I'm pretty happy to be honest. Yeah, Helvault and NDE are meh, but I want almost everything else in here. I'll play Glissa, Jitte, Momir and Dark Depths in decks, Processor is a fun casual card, Cabal Ritual foil is always nice to have. Honestly am not super disappointed and want to get one, as do a few of my friends.
I agree. I think people are giving this too much flak. At least Dark Depths finally got a much needed reprint, and with a token no less! There's definitely value in the set, and there's some reasonably flavorful stuff here too. It's not the best FTV, but it's not the worst either. I'll probably pick one up once the price settles down a bit since I don't have access to one at MSRP.
That cheer you just heard? That was your local Commander player.
Absolutely not.
This set is ultra limited to the extreme.
I'm expecting to be unable to get a box for less than double MSRP.
I might as well just buy all the cards that are being printed in it with how expensive and unavailable it will be.
Is it expected to be more limited than the last Modern Masters? There's certainly going to be more demand for this set than there was for the last one, so I really hope they don't decide to drop the supply of it after the problems that happened with the first Modern Masters.
DO we have any idea as to how many of these were made? FTV used to be super limited in quantities, but Annihilation and 20 seemed to have larger print runs. Is Angels also getting a larger print run, like the last two have, and how much bigger is that than the old FTVs?
I love everything about this except for their likely being 'extremely rare'. Means that I'll likely never get one like the promo Ugin, but it's better to have them in circulation than not.
I wonder when modern will stop increasing in price and finally become affordable like WOTC has promised for 4 years now... For every card that goes down a few dollars because of a reprint, there seem to be 10 that double in price due to not getting reprinted. Now we're back to 50-80 dollar fetches, and likely to see them only go up over the coming years. Hooray!
Reprinting Goblin Piledriver is not shabby. Also, the wording on Sylvan Messenger ("Put all Elf cards") kinda makes me think of Tribal spells returning to standard soon...
They've said before that they don't like tribal spells. My guess is that this wording isn't for future printings, but to make it more eternal playable by making it line up with the wording on Goblin Ringleader.
Now that all the dust has settled I have to wonder what Wizards thinks about MM2. While the initial rage of the community has fallen there does seem to be a general agreement of disappointment, you have to wonder if they don't feel the same on some of the points players have made.
I don't think they give a rat's ass. They sold a ton of dead trees with minimal investment for a lot of profit. All the criticism can be shrugged away as long as people are throwing money at them, which they are.
I wish I had pricing data for modern decks. If the prices are creeping up at the rate they seem to be creeping up, then MM15 is going to be the least of the problems the format is going to face.
That's a pretty naive view. Just because they made money in the short term does not mean that this was a good thing for them. They pissed off a lot of their players, and those players are now highly likely to spend less on magic. Saying that a company which relies heavily on the good will of their player base can release a terrible product and not care so long as it sells for the first week is ludicrous. MM2 has damaged WOTC's reputation (though certainly not irrevocably or unreasonably), and this will hurt them as a company. Your argument is about as good as someone pointing to snow and saying 'see, there's no such thing as climate change!'.
I have no idea if this was intentional or not, but I hope it wasn't. This sort of exceedingly rare massive bonus is not a pro-consumer marketing strategy. It's like those all-foil Hellvaults from the Avacyn Restored prerelease which were worth tens of thousands of dollars, as opposed to the other 99.9% of them, which were nearly worthless.
Booster packs are already random enough. Let's not make them even more random.
And isn't it a bit early to announce the August FNM promo? We learned about Path on April 23rd; I'm guessing they hurried the announcement out to help with the backlash of it being omitted from MM15.
They probably let is slip a bit early because everyone was pissed it wasn't in MM15.
But doing so defeats the point of the set since if the cards in it are only worth their MSRP then they won't go down much at all. The other option is to make a good value set and print more of it. Think MM1 with the print run of MM2. That's the kind of set players want (and for obvious reasons won't get), not this lottery set where you have a 1 in 5 chance of opening anything worth more than a dollar in your 10 dollar packs.
1. From Wizards' point of view, their primary goal is to just get more cards into circulation, more people who can get those cards and play with them. So keep in mind that a set that does not lower the prices of certain staples but does increase the amount of players that play with them is still a success in Wizards' eyes. It might defeat the players' wishes, but it doesn't defeat Wizards' point.
2. That being said, I believe Wizards is just testing the waters here, finding the right balance. They overshot with MM1, they probably undershot with this one. I'm confident MM3 will be somewhere in between if this underperforms.
These are the same kind of arguments that people used with MM1, and MM1 is largely seen as a failure. That doesn't mean it has to be a failure this go around, but I guess I'm just rarely pissed off that the set seems worse than MM1, but they want to charge 50% more for it. And yes, MM1 packs did go up to that price almost immediately (I got 7 at MSRP!), but that seemed largely to do with the unimaginably short supply. I was in line before midnight, and the store I showed up at had 1 box for sale, and limited people to two packs a person from it. Luckily, they are increasing the supply at this point, but the fact that the price is now artificially inflated again means that even at MSRP, they're the same crazy high price as last time, and sure, I can buy a few more now, but the cards in them aren't even as good, and the variance is just through the roof. If you don't open one of the 20 or so good rares/mythics (and god help the kid who opens up comet storm) then you get virtually nothing since the commons and uncommons are *****.
Wizards has been talking about making modern affordable for years now, and yet it keeps seeming to get more expensive. MM2 does not seem designed to alleviate the problem, which is very disappointing. When something like this is extremely expensive and provides no value for the expense and a poor draft format, it's hard to see why I should bother with it. It seems that everyone on this thread is now just hoping other people buy the packs and open them so they can get the one or two cards they want that actually made it into this over-premiumed set.
