Honestly, I don't know what to make of this. Every now and then they throw us a bone like Delver of Secrets or Wild Nacatl, both of which are some of the best cards in the decks that play them and show up in Legacy. But for the most part... Wasn't it always a bit like this? The best cards in the game always had a large portion of rares in them compared to commons and uncommons. Granted, utility instants and sorceries used to be uncommon for the most part, but still. I think (And this is just my personal opinion) that it's not so much the rarities going up a whole ton, but rather the price of Magic in general going up these days.
Think about it. Back in Invasion block, could you imagine paying in the neighbourhood of 50 $ for a Standard card like Liliana or VoR? Even paying over 20 for something like Snapcaster would be above the norm. Magic's just more expensive across the board these days, with even individual rares and mythics being more than they used to be. And if the announcement MaRo gave at the dawn of the mythic rarity is to be trusted (And I don't see why it wouldn't be), rares are actually more common these days than they were back then, with mythics being only slightly more sparse than old rares. So... What gives? You'd figure that if it was just Magic being more popular, that would mean more boosters being cracked and more cards being in circulation.
Try to keep in mind that one factor that increases the value of cards nowadays is the massive increase in the size of the playerbase. More players=more demand=higher prices.
I've played a lot of CCG's over the last eighteen years or so (and most of them competitively). Almost every condescending and arrogant jerk I've met in gaming has been a Magic player. Things that dangle the promise of money tend to breed contempt. Except for some odd reason Poker, which is 100% about the money, and that has less jerks than Magic. Most poker players are fine. I've only met a few that a truly deplorable to play against.
I have yet to understand where the condescension and elitism that I meet constantly in Magic comes from. I'm a gamer. A true gamer. Meaning I'll play anything and own several hundred boardgames/card games. I've just never understood where the superiority complex about this game comes from. It's literally the only game where I run across it on a semi-regular to a very regular basis (as opposed to once in awhile or rarely like most every other board game or CCG I have played).
I'm not sure why. I love playing this game. You just have to find a very good group to play it with. This seems to be harder these days because everybody takes it so damn seriously.
Your anecdotal account doesn't mean much. Even if you've met 2-3 thousand magic players and got to know each one of them very well, there are at least a few million magic players. It may just happen that you're good at finding all the jerks. I personally have only met 2-3 unpleasant individuals that play magic over the past 2 years that I've been playing.
If you increase the consistency of the game, terrible players will have to start blaming their losses on something other than mana screw and the game will die.
People who always blame their losses on bad luck will always blame their losses on bad luck or their opponent getting lucky. No matter how much of the luck factor you take away from the game some people will refuse to admit that they are responsible for their losses. A pro will look at a game where they drew too many/too few lands and think about alternate lines of play or what they did wrong. A noob(or I guess most players) will look at the same game and only think about how they could've won if they drew the right number of lands.
Aggro takes a ton of skill to play effectively. You have to get in as much damage as quickly as possible. Missing just 1 point of damage can sometimes make the difference between a win or a loss for aggressive decks. Sequencing your plays so that you can get in the maximum amount of damage over 4-5 turns takes a lot of thinking and skill to pull off. Not to mention you have to make sure that you don't over-extend into a board wipe or throw a burn spell too early/at the wrong target.
Let's not forget that Percy was in the same format as caw-blade. I think him not seeing play is more the environment being very hostile towards anything that wasn't caw-blade than it was Percy being a weak card.
If I'm at a tournament I'd just take it up to the TO and tell them that I found the deck box unattended. If it's literally just the two of us then I'd leave it there as I wouldn't feel any obligation to go out of my way to help him out.
You could just go to fnm and meet people by playing then? Getting to know the store owner/TO also helps as he/she will usually know most of the regulars.
I think that not making emblems permanents was a big mistake. If you have a emblem, and someone destroys all permanents in play, then you shouldn't get to keep it.
That's kind of the point of emblems. Elspeth, Knight-Errant used to read "For the rest of the game artifacts, creatures, enchantments, and lands you control are indestructible". Emblems exist to make it easier to remind players that you have that effect for the rest of the game and in some cases(like Domri's ultimate) makes it easier for templating and memory issues. To make it possible for emblems to be destroyed/interacted with goes against the effect that they are supposed to represent.
Nope. They're going to continue rising in price until they get reprinted in either a standard set or modern masters 2. Main reason being that they're pretty much required to make modern mana bases as consistent as possible and there are quite a few legacy decks that make use of them as well. So as long as the modern/legacy playerbase continues growing(and we have no reason to believe that the number of players in either format is decreasing) then prices will keep trending upwards.
If you need them sometime in the immediate future(3-6 months or so) then just bite the bullet and pick them up now. If you can wait a while then I'd say wait till wizards reprints them(which may take a while).
Good points on all sides. I have a few questions: Did Nephalia Drownyard see play? Would a Nephalia Drownyard that can also let you play your opponent's creatures see play? Do you like George Wendt? Do you like eating beans? Would you like to see a movie about George Wendt eating beans?
I know, I know. Not exactly an apples to apples comparison. But for those people saying that milling 3 does nothing, well... seems to me it does something. Add in the other somethings this card does, and it might see play.
