I do miss drafting Eye Tribal in Time Spiral. That was the messiest, all over the place set I can remember, which makes it my favorite but is also the antithesis of what they've said they're aiming for today.
As to the old Commander sets, you're absolutely right. They were good sets for a number of reasons. I don't know if it's a corporate shareholder mindset or just straight incompetence, but in recent memory the trend has been to try random shit, find the one that sells, then try and cut as much meat away and still sell it. When that ultimately fails they drop it and repeat with something new.
Commander and Masters sets are just one example, but the classic 3-set block into 2-set blocks into the "post-block" era, core sets ending but then M19 is a thing.
From the Vault was cool until it wasn't, just seems the list goes on. This isn't really a surprise.
I get that with the popularity of the game came a single market pricing issue, and it's nice to see them trying new things to solve a seemingly (to some) difficult problem. But all I see is a constant trend that the longer they print a product, the lower the quality seems.
Good thing they forgot Imperial Seal!
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Oh boy. Last time I tried to make this point, all sorts of people came out of the woodwork to accuse me of saying Limited shouldn't exist and that I hate Limited. One sized products do not fit all, but apparently I am wrong. Even though I said that people weren't generally finding opening boxes to be "woth it" and then all of a sudden Wizards starts trying to give people "added value" with these "box toppers." But what the hell do I know?
Well, I don't buy that, of course. Even if that is what they said. They increased the price to make more money, obviously, that's the only reason to increase the price. They could print packs of 15 Black Lotus it would "cost" the same and 15 Giant Growths. Nonsense corporate marketing-speak is never going to be reasonable or intelligible from a non-marketing perspective.
I have no way to prove this, but it's always been my hypothesis that the Expeditions and Masterpeices were very last minute attempts to prop up what they anticipated would be poor selling sets. And if that is true, it really showed, from both an art and layout perspective.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
is it just me or do the normal full border cards look better than some of the extended border cards?
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Even if you're buying it to draft with friends, it's still probably better to buy a switch + 2 games for most because you can invite your friends over repeatedly to get drunk and play mario kart.
You'd have to buy another box to do the same draft.
They know this will just get marked up and sold for 2/3 times normal msrp. They may as well put some of that money in their pocket.
I don't think the problem with Modern Masters was even was them doing it over and over. It was the fact they decided to up the MSRP of boosters while also cutting the value of the cards inside them (and, of course, they decide to up the price again with this new set). If they had sold Iconic Masters at the original $7 I think reception would've been a lot less lukewarm.
I'd be astounded to hear that. Guilds of Ravnica has, as far as I can tell, been a big success and I'm seeing people excited about Standard for the first time in years.Depending on how this next set goes, I wouldn't be surprised to hear "yes, we're shelving the Ravnica series for the foreseeable future. Sorry for fans hoping for Return to Return to Return to Ravnica"
They're looking to give Modern some bling value to distract people from the fact that they won't end the reserved list. Because if there are options to spend exorbitant amounts of money on a bunch of different things, why would people spend it on good cards? (That's how Marketing works.) Nearly explains the lack of Imperial Seal.
Depressingly, booze also costs money. I should know. And only in one of the two alternatives he posted is buying booze expected/not really a hindrance to enjoying the game.
And you could spill booze on a reprinted Imperial Seal!
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I read is as something like; people want City of Traitors but don't want to spend $250 on a copy, and they're not getting reprinted any time soon. Ancient Tomb is close but $35 a copy doesn't hold the same sway. So if you print an Expedition Ancient Tomb that values at $200, well that's just as good as City of Traitors, right? That implication that a deck's "goodness" is intrinsic to it's value. My Legacy deck can't stand a chance to that Vintage deck, it's only worth $4,000! His is way more!
Power (mtg kind) = Money = Power (other kind)
That's the sell with this kind of stuff I think. Players who buy this can strut saying "who needs dual lands, I have weird boarder foil Snapcaster Mages!"
The underlying flaw was: They insisted that the set make a good draft environment, to the point of cutting out good cards that needed reprints. Then, they upped the cost of the packs because "value" to the point where it was cost prohibitive to draft.
They gimped the set to make it draftable, and then priced it too high to be draftable.
Clearly the solution was to charge MORE for it.
Well, I don't doubt that there are these kinds of people out there. Same goes for the sorts that play foil/Expedition fetches with Revised duals. But I think most of them are really Modern players who just so happen to play Legacy once in a while though.
I don't think most Modern players want real duals anyway, because they'd never actually use them. And while some of them imagine that they want duals and other stuff, they don't actually want to play Legacy (or Vintage). Run some proxy events and you'll see, they just don't like the format.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Its not so much that Modern players want to get into Legacy, it's that they want to be taken as seriously as older formats. And that deck value somehow equates to that. You're still riding your bike when your big brother gets a car. But if his car is a beater Jetta and you get a WTP BMX, then you're just as cool right?
Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant, just that I'm approaching it from Wizards's side rather than the players'. It's like, "well, if we can't please the Legacy and Vintage crowds, at least we can persuade ourselves we're making the Modern crowd's cards just as cool." Also, the packs will sell like hotcakes given the spoilers we've already seen, but I'm curious as to whether whole boxes will sell more because of the new "frameless" cards. To be honest, I didn't notice a huge difference between the frameless ones and the regular versions from the previews. I guess we'll see how they look in the flesh; I didn't expect Unstable Swamps to look that good, but I liked them when I actually saw them.
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
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