I guess I assumed that given that MM1 was 3 dollars a pack more than a normal set, and given that MM2 is 3 dollars a pack more than MM1, then there would be as big of a gap between the quality of cards in MM2 with respect to MM1 that there was between MM1 and a normal set. I see now that I was wrong, and the 10 dollar MSRP is just WOTC trying to take advantage of their players. The set's not even as good as MM1, and there will be significantly more of it, so why do I have to pay 50% more for it? This seems radically counter-intuitive.
Because Wizards doesn't want stores to take advantage of the players. If Wizards put a too low price on it stores will just mark it up because it's still a limited supply. They rather make a product that gets sold for MSRP.
But doing so defeats the point of the set since if the cards in it are only worth their MSRP then they won't go down much at all. The other option is to make a good value set and print more of it. Think MM1 with the print run of MM2. That's the kind of set players want (and for obvious reasons won't get), not this lottery set where you have a 1 in 5 chance of opening anything worth more than a dollar in your 10 dollar packs.
This calculation gives EV of $303, and after prices fall it presumes EV of just over $240.
Yes, prices on cards will fall, but there's also 1 foil per pack which the first two links don't address. I understand complaints about needed reprints not being there, but complaints about worthless boxes are unfounded.
Rare/mythic heavy EV is all fine and good if you can buy up loads of boxes. I'd just been hoping I could do some drafts and have a decent chance of getting some copies of staple commons/uncommons. If most of EV is in rare/mythic, drafting for $40 is way less palatable, and even worse, makes it so you have to rare draft unplayables.
One thing to consider though is that the EV of a set needs to be significantly higher than the MSRP for it to be worth buying, at least when the product is being sold at MSRP. In standard, the 'good' sets from a financial perspective (think RTR) launch with an EV twice that of their MSRP if not more. MM2 launching with an EV roughly equivalent to its MSRP just means that there's no reason to buy it, since you could literally just spend the money on the singles instead and get exactly what you want for the same price as a random lot.
That kind of confirms Inquisition to be in BFZ. There is no other place they can print it, and they know they have to print it. Will not be a problem with Thoughtseize rotating out.
Lol, 'have to'. They don't have to reprint *****, and I think MM2 shows that off quite well.
I agree. I think people are giving this too much flak. At least Dark Depths finally got a much needed reprint, and with a token no less! There's definitely value in the set, and there's some reasonably flavorful stuff here too. It's not the best FTV, but it's not the worst either. I'll probably pick one up once the price settles down a bit since I don't have access to one at MSRP.
Is it expected to be more limited than the last Modern Masters? There's certainly going to be more demand for this set than there was for the last one, so I really hope they don't decide to drop the supply of it after the problems that happened with the first Modern Masters.
Then why did they make Modern?
I'm also skeptical that the format would be very well received.
They've said before that they don't like tribal spells. My guess is that this wording isn't for future printings, but to make it more eternal playable by making it line up with the wording on Goblin Ringleader.
That's a pretty naive view. Just because they made money in the short term does not mean that this was a good thing for them. They pissed off a lot of their players, and those players are now highly likely to spend less on magic. Saying that a company which relies heavily on the good will of their player base can release a terrible product and not care so long as it sells for the first week is ludicrous. MM2 has damaged WOTC's reputation (though certainly not irrevocably or unreasonably), and this will hurt them as a company. Your argument is about as good as someone pointing to snow and saying 'see, there's no such thing as climate change!'.
Booster packs are already random enough. Let's not make them even more random.
They probably let is slip a bit early because everyone was pissed it wasn't in MM15.
These are the same kind of arguments that people used with MM1, and MM1 is largely seen as a failure. That doesn't mean it has to be a failure this go around, but I guess I'm just rarely pissed off that the set seems worse than MM1, but they want to charge 50% more for it. And yes, MM1 packs did go up to that price almost immediately (I got 7 at MSRP!), but that seemed largely to do with the unimaginably short supply. I was in line before midnight, and the store I showed up at had 1 box for sale, and limited people to two packs a person from it. Luckily, they are increasing the supply at this point, but the fact that the price is now artificially inflated again means that even at MSRP, they're the same crazy high price as last time, and sure, I can buy a few more now, but the cards in them aren't even as good, and the variance is just through the roof. If you don't open one of the 20 or so good rares/mythics (and god help the kid who opens up comet storm) then you get virtually nothing since the commons and uncommons are *****.
Wizards has been talking about making modern affordable for years now, and yet it keeps seeming to get more expensive. MM2 does not seem designed to alleviate the problem, which is very disappointing. When something like this is extremely expensive and provides no value for the expense and a poor draft format, it's hard to see why I should bother with it. It seems that everyone on this thread is now just hoping other people buy the packs and open them so they can get the one or two cards they want that actually made it into this over-premiumed set.
But doing so defeats the point of the set since if the cards in it are only worth their MSRP then they won't go down much at all. The other option is to make a good value set and print more of it. Think MM1 with the print run of MM2. That's the kind of set players want (and for obvious reasons won't get), not this lottery set where you have a 1 in 5 chance of opening anything worth more than a dollar in your 10 dollar packs.
One thing to consider though is that the EV of a set needs to be significantly higher than the MSRP for it to be worth buying, at least when the product is being sold at MSRP. In standard, the 'good' sets from a financial perspective (think RTR) launch with an EV twice that of their MSRP if not more. MM2 launching with an EV roughly equivalent to its MSRP just means that there's no reason to buy it, since you could literally just spend the money on the singles instead and get exactly what you want for the same price as a random lot.
Lol, 'have to'. They don't have to reprint *****, and I think MM2 shows that off quite well.