For everyone complaining about this being a "cash grab" for WotC, may I remind people that no one in the building in Renton, WA, sets the secondary market prices.
The "cash grab" will be done by sites like Star City Games and eBay sellers, who will buy cases of product at bulk pricing to sell sets of DoJs and the new Fetchlands at wallet-draining prices. Meanwhile, the casual player that picks up a few packs a week will be paying MORE per pack due to restricted distribution. A local shop is being charged $110 a box for M10 and Zen by their three regional distributors, and may raise their prices to $5 per pack just to be able to order more product. At $4 per pack, they make $12 per box. At that rate, they'll be closing by the end of the year.
This is the same argument people had with FtV: Exiled, blaming WotC for making a "cash grab." The only money they got was what distributors paid for the sets, not the $75+ many places charged the consumers. That MSRP of $35 would have held for a day or two after release, had the cards not been spoiled. Once the secondary market set the price for Berserk at $40, my hopes of picking up FtV: Exiled went out the window. The fallout from this debacle has pushed WotC to limit distribution, to try and curtail these practices. Unfortunately, players and shops are going to be paying the price for these changes, at least for the coming months.
While not normally apt to MtG, there is a phrase that comes to mind: "Don't hate the game, hate the player."
For everyone complaining about this being a "cash grab" for WotC, may I remind people that no one in the building in Renton, WA, sets the secondary market prices.
The "cash grab" will be done by sites like Star City Games and eBay sellers, who will buy cases of product at bulk pricing to sell sets of DoJs and the new Fetchlands at wallet-draining prices. Meanwhile, the casual player that picks up a few packs a week will be paying MORE per pack due to restricted distribution. A local shop is being charged $110 a box for M10 and Zen by their three regional distributors, and may raise their prices to $5 per pack just to be able to order more product. At $4 per pack, they make $12 per box. At that rate, they'll be closing by the end of the year.
This is the same argument people had with FtV: Exiled, blaming WotC for making a "cash grab." The only money they got was what distributors paid for the sets, not the $75+ many places charged the consumers.
This sounds more like a cash grab by third party dealers stacked on top of a cash grab by WotC. It's hard to defend a company as being completely innocent when they charge $35 for a pack of reprint cards.
Remeber way back when when there were only 3 expansions a year? Now there's 4 sets a year, core sets come out twice as often and their cards are only in standard for half as long + all the side stuff like FTV and that Planeswalk set.
A local shop is being charged $110 a box for M10 and Zen by their three regional distributors, and may raise their prices to $5 per pack just to be able to order more product. At $4 per pack, they make $12 per box. At that rate, they'll be closing by the end of the year.
Why don't the local shops just buy boosters online for $80 each? I find it hard to believe they would pay $110 per booster box.
Why don't the local shops just buy boosters online for $80 each? I find it hard to believe they would pay $110 per booster box.
I agree, there is no local shop out there that is buying booster boxes from WotC for 110 bucks a pop. I just preordered 2 from my local shop for 90 bucks a piece and I guarantee they are making at least a good 10-20 bucks profit on each of those boxes. Stores wouldn't sell them unless they were making a profit (Economics 101).
I will say though that on the topic of this card I am still kind of mad that they printed this card. It's not that the card will cost 15 dollars a piece since we all know WotC doesn't make that kind of money on the card itself since it's all through the secondary market. But they still do make more money off of printing good cards like this.
For example, if a set is junk when it's being previewed, people buy less product, stores buy less product, WotC makes less money. However, when people who play formats like standard see cards like this one and the fetch lands, it causes people to want the product more so that they can get decks ready for FNMs, PTQs, etc. which causes stores and dealers to buy more product, and WotC makes more money. Look at M10 for instance. They sold out of product which hasn't happened for a while. (Not sure the last time this happened but I believe it's been a few years at least). The demand has been crazy lately, especially in M10 where you could actually make money on the secondary market off a box of cards. Case in point, the secondary market does directly reflect WotC making more money, at least when the set releases and is out for a few months. Which is why printing cards like this makes sense for WotC but alienates those that are sick of buying cards that are so similar to other cards we already own.
