Some thoughts on Modern and he impact that it has on Legacy or MTG in general

[Zunam]

Now that my first excitement about the new Modern format settled a bit I started thinking about what the introduction might mean for Legacy, Modern itself or MTG in general.

This is not meant to be bashing on the new format or "the sky is falling"-talk, just some random thoughts that I feel should be discussed.

I'll phrase my thoughts a bit provocative to get the discussion going:


Modern showed us that there will never be a print of functional-identical (or similar) Dual Lands (e.g. Snow Duals...):

Do you really think that there will be day where WotC thinks that the Modern format would be ready for such a shake-up?
If it is not happening in the next set I am quite sure that it won't happen ever. This of course means no cheap Duals for Legacy.


Modern is set-up and planned to go the way of Legacy in the long run:

What I want to say with that is that there will be no reprints of the shock-duals (and some of the other pricy staples) either. If necessary they will introduce another format later on.
This is because I think WotC cares more about the secondary market than they are willing to admit.
I see some indications on this when looking on FTV: Legends (I really would have expected Xiahou Dun to be included) and of course in the solidification of the Reserved List some month ago.
And Imagine the bitching that would happen if lets say Hallowed Fountain would now be reprinted in Innistrad after its crazy price explosion.

[Rizso]

Hopefully they will reprint all the shocklands soon, before they are as costly as the old duals.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Hopefully they will reprint all the shocklands soon, before they are as costly as the old duals.

As far as I'm aware, they have never reprinted a staple with the aim of lowering its price. I see absolutely no reason why they would do so for modern staples - it is not in their best interest. Honestly, I think anyone that's getting into the format "because they will reprint duals and bob and goyf and keep prices way lower than legacy" needs to stop chasing the elusive pot of gold at the end of the fucking rainbow and come back to reality.

[SpikeyMikey]

Modern is set-up and planned to go the way of Legacy in the long run:

What I want to say with that is that there will be no reprints of the shock-duals (and some of the other pricy staples) either. If necessary they will introduce another format later on.
This is because I think WotC cares more about the secondary market than they are willing to admit.

I think the shock-duals may be reprinted simply because their format will likely fall flat on its face after the initial surge if they do not. However, I agree, they will definitely not use reprints as a tool to keep pricing affordable; it's in their best interest to keep secondary market prices as high as possible. High prices create a "lottery" mentality. The EV of a pack may not be good, but if there's a chance to crack an ultra expensive card, people will buy them anyway. Nobody with any sort of understanding of probability should play the lottery (it's arguable in the case where the prize is large enough to overcome pot odds, but that's pretty rare and the likelihood of winning is low enough that even at that point it's a poor bet; pot odds work on the idea that you win some of the bad bets you place) but people do because we're irrational creatures. Cracking packs in search of a Jace, TMS or other hot chase card is a great example.

If there is a history of out-of-print (OOP) cards retaining or rising to very high values (see $100 Tarmogoyfs and $40 Vendilion Cliques), it makes sense for people to buy any singles they think they might need while they're in print. If card values on OOP cards are low, there's no reason to buy them until you need them. If 50 people only need 5 playsets of card "x" at any given time and x stays cheap, then you'll only have 5 sets in the pool. If there is a reason to believe that x will spike in the future, all 50 people are going to want a playset "just in case" because OOP values will be much higher than IP values. Suddenly, you need 10 times more packs cracked to get your 50 playsets of x and Wizards makes more money. Any way you slice it, high singles prices correlate to higher pack sales.

[DrJones]

I don't think they will reprint the shocklands because the developers have said they weren't a good design for newcomers. However, there have been veiled comments about reprinting the onslaught fetchlands so that modern doesn't have to rely on the enemy-colored ones.

I believe better duals are about to come, if not on this block, on the next one, which is why I wouldn't buy shocklands. There are barely any tournament-caliber card in the format that cares about the basic land type of your lands, anyways.

