[Official] Bitching About Prices, Buyouts and Reprints Thread

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Originality is overrated.



First of all, not everyone has time to dick around with a crap.dec, some of the people play MtG exclusively during the weekly Legacies and they simply prepare one of their two decks the evening before and then on the next day they ride to their stinky lgs to have eight games of MtG before going home. They wanna win, they wanna play the deck they like, they don't have money to experiment with shitty cards. Their choice. If you dislike such community, then there's always Casual Players Alliance site.

Second, this is about tournament play. I know people who'd love to brew but not for the cost of kidney (oh, thank you WotC for the RL, you really done good job in stifling the format!) and for the cost of annoying 1:3 evening after evening until after a year or so they'd finally perfect their Tier 1,99 homebrew.

Third, it's not like there's much to invent in modern MtG, if you want to be at least a bit serious. And no, sorry, switching one bad Dragon Stompy creature for another one bad DS creature isn't anything special, as you may win with Shivan Dragon once you land three lock pieces. If the brews have to fight back against Bob, Grisly, Delver, Force, DRS, AdN or Glimpse, they need to be pretty good. I'm not sure what you wanna build and frankly I don't really care. I play Legacy becasue it's the easiest way to play non-rotating MtG due to the fact that there's a weekly tourney in our lgs. If there'd be a casual group that allows winnng, I'd play with them, but as long as the only possible "you may play old cards" type of community is the competitive one, it's quite strange to whine that it's competitive. Play by the rules, or don't play at all. the, Rome, when, as, Romans, in, do x2.

If you dislike to play against same decks, simply don't go to tournaments, it's that easy. Or throw your eleven playsets of Ancient Tomb into the crowd, so that the others may brew. But if the players are satisfied with their "fetch, island, Delver, go", who are you to tell them that they should play some homebrew.

[ESG]

I'm going to reply to a few people, and then I suggest we create a new thread if people still want to discuss this, since this isn't about prices or reprints.

@Hollywood: If you would turn down a deck tech, then I don't see what SCG could do to please you. We can't go back to 2005 or, for that matter, 1995 -- believe me, I would love to. I enjoyed Magic more back then, but there are also lots of different things to love about it now.

@nedleeds: If you went 4-0 with Didgeridoo, your deck would be the talk of the tournament, and you would be guaranteed camera time and probably also a deck tech.

@ HammerAndSickled: I don't know why you were passed over on those occasions. It's possible that the deck tech features had been completed a round or so earlier, and it's possible that people didn't see the innovative parts of your deck in action and thus thought it was a traditional Lands deck. It's also possible that there were other compelling lists that were selected over your list. I've noticed that there usually aren't more than one or two deck techs per event (probably as a reality of staffing).

I feel that Star City's coverage has improved, but there are a lot of people involved who deliver it to you, so you're free to make suggestions to the writers, commentators, and coverage managers, whether by email or by social media or in person at an event. All feedback goes into consideration.

[HammerAndSickled]

@Beddecks That's not even related to what we're discussing. Nobody's telling anyone to play uncompetitive brews, what people are saying is that brewing IS happening at these events, but you wouldn't know it because SCG has an agenda to hype particular cards and decks to raise prices.

[Barook]

I wouldn't mind a "State of the format" thread in the format discussion thread.

It isn't just the SCG Delver/Blade circlejerk on their coverage - I feel like the format has overall become less enjoyable since they had made a volley of stupid mistakes, starting with Innistrad's Delver (New Phyrexia had Mental Misstep, but at least they had the balls to fix it asap) and currently climaxing in the TNN-meta (or should I say Anti-TNN-meta? Just look at the Team America/Miracle numbers this month, Jesus Christ!).

Partly due to the huge card pool (and partly due to oppressive, overpowered crap), the format has become kinda stall since brews actually have to fight through lots of powerful plays which all require different angles to handle - which is also one of the reasons we saw an increase in Brainstorm decks since Innistrad.

Now add to that uncontrolled speculator's galore who jack up the prices of staples to their liking and the future of the format doesn't look exactly bright.

"Oh, hey, Bahra made a new deck based around Edric. There was also a single copy in the SCG Open winning list this week!" *whoosh, price of Edric tripled"

Seriously - it just sucks.

[Michael Keller]

@Beddecks That's not even related to what we're discussing. Nobody's telling anyone to play uncompetitive brews, what people are saying is that brewing IS happening at these events, but you wouldn't know it because SCG has an agenda to hype particular cards and decks to raise prices.

Thank you for clearing that up to him; it's not that hard to read between the lines and most of what the guy said is baffling. This isn't rocket science: SCG has an agenda, and it's rather stale in the eyes of creativity. If you're content with playing and watching the same decks all the time, good for you. I won't.

