man you guys are thinking way too hard over-analyzing what, at face value, was a rather straightforward decision.
like attributing choosing bridge over another card because they are greedy and only care about selling new product. is it not possible that bridge was chosen because it was actually the appropriate choice given its role in the most degenerate play patterns and its awkward and frankly poor design?
similarly their citing of certain data points but not including all the data they looked at isnt some deliberate attempt at deceive or hide anything. there isnt some set of immutable guidelines for ban decisions where some burden of proof exists. they are just people designing a game, and they adapt the 'rules' as they see fit in order to craft what they believe is a more enjoyable environment. so you either agree or you dont, and in turn you trust them or you dont. i get that players, especially ones that might use this forum/thread, would delight in more transparency; however it behooves wizards not to share everything they look at and the specifics because its needlessly constrains future decisions by setting precedent/expectations that most will likely misinterpret.
i mean did anything about the announcement seem unreasonable if taken at face value? regardless if anyone believed bridgevine didnt ultimately cross some line, i dont believe it can be argued the deck w/ bridge wasnt at least a borderline case.
So what the hell is happening with Wrenn and Six? It was like 40€ in the morning here in Europe and right now it's at 60€ minimum..
i mean its gotta be jund right? a beloved archetype gets a shot in the arm from a mythic walker with 3-4 copies showing up in lists. people eat that stuff up
you should be able to find copies of FoN in the 30-35 range still.
im fairly certain that the price of FoN and some other mh1 cards are inflated. the question is how much, and when it will cool off and begin to settle. the steady climb since release indicates that demand is outpacing the influx of supply (the market being saturated but supply drying up makes less sense).
we are about a month and a half into mh1's print run. i think there are arguments that mh1 won't be opened as much as people thought it might, but what we are seeing is still only a fraction of the total supply that will eventually hit the market in the 6-12 months wizards continues to fulfill orders. this also includes i believe 1 if not 2 mh1 limited GPs which isnt an insignificant amount of packs/boxes being opened.
Another ban on a tier 1 combo deck. Why does wizards refuse to allow combo to be anymore than tier 2 at best? Pod, Twin, Bloom, KCI, now Bridge. Sends a strong message that combo has no place in the modern format.
bridgevine was only a combo deck in the loosest sense. at its core its still just spitting out power and toughness as quickly as possible to run down opponents. the fact that it had a combo mill finish was just another angle of attack even further circumventing forms of resistance.
also combo-esque interactions are the sort of thing that have the highest chance of breaking something and applying too much pressure to format stability. it stands to reason this would translate to the types of things targeted for bans more frequently.
imo just buy forces now if you foresee playing them at all. could the card go down a bit in 4-6 months? maybe, but id give it an equal if not higher chance for the card to go up. regardless of the outcome purchasing now incurs very little risk.
the same can be said for any of the horizon cards imo. if they go into your decks and you plan to play with them, just get em now. the set is proving to defy most conventional wisdom on how the market will play out, and i dont think its worth the time or effort trying to predict such volatile price movements.
Well considering Looting is not going away, I'm cataloging my stuff. I'll probably work with Card Kingdom to liquidate, as I've had good interaction with their Support/Sales staff before.
Will let you know how it goes.
yeah ive had nothing but positive dealings buylisting to them. they wont cut you much slack on grading, but its never been unfair or shady from my experience.
if i remember correctly you have a lot of foil cards, so i would temper my expectations on how those end up graded. foils are held to a higher standard, and the percentage scale for each downgrade is more steep.
solid announcement. i think many of us, including myself, were and are still hoping for some unbans; especially moreso along the lines of the precedent they set last year with the jace/bbe unbans. however for a non-rotating format like modern, and with the higher frequency of b&r announcements there isnt any rush.
if anything the format has been too chaotic as of late. better to give things time to settle
im holding fast to the opinion that action will only be taken next week if wizards believes current developments would be a significant detriment to the optics of the mythic championship.
this likely means mtgo would have to be showing some scarily skewed results beyond what any of us can or have seen since its easier to attack certain decks in small(er) invite tournaments; with bridgevine being no exception. the fear being overwhelming representation and dominance despite it. whereas it just being the villain, and the narrative of it being suppressed by creative or intelligent deck choices sounding alright.
mentor blowing up like it did is a pretty good example of how volatile the market is atm. hype and speculation have grown as market forces for some time, but its particularly bad when there is a lot of uncertainty like there is in modern right now. people will bandwagon on anything that looks remotely good since they want to be sure to get copies before it catches on and becomes real and truly skyrockets.