I dont want to excuse Wotc but some people dont seem to understand what a company is...
Wotc of course is trying to make money one or the other way,if their products dont sell they will end up closing .
Saying they make good cards to grab money from people is just ridiculous..
Gaming/pc industries arent trying to make money when they make so many games a year?
Its the same for everything.
And about the Ftv exile,the original price from wotc is 35$,if you want to blame someone blame the dealer that sells it for 100$ + ..
There's a difference between From the Vaults and Day of Judgement. A BIG difference.
Hypothetical A: WotC chooses to reprint Wrath in M10 and no DoJ in ZEN.
Hypothetical B: WotC chooses to discontinue Wrath and print a variant with superficial differences*.
The difference between situation A and B is very low in terms of what the pros like to call EV, or Expected Value, to the consumer; whether you open Wrath or DoJ they do nearly the same thing.
The difference lies in the fact that consumers must now replace their Wraths with new DoJ's without getting any EV into the bargain. Before this change I had the ability to pay 2WW to kill everything, and afterwards I will still have the same ability, but I'll be out $60.00. So I basically just paid $60 for nothing but the privilege of remaining competetive. How can you defend that? Especially when compared to:
Hypothetical C: WotC prints "Day of Exile" to replace Wrath with: 1WWW sorcery: Exile all creatures. This card gives positive EV over Wrath. Consumers buy it happily. *I* would have bought it happily, are you kidding? That would have been AWESOME. It would have been new, fun, and innovative. It would have added value.
This is why FtV: Exiled is different. It DOES have value. Because where else can you find a newly-printed Berserk? Or a foil Berserk? Or a foil alternate art Balance? FtV: Exiled is a unique product. DoJ is not.*
The point is, what we as customers want from Wizards is innovation and fun. If they're going to do a reprint of a card, they ought to have the GDMF decency to do a real reprint and let us play with our old copies, promo foils, signed judge foils, and other pretty toys that we've shelled out money for. It doesn't do much to endear your hardcore older collectors when you keep yanking the rug out from under them. And if they don't want to do reprints, that's great too - I'd have loved to see a new, innovative, never-before-seen Wrath effect printed. Instead we just got a rename, which I'm sorry to say IS a cash grab, no matter how you slice it.
* some are going to object that DoJ is substantially different from Wrath. Until I see regenerators rocking the top 8 of a PTQ, I'll continue to say this is just a reprint.
I still fail to see what's wrong with cash-grabs. They are a company in a capitalistic society. Do you expect them to think that thier customers are loyal to a fault, and will buy product no matter whats in it? Of course not, they need to make reasons for you to keep purchasing. It's economics people, learn to live with it.
I still fail to see what's wrong with cash-grabs. They are a company in a capitalistic society. Do you expect them to think that thier customers are loyal to a fault, and will buy product no matter whats in it? Of course not, they need to make reasons for you to keep purchasing. It's economics people, learn to live with it.
I'm saying a better "reason to keep purchasing" wrath effects is because they're cool and exciting, not because they chose to change the card's name.
If you really dislike the term "cash-grab", I could go with out-and-out product design laziness. They couldn't be bothered to come up with a new Wrath effect, so they just renamed it, made a superficial change, and expect us to be OK with buying the same product all over again. Some will, some won't, that's economics - but I'm saying if they had made a better product, no one would be complaining.
A local shop is being charged $110 a box for M10 and Zen by their three regional distributors, and may raise their prices to $5 per pack just to be able to order more product. At $4 per pack, they make $12 per box. At that rate, they'll be closing by the end of the year.
As a TO who works closely with shops and distributors, there is 1 of 2 things going on here. That's either absolute BS. No, shop owner would knowingly pay $30 extra per box when they can easily avoid it. Or, it's price gouging by the distributors, and the shop owner is being an idiot. He can get them for MUCH cheaper online. Hell, our shop sells boxes @ $100 or $90 w/ membership.
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I dunno, it really seems like they had a good enough reason to change it. Wrath of GOD doesn't fit in with their new design philosophy for obvious flavor reasons. The problem is that the change came about 10 years too late... if they had fixed the name when they were altering things to get rid of 'demons' et al. to appease crazy Christians all those years ago we wouldn't be complaining about our textless/promo/beta/already owned ***s now being useless in Standard.