[Megadeus]

Just anecdotally related to the discussion on deck techs, I've been x-0 or x-1 in rounds 5-7 of Opens quite a few times with my Jace Lands deck, which in my opinion is a pretty innovative and interesting take on the deck, and I've never been approached by SCG for either a feature match or a deck tech. You would think they'd be happy to feature something like this (it runs quite a few stupidly expensive cards that they could hype and sell) but I think the primary reason is I'm not a pro or a grinder, my name isn't well-known, my deck doesn't fit into the SCG meta of Delver/Griselbrand decks, and therefore it doesn't play into the image they're selling.

I kinda feel you there. At SCG ATL I was X-1 and at table like 6 and literally every match besides our was in a feature match. Dont get me wrong, I don't really card that much, I just thought it was hilarious because the other guy and I are both unknowns and every other table had a "name" player. It's all about being a name I guess. It was nice getting a whole long table to ourselves though ;)

[shrubs]

To be a devil's advocate, SCG may focus on known 'personalities' because they know what they will get from that player and that they are capable of playing decently on camera. It's a safe bet. It can be a tilt to play on camera, especially the first time, and really who wants to watch someone completely punt the game from nerves? Not that every random SCG'er is camera shy, if you can handle it great- you can do something I never would.

And as a disclaimer, I'm not defending SCG's home-grown personality cult of "pros" and beards that nedleeds was striking at earlier. It's pretty ridiculous when you think about it, but hey, if it makes money, I guess?

And if you want horrible misplays, SCG has plenty of known dipshits that can misplay brainstorm and cheat with elves.

[Higgs]

I think this is still a discussion about the card prices because I think lack of innovation is mostly caused by limited access to cards. We had a similar discussion locally recently; the question was why do you keep playing with the same cards everyone else does? I think its because very few players own like a million cards and have playsets of everything to be in a position where they can just go through 20 years of Magic's history, pull together a 60 card homebrew and sleeve it up for the next weekly. Most of us don't have such extensive collections and are limited with the X dollars we can spend on Magic per month. So obviously if you are a competitive/ semi-competitive player you want to make smart purchases and use your money wisely. You get the format staples, you build towards well-known high tier decks. If you have a couple thousand dollars to spend for an eternal format you can either have 10 homebrew decks which will probably evaporate 1-2 years later or 2 high tier decks which you can play for years and years while also having future compatibility. I think this is also why blue is the most popular color. Blue gives you options, can be a support color to most anything and if you need a single deck which is 50% across the board it gives you most flexibility. Therefore you end up with a million variations of the same blue shell decks being played over and over again by a lot of players.

[Julian23]

@HammerAndSickled: If you want exposure for you and your deck, get on Twitter. Forget Facebook, forums or whatever, it's basically the absolute prime place to build a name for yourself and get into contact with pros, grinders, casters etc.

It would also make it much easier to cheer for you and request feature matches if you had an account there to easily put into a tweet.

[Koby]

Ok seriously what the hell. I can sell an Underground Sea I won a month ago for $200 to SCG at buylist. How is this possible? /headdesk/

[Esper3k]

Ok seriously what the hell. I can sell an Underground Sea I won a month ago for $200 to SCG at buylist. How is this possible? /headdesk/

People are clearly willing to pay for $300 Seas?

[Bed Decks Palyer]

People are clearly willing to pay for $300 Seas?

If I'd be Chinaman, I think I'd know what to do now.

[Esper3k]

If I'd be Chinaman, I think I'd know what to do now.

Hell, I don't think you even need to be Chinese. Just get access to somewhere that does better quality printing than the crap that's been coming out of China.

[HammerAndSickled]

@julian it's not that I "wanted" to be recognized or that I have some strong desire to be a "personality" in this game, or else clearly the best way to go about it would be to buddy up to some SCG guys and suck up that way. It's really about exactly the opposite: that the focus on "personality" and that particular style of narrative coverage is detrimental to the game in my opinion. The focus on particular players and their "leader board" standings and featuring the same players and decks week after week is designed to appeal to a singular type of viewer: someone who appreciates having someone to "root" for and enjoys identifying with these so-called "pros." But it comes at a real cost: the focus you're putting on the name and the face has to be diverted from somewhere, and in my opinion it's taken away from good gameplay, tactics, gamesmanship, and creativity.

The Starcity "pros" have a personal vested interest in doing well consistently at multiple events, jockeying for position on this abstract leaderboard, grinding points and making enough finishes to keep their job as a "content producer." There's also apparently a professional push by SCG for their stable of players to feature certain cards in their decks to hype them in order for the site to sell more. This leads to some rather strange incentives to play certain decks or strategies and to (on occasion) do some questionably unethical things to maintain their status. This flies in the face of what I believe Magic should be about: a focus on mental exercise in playing tight, out thinking your opponents, innovating creatively with regards to deck building, and most importantly being social/civil and having good sportsmanship. The "personality-based" coverage system simply doesn't reward, encourage, or incentivize these things enough, in my mind. Almost every "grinder" and "pro" I've met or played against has been a) playing some cookie-cutter archetype, b) an angle-shooter trying to take advantage of the rules or outright violating them to gain advantage, and c) a poor sport and in many cases a gigantic douche, perhaps attempting to get me upset through their attitude to eke out some percentage points. And to their credit, all of these things help them win and keep their name and face on the website, because the system rewards this behavior.

