Yeah, I really see this as a test case. If in fact they can make money from us, I would think the chances of RL shifts to facilitate making additional money from us get much higher.
Cockatrice: Bosque
I don't understand this is a draft set. There is a reason some amazing constructed cards were Uncommon [FoW and Wasteland] - they had an Uncommon effect on a draft. Now they weren't really focused on draft back in Alliances, and here in EM they dealt with FoW correctly: they used Mythic Slot for Mythic (constructed) Uncommons. I'm really confused as to why Wizards thinks Wasteland will have a Rare effect on the draft format [congrats on having wasteland vs an opponent with 12-15 basics in a 40 card deck].
I understand you have to have some really trashy mythics when you guarantee 3 in a box, b/c if you don't people buy it up and this set is never drafted...but, let's put the constructed pillars of the format [which are terrible in limited] in non-rare slots. You can even reprint them as uncommons that are in actuality rarer than mythics.
Two more observations: please give us back old borders and templating for this set (this'll never happen) and please package these in more tamper-proof packages than the glue gun + cardboard MM packs.
He has no say.Originally Posted by Lemnear
This is the one thing that has a sliver of a chance of changing this. Public outcry combined with record sales of Eternal product could convince Hasbro to overturn it.
They stated the packaging will not be recyclable (i.e. cardboard MM crap).
This reminds me, with the new hologram, we'll have Legacy/Vintage value cards that are a lot harder to fake.
Is case another word for box or are there multiple boxes in a case?
6 boxes per case
15 cards per booster pack.
24 booster packs per booster box.
4 boxes per case.
This will be identical to the distribution of MMA and MM2 in terms of the packaging, except using foil wrappers instead of cardboard.
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This. Rosewater's article on the 20 things that shaped the game we know today and players' responses it pretty telling.
60-card decks and 4-per-card limits - "Why is Wizards trying to tell me how many cards I can play with???"
Banned and Restricted list - "Why is Wizards trying to tell me which cards I can play with???"
Creation of Type 2 - See above
Removal of ante cards - "Why is Wizards catering to small kids and parents???"
Removal of damage on the stack and mana burn - "Why is Wizards dumbing down this game???"
Chronicles - "Wizards is trying to make my collection worthless!!!"
Reserve List - "Wizards is trying to make this game too expensive!!!"
@maharis: I think you are right on the money when you openly ask about wizards' motivation. I also think you're correct about Conspiracy doing a solid job bringing back [insert useful cards also playing in older formats].
I'm gonna get blown up for saying this, but I think a lot of people are buying way too much into into the hype. I'm fully on the cynical side. I'm rooting for a good set, but not counting on it being the greatest release ever. Something is fishy, but the clues add up when you think about WotC's moves:
My baseless speculation
1. GP NJ shocked WotC. People thoroughly enjoy eternal formats. But how do you make money off Eternal? You need products. You also need to tame the secondary market to a degree.
2. Eternal Masters is "phase 2" of a much greater "reprint older cards for profit" gameplan. They successfully tested the proverbial waters with Modern Masters. Twice. They saw how the market reacted. They are giving everyone a handful of older and more powerful cards. WotC is also in bed with SCG and the other major firms that provide MTG products. They can't piss off collectors and major vendors with straight up reprinting all the cards we want, so this item is in many ways an agreement for all sellers to make money. I'm also sure WotC analyzed the impact MM1 and MM2 had on consumers. While many cards went down in price, Goyf only went up.
3. I still believe WotC is planning to do a legitimate cube stand-alone product. This may be what [something Masters] evolves into. Alternatively, an annual [something Masters] that does not impact the B/R of Modern will could also see the light of day. WotC needs you to buy packs. Players love reprints of older solid cards. An eventual Cube or annual Masters product is a win-win that sells like hotcakes.
4. Drafting EM1 will be very expensive. Far beyond MSRP. *raises glass* Here's to hoping the cost of drafting EM1 is under $60/person. It is especially troubling to hear the print runs of this product will be intentionally low.
5. The pool of commons and uncommons will not be as strong as we'd all hope. There will obviously be chaff in this set. It would be great to see bstorm, ponder, swords, chain, bolt, hymn, therapy, mongoose, etc...but we need to lower our expectations. For every potential cabal therapy in this set, you're going to have bottle gnomes and moment's peace.
