There is a third effect you didn't mention. The more product is held, the higher prices climb in the present. Let us presume that they print 60,000 boxes, and as was noted, more and more people are buying it purely as an 'investment.' This will likely reach critical mass at some point, so lets say half. This only leaves 30,000 boxes actually on the market. One in five of those boxes holds a goyf. That is 12,000 goyfs ACTUALLY entering the market. This would raise the price on the originals, as this set has already increased interest in modern ten fold.
As far as I'm concerned, this product had been an abysmal failure, and it hasn't even been released.
Indeed, so much for reprinting modern staples. They reprinted them, but made sure to print few enough at a high enough price that nobody benefits except investors and resellers. If you can't get Goyf to $50 or lower, you haven't helped modern much at all. Anything in Modern over $50 is a serious liability to the formats accessibility.
18 premium foil cards $35 judging from FTV sets
10 oversized premium foil cards $10
120 UltraPRO foil card sleeves $20 judging from UltraPro sleaves
20 double-sided Battle Marks (+ and –) $5
A life counter that goes up to 99 $5
Msrp $74.99
This would be my guess at the breakdown, unfortunately I only care about the 18 premium foils. So this will be an expensive product if I buy one for what I get. I would have preferred more premium decks, I loved those.
I think the odds are pretty good that with reprinting Chandra, Garruk and Jace along with Nicol Bolas it would be a perfect time to introduce the Core 2.0 versions of Liliana and Ajani
The core 5 came out in Lorwyn then returned in M10. I would consider these the 1.0 core walkers. M12 introduced core 2.0 versions of Jace, Garruk and Chandra. The non-core 3.0 versions of Jace, Chandra, Liliana, Ajani and Garruk all exist, brought in through the various blocks with advanced mechanics. Now is the perfect time to round out the line-up and then move on to new core walkers, likely next core set. The original faces have will have had 6 years in the sun.
I find the concept of conceding in this circumstance odd. If it were proper to concede then the match should be an auto-win for the higher ranked player by the nature of the rules (it isn't). There are only 8 spots, so as others have said, you are deciding who gets in either way instead of letting the game decide. The purpose of playing in a tournament is to play to win and have fun, deciding not to play to convey prizes is counter to the purpose of everyone being there.
It is logically unfair to the other players eligible for the top 8 to concede, again, if it were fair then the round would be auto-win for the top 8 eligible players and just be played as an exhibition round.
By conceding you are considering only yourself and your opponent, but being inconsiderate of the rest of the players there.
You cannot get to a number of 9.7 mythics per pack on 8 boxes without doing something extraordinary. You also mention 8 boxes but then only mention the breakdown of 7 of them.
In any case, Cavern of Souls is worth more than 12 out of 15 mythics in this set and probably the only card in the set that is guaranteed to keep value, yet you complain. The average is 4 mythics in a box, so for every good box you open, someone has to get a lower number. Calling it ''unacceptable'' for you to finally become one of those is rather preposterous.
You are right, I was in a rush, saw a complaints/oddities thread and threw some info out without double checking my maths. It's been a long weekend, but I'll try and clear it up. 4.6 packs per box average when I double check my math. So nothing to see here, move along I guess. Probably just the psychological impact of it being the first 4 boxes in a row contained only 3 following a fat pack that contained 0 mythics and a sealed pool at the prerelease with no mythics and prize packs with no mythics. This is why I don't go to casinos.
I opened 8 boxes and was extremely disappointed. 4 boxes had 3 mythics, 1 had 4, and 2 had 6. I have never had less than 4 mythics in a box and I've probably opened a good 50 boxes since SOA released. This is completely unacceptable to have this kind of variance. That is an average of 1 mythic per 9.7 packs. The only redemption was I ended up with 2 playsets of vexing devil and 6 cavern of souls which I can sell to help buy the mythics I did not draw.
If they reprint shocks I would suspect it will be after Innistrad rotates.
I do not think this is likely, if we are going into a gold block, better mana fixing is precisely what is needed. M13 and RTR will in some combination feature a complete reprint of the shocklands. M13 is the logical choice to prepare for RTR while RTR is logical as they originally occured in Rav. Waiting until INN rotates would be too little too late.
M13 is likely the smartest place for them as it gives you more room for new ideas in RTR and previews multicolor.