dont get me wrong, mentor is really strong, actually probably one of the stronger creatures ever printed given how well it scales as time passes. it also hits those checkboxes like idsurge mentioned with a keyword thats been phased out and as a mythic from a small set. however the list price for mentor literally doubled overnight without results indicating the play demand is there.
funnily enough i picked up a playset at 20/per a little over a week ago after seeing esper mentor lists pop up on modo. think it posted in 2 different events. card barely budged over those 2 weeks. shows up on camera at the GP and all hell breaks loose.
i expect mentor to retract, albeit at a higher point it was at before, but probably something around 30 for NM copies. imo if you have copies and dont have serious plans to play with them in the near future, consider cashing in.
Kinda makes me look dumb for not buying the foils I wanted (just 2) for $25 a while back. At least I can still play the card, as I did buy 4 non foils during Khans.
UW's all the rage. Maybe something there should get banned?
yeah paper players really love UWx control. normally id say that the format response when it looks like a good thing to be doing has (typically) been exaggerated, but i think UW is the real deal at this point.
honestly the WAR walkers have just left a sour taste in my mouth at this point, including karn. feels like they are all just sorta the same card. cant say im pleased my main archetype has been pigeonholed so decisively by them.
as for bans? maybe one day. fair decks skewed heavily towards the reactive are usually a slow burn as it comes to being outed as 'too good' or oppressive. doesnt help the control or even 'fair' competition is lacking and its doing most of the heavy lifting to convince people you can play a slow reactive deck and succeed
yeah i think people are quick to write off the new urza decks and focus on bridgevine because of that period when grixis whir rose up for a bit not too long ago. its natural to think 'oh yeah its because chalice and ensnaring bridge are good right now', when they dont realize urza is facilitating relatively fast combo shennanigans. basically new angles of attack whir prison never had access to.
these assertions about what may or may not end up happening to bridgevine are well and good. ive been around long enough to know that pretty much everyone, including myself, are severely limited in our capacity to know what the hell we are talking about nor separate ourselves from our biases.
what im genuinely curious about though is who actually WANTS bridgevine to stick around as yet another 'top deck'?
i just dont see how anyone could be content with it being a thing influencing what modern is about on top of the direction the format has noticeably been moving in
havnet seen any of the coverage yet, but comical sounds good to me. i hope bridgevine is hilarious in its performance. lets put this to bed sooner rather than later so the format can move on.
yeah lyra and baneslayer are often paired up, but both showing up in sideboards has been less frequent as of late. i personally also benched baneslayer and put resto angel in its place and it has been surprisingly effective.
thats not to say the card is obsolete or anything so anyone who bought baneslayers are likely to hold onto the card as its still a solid option to play if the meta permits. so id chalk any price increase to the total supply out there just shrinking naturally.
i love me some baneslayer though. i do want to pick up an m10 foil at some point cause the art is awesome, but damn is my wallet tired from buying all the crap i needed from WAR and MH1 to update my decks.
yeah the ban list could use cleaning. for the most part a good portion of the cards are being evaluated under assumptions born from context that is no longer relevant or applicable. this has been evidenced multiple times as cards were unbanned and it was clearly evident that pretty much no one knew what the hell they were talking about. its easy to chalk it up to anyone wrong being ignorant or incompetent, including wizards; but really the complexity of the system involved with format ecology and how it develops is crazy high.
like look at punishing fire. who the hell would play that card? at first blush id think it wouldnt show up anywhere, but i cant be sure cause there are way too many unknowns.
so basically wizards will (probably) never even attempt cleaning up the ban list and challenging assumptions of the past because its a huge pain in the ass; to the point where you'd probably be better served just remaking the format from the ground up. whereas the alternative is to just keep doing what they are doing, design new cards, they trickle into the format and it develops organically. ban stuff when it looks like its harmful and just move on.
consider me on board the hype train.
like attributing choosing bridge over another card because they are greedy and only care about selling new product. is it not possible that bridge was chosen because it was actually the appropriate choice given its role in the most degenerate play patterns and its awkward and frankly poor design?
similarly their citing of certain data points but not including all the data they looked at isnt some deliberate attempt at deceive or hide anything. there isnt some set of immutable guidelines for ban decisions where some burden of proof exists. they are just people designing a game, and they adapt the 'rules' as they see fit in order to craft what they believe is a more enjoyable environment. so you either agree or you dont, and in turn you trust them or you dont. i get that players, especially ones that might use this forum/thread, would delight in more transparency; however it behooves wizards not to share everything they look at and the specifics because its needlessly constrains future decisions by setting precedent/expectations that most will likely misinterpret.