It sucks for us, but I think it was a necessary decision, and they didn't make it lightly. I don't think it was made to sell more packs (at least it wasn't made ONLY to sell more packs), because they've said on numerous occasions that printing *** in core sets leaves less design space for sweepers in Block.
And as for FTV:Exiled being printed to make money, ****ing duh. They're a company, and printing FTV:E is practically like printing money for them. Hell, they're probably not making nearly as much money as the secondary market is by marking them up 200%.
As a TO who works closely with shops and distributors, there is 1 of 2 things going on here. That's either absolute BS. No, shop owner would knowingly pay $30 extra per box when they can easily avoid it. Or, it's price gouging by the distributors, and the shop owner is being an idiot. He can get them for MUCH cheaper online. Hell, our shop sells boxes @ $100 or $90 w/ membership.
How much do shops have to buy boxes from distributors for? The fact that I can buy a box for 80 bucks online suggests that shops must make some decent amount of profit off of selling a single box for that price, or is that only because those places buy cases upon cases of boxes?
Hypothetical A: WotC chooses to reprint Wrath in M10 and no DoJ in ZEN.
Hypothetical B: WotC chooses to discontinue Wrath and print a variant with superficial differences*.
The difference between situation A and B is very low in terms of what the pros like to call EV, or Expected Value, to the consumer; whether you open Wrath or DoJ they do nearly the same thing.
In what terms? In terms of Limited, ok they do about the same thing. In terms of Standard, there is a big difference since in situation A you have the price of Wrath of God falling which influences many many people and their trade binder (witness the falling price of every other core set reprint in M10, most have lost 40% or more value, aka Birds of Paradise, Pithing Needle, Underworld Dreams, Howling Mine, etc). Thus you could argue that the EV of M10 in general would be lower with Wrath of God being a reprint in it (lets say, in place of Planar Cleansing).
Furthermore in situation A you would also lower the EV of Zendikar since that is one less T2 Staple $10 rare you could open. Let's say they had reprinted Planar Cleansing instead in Zendikar. That's a $3 rare (at best), so by reprinting Wrath and not printing DoJ you've lowered the EV of 2 of the newest (hottest) sets, which will definitely influence WotC's bottom line.
However, let's look at situation B which is conveniently the situation we find ourselves in. M10 was a hit without a good wrath substitute and the price of Wraths has gone down (which is the same situation we'd be in if it had been reprinted). DoJ is providing a lot of hype for ZEN since everyone knows it will be an instant staple for T2 as long as it is in print, making the EV of Zen go up.
The difference lies in the fact that consumers must now replace their Wraths with new DoJ's without getting any EV into the bargain. Before this change I had the ability to pay 2WW to kill everything, and afterwards I will still have the same ability, but I'll be out $60.00. So I basically just paid $60 for nothing but the privilege of remaining competetive. How can you defend that? Especially when compared to:
Not necessarily. First, many people had wraths and did not use them. While it was and has been a tournament staple and something every competitive person would collect 4 of, they are not used in every season and are limited to one decktype (control with a white splash). You are only "out" $60.00 if you choose to pick up a playset of DoJ immediately.
Hypothetical C: WotC prints "Day of Exile" to replace Wrath with: 1WWW sorcery: Exile all creatures. This card gives positive EV over Wrath. Consumers buy it happily. *I* would have bought it happily, are you kidding? That would have been AWESOME. It would have been new, fun, and innovative. It would have added value.
It's also a little *better* than wrath and has some design issues compared to DoJ (in terms of making regenerators matter, your card doesn't).
The point is, what we as customers want from Wizards is innovation and fun. If they're going to do a reprint of a card, they ought to have the GDMF decency to do a real reprint and let us play with our old copies, promo foils, signed judge foils, and other pretty toys that we've shelled out money for. It doesn't do much to endear your hardcore older collectors when you keep yanking the rug out from under them. And if they don't want to do reprints, that's great too - I'd have loved to see a new, innovative, never-before-seen Wrath effect printed. Instead we just got a rename, which I'm sorry to say IS a cash grab, no matter how you slice it.
