Take a look though the forums, especially the URx threads, and look at how many people are running sub optimal fetches. It can be staggering just how many people are running Strand and Delta instead of Tarn or Misty due to budget. The demand is there. Wasteland only really had Legacy demand. Fetchlands would have demand in Commander, Legacy, and Modern. If printed at rare their price would dip in the short term, but as people jump into the format, or try to optimize their deck, they'll slowly push the price back up. That is, unless the print run is as big as people seem to think it is.
That being said, I highly doubt that Wizards is putting fetches in MM3. I'd love to be proven wrong, but Wizards can make far more money saving fetches for a Standard set. Also, unless Wizards reprints this set into the ground, these boxes would rival Modern Masters 1 prices. Fetches would spike the price hard on a limited print run set. You'd see a lot of pre order cancellations on the online pre orders, and the box prices would sky rocket. Even overprinted, it'd still grow in price over the years. MM2 has finally gotten to MSRP and Eternal Masters is creeping up there. If I'm wrong my cards loose a bit of value and I don't care. I play them, I don't use them as a stock market. If I'm right, then you'll see a small spike on the Zen fetches when they aren't in the set and I'll loose money.
Legacy and Vintage are better supported on MTGO. It's a crap client, but it doesn't suffer under the RL. This enables Wizards to directly support the format like they haven't been able to do sine the RLs inception. It sucks they can't do it for paper, but it is what it is. Wizards can also better support these formats, and Modern, by utilizing their duel decks and Commander products as a vessel for some reprints. Things like Kitchen Finks and Spell Snare would be fantastic in these products, as they are usually high print run, and would help push down prices.
While I do believe that Modern Masters was a mistake, I believe this for a different reason. I believe decoupling Modern reprints from Standard hurts both Modern and Standard. It signals that the cards in the MM sets probably won't see Standard again, which is bad for Modern as these sets traditionally have low print runs, limiting the effect of the reprints. For example, look at the Mythics in MM sets. Most have returned to their pre reprint pricing. The reprinting of key rares, uncommons, and commons has helped, don't get me wrong, but we are getting them in the wrong way.
As for Standard, not reprinting these cards into Standard lessens the eternal appeal of Standard. This will limit the number of players buying the Standard sets. This game lives and dies on Standard. Wizards needs to find a way to better support the non rotating and eternal formats through Standard to ensure the games survival. They've made mistakes, like printing Thoughtseize into a Standard with an exceptionally strong black strategy. But they could have printed something like Bitterblossom in Origins. It had the plane tie in with Nissa's backstory, and the card would have been good, but without Tribal support I don't think it would have been too much for Standard. Doing a decent reprint every set would generate more hype, sell more packs, and help sell standard packs. While Masterpieces have generated some eternal excitement, the more people learn of the odds, the less people are excited. The odds of getting an eternal card you want is stupidly low. Because it's so low, these "reprints" are doing nothing to the price of the cards.
Not doing this has lead to Standard players buying Standard sets. Modern players get in on MM sets. Commander players obviously buy the Commander products. Draft players got Conspiracy, with they have to share with Legacy and Vintage who also have Eternal Masters. That isn't good. Products have very little player base overlap, which means that each set isn't reaching the number of players that it could be. If you cut the Masters Sets, and instead pushed more need reprints into Intro Decks and Commander Products, while supporting these products with large print runs, and did more reprints in Standard, I think the game would be better off. This would, in my mind be better than dedicated Master Sets, Masterpieces, and Standard sets that don't even attempt to support older formats.
MTG if you are looking at value. While Pokemon does have some expensive cards, like Shadowless Holo Charizard, and a few extremely limited print run cards, Magic has the RL with a host of cards on it that see play in Legacy/Vintage/Commander, and have massive value.
If you are just looking at emotional attachment, it will vary from person to person. Many have watched the Pokemon Anime, played it's gameboy games, it's TCG, and now Go. For these people the cards probably hold far greater value. But for the magic player who's been playing since 93-94, it would go the other way.
If you are just looking at the pokemon cards, I'd say they are about even with collecting vs playing the card game. Pokemon has a much better online client and a decent paper player base. If you throw in all the other Pokemon merch, it's all about collecting. That's what the whole thing is based on with "Gotta Catch 'em all!". There are innumerable toys and plushies, games, cards, shows, movies, it eclipses MTG.