Rav duals are almost 99% certain to be in the RTR block or completely in the RTR set. There is only upside for both WOTC and the secondary market. We are not dealing with a situation in Modern where lands and staples have hit $100-800. The small decline in price will be more than made up for by the massive volume of business it will generate. WOTC will guarantee a sell out of every print run and the resellers will sell many sets to the new players who have been waiting to enter Modern tournaments.
There are about 15-25 cards that need to see a reprint soon to keep modern from degenerating price wise and a full 10 of them are the shock lands. Modern is Magic 2.0 and the place WOTC clearly plans to make their stand on maintaining a sustainable game for the next 20 years. Legacy and Vintage are doomed to eventual irrelevance by the reprint policy. They are not so foolish as to make the same mistake again.
Indeed, properly managed exile is a cool zone that can have some sorts of interactions. This is a very interesting use of exile and at Mythic and as the only card with this ability, it seems pretty decent.
I think this could have a lot to do with their new android/apple app. If you want to sell it, you have to push out the free competition. If draft sims are not already a feature I expect they will be included in the app in the not too distant future. Have to protect your IP to sell it.
My LGS said they got/get one, for 96 tourney players. I see grim nerdy rage stampede when that thing opens.
I really hope they all do it like my LGS does for the regular promo's, you stay in your seat and they pass them out during the round, so you take it, file it away and get back to gaming. No muss, no fuss.
I know that while I am frustrated at having to point out to my opponent why I am losing, the reality is I know that if I were playing a better player the resulting loss would be the same.
I just think that the complexity of Magic means that remembering/managing your beneficial triggers is a skill. Completely forgetting and blowing past whatever is going on in the game state because you drew your sweet mythic rare or whatever should not be rewarded in my opinion. Now if your new and you do not know how things work when multiple things trigger at once, but you ask if it is possible to have a certain outcome or something along those lines, I am totally fine with that.
I don't really see a difference between "I should have remembered that my card is supposed to gain me 5 life because an artifact died and I wasn't paying attention." and "Oops I should have blocked differently because I didn't realize your guy had First Strike." Competitive Magic should be 1 game not one thing at Competitive REL and almost casual at Regular REL.
EDIT.
I also think there is a difference between a turn based action like Drawing a card during your draw step, and drawing a card from Howling Mine. I referenced Monopoly as an example of a game that punishes not paying attention to detail.
I think you may be missing the point here, WOTC wants casual players at REL events. If both players are tasked with keeping the game state proper and maintaining mandatory triggers, it prevents skilled players from simply winning by a greater familiarity with the rules and ability to track many things. It means you win on the skill of your plays alone. This is fair and sporting. The fact that you no longer need point them out in Prof and Comp is basically saying, you're in the big leagues, you can play a little rougher.
Moving this down to regular events would basically push away all but the determined newcomers. This is contrary to WOTC's vision for keeping Magic growing. What you are suggesting may help you feel better, but it does not make the gaming environment better.
I imagine this as if you allowed checking in Hockey down to Pee Wee Leagues and then mixed age groups up to the Pros... not pretty.
Red doesn't draw cards out of knowledge, but of instinct. Check out the flavor text of Bonded Fetch:
A well-made homunculus grooms the mind of its master, pruning the thoughts that lead to madness. Few loredelvers survive the study of the infinite without one.
Looting is considered a calculated trade of "inferior" knowledge for more esteemed or useful knowledge and should clearly be in the realm of blue (or green, in the sense of growth of mind, i.e. why Sindbad was timeshifted into green). In no case should red flavorfully be able to control knowledge to that detailed of a degree. I could see it maybe being a blue/red hybrid card, as surges of unconscious intuition do fit the overlap between blue and red, but it should definitely have a random aspect to it to be a fully red card. Red also gets sorceries as it's "preferred" card type for the color, so I could see a looting effect that lets them dig for those as well, but just flat out looting? Doesn't make any sense.
Looting makes sense in this regard: You break into a building and see shiny stuff all around, but you've already got stuff with you and you can only carry so much. Now you have to decide what to drop and what to run off with. You didn't know what you'd find when you decided to break in but now you have a choice of what to make off with.
The article claims it's dark ascension which makes sense. There has been talk of moving looting into red as well.
I believe this.
EDIT: Looking at this though, I'd be surprised if the final card is rare and bet that the rare symbol is only being used for the promo version.