Excuse me, did you just imply that printing something like DoJ is indecent? Nothing prevents you from playing with your toys in Extended. Or legacy. Or Vintage. Or EDH (if that's your style). Wizards did not come to your house and light your Wraths on fire. You can call it a cashgrab if you want and you seem to be beyond having your opinion changed but at least consider that not everyone feels the way you do.
* some are going to object that DoJ is substantially different from Wrath. Until I see regenerators rocking the top 8 of a PTQ, I'll continue to say this is just a reprint.
It can act as white wrath 5-8 in extended and wrath #2 in highlander style decks. Also, if we really are getting River Boa, I'll expect you'll get your wish.
In what terms? In terms of Limited, ok they do about the same thing. In terms of Standard, there is a big difference since in situation A you have the price of Wrath of God falling which influences many many people and their trade binder (witness the falling price of every other core set reprint in M10, most have lost 40% or more value, aka Birds of Paradise, Pithing Needle, Underworld Dreams, Howling Mine, etc). Thus you could argue that the EV of M10 in general would be lower with Wrath of God being a reprint in it (lets say, in place of Planar Cleansing).
That has more to do with the new cards in M10. If it had been an all-reprint set like 10th, the price of an M10 needle or wrath would have remained fairly steady. What's depressing M10 rare prices is the fact that, wanting playsets of Time Warps and Baneslayers and Planeswalkers, people are opening lots of packs of M10, whereas opening a box of 10th wasn't as enticing (but it was good to have it around for newbies to get into the game with).
Furthermore in situation A you would also lower the EV of Zendikar since that is one less T2 Staple $10 rare you could open. Let's say they had reprinted Planar Cleansing instead in Zendikar. That's a $3 rare (at best), so by reprinting Wrath and not printing DoJ you've lowered the EV of 2 of the newest (hottest) sets, which will definitely influence WotC's bottom line.
Well, doesn't that work out to the same amount of money whether they put the 10 dollar rare in M10 or in Zendikar?
However, let's look at situation B which is conveniently the situation we find ourselves in. M10 was a hit without a good wrath substitute and the price of Wraths has gone down (which is the same situation we'd be in if it had been reprinted). DoJ is providing a lot of hype for ZEN since everyone knows it will be an instant staple for T2 as long as it is in print, making the EV of Zen go up.
Well, WotC's EV from ZEN is certainly going up... but if Wrath had been reprinted in M10, DoJ in ZEN would not give it EV from the player's POV. This is a card that's only exciting in the absence of wrath.
Not necessarily. First, many people had wraths and did not use them. While it was and has been a tournament staple and something every competitive person would collect 4 of, they are not used in every season and are limited to one decktype (control with a white splash). You are only "out" $60.00 if you choose to pick up a playset of DoJ immediately.
Well, I'm out 60 whenever I get my playset. I really don't see it dropping below $15 for the foreseeable future. Sure, not many people opened 10th, but nevertheless there were LOTS of Wraths out there (Alpha thru 10th = a lot of wrath), and they still held value in the 15-20 range. By comparison total number of DoJ's once ZEN's print run is up will be a fraction of the total number of Wraths. Now, one can hope they'll reprint DoJ in M11 rather than pull the rug out from under us *again*, but even if they do, it will take quite a few reprintings before DoJ is common enough that its price can drop down to Wrath's level.
And if I want to just open packs until I get my playset (rather than buying/trading), I suspect I'm going to be out considerably more than $60.
Excuse me, did you just imply that printing something like DoJ is indecent? Nothing prevents you from playing with your toys in Extended. Or legacy. Or Vintage. Or EDH (if that's your style). Wizards did not come to your house and light your Wraths on fire. You can call it a cashgrab if you want and you seem to be beyond having your opinion changed but at least consider that not everyone feels the way you do.
OK, I went a bit over the top there. It just seems a rather disingenuous thing to do is all. I feel like they could have at least tried to make the card different in some other ways than just one small change.
It can act as white wrath 5-8 in extended and wrath #2 in highlander style decks. Also, if we really are getting River Boa, I'll expect you'll get your wish.
