Well, except that the orignals DID crash. Thoughtseize was breaching $80 when it got its reprint and it got sent to $20 during its standard life.
I don't remember Mutavault's high, but I do recall it being about $10 shortly after it left standard. And the Khans fetchlands? Delta was close to $80. Crashed to $12 during standard. Is currently 1/4th of its original value. If we look at the original printings, they've got about 50% or less of their original value.
If you're not making any meaningful change to the long term price, what's the point of doing something so potentially volatile as breaking the RL? There's a lot of ramifications to just SAYING you're gonna break it at all, let alone actually doing it. And if you are making a meaningful impact, what are the full scale ramifications of that impact? For example, if you can buy Eldritch Moon or a pack of whatever this reprints set is, exactly how much standard do you really think you're going to sell? What's to stop stores from just taking their product and cracking the duals out of it? I mean, right now stores are motivated to sell packs because it's more profitable than opening them, but with RTR you had multiple cases of retailers simply cracking the boxes for singles because they were worth more. If you cracked an Underground Sea out of a box, even just one, even at half value, you still made more than 2x what you, as a dealer, paid for the box. Maybe 3x.
You can't break the RL at all, even in limited fashion, without screwing a LOT of players (as you said there a TON of revised duals), and a LOT of stores. You've already shown your willingness to do it, why should we believe it's "just this once?" I mean, before you told a bunch of people you'd never do it, and some people went and bought a lot of cardboard to stock their business witrh under that premise.
Or maybe you do drive the prices of duals down. How much money did your LGS' just lose?
There are so many logistical issues with doing a partial break of the RL involving print run, ensuring the product makes it to the target audience, guarding against price gouging, the target price to begin with, and we haven't even touched on the actual issues and results in this. Most players give no craps about the promise made 20 years ago. But LGS's do. Some have a lot of moneyu tied up in RL cards and possible lawsuits aside (just because I'm not lawyer and won't hazard a guess as to what could or could not transpire), the damage done between the relationship of those LGS and WoTC would be permanently damaged or destroyed.
What is the "original value" of a card? Card prices constantly change and go up and down. Khans Polluted Deltas are already back to almost $20 and Onslaught Polluted Deltas are worth nearly $40, which is more than they were worth 4 years ago and far more than they were worth 14 years ago. Did LGS lose more money from the price drop on Deltas than they gained from sales of KTK packs pushed directly by fetchland reprints? How many more Deltas are they now selling due to the massively increased demand?
Also, I know some LGS owners. They make FAR more money on sealed product than singles. It's not LGS that stand to lose money on reprints, it's mega-stores like SCG and Channel Fireball.
Give me my infraction, I can't wait until counterfeits are good enough to appear real in a sleeve. I'd love to actually support Wizards with my money but their policies are meant to protect the secondary market, not support the game.
Playing with counterfeit Magic cards that aren't being reprinted is as ethically justifiable as downloading music from a dead artist or pirating out of print video games.
Oh yes, that's a great idea. Because most people can't afford $1000 cards, we should just encourage counterfeiting on a level so high it makes everyone's cards worthless. I'm sure that will go over REAL well. Regardless of how one might feel about the reserve list, anyone with an ounce of common sense would recognize that counterfeits on the scale and detail you're talking about would wreck everything and there wouldn't be any formats left period.
Wizard's policies protect one small segment of the market, overall, their policies have zero bearing on the two largest, most active flagship formats of the game. Assuming we don't include limited, which by the way, would die a horrible death if counterfeits on the level you're suggestion became reality.
The only policy you can call into question here is the RL. The RL's intent was to rescue the game after WoTC almost destroyed the secondary market and the game itself. It sucks that it had some unintended consequences 15+ years later, but without it we wouldn't even have this internet forum to argue about it on because the game wouldn't have survived.
Chronicles made a bunch of cards worthless, which, at the time, represented a significant chunk of the cards that existed that were actually worth anything. It also made owners of cards that weren't reprinted very nervous and disillusioned their cards might become worthless. So let me get this straight, your proposed solution is to encourage counterfeiting to the point everyone's cards are worthless again? And you think that's a good idea?