Indeed Dark Ascension is the only real option. It will likely be published right around DKA's release. Like the Treasure Hunt Promo the gold rare symbol is used despite the actual cards rarity being common. The actual card will likely be an uncommon, possibly common.
Indeed, so much for reprinting modern staples. They reprinted them, but made sure to print few enough at a high enough price that nobody benefits except investors and resellers. If you can't get Goyf to $50 or lower, you haven't helped modern much at all. Anything in Modern over $50 is a serious liability to the formats accessibility.
10 oversized premium foil cards $10
120 UltraPRO foil card sleeves $20 judging from UltraPro sleaves
20 double-sided Battle Marks (+ and –) $5
A life counter that goes up to 99 $5
Msrp $74.99
This would be my guess at the breakdown, unfortunately I only care about the 18 premium foils. So this will be an expensive product if I buy one for what I get. I would have preferred more premium decks, I loved those.
The core 5 came out in Lorwyn then returned in M10. I would consider these the 1.0 core walkers. M12 introduced core 2.0 versions of Jace, Garruk and Chandra. The non-core 3.0 versions of Jace, Chandra, Liliana, Ajani and Garruk all exist, brought in through the various blocks with advanced mechanics. Now is the perfect time to round out the line-up and then move on to new core walkers, likely next core set. The original faces have will have had 6 years in the sun.
It is logically unfair to the other players eligible for the top 8 to concede, again, if it were fair then the round would be auto-win for the top 8 eligible players and just be played as an exhibition round.
By conceding you are considering only yourself and your opponent, but being inconsiderate of the rest of the players there.
You are right, I was in a rush, saw a complaints/oddities thread and threw some info out without double checking my maths. It's been a long weekend, but I'll try and clear it up. 4.6 packs per box average when I double check my math. So nothing to see here, move along I guess. Probably just the psychological impact of it being the first 4 boxes in a row contained only 3 following a fat pack that contained 0 mythics and a sealed pool at the prerelease with no mythics and prize packs with no mythics. This is why I don't go to casinos.
3 mythics in a box is not ok.
I do not think this is likely, if we are going into a gold block, better mana fixing is precisely what is needed. M13 and RTR will in some combination feature a complete reprint of the shocklands. M13 is the logical choice to prepare for RTR while RTR is logical as they originally occured in Rav. Waiting until INN rotates would be too little too late.
M13 is likely the smartest place for them as it gives you more room for new ideas in RTR and previews multicolor.
There are about 15-25 cards that need to see a reprint soon to keep modern from degenerating price wise and a full 10 of them are the shock lands. Modern is Magic 2.0 and the place WOTC clearly plans to make their stand on maintaining a sustainable game for the next 20 years. Legacy and Vintage are doomed to eventual irrelevance by the reprint policy. They are not so foolish as to make the same mistake again.
Indeed, properly managed exile is a cool zone that can have some sorts of interactions. This is a very interesting use of exile and at Mythic and as the only card with this ability, it seems pretty decent.
I really hope they all do it like my LGS does for the regular promo's, you stay in your seat and they pass them out during the round, so you take it, file it away and get back to gaming. No muss, no fuss.
I think you may be missing the point here, WOTC wants casual players at REL events. If both players are tasked with keeping the game state proper and maintaining mandatory triggers, it prevents skilled players from simply winning by a greater familiarity with the rules and ability to track many things. It means you win on the skill of your plays alone. This is fair and sporting. The fact that you no longer need point them out in Prof and Comp is basically saying, you're in the big leagues, you can play a little rougher.
Moving this down to regular events would basically push away all but the determined newcomers. This is contrary to WOTC's vision for keeping Magic growing. What you are suggesting may help you feel better, but it does not make the gaming environment better.
I imagine this as if you allowed checking in Hockey down to Pee Wee Leagues and then mixed age groups up to the Pros... not pretty.
Looting makes sense in this regard: You break into a building and see shiny stuff all around, but you've already got stuff with you and you can only carry so much. Now you have to decide what to drop and what to run off with. You didn't know what you'd find when you decided to break in but now you have a choice of what to make off with.
Red flavor: recklessness
Indeed Dark Ascension is the only real option. It will likely be published right around DKA's release. Like the Treasure Hunt Promo the gold rare symbol is used despite the actual cards rarity being common. The actual card will likely be an uncommon, possibly common.