Possibly, I remember how good it was once upon a time. The question is, now that creature power has been pushed this much, is Boa big enough to rumble in Standard any more? 2 for 2 power is NOT what defines a good creature in Standard any more... so the question comes down to how many Islands it will get to walk on, and how many Infests, Paths, Terminates, etc., it has to face.
I dunno, it really seems like they had a good enough reason to change it. Wrath of GOD doesn't fit in with their new design philosophy for obvious flavor reasons. The problem is that the change came about 10 years too late... if they had fixed the name when they were altering things to get rid of 'demons' et al. to appease crazy Christians all those years ago we wouldn't be complaining about our textless/promo/beta/already owned ***s now being useless in Standard.
Agree. It's very, very late for this change happening due to flavor reasons.
...they've said on numerous occasions that printing *** in core sets leaves less design space for sweepers in Block.
Now this is a fairly valid point. I'm not sure how I would address that, aside from reprinting *** in every large October expy so that block could have it. But that would get old quickly...
And as for FTV:Exiled being printed to make money, ****ing duh. They're a company, and printing FTV:E is practically like printing money for them. Hell, they're probably not making nearly as much money as the secondary market is by marking them up 200%.
Yeah, I have no idea why they were selling them for $35 at the con with people turning around and selling them for $100. If I had been running the WotC booth that day I'd have immediately set the price to $95.
What's going to be really funny is those people who moved FtV on release day for $65/unit... if they want to get one back they'll have to pay an even higher price now, probably be out 30 net... I would never have let go of one of these if I'd gotten it for 35, except to immediately convert my profits into more FtV.
Well, WotC's EV from ZEN is certainly going up... but if Wrath had been reprinted in M10, DoJ in ZEN would not give it EV from the player's POV. This is a card that's only exciting in the absence of wrath.
I think it would still be exciting even if we had Wrath. Until we start seeing more playable regenerators, it's still a 4CMC sweeper. It's 4 more ***s in every non-Standard constructed format, or one more in singleton formats.
I really hope they don't replace Planar Cleansing with this....I really hate how they are changing card names, like Grizzly Bears to Runeclaw Bear. I mean come on wizards.
As a TO who works closely with shops and distributors, there is 1 of 2 things going on here. That's either absolute BS. No, shop owner would knowingly pay $30 extra per box when they can easily avoid it. Or, it's price gouging by the distributors, and the shop owner is being an idiot. He can get them for MUCH cheaper online. Hell, our shop sells boxes @ $100 or $90 w/ membership.
I imagine that is true for the US, but for smaller countries such as the one I live in it can be a problem. We only have one distributer for the whole country and stores cannot sell sealed product to overseas countries. I'm sure there are some that do so regardless but if the store owners here were to buy from them they risk losing the official product (and FNM support etc) altogether.
How much do shops have to buy boxes from distributors for? The fact that I can buy a box for 80 bucks online suggests that shops must make some decent amount of profit off of selling a single box for that price, or is that only because those places buy cases upon cases of boxes?
I know the shops in my area get boxes $73.50 (might be $74.50) before markup
I wonder why there are 2 different arts of this card.
One from Kev Walker (the first we saw) with a Hurricane and some bolts, then another "official" from WotC with many people flying through the air...
Personally I like the Hurricane art more.
Has it been clearified why there are two? Sorry I don't want to read through 57 pages...
The "hurricane" art is for the promotional card. As far as I know, you can get this card by buying a box of Zendikar from your local brick and mortar shop. Otherwise, there's always Ebay.
A voice for Timmy.
Commander R Ashling, the Pilgrim Mono Red Wildfire Control GBW Karador, Ghost Chieftain Abzan Dredge Rock WBR Tariel, Reckoner of Souls Mardu Aggro-Reanimator Midrange
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Yes and no: remember that you only have to regenerate once against a deathtoucher now.
But yeah, WotC is trying to make regeneration matter outside of combat, since before, every removal spell pretty much took care of regenerators.
Thank you for typing this.
This sounds more like a cash grab by third party dealers stacked on top of a cash grab by WotC. It's hard to defend a company as being completely innocent when they charge $35 for a pack of reprint cards.