i mean did anything about the announcement seem unreasonable if taken at face value? regardless if anyone believed bridgevine didnt ultimately cross some line, i dont believe it can be argued the deck w/ bridge wasnt at least a borderline case.
im fairly certain that the price of FoN and some other mh1 cards are inflated. the question is how much, and when it will cool off and begin to settle. the steady climb since release indicates that demand is outpacing the influx of supply (the market being saturated but supply drying up makes less sense).
we are about a month and a half into mh1's print run. i think there are arguments that mh1 won't be opened as much as people thought it might, but what we are seeing is still only a fraction of the total supply that will eventually hit the market in the 6-12 months wizards continues to fulfill orders. this also includes i believe 1 if not 2 mh1 limited GPs which isnt an insignificant amount of packs/boxes being opened.
also combo-esque interactions are the sort of thing that have the highest chance of breaking something and applying too much pressure to format stability. it stands to reason this would translate to the types of things targeted for bans more frequently.
the same can be said for any of the horizon cards imo. if they go into your decks and you plan to play with them, just get em now. the set is proving to defy most conventional wisdom on how the market will play out, and i dont think its worth the time or effort trying to predict such volatile price movements.yeah ive had nothing but positive dealings buylisting to them. they wont cut you much slack on grading, but its never been unfair or shady from my experience.
if i remember correctly you have a lot of foil cards, so i would temper my expectations on how those end up graded. foils are held to a higher standard, and the percentage scale for each downgrade is more steep.
if anything the format has been too chaotic as of late. better to give things time to settleits shown up as a 1-of in urza lists. other than that the card is just way too slow to be relevant in a format like modern.
if you are really sitting on a stack of them id bite the bullet quick and dump them as quickly as possible.
this likely means mtgo would have to be showing some scarily skewed results beyond what any of us can or have seen since its easier to attack certain decks in small(er) invite tournaments; with bridgevine being no exception. the fear being overwhelming representation and dominance despite it. whereas it just being the villain, and the narrative of it being suppressed by creative or intelligent deck choices sounding alright.
dont get me wrong, mentor is really strong, actually probably one of the stronger creatures ever printed given how well it scales as time passes. it also hits those checkboxes like idsurge mentioned with a keyword thats been phased out and as a mythic from a small set. however the list price for mentor literally doubled overnight without results indicating the play demand is there.
funnily enough i picked up a playset at 20/per a little over a week ago after seeing esper mentor lists pop up on modo. think it posted in 2 different events. card barely budged over those 2 weeks. shows up on camera at the GP and all hell breaks loose.
i expect mentor to retract, albeit at a higher point it was at before, but probably something around 30 for NM copies. imo if you have copies and dont have serious plans to play with them in the near future, consider cashing in.
yeah paper players really love UWx control. normally id say that the format response when it looks like a good thing to be doing has (typically) been exaggerated, but i think UW is the real deal at this point.
honestly the WAR walkers have just left a sour taste in my mouth at this point, including karn. feels like they are all just sorta the same card. cant say im pleased my main archetype has been pigeonholed so decisively by them.
as for bans? maybe one day. fair decks skewed heavily towards the reactive are usually a slow burn as it comes to being outed as 'too good' or oppressive. doesnt help the control or even 'fair' competition is lacking and its doing most of the heavy lifting to convince people you can play a slow reactive deck and succeed
what im genuinely curious about though is who actually WANTS bridgevine to stick around as yet another 'top deck'?
i just dont see how anyone could be content with it being a thing influencing what modern is about on top of the direction the format has noticeably been moving in
thats not to say the card is obsolete or anything so anyone who bought baneslayers are likely to hold onto the card as its still a solid option to play if the meta permits. so id chalk any price increase to the total supply out there just shrinking naturally.
i love me some baneslayer though. i do want to pick up an m10 foil at some point cause the art is awesome, but damn is my wallet tired from buying all the crap i needed from WAR and MH1 to update my decks.
like look at punishing fire. who the hell would play that card? at first blush id think it wouldnt show up anywhere, but i cant be sure cause there are way too many unknowns.
so basically wizards will (probably) never even attempt cleaning up the ban list and challenging assumptions of the past because its a huge pain in the ass; to the point where you'd probably be better served just remaking the format from the ground up. whereas the alternative is to just keep doing what they are doing, design new cards, they trickle into the format and it develops organically. ban stuff when it looks like its harmful and just move on.