[SpikeyMikey]

There are barely any tournament-caliber card in the format that cares about the basic land type of your lands, anyways.

Verdant Catacombs would like a word with you. So would Wild Nacatl. And Knight of the Reliquary. In fact, half of the cards that care about basic land types in 1.5 are the ones that care in Modern. Daze and Quirion Ranger stand out to me as the main exceptions and Ranger is only played in Elves. Submerge possibly, but it's always been a niche card at best. But the point of dual lands is that they make for idiot-proof mana bases in combination with the fetches.

[DrJones]

I forgot about those two zoo cards, I was thinking more in the lack of Fireblast and that Kird Ape wasn't so hot in modern. Plus, I don't like pairing fetchlands + shocklands, way too much damage for most decks.

[ramanujan]

I agree with the others on the sentiment that reprints will not be made to reduce prices. It was once an important promiss to players that there are only so many of a given card, making it collectible. Wizards tends to look forward by designing new cards rather than reprints. It is a good policy to keep the game fresh and to reward the players/businesses that have supported them for a long time. I know that I would rather see some new cards creating new decks than a reprint of some expensive staples.

I would look at price reducing reprints as a poor business choice. I think it would remove a fair amount of the credibility of the card prices we see today, and could potentially cause a run on the bank. Part of the reason that it seems rational to buy great cards is knowing they wont reprint 20 Billion just so everyone can have a set. I see both sides of the coin on the issue, I just agree with the unpopular choice.

In the end, Wizards can create cards that invalidate strategies/formats if they want. Take a look at mental misstep as a good example.

-Peace

[Octopusman]

Chilling effect for collectors if they reprint "expensive" cards.

Chilling effect for players if they make new, powerful cards (as opposed to side-grades). "What do you mean my $100 Goyf is crap now?"


It's a tough business to run because favoring one spectrum of the product over another creates angst.
I tend to wonder if the more recent homogeny in decks has to do with "newer" powerful cards. Thoughtsieze, Bob, Stoneforge Mystic, Jace2.0, Nacatl, Knight of the Reliquary, Loam, Mental Misstep, Batterskull, etc.
Aside from most lands and force of will, Natural Order, etc

Just run what's powerful, it seems.

[dontbiteitholmes]

What I want to say with that is that there will be no reprints of the shock-duals (and some of the other pricy staples) either. If necessary they will introduce another format later on.
This is because I think WotC cares more about the secondary market than they are willing to admit.
I see some indications on this when looking on FTV: Legends (I really would have expected Xiahou Dun to be included) and of course in the solidification of the Reserved List some month ago.
And Imagine the bitching that would happen if lets say Hallowed Fountain would now be reprinted in Innistrad after its crazy price explosion.

They are going to reprint Shocklands you can bet on it. The next block after Innistrad will be a return to Ravnica and shocklands will return. They may have been a bad design for noobs, but noobs learn to follow the herd a lot quicker now adays than back in Ravnica. Even the terrible players at my local store play Tempered Steel and crap like that.

If anyone wants to bet against me step up to the plate and prepare to get burned. On a related note I called Enemy M12 lands in Innistrad. Expect every land in Modern to be under $15 in a couple years.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Chilling effect for collectors if they reprint "expensive" cards.

Who gives a shit.

I mean really.

Collectors don't buy packs, players do.

Especially when you reprint cards they want to play with.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Who gives a shit.

I mean really.

Collectors don't buy packs, players do.

Especially when you reprint cards they want to play with.

Like it or not collectors + players keep the game alive.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I agree with the others on the sentiment that reprints will not be made to reduce prices. It was once an important promiss to players that there are only so many of a given card, making it collectible.

This is not what "collectible" means. "Collectible" cards are generally certain editions of cards.

Like, a collectible special edition of a comic doesn't mean they will never reprint that comic in any other form.

A collectible Mickey Mantle card worth a couple hundred k doesn't mean that new baseball card sets aren't going to throw in a Mickey Mantle.