Remeber way back when when there were only 3 expansions a year? Now there's 4 sets a year, core sets come out twice as often and their cards are only in standard for half as long + all the side stuff like FTV and that Planeswalk set.
Why don't the local shops just buy boosters online for $80 each? I find it hard to believe they would pay $110 per booster box.
I agree, there is no local shop out there that is buying booster boxes from WotC for 110 bucks a pop. I just preordered 2 from my local shop for 90 bucks a piece and I guarantee they are making at least a good 10-20 bucks profit on each of those boxes. Stores wouldn't sell them unless they were making a profit (Economics 101).
I will say though that on the topic of this card I am still kind of mad that they printed this card. It's not that the card will cost 15 dollars a piece since we all know WotC doesn't make that kind of money on the card itself since it's all through the secondary market. But they still do make more money off of printing good cards like this.
For example, if a set is junk when it's being previewed, people buy less product, stores buy less product, WotC makes less money. However, when people who play formats like standard see cards like this one and the fetch lands, it causes people to want the product more so that they can get decks ready for FNMs, PTQs, etc. which causes stores and dealers to buy more product, and WotC makes more money. Look at M10 for instance. They sold out of product which hasn't happened for a while. (Not sure the last time this happened but I believe it's been a few years at least). The demand has been crazy lately, especially in M10 where you could actually make money on the secondary market off a box of cards. Case in point, the secondary market does directly reflect WotC making more money, at least when the set releases and is out for a few months. Which is why printing cards like this makes sense for WotC but alienates those that are sick of buying cards that are so similar to other cards we already own.
There's a difference between From the Vaults and Day of Judgement. A BIG difference.
Hypothetical A: WotC chooses to reprint Wrath in M10 and no DoJ in ZEN.
Hypothetical B: WotC chooses to discontinue Wrath and print a variant with superficial differences*.
The difference between situation A and B is very low in terms of what the pros like to call EV, or Expected Value, to the consumer; whether you open Wrath or DoJ they do nearly the same thing.
The difference lies in the fact that consumers must now replace their Wraths with new DoJ's without getting any EV into the bargain. Before this change I had the ability to pay 2WW to kill everything, and afterwards I will still have the same ability, but I'll be out $60.00. So I basically just paid $60 for nothing but the privilege of remaining competetive. How can you defend that? Especially when compared to:
Hypothetical C: WotC prints "Day of Exile" to replace Wrath with: 1WWW sorcery: Exile all creatures. This card gives positive EV over Wrath. Consumers buy it happily. *I* would have bought it happily, are you kidding? That would have been AWESOME. It would have been new, fun, and innovative. It would have added value.
This is why FtV: Exiled is different. It DOES have value. Because where else can you find a newly-printed Berserk? Or a foil Berserk? Or a foil alternate art Balance? FtV: Exiled is a unique product. DoJ is not.*
The point is, what we as customers want from Wizards is innovation and fun. If they're going to do a reprint of a card, they ought to have the GDMF decency to do a real reprint and let us play with our old copies, promo foils, signed judge foils, and other pretty toys that we've shelled out money for. It doesn't do much to endear your hardcore older collectors when you keep yanking the rug out from under them. And if they don't want to do reprints, that's great too - I'd have loved to see a new, innovative, never-before-seen Wrath effect printed. Instead we just got a rename, which I'm sorry to say IS a cash grab, no matter how you slice it.
* some are going to object that DoJ is substantially different from Wrath. Until I see regenerators rocking the top 8 of a PTQ, I'll continue to say this is just a reprint.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who is up in Heaven now. EDH WUBRG Child of Alara WUBRG BGW Karador, Ghost Chieftain BGW RGW Mayael the Anima RGW WUB Sharuum the Hegemon WUB RWU Zedruu the Greathearted RWU
WB Ghost Council of Orzhova WB RG Ulasht, the Hate Seed RG B Korlash, Heir to Blackblade B G Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer G *click the general's name to see my list!*
I'm saying a better "reason to keep purchasing" wrath effects is because they're cool and exciting, not because they chose to change the card's name.