This is actually a massive difference. Nephalia drownyard was a land which made it extremely hard to kill and could kill people while only using mana on your opponent's turn. It was essentially the perfect win condition for slow control decks. It lets you play more lands while giving you a tough to kill win condition and you can use it on your opponent's turn.
Now I'm not saying that Ashiok is bad but trying to use Nephalia drownyard to say that Ashiok is good/bad is pointless because they are two very different cards.
While limited doesn't require junk rares/mythics there always will be junk rares/mythics. Even if Wizards were to power creep the hell out of the game there will always be cards that are "junk" based on the context of the limited/constructed environment. If wizards were to print a spell that read "R: Deal 4 damage to target creature or player" lightning bolt would become a much worse card in the context of legacy/modern since you would rather player the 4 damage burn spell over the 3 damage burn spell.
Cards can't be bad or good without a context. If 90% of creatures in a limited format have 4 toughness then you can throw lightning bolt in the set and it would be a crap card because it wouldn't kill 90% of the creatures in the format. You can use the same thinking with standard/modern/legacy. Ancestral Recall is only the most broken draw spell in the game until they print "U: Draw 4 cards".
I get that part of the issue is that there are certain cards are almost never going to get played in anything(Emmara Tandris) but part of the issue is that you have to define "constructed playable". Are we talking standard/block/modern/legacy/vintage/pauper/etc.? What do the rest of the cards in those formats look like? Is it reasonable to expect cards to be printed that replace cards in older formats(I.E. expecting wizards to print lands playable in modern when you have fetches/shocks which are just 2 life short of being just as good as legacy manabases?).
Don't forget doom blade, ultimate price, dreadbore, mizzium mortars, orzhov charm, putrefy, plus whatever we get out of Theros that we haven't seen yet. Kalonian Hydra gets out of control very quickly but your opponent can very easily just have the removal spell and you just waste a turn getting a guy killed. If you're wondering about a ramp deck like the elf ball deck then that might be a potential deck but it loses a lot of its explosiveness since we lose archdruid and arbor elf.
"Dies to removal" is actually a relevant concern for some creatures. Depending on what you want a creature to do it can actually be a huge concern that it just dies to a doom blade. A control deck that runs a finisher like aetherling(where you only run 2-3 max) you want to make sure that it's a resilient finisher because you only have so many finishers in a deck and that finisher needs to "finish" the game reliably. An aggro deck doesn't care if it's 2/2 or 3/3 dies to a doom blade, that aggro deck probably has 10-15 more dudes it can just throw at the opponent.
As with most things "dies to removal" isn't always a concern for creatures but that doesn't mean you should just say "everything dies to removal so it just doesn't matter". In some cases it actually does.
Try to keep in mind that one factor that increases the value of cards nowadays is the massive increase in the size of the playerbase. More players=more demand=higher prices.
Your anecdotal account doesn't mean much. Even if you've met 2-3 thousand magic players and got to know each one of them very well, there are at least a few million magic players. It may just happen that you're good at finding all the jerks. I personally have only met 2-3 unpleasant individuals that play magic over the past 2 years that I've been playing.
People who always blame their losses on bad luck will always blame their losses on bad luck or their opponent getting lucky. No matter how much of the luck factor you take away from the game some people will refuse to admit that they are responsible for their losses. A pro will look at a game where they drew too many/too few lands and think about alternate lines of play or what they did wrong. A noob(or I guess most players) will look at the same game and only think about how they could've won if they drew the right number of lands.
That's kind of the point of emblems. Elspeth, Knight-Errant used to read "For the rest of the game artifacts, creatures, enchantments, and lands you control are indestructible". Emblems exist to make it easier to remind players that you have that effect for the rest of the game and in some cases(like Domri's ultimate) makes it easier for templating and memory issues. To make it possible for emblems to be destroyed/interacted with goes against the effect that they are supposed to represent.
If you need them sometime in the immediate future(3-6 months or so) then just bite the bullet and pick them up now. If you can wait a while then I'd say wait till wizards reprints them(which may take a while).
This is actually a massive difference. Nephalia drownyard was a land which made it extremely hard to kill and could kill people while only using mana on your opponent's turn. It was essentially the perfect win condition for slow control decks. It lets you play more lands while giving you a tough to kill win condition and you can use it on your opponent's turn.
Now I'm not saying that Ashiok is bad but trying to use Nephalia drownyard to say that Ashiok is good/bad is pointless because they are two very different cards.
Cards can't be bad or good without a context. If 90% of creatures in a limited format have 4 toughness then you can throw lightning bolt in the set and it would be a crap card because it wouldn't kill 90% of the creatures in the format. You can use the same thinking with standard/modern/legacy. Ancestral Recall is only the most broken draw spell in the game until they print "U: Draw 4 cards".
I get that part of the issue is that there are certain cards are almost never going to get played in anything(Emmara Tandris) but part of the issue is that you have to define "constructed playable". Are we talking standard/block/modern/legacy/vintage/pauper/etc.? What do the rest of the cards in those formats look like? Is it reasonable to expect cards to be printed that replace cards in older formats(I.E. expecting wizards to print lands playable in modern when you have fetches/shocks which are just 2 life short of being just as good as legacy manabases?).
As with most things "dies to removal" isn't always a concern for creatures but that doesn't mean you should just say "everything dies to removal so it just doesn't matter". In some cases it actually does.