6. WotC is making Eternal Masters because it is pressured by competition. I really believe the only reason we're seeing this product come to life is due to proxies and alternative competitive games. Proxies are a much bigger deal than forum members believe. That anti-theft sticker isn't doing enough. Proxies are also getting better in quality as years go by. If WotC is looking to lay down serious "no proxies at stores/events", they need to reprint cards for players in some capacity. I also think other CCGs, LCGs, board games, and computer games are cutting into WotC's market-share of nerds. Players who once told me about other games pressuring WotC were probably correct.
*I would love to be loud wrong. But I look at how the market is already reacting to just the announcement of this product and it's quite sickening IMO.
As I've been saying for a while, either Wizards reprints duals or the Chinese will.
With reserved list cards skyrocketing, you can bet demand for counterfeits will increase.
I believe, though, that we will have 99% counterfeits before Wizards does away with the RL.
Newer proxies are practically indistinguishable already, short of ripping the cards to look at the core.
Just to check, since I haven`t seen any really good ones - do they have the right print pattern, text printed without the dot pattern, do they pass the light test etc? I can feel the paranoia starting to set in.
I'm at the point where I think chinese copies are doing the game a service by combatting the idiotic price spikes. I didn't want to buy LEDs but i knew I had to buy them because otherwise I'll never do it anymore. I have zero need for LEDs at the moment, but these stupid price spikes are forcing me to buy immediately for the old price to be able to play a range of decks and build my collection. I'm not buying to sell, just so that I have the freedom to select a deck and not be priced out of building a collection.
I feel this as well. When stuff like this happens and you can easily predict a price spike in the next few days, it`s only sensible to buy anything you might use in the future, because you don`t want to pay 1.5x the price next month, and worst case scenario is that you sell it at a profit or break even. I`m sitting here trying to figure out if I`ll ever want to play some Loam variant that I need Mox Diamonds for, because I can still find it at the old price, but not for long.
Like when Birthing Pod got banned, I didn`t have any immediate plans on playing Liliana of the Veil, but it`s a card that I like and it goes in a lot of archetypes that I`m drawn to. When I saw the B&R announcement, I knew that it was now or never, so I jumped on it. In a matter of days she went from $60 to $90. It`s just too predictable sometimes.
What`s sad is that this behaviour, while nothing but common sense on a personal financial level, is a huge contribution to the spikes that we`re trying to buy around. Prices spike because we are buying because prices spike. No wonder prices get out of hand.
This is absolutely true. They're able to liquidate staples at a much faster rate due to this now or never effect. I can tell you it's taking a substantial bite of my income and I don't feel happy about it because, although I like the cards I want to prioritize purchasing other cards first. You know, the stuff I need for decks now. WOTC should just give you points that you can trade in for attendance/tournament performance that you can spend on purchasing singles from them directly. This way you can't just give them money, so the stores have no say in it, but you can still circumvent the secondary market. This way Wizards also increases the activity of paper events and will be able to profit from the secondary market as well (I'd rather give to WOTC or a local shop than some online speculator).
I really think that the only way for them to truly combat counterfeits is to reprint power/duals. They've tried (and I know they apologized and reversed course with this, but I see this as a genuine attempt) to stop proxies altogether and faced huge criticism. Their attempts at moving Vintage to MTGO isn't really working for varied and numerous reasons. They reprint highly valuable cards on a near-regular basis now (MM), and it's had the effect that one would expect, Modern is flourishing, prices become more stable, but not without value to collectors.
Who will get pissed of they do? People with enough extra cash to just own 4-10 playsets of power or Library or Workshop (or Force... they're already pissed). Honestly I care so little about the plight of people who use cardboard in binders as a stock portfolio. There's a FB Vintage group, and 1 out of every 4 people commenting on EM said they got rid of absolutely everything that *might* have been printed in EM. One person had something like 40 FoW they shifted when they heard of the *possibility* they'd be reprinting Force. Personally? I have playsets of RL cards. I take absolutely no joy in seeing Mox Diamond double in price, even though I have a few extras. I'm not using my two LED in anything, and I don't think it being up to $150 since EM's announcement is a good thing. This is the difference between players and collectors, I place more value on the game itself than on the cards, The game gets worse when people can't afford to play it.
I'm with folks in that I don't think this thread should become about the RL, but so often this issue comes up (twice in the last few months, even) that I personally think it has to become something we need to constructively discuss, specifically about tactics we can employ to end it. Like I mentioned, the more they try to make money off eternal formats, the more players will be sucked in to a world where only half of their deck is accessible, and the other half is far beyond reasonable to attain.
I personally don't think they're edging against the RL, or have any plans to remove it. We should figure out what to do, especially once EM hits and sells out, and Wizards sees that more people actually prefer Vintage and Legacy (which I think is definitely true, when card prices aren't a factor).