If you really dislike the term "cash-grab", I could go with out-and-out product design laziness. They couldn't be bothered to come up with a new Wrath effect, so they just renamed it, made a superficial change, and expect us to be OK with buying the same product all over again. Some will, some won't, that's economics - but I'm saying if they had made a better product, no one would be complaining.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who is up in Heaven now. EDH WUBRG Child of Alara WUBRG BGW Karador, Ghost Chieftain BGW RGW Mayael the Anima RGW WUB Sharuum the Hegemon WUB RWU Zedruu the Greathearted RWU
WB Ghost Council of Orzhova WB RG Ulasht, the Hate Seed RG B Korlash, Heir to Blackblade B G Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer G *click the general's name to see my list!*
As a TO who works closely with shops and distributors, there is 1 of 2 things going on here. That's either absolute BS. No, shop owner would knowingly pay $30 extra per box when they can easily avoid it. Or, it's price gouging by the distributors, and the shop owner is being an idiot. He can get them for MUCH cheaper online. Hell, our shop sells boxes @ $100 or $90 w/ membership.
It sucks for us, but I think it was a necessary decision, and they didn't make it lightly. I don't think it was made to sell more packs (at least it wasn't made ONLY to sell more packs), because they've said on numerous occasions that printing *** in core sets leaves less design space for sweepers in Block.
And as for FTV:Exiled being printed to make money, ****ing duh. They're a company, and printing FTV:E is practically like printing money for them. Hell, they're probably not making nearly as much money as the secondary market is by marking them up 200%.
How much do shops have to buy boxes from distributors for? The fact that I can buy a box for 80 bucks online suggests that shops must make some decent amount of profit off of selling a single box for that price, or is that only because those places buy cases upon cases of boxes?
UGR Intet, the Dreamer
B Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
WUBRG Sliver Overlord
W Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant
In what terms? In terms of Limited, ok they do about the same thing. In terms of Standard, there is a big difference since in situation A you have the price of Wrath of God falling which influences many many people and their trade binder (witness the falling price of every other core set reprint in M10, most have lost 40% or more value, aka Birds of Paradise, Pithing Needle, Underworld Dreams, Howling Mine, etc). Thus you could argue that the EV of M10 in general would be lower with Wrath of God being a reprint in it (lets say, in place of Planar Cleansing).
Furthermore in situation A you would also lower the EV of Zendikar since that is one less T2 Staple $10 rare you could open. Let's say they had reprinted Planar Cleansing instead in Zendikar. That's a $3 rare (at best), so by reprinting Wrath and not printing DoJ you've lowered the EV of 2 of the newest (hottest) sets, which will definitely influence WotC's bottom line.
However, let's look at situation B which is conveniently the situation we find ourselves in. M10 was a hit without a good wrath substitute and the price of Wraths has gone down (which is the same situation we'd be in if it had been reprinted). DoJ is providing a lot of hype for ZEN since everyone knows it will be an instant staple for T2 as long as it is in print, making the EV of Zen go up.
Not necessarily. First, many people had wraths and did not use them. While it was and has been a tournament staple and something every competitive person would collect 4 of, they are not used in every season and are limited to one decktype (control with a white splash). You are only "out" $60.00 if you choose to pick up a playset of DoJ immediately.
It's also a little *better* than wrath and has some design issues compared to DoJ (in terms of making regenerators matter, your card doesn't).
Excuse me, did you just imply that printing something like DoJ is indecent? Nothing prevents you from playing with your toys in Extended. Or legacy. Or Vintage. Or EDH (if that's your style). Wizards did not come to your house and light your Wraths on fire. You can call it a cashgrab if you want and you seem to be beyond having your opinion changed but at least consider that not everyone feels the way you do.
It can act as white wrath 5-8 in extended and wrath #2 in highlander style decks. Also, if we really are getting River Boa, I'll expect you'll get your wish.
That has more to do with the new cards in M10. If it had been an all-reprint set like 10th, the price of an M10 needle or wrath would have remained fairly steady. What's depressing M10 rare prices is the fact that, wanting playsets of Time Warps and Baneslayers and Planeswalkers, people are opening lots of packs of M10, whereas opening a box of 10th wasn't as enticing (but it was good to have it around for newbies to get into the game with).