I get why people have various issues with the RL. I get that their arguments have some degree of merit and I sympathize with them, even if I disagree with the removal of the RL for a far different set of reason that goes beyond "I can't play Magic if I don't have paper versions of Underground Sea and friends." What I don't get is the need to go from proxy to full out perfect clones. What I don't get is the failure to recognize that repeating a mistake that happened 20 years ago doesn't mean it's not still a mistake. What I don't get is the notion that if China is making all of our Magic cards, and WoTC isn't, then where are new cards going to come from? You think China's counterfeiters will take over when the sealed product that you're saying is so important to stores stops selling because we can all go buy 50 copies of *insert hot standard card* for 5 bucks? If sealed product is so important to retailers, why would you advocate people's reasons to purchase it at all? Do you think the game will be better off if WoTC's business crashes and burns, we're left with the cards that are in existence and chinese knockoffs, and LGS' lose that revenue stream?
I have an idea: Why don't you cruise over to the standard and modern forums and pose the question of "How would you feel if all of a sudden, you could buy every copy of the cards in your decks for about $10 TOTAL and your deck was now basically worthless?
If there was a living card game worth playing I would play the crap out of it. Modern players might care but Standard players make peace with their cards becoming worthless every rotation
The pokemon tcg does not have a reserve list and the much older cards were widely reprinted. The result: 1st edition Charizard is $800, shadowless zard is $120, regular is $75, and the other variants are $25. Collectors are happy because they can chase the 1st editions while everyone else who wants them for cube or something can buy the cheapest real one for $25. As evidence in other games we can see that the reserve list is absolutely not needed and the older versions of the cards will still be highly sought after while your average Joe will still have access to the cheaper copies. Everyone would be happy
I've also very much downsized my collection and here's why:
1. The game as a whole stopped appealing to me. The only competitive format I really enjoyed (and still do) is Legacy. I feel that standard and modern are too watered down for the price point they command and I don't have the attention span for EDH (I've been in games that took hours, blah). I could go on about why I don't like the other formats but suffice to say Legacy was the only one that grabbed me once I started. It felt, and still feels, like the very best experience. Which lead me to...
2. My city just doesn't support Legacy like it used to. I would play every so often at Cons and would even drive to other cities to play my favourite format (this continued for years) but even those have dried up in favour of modern. Legacy just doesn't fire anymore which lead me to...
3. Try to promote Legacy locally. This is where the community really surprised me with its negativity. Sure I expected a few "no thanks" or even dead silence from the local social media but I didn't get that. Instead I got "Legacy's a dead format", "it's too expensive", "Legacy's dying", and my favourite "how dare you discuss budget options, you just want me to play a bad deck." I would have preferred dead silence rather than subjective reasons why Legacy is bad but whatever. Finally we did get a tournament set up and attendance was great at first but after a week or so players would drift away to play the competitive, Wizards supported formats. It's as if non-supported formats weren't worth the community's time. I don't blame them, everyone has their own reasons for playing but the initial reaction followed by the now non-existent scene was really discouraging. It was then that I realized that I didn't really have many true friends through this game and most people just use it as a vector to become better at the game itself. That's not to say I didn't meet any lifelong friends through Magic but those friends have been there from the moment I began playing casually and are still casual, chill guys that I associate with now (you know who you are :)).
4. I then had a bunch of cards worth a few grand just sitting there so, after some soul searching, I sold most of it. I kept my 2 favourite Legacy decks as well as my Cube (I still love the Cube and I'm pretty sure it contains pieces of mine and my friend's souls :P) but after 3 months now I've never looked back. Sure I still frequent this site for Cube opinions, to follow the drama that seems to be inherent to the game now (judge drama, gender drama, pros' cyber bullying, Wizard's general incompetence, man there's a lot), and to check price drama (another reason I didn't get into modern, nothing seems stable anymore) but that doesn't take up much time.
I still play other games and funny enough I got back into Pokemon cards (which is a blast right now for many reasons for both me and my awesome gf, check out my youtube channel Expert Occultist :)) but I've never missed the competitive Magic scene. I of course still have my 2 Legacy decks for the inevitable yearly Legacy tournament but I agree with many posters here; after downsizing I feel a huge weight has lifted from me now that I don't have to worry about staying current, buying before prices surge, and dealing with those who just see me as an opponent. I guess you could just say that the game got too Modern for me
is it fair to blame the godbook leak for poor nph sales though? seems like its just a convenient scapegoat. most of the things they blame for poor sales in recent memory seem like scapegoats that get around the real reasons. like poor design, or bad flavor, or what have you.