Very good post. I agree on pretty much everything.
I would only add that sooner or later WotC (Hasbro) will probably feel the financial pressure of strong competition to the point of having to start the "management of decline". At that point the removal of the RL might become their secret weapon for mid-term revival.
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The problem I see is that they reiterate, just about every set, that the RL is not changing, that they've talked at length about 'the spirit of the RL' (which, printing functionally identical cards for MTGO isn't doing?), and that they've made it more strict instead of more relaxed.
Power creep is also a factor. In some ways, if they make duals really accessible and the days of 100+ dollar duals is long gone, there will be an absolute rush on 1-2 CMC, uber-powerful cards. They won't be able to print 4WW cards anymore unless they do absurdly broken things, and they're almost at that point now. Even if Standard won't see any benefit of Power or Duals being reprinted, the share of the playerbase that wants/needs extremely powerful stuff will be greater than it was before.... Which invariably means printing things IN standard, but FOR Legacy and Vintage. Right now, I'd estimate they have Vintage/Legacy in mind when they design probably 4 cards out of every 250 card set. If that number needed to increase, they will have serious issues with Standard, IMO.
Which is why special sets are super important, and I wish they used this opportunity (printing a non-Standard-legal set) to innovate for Vintage and Legacy and print some new action cards. Future bans, even. Just more tools for us to get excited about. Every other year we'd get a set designed specifically for Eternal, and not just reprints. That would be VERY good, and a solution to expanding the eternal player pool without having to affect Standard and Modern as a result. Personally, I want a Mishra set :)
If this was true most counterfeits would be RL cards but I'm pretty sure that T2/Modern cards are perhaps even more viable for counterfeits then P9/RL cards are because of the volume of the market.
Assuming you would be able to counterfeit an Alpha Black Lotus to near perfection how many do you reckon you would be able to push into the market before you draw attention? Who would buy that thing without asking questions? Assume it would be just as difficult to counterfeit say tarmogoyf/fetches/liliana of the veil. Which would be more interesting and would probably go unnoticed for quite a while?
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what's for lunch.
Making counterfeints of power and Duals is stupid as there is so mich money involved people do a shitload of tests to determine if the cards are real or not. The real market for counterfeits are cast flippable staples for Modern at this point like Goyf, Liliana, Snapcaster and Fetches
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I agree that Wizards won't violate the reserve list, but I strongly disagree that this is "the only way for them to truly combat counterfeits." The reserve list prevents "functional reprints" which Wizards defines as: " A card is considered functionally identical to another card if it has the same card type, subtypes, abilities, mana cost, power, and toughness." That means the door is open to Snow Duals, Legendary Duals, that kind of thing.
"But MaximumC," you say, "what about the SPIRIT of the Reserve list?" Yes, this is a concept they have floated before. However, this is flexible standard. Somewhere in Hasbro, some in-house counsel has written a legal memo where the lawyer has said something like: "You technically can print a Snow Dual, but smaller the functional difference is, the more likely some jackoff is to sue you. The argument would be that the difference is not material enough, so it violates the intent of the Reserve list. Plus, if it's really a replacement for an expensive Reserve-list card, you're maximizing the chances that the old cards actually lose value, giving said jackoff damages." So, WotC has a lot of flexibility on exactly what is too close to a card.
Luckily, we know this flexibility allows them to print cards that compete with Reserve List cards. Sometimes, they print new archetypes (Eldrazi, Maverick, Belcher, etc) that can break into older formats. Other times, they print new cards that are very nearly strict upgrades to older cards (Faithless Looting). In other words, Wizards has all the tools they need to revitalize old formats without breaking the reserve list.
Still not convinced? Here's some examples of cards that: (1) don't violate the express Reserve List; (2) compete with Reserve List staples; and (3) for which there is not much of an argument that they are "too close" to Reserve List cards:
Better Dual Land
Forest Plains
When this enters the battlefield, scry 1.
Weird Black Lotus
Enchantment - 0
Add 3 mana of any single color to your mana pool. This mana may not be spent to cast artifacts.
Ancestrall Recall 2.0
5U
Delve
Draw three cards.
(Whoops, they actually did print that last one. My bad.)
Obviously, there are other concerns that might make them reluctant to print such powerful cards. The point here is that all our belly aching about the Reserve List is totally misplaced. The only reason they don't print cards like this for Legacy and Vintage is because they have power level concerns, not because of the Reserve List.
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