Well, doesn't that work out to the same amount of money whether they put the 10 dollar rare in M10 or in Zendikar?
Well, WotC's EV from ZEN is certainly going up... but if Wrath had been reprinted in M10, DoJ in ZEN would not give it EV from the player's POV. This is a card that's only exciting in the absence of wrath.
Well, I'm out 60 whenever I get my playset. I really don't see it dropping below $15 for the foreseeable future. Sure, not many people opened 10th, but nevertheless there were LOTS of Wraths out there (Alpha thru 10th = a lot of wrath), and they still held value in the 15-20 range. By comparison total number of DoJ's once ZEN's print run is up will be a fraction of the total number of Wraths. Now, one can hope they'll reprint DoJ in M11 rather than pull the rug out from under us *again*, but even if they do, it will take quite a few reprintings before DoJ is common enough that its price can drop down to Wrath's level.
And if I want to just open packs until I get my playset (rather than buying/trading), I suspect I'm going to be out considerably more than $60.
OK, I went a bit over the top there. It just seems a rather disingenuous thing to do is all. I feel like they could have at least tried to make the card different in some other ways than just one small change.
Possibly, I remember how good it was once upon a time. The question is, now that creature power has been pushed this much, is Boa big enough to rumble in Standard any more? 2 for 2 power is NOT what defines a good creature in Standard any more... so the question comes down to how many Islands it will get to walk on, and how many Infests, Paths, Terminates, etc., it has to face.
Agree. It's very, very late for this change happening due to flavor reasons.
Now this is a fairly valid point. I'm not sure how I would address that, aside from reprinting *** in every large October expy so that block could have it. But that would get old quickly...
Yeah, I have no idea why they were selling them for $35 at the con with people turning around and selling them for $100. If I had been running the WotC booth that day I'd have immediately set the price to $95.
What's going to be really funny is those people who moved FtV on release day for $65/unit... if they want to get one back they'll have to pay an even higher price now, probably be out 30 net... I would never have let go of one of these if I'd gotten it for 35, except to immediately convert my profits into more FtV.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who is up in Heaven now. EDH WUBRG Child of Alara WUBRG BGW Karador, Ghost Chieftain BGW RGW Mayael the Anima RGW WUB Sharuum the Hegemon WUB RWU Zedruu the Greathearted RWU
WB Ghost Council of Orzhova WB RG Ulasht, the Hate Seed RG B Korlash, Heir to Blackblade B G Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer G *click the general's name to see my list!*
I think it would still be exciting even if we had Wrath. Until we start seeing more playable regenerators, it's still a 4CMC sweeper. It's 4 more ***s in every non-Standard constructed format, or one more in singleton formats.
UGR Intet, the Dreamer
B Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
WUBRG Sliver Overlord
W Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant
I think there is a good chance regenerate will be a useful ability in the new metagame.
Commander: *Five Color Fun-Stuff *Grixis Artifacts *Beast Tribal
Brawl: To Be Decided At Eldraine Release!
Source: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/events/zendikarbuyaboxpromo
11-3-1 @ GP Copenhagen: Top Stories of Grand Prix Copenhagen
I imagine that is true for the US, but for smaller countries such as the one I live in it can be a problem. We only have one distributer for the whole country and stores cannot sell sealed product to overseas countries. I'm sure there are some that do so regardless but if the store owners here were to buy from them they risk losing the official product (and FNM support etc) altogether.
I know the shops in my area get boxes $73.50 (might be $74.50) before markup
Ha! They did make a 4/4 flying prot white... But not a single Vamp with Regen?! WTF! All the life gain stuff is pretty good though.
The "hurricane" art is for the promotional card. As far as I know, you can get this card by buying a box of Zendikar from your local brick and mortar shop. Otherwise, there's always Ebay.
Edit: Yes, it's a foil promo.
Commander
R Ashling, the Pilgrim Mono Red Wildfire Control
GBW Karador, Ghost Chieftain Abzan Dredge Rock
WBR Tariel, Reckoner of Souls Mardu Aggro-Reanimator Midrange