I'm a classical musician, and you see a lot of this in the music industry: what "sells" is to brand an artist a certain way and sell the "image," because for most people that matters more than the music itself. But that approach necessarily detracts from the musicality: what matters is how well the image is monetized, not how well you play your instrument technically or your musical innovations in interpretations of repertoire or whatever. But I would prefer to live in a world where those things mattered more. In the magic context, there's a clear financial incentive for SCG and sometimes even WotC to act in ways which are detrimental to the actual integrity of the game.

This has all been pretty off-topic but getting back to the context of the thread, it's important to see how the business model of SCG is directly responsible for some of these price hikes. Were the business model different, different cards would be incentivized less or more based on playability over hype, I think. Basically I'm just trying to say that the integrity of the game is detrimentally effected by this style of coverage.

[bruizar]

Ok seriously what the hell. I can sell an Underground Sea I won a month ago for $200 to SCG at buylist. How is this possible? /headdesk/

I've long been one of the people who thought the increasing prices weren't too much of a problem, but with underground sea at $350 (err?), and crap rares like invoke prejudice for $150,-, it's becoming more and more difficult to justify the cost of this game compared to how much I attend tournaments.. At some point, aren't we pricing each other out of the market? Where's the breaking point?

[nedleeds]

Who is we? I don't want to play with children, or the poor who might steal my things in order to make ends meet. I'd be thrilled if eternal's demographic continued to shift to employed 20+ year old people. Higher prices would help ensure that. If prices ever dropped too far it would be like going to an FNM sealed and having to play with idiots, children and people who don't know the rules.

[Arsenal]

Who is we? I don't want to play with children, or the poor who might steal my things in order to make ends meet. I'd be thrilled if eternal's demographic continued to shift to employed 20+ year old people. Higher prices would help ensure that. If prices ever dropped too far it would be like going to an FNM sealed and having to play with idiots, children and people who don't know the rules.

This is a rather elitist attitude to take. You're implying that Standard is overrun with immature children who barely know how to play Magic while Legacy is some bastion of highly skilled, competent players. Having played both Standard and Legacy at large events, this simply isn't accurate. And your comment about poor people going to steal your stuff is just completely baseless.

[Deviruchi]

Out of curiosity I entered one of those sites with price graphics (mtggoldfish) to check what is going on during 2014 and here are the changes of prices of revised duals since January 1st:

Badlands 69,90 -> 85,58 (+22,43%)
Bayou 106,40 -> 164,35 (+54,46%)
Plateau 45,30 -> 65,24 (+44,02%)
Savannah 78,80 -> 89,95 (+14,15%)
Scrubland 74,60 -> 89,30 (+19,71%)
Taiga 66,10 -> 84,94 (+28,50%)
Tropical Island 109,00 -> 211,61 (+94,14%)
Tundra 121,80 -> 200,64 (+64,73%)
Underground Sea 178,80 -> 299,99 (+67,78%)
Volcanic Island 130,20 -> 292,99 (+125,03%)

I know these sites often use top prices of SCG and similar ones and you can buy cards in cheaper places but those price spikes are very scary and we already know that the most of the herd will follow. Not even four months and such rises.

[Anen]

Who is we? I don't want to play with children, or the poor who might steal my things in order to make ends meet. I'd be thrilled if eternal's demographic continued to shift to employed 20+ year old people. Higher prices would help ensure that. If prices ever dropped too far it would be like going to an FNM sealed and having to play with idiots, children and people who don't know the rules.

We need a like button !

[bruizar]

Who is we? I don't want to play with children, or the poor who might steal my things in order to make ends meet. I'd be thrilled if eternal's demographic continued to shift to employed 20+ year old people. Higher prices would help ensure that. If prices ever dropped too far it would be like going to an FNM sealed and having to play with idiots, children and people who don't know the rules.

I think many adults would rather spend their money to travel the globe or buy a new car than to buy 1 pimp underground sea. It's rather easy to say what you just said when you got your cards during the 'cheap days'. Even adults, with good jobs in IT, law or consultancy would be hard pressed to pick up a legacy deck today. When magic becomes a hobby for those who got in first, that's a real problem. I'll tell you why. WotC can't do a thing about it. They can't suddenly revoke the reserved list, so it's really out of their hands. The players who got in first have a vested interest to maintain high prices. Most likely, magic is the most expensive asset many eternal players have. That can't suddenly evaporate. On the other hand, professional traders have a vested interest to pump prices up, so that they need less transactions to make the money they want to be making, because the price increases price out the majority of the non-eternal community from the market. No new eternal players means there will only be attrition. That cycles will continue for a couple year, I think around 10 years, but that will be the end of eternal tournament play for a large part of the player base. I do think there will always be the guys that sling cards, even when they are 80. Magic won't disappear, but it has become highly inaccessible, even for rich people.