One of the first lessons you learn during your orientation at WOTC is the coveted finger pointing technique in which you are taught how to point at everyone and everything else for your shortcomings.
NPH was a weak set, BFZ was a weak set, and OGW looks to be another weak set. You just watch, if sales end up bad, they will cry up and down that it was the fault of the dastardly leakers!
NPH was a weak set? It had the best commons and uncommons I've ever seen and no set came close before or since.
I second (third, fourth?) Chaos. As long as you have a plan to win I have no problem with you. However, chaos decks usually don't and gride the game to a screeching halt. The player's mindset that usually goes with this is also horrible and usually consists of "haha, isn't this fun? Look how much magic we're playing!" It's part of the reason I don't play EDH tbh. Most of the stuff in the poll has shown up in tournaments throughout the ages and I've gotten used to them.
Edit: in my experience I only see "card replacement" in chaos decks so I'd remove that one from the poll
Wow, sure looks like 90% of the people posting in this thread don't have a clue with what happened even though a lot of the info is out there now.
If you want a ton more info (generalized and to the point) go check the most recent MTG Focus podcast where someone who was hit with a 3year ban tells you his side and then follows it all up with an interview with a WotC official.
It's really, really scary what WotC is doing. Basically, you CAN NOT post MTG cards that aren't already released in sets (yes, even no fake cards if they are anything close to resembling something that could be real) or risk ~3 YEAR bans. WotC want you to not only vet your sources of said image (no matter where you find it, facebook/twitter/instagram/etc.) BUT, you need to search the internet and research the info/image yourself to make sure it isn't a spoiler. And yeah, don't try posting it and then reporting it to WotC because you could easily still get hit with a 3year ban... *mind blown.
I thought we were in an age of getting rid of bullies? Because basically, WotC is bullying everyone and anything (especially a site like this) with huge bans for posting OR REPOSTING anything spoilish what-so-ever. Instead of taking responsibility themselves (for leaks), WotC is attempting to force anyone who wants to continue to play their game into being anti-spoiler backyard heroes. It's bullying at it's finest... and very naive in today's information age. I'm really surprised more peeps running this site haven't come out with statements.
My biggest complaint so far has to do with the lack of good, useful commons and uncommons in new sets. I remember opening bad rares but being ok with it because I also opened up a Spell Pierce or Lightning Bolt or Gitaxian Probe. Those days seem to be gone as, even in the Kahns block (a block praised for high quality cards), after a draft most of the cards I pulled would just be left on the table. Keep in mind that I play Legacy exclusively but there was a time when I would have to actually look through my pulls to find usable cards because, yes, usable cards at common did exist! Now I go through a set list and see that the commons and uncommons aren't worth the paper they're printed on. As a result I don't draft anymore because I see it as wasteful. I'd like to get back to the days of eternal playable commons and uncommons. I know NWO is a thing but OG Zendikar, Alara Reborn, and New Phyrexia were within the NWO timeframe and even if you pulled a bad rare you didn't necessarily want to kill yourself after thanks to the higher quality cards in other rarities.
As someone who exclusively plays Legacy and Cube (and has everything he could ask for in that regard) I would LOVE if Wizards reprinted a bunch of staples so that I could play with more people. Since that is clearly not a realistic scenario (and hasn't been for a long time) would it kill Wizards to to put useful commons and uncommons in their sets? Back in my day value wasn't just in the rares (as they were just as bad as they are now) but the commons were also ok too. Sets like New Phyrexia, Innisrad, Lorwyn, MM1, and OG Zendikar had commons that were ok to open. Even if you opened a bad rare you didn't want to kill yourself because you got some cool commons like Spell Pierce and Lightning Bolt as well. The last few sets now I could skim over the set list and frown because the commons are lackluster. What happened?
