on this plane, what their goal is, and what their current personal struggle is.
I believe her deck in Duels was g/b. She's also a elf-supremacist and released the Eldrazi (accidently) for her own selfish needs. If that isn't black, I don't know what is.
They toned the 'Walkers down so that they become relatable characters, but now that the story telling head moved to just block and savor the flavor, could they bring back the original earth shattering characters they're suppose to be? It doesn't even seem like 'Walkers matter much as most of the story Is more engaging if its about the in plane characters, i.e. Thalia, the Twins, the Praetors. Much like the older books, Gerard and company made for a fascinating story without Urza's interference. The relatable characters have pretty much always been the actual mortals and the introduction of following mortal planeswalkers has kind of dulled everything.
Amirite?
No, they shouldn't. The oldwalkers were gods. Any defeat of an oldwalker would seem impossible. Nicol Bolas and Alara is a pretty good example; He comes back, everyone says BAD***, then he gets beat while holding four aces since the flop while Ajani hits a straight flush on the river to win.
Of course the fanbase goes... "Wait, What?" Despite the fact that it was a legit win for Ajani it looks like a cop-out.
Got this without searching for anything, just a straight up open box and hitting "go"
EDIT: Oh snap we have a "like" button now?
But WotC doesn't make money off singles trading (if they do, this is a HUGE moral problem). I'd also guess that Ravnica block boxes are probably disappearing too.
They've already caused the prices to fluctuate twice (Extended->Standard x2->Modern). And a reprint for standard won't cause an immediate price drop, those prices might rise at first on the news that they're back.
Game two starts and my little guys start popping and dropping him. Game wraps up after a while and my opponent says, "Shoot, I had two MC's in my hand, but you never dropped any of those cards." I reveal the three were in my sideboard box and his jaw just drops.
Can't say I'd be against the reprint, but this makes it a great time to dump your duals and get them back later.
Deck_Name (4-0)s / (3-1)s / % of (4-0)s / % of Metagame
Birthing Pod 60/154/28/16.5
UW Delver 34/163/17.2/15.2
WRR - Huntmaster 34/93/26.7/9.7
Esper Control 20/100/16.6/9.2
Humans UW 15/75/16.6/6.9
WB Tokens 19/60/24/6
RG Aggro 9/64/12.3/5.6
UB Control 12/52/18.7/4.9
Zombies - UB 10/37/21.2/3.6
WRR - White Add 5/25/16.6/2.3
Frites 5/21/19.2/2
Esper Spirits 4/21/16/1.9
Zombies - BR 4/20/16.6/1.8
Mono Red 3/19/13.6/1.6
Artifacts UB 0/18/0/1.3
UW Control 3/15/16.6/1.3
WRR - Dungrove 3/15/16.6/1.3
GW Aggro 3/12/20/1.1
WBG Tokens 4/7/36.3/0.8
Rogue 2/7/22.2/0.6
WBR 3/5/37.5/0.6
Tempered Steel GW 1/6/14.2/0.5
UB Poison 0/7/0/0.5
Hybrid WRR/Tokens 1/5/16.6/0.4
Tempered Steel UW 0/6/0/0.4
G Aggro 1/4/20/0.3
RGW Aggro 0/5/0/0.3
UW Venser 2/3/40/0.3
BRG Aggro 1/3/25/0.3
WRR - Black Add 1/3/25/0.3
GW Tokens 1/2/33.3/0.2
UW Delver/Humans 0/3/0/0.2
Werewolves 0/2/0/0.1
Zombies - Mono Black 0/2/0/0.1
Humans RW 0/1/0/0
Humans GW 0/1/0/0
I do apologize for not seperating this out a bit more, but it takes a while to export all of the data Wizards gives to an excel file and sort through all of it. I've also not played standard for a while, so taking a look at this data was somewhat of a way to familiarize myself. Decks are sorted first by what colors they contain and the number of unique creatures/other_spells they have (for instance most Birthing Pod decks had 20 unique creatures, but it's identifier was the 4x Birthing Pod).
The biggest error I made when making this first list was combining Tempered Steel Decks and UB decks containing Grand Arbiter. The second of course was combining decks that shared colors but not strategies (UW Delver with more general UW control decks for example). Although in making the second mistake it was merely because one of the decks was statistically insignificant (WU Control in this example). The third error I only noticed today was that W/x Tokens (As opposed to earlier B/W Tokens) is it's own format.
As a token of apology, here is a more detailed metagame:
Deck_Name 4-0s/3-1s/4-0:Total Ratio/Percent of total Meta
WU Delver 55 / 147 / 0.272 / 14.30
Birthing Pod 47 / 133 / 0.261 / 12.74
Humans WU 28 / 145 / 0.161 / 12.25
WRR 36 / 112 / 0.243 / 10.48
RG Aggro 20 / 84 / 0.192 / 7.37
WB Tokens 15 / 71 / 0.174 / 6.090
UB Control 9 / 64 / 0.123 / 5.169
Esper Control 18 / 51 / 0.260 / 4.886
WRR with White 4 / 44 / 0.083 / 3.399
UB Artifacts (Grand Arbiter) 9 / 35 / 0.204 / 3.116
Esper Spirits 5 / 32 / 0.135 / 2.620
UB Zombies 3 / 33 / 0.083 / 2.549
BR Zombies 5 / 29 / 0.147 / 2.407
GW Aggro 8 / 23 / 0.258 / 2.195
Frites 7 / 17 / 0.291 / 1.699
Tempered Steel 3 / 18 / 0.142 / 1.487
WBg Tokens 2 / 16 / 0.111 / 1.274
WRR with Black 2 / 15 / 0.117 / 1.203
Mono Red 5 / 12 / 0.294 / 1.203
WU Control (No Delver) 0 / 13 / 0 / 0.920
Grixis Control (UB with R splash) 2 / 7 / 0.222 / 0.637
Rogue 0 / 9 / 0 / 0.637
Humans WUB 1 / 5 / 0.166 / 0.424
WU Aggro 1 / 5 / 0.166 / 0.424
Mono Black Zombies 2 / 2 / 0.5 / 0.283
Humans GW 0 / 3 / 0 / 0.212
EDIT: One more error, I hadn't noticed the difference between WRR and G/R Aggro. Corrected Here
I've noticed that Savor the Flavor has been pretty good recently in explaining the story, is it possible that they have decided to cancel the crappy books and instead tell the story in parts in a weekly segment like they did the comics way back when?
I'm a guy too, I think most people on this site are.
I'd guess its more of a "you play cards of people you would want to be", and as most of us are guys, we see ourselves being them.
As for damsels in distress, I think you can argue all of them but Chandra could be considered one. Liliana has her demon contract, Nissa doomed Zendikar, and Elspeth is/was/retcon traumatized by phyrexians. At least most of them have the abilities to fight them (except for Nissa, who's power is xenophobia)
This just says to me that 84% of the people they have surveyed has rushed to judgement and don't have any real clue whats going on.
I believe her deck in Duels was g/b. She's also a elf-supremacist and released the Eldrazi (accidently) for her own selfish needs. If that isn't black, I don't know what is.
Is there a reason for this other than perhaps sexism(only men fight and explore/women stay home and make samwiches)?
No, they shouldn't. The oldwalkers were gods. Any defeat of an oldwalker would seem impossible. Nicol Bolas and Alara is a pretty good example; He comes back, everyone says BAD***, then he gets beat while holding four aces since the flop while Ajani hits a straight flush on the river to win.
Of course the fanbase goes... "Wait, What?" Despite the fact that it was a legit win for Ajani it looks like a cop-out.