Collectibility inherently means something different from what you're saying, collectibility means that something has addded value beyond its utility.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Collectibility inherently means something different from what you're saying, collectibility means that something has addded value beyond its utility.

Like a piece of cardboard with a picture of a lotus flower on it being worth over $1000?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Like a piece of cardboard with a picture of a lotus flower on it being worth over $1000?

If Black Lotus were in M13, it wouldn't make a Beta Black Lotus any less of a collectible item for being a Beta Black Lotus.

[lordofthepit]

If Black Lotus were in M13, it wouldn't make a Beta Black Lotus any less of a collectible item for being a Beta Black Lotus.

Alpha/Beta are very much immune to reprints. It would cause Unlimited Lotuses to drop significantly in price though. Not necessarily to $100, but significantly lower.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Alpha/Beta are very much immune to reprints. It would cause Unlimited Lotuses to drop significantly in price though. Not necessarily to $100, but significantly lower.

Being collectible doesn't mean that the company is going to somehow protect the market worth of an item or never print another version of it, though, that's a totally bizarre interpretation unique to a subset of Magic players. It just means there's not going to be an indefinite run of that version of Black Lotus or whatever.

[KevinTrudeau]

Modern is set-up and planned to go the way of Legacy in the long run:

What I want to say with that is that there will be no reprints of the shock-duals (and some of the other pricy staples) either. If necessary they will introduce another format later on.
This is because I think WotC cares more about the secondary market than they are willing to admit.
I see some indications on this when looking on FTV: Legends (I really would have expected Xiahou Dun to be included) and of course in the solidification of the Reserved List some month ago.
And Imagine the bitching that would happen if lets say Hallowed Fountain would now be reprinted in Innistrad after its crazy price explosion.

Folderol. The entire point of the format was to have a non-rotating Eternal card pool without the hindrance of the Reserve List so that they could reprint any staple they desired; you are right in saying that stuff like Vendilion Clique won't ever see a random reprint in a Core Set to quell prices, but I guarantee that the shocklands will come back before 2013.

You're seriously saying they're already planning on phasing out the format in the long run a month after its inception, even though it doesn't bear the weight of the Reserve List?

[soltakar]

Being collectible doesn't mean that the company is going to somehow protect the market worth of an item or never print another version of it, though, that's a totally bizarre interpretation unique to a subset of Magic players. It just means there's not going to be an indefinite run of that version of Black Lotus or whatever.

This.

From the beginning Wizards stated that there was supposed to be a limited number of a card when it is originally printed, and then they can print an unlimited (that is where the name of the set actually came from) amount of the card in other forms. Somewhere along the lines players started feeling like this limited printing rule should apply to all printings of all cards, and so now we have cards at outrageous prices because selfish people don't want reprints because it will ruin their "investment".

[dontbiteitholmes]

This.

From the beginning Wizards stated that there was supposed to be a limited number of a card when it is originally printed, and then they can print an unlimited (that is where the name of the set actually came from) amount of the card in other forms. Somewhere along the lines players started feeling like this rule should apply to all printings of all cards, and so now we have cards at outrageous prices because selfish people don't want reprints because it will ruin their "investment".

The reality is somewhere in between. If Black Lotus and friends had been reprinted like birds of paradise over the years and the most expensive card in the game was $25 I don't think Magic would still be around. At the same time Modern prices are going to drive people away from the format and puts a lot of pressure on WotC to reprint expensive cards. At the same time WotC reprinting expensive cards lowers their value and screws over stores that bought in to Modern staples at current prices. WotC has to balance keeping players happy and keeping businesses happy because it can't afford to lose either. I'm guessing we might see Goyf sometime soon in a set and then every year a $50-$60 Modern rare will be the selling point of a FTV with the $20-30 rares being the selling points of duel decks. The only way to reprint money rares and keep businesses from getting boned is to repack them in sealed product that stores can mark up for demand.