None of this matters. Everything people complain about, every mistake Wizards has made, every controversial decision, every time Wizards has been asked to get with the times (loss of player rewards, Whatshisface's rape case, the reserve list, the current state of MODO, mythic rares, I could go on) has resulted in what? This game continues to grow and obtain more players while the people who complain about Wizard's supposed lack of business competence... are still here! Still playing this game. Whether or not Wizards or the judges are in the wrong or right will not matter in the long run. I think those that think there will be a judge walkout or boycott or whatever will be wrong. People will complain about it initially until something else comes up or they will just forget about it OR it will be treated as something that's just... there. Something you can do nothing about. Just like everything else in this game's past. People will keep buying cards, people will keep playing magic and unless that changes, unless you actually quit the game nothing will change. It would take something HUGE to get a mass exodus of players. This judge thing, bad standards, MODO being awful, Legacy players feeling neglected, these things clearly aren't enough for people to stop giving Wizards money. So what would it take?
I wouldn't even say Pokemon is an inferior TCG when it does a lot of things people want magic to do. The thing holding back games like pokemon and yugioh is the age progression. Typically if you're playing a tcg at 8-12 years old it is pokemon, yugioh, or magic. At 12-18 years old it's most likely yugioh or magic. After 18 you're all but guaranteed to be playing magic at that point. We just age out of hobbies, going from 8-18 we probably go through 50 different hobbies, following what our friends do. Once adulthood starts to set we start to cement our interests and decide them for ourselves. I think a 21 year old can enjoy playing pokemon and have a desire to play it, but they don't want to play against a field of 10 year olds. And I think if magic wasn't around we would see yugioh or force of will as the adult tcg and pokemon as the teenage one. It has nothing to do with the quality of the game, just where the demographics settled because I guarantee there are plenty of people on these forums that still love the pokemon videogames, it's not a child thing it's an everyone thing, but the pokemon tcg is by environment a child's tcg though I believe the average world champion is in his late teens.
I would be one of those older people (age 25+) that got back into the Pokemon TCG, not to play tournaments or anything competitive, but to build a Pokemon TCG Cube out of all the cool cards I used to play with as a kid. The result; my friends and I have a blast with it! Yes, it's a simpler game (no removal/counters etc.) but the 2v2 aspect of Cube translates surprisingly well to Pokemon and makes for exciting gameplay. The thing that surprised me when I was re-buying the cards for this cube was that most of the old cards held some value. They didn't really appreciate like Magic duels did but the cards that used to be competitive still carry 10-20$ price tags. My shadowless Charizard that I kept all this time still sells for 100$ despite being reprinted a few times!
I think many serious Magic players need to step back and realize that a game's quality does not need to come from a financial or competitive aspect but the amount of fun you're having with each game. I realized this when I cut down on Magic to buy more board games
Hasbro has done extensive market research on this. They aren't going to make as much money if they do what you propose. Ultimately, this game is about making money. It's a business: they're not making Magic cards for your personal happiness. Part of the appeal of CCGs is rare, collectable cards. Exclusivity breeds value in the human psyche: the cards I mentioned wouldn't be nearly as cool if everyone could get them for $5. Without cool exclusives, people wouldn't bust packs, and if people don't bust packs, the game dies.
Magic is only a card game: it's not a multimedia franchise like Pokemon. Nintendo can make most of their $ on the video games, the anime, the toys, and the Pikachu-stamped underwear, and sell the cards at a lesser profit margin. In contrast, Magic has very little multimedia: all we have is a crappy Steam game and a series of poorly sculpted statuettes where Gideon is the wrong race.
Hasbro has done extensive market research? Source? Wizard's doesn't even give us the results of the polls they put on their website. I would love to see the raw data that suggests that players want rare, collectible cards. And no, the outcry from Chronicles doesn't count, the playerbase has changed since then. For now, Wizards could use a bit more transparency because until I see actual numbers from the company I'm not trusting the "extensive market research" angle. To me it's just more of Wizards telling us what we should want. As for me I'll continue to play Legacy and Cube and treat this game like my other board games
I'll speak up again for this deck's effectiveness in my testing last week to drum up discussion. It seems to have an even match up verses most archtypes and feels more "unfair" than other Stoneblade style decks. The only card I'm leery of right now is Jace TMS because it never seems to get cast but other than that the list feels great!
If there was a living card game worth playing I would play the crap out of it. Modern players might care but Standard players make peace with their cards becoming worthless every rotation
1. The game as a whole stopped appealing to me. The only competitive format I really enjoyed (and still do) is Legacy. I feel that standard and modern are too watered down for the price point they command and I don't have the attention span for EDH (I've been in games that took hours, blah). I could go on about why I don't like the other formats but suffice to say Legacy was the only one that grabbed me once I started. It felt, and still feels, like the very best experience. Which lead me to...
2. My city just doesn't support Legacy like it used to. I would play every so often at Cons and would even drive to other cities to play my favourite format (this continued for years) but even those have dried up in favour of modern. Legacy just doesn't fire anymore which lead me to...
3. Try to promote Legacy locally. This is where the community really surprised me with its negativity. Sure I expected a few "no thanks" or even dead silence from the local social media but I didn't get that. Instead I got "Legacy's a dead format", "it's too expensive", "Legacy's dying", and my favourite "how dare you discuss budget options, you just want me to play a bad deck." I would have preferred dead silence rather than subjective reasons why Legacy is bad but whatever. Finally we did get a tournament set up and attendance was great at first but after a week or so players would drift away to play the competitive, Wizards supported formats. It's as if non-supported formats weren't worth the community's time. I don't blame them, everyone has their own reasons for playing but the initial reaction followed by the now non-existent scene was really discouraging. It was then that I realized that I didn't really have many true friends through this game and most people just use it as a vector to become better at the game itself. That's not to say I didn't meet any lifelong friends through Magic but those friends have been there from the moment I began playing casually and are still casual, chill guys that I associate with now (you know who you are :)).
4. I then had a bunch of cards worth a few grand just sitting there so, after some soul searching, I sold most of it. I kept my 2 favourite Legacy decks as well as my Cube (I still love the Cube and I'm pretty sure it contains pieces of mine and my friend's souls :P) but after 3 months now I've never looked back. Sure I still frequent this site for Cube opinions, to follow the drama that seems to be inherent to the game now (judge drama, gender drama, pros' cyber bullying, Wizard's general incompetence, man there's a lot), and to check price drama (another reason I didn't get into modern, nothing seems stable anymore) but that doesn't take up much time.
I still play other games and funny enough I got back into Pokemon cards (which is a blast right now for many reasons for both me and my awesome gf, check out my youtube channel Expert Occultist :)) but I've never missed the competitive Magic scene. I of course still have my 2 Legacy decks for the inevitable yearly Legacy tournament but I agree with many posters here; after downsizing I feel a huge weight has lifted from me now that I don't have to worry about staying current, buying before prices surge, and dealing with those who just see me as an opponent. I guess you could just say that the game got too Modern for me
I'll just leave this here
NPH was a weak set? It had the best commons and uncommons I've ever seen and no set came close before or since.
Edit: in my experience I only see "card replacement" in chaos decks so I'd remove that one from the poll
Link to this interview?
I would be one of those older people (age 25+) that got back into the Pokemon TCG, not to play tournaments or anything competitive, but to build a Pokemon TCG Cube out of all the cool cards I used to play with as a kid. The result; my friends and I have a blast with it! Yes, it's a simpler game (no removal/counters etc.) but the 2v2 aspect of Cube translates surprisingly well to Pokemon and makes for exciting gameplay. The thing that surprised me when I was re-buying the cards for this cube was that most of the old cards held some value. They didn't really appreciate like Magic duels did but the cards that used to be competitive still carry 10-20$ price tags. My shadowless Charizard that I kept all this time still sells for 100$ despite being reprinted a few times!
I think many serious Magic players need to step back and realize that a game's quality does not need to come from a financial or competitive aspect but the amount of fun you're having with each game. I realized this when I cut down on Magic to buy more board games
Hasbro has done extensive market research? Source? Wizard's doesn't even give us the results of the polls they put on their website. I would love to see the raw data that suggests that players want rare, collectible cards. And no, the outcry from Chronicles doesn't count, the playerbase has changed since then. For now, Wizards could use a bit more transparency because until I see actual numbers from the company I'm not trusting the "extensive market research" angle. To me it's just more of Wizards telling us what we should want. As for me I'll continue to play Legacy and Cube and treat this game like my other board games