Daretti, Scrap Savant is my go to commander, and is great with MLD if you build him as a Stax general. Daretti likes mana rocks, so go ahead and blow up all the lands, he doesn't care anyways. Along side that, all the stax and tax cards will further punish the other players, and can quickly lock people out of the game. Then all you have to do is ult Daretti and drop a Mindslaver for the win and loose what remaining friends you have. What's nice about Daretti is that you can also play him as an artifact reanimator style build. You can play a reanimator sub theme with cards like Trash for Treasure and Scrap Mastery, or you can go all out on that plan and have a MLD back up plan. It's nice because you can customize it to your meta.
I would not have that as your only deck however. When it was mine, I got targeted and murdered often in multiplayer games, and with good reason. Daretti is a great tool to break out when someone gets greedy, but not one I'd grind within a friendly play group.
I'm not really sure that they've gotten investors to back off. While the second wave of EM was a huge blow, they did an oddly short run of Commander 2016. While some think that we will see a second wave like we did with Commander 2013, nobody can be sure. With the minimal info we have on MM3, conflicting reports of some stores having a hard time getting boxes, while others are being begged to buy more, and seemingly inconsistent release and print run strategies employed by Wizards, this set is extremely volatile.
I also don't think we will see any of these low preorder boxes actual ship if the boxes have a reasonable EV. I expect a lot of cancellations and refunds if the EV is higher than 200.
As for the set itself I expect BUG flashback to be an archtype, with the trilands being reprinted at uncommon. Snapcaster at rare with Spider Spawning and Mystical Teachings at uncommon. Spawning was a huge part of triple Innistrad, and I can't see them leaving it out.
I think you are on the right path. I don't like that Ashmoor dies to Bolt, but in the day and age of Push... You are right about Master of Feast getting crap. He's really neat with Notion Thief, but outside of that I wouldn't run him. We want to be grinding people out, and giving people cards just undoes your Thoughtseize.
I'd say it's a good start. I'm not a huge fan of Bitterblossom, and would swap it out for another Arena. With a third Arena, I'd also drop the Sign in Blood for another copy of Collective Brutality.
I think the idea of Shag isn't great, but I've played many hours of magic on carpet, be it the floor or stairs. There are some types that I'd like to try out as a play mat. It's an interesting idea.
Your story makes me wish I could find a "kitchen table" playmat
Something like that might work. It'd look pretty sweet at an event. Or just show up with a cutting board
I'd be interesting to see what effect a big box store getting an allocation would be. It could be like the Commander products where they get cleaned out for being the lowest price, while the rest of the market stays high (think Mind Seize and Breed Lethality). Or it could force the price to remain low until the stock runs out. It's closely tied to print run, but even then I don't think people will be quick to forget the second wave of Eternal Masters. If we do see a low print run, I think many will shy away expecting the second wave hit. The box prices will be interesting to watch as time goes on, especially if the set has any real value.
If you bought Modern Masters 1 at launch for 200 (it was possible, I did it) and sat on it until this year (I did not do this, and cracked both of my boxes), is that not an investment? 4 years is not a very long time, but I'd still call this an investment, and a profitable one as MM1 is going for 350+ as far as I've seen. Or if you had the forethought to hold on the Zendikar Boxes from back in the day. A store could get them for around 80 bucks. Imagine if you "invested" in a case and sat on them until now, selling the boxes for 500. Is 8 years not long enough? Investing can be done in Magic, but is risky, as it's dependent on the health of the game.
RL investing, and even ABUR investing can be done. It's less volatile than trying to invest in current sets, but carries a higher price, and the same risk of the game failing. The issue with worrying about the game failing is that A. according to Wizards the game has been on a steady growth pattern for years now and B.Every system can fail. "Sure", traditional investment opportunities failed during the financial crash in '08. It doesn't matter what you are investing in, there is always a risk that the system crashes.
You might call investing in magic silly, but there are people who have made quite a lot of money doing it. I have a hard time labeling those people as silly, especially is they have managed to do so for a long time.
I think the idea of Shag isn't great, but I've played many hours of magic on carpet, be it the floor or stairs. There are some types that I'd like to try out as a play mat. It's an interesting idea.
I understand you can level people for small edges, but had the meta ignored the possible meta game implications of Fatal Push, and played the card instead of hedging against ramp, it's possible Death's Shadow would not have been quite as impressive as it was.
Level 0: Fatal Push is a great card, I'll be playing x amount.
Level 1: I'll play Ramp to punish people playing Push.
Level 2: People may try to punish Fatal Push by playing Ramp. With that in mind I will not be playing a significant number of them.
Level 3: People will not be playing Push in fear of Ramp. I'll play a deck weak to Push and strong against Ramp to exploit this.
Level 4(?): Some people are going to play a strategy that punishes ramp, and hopes to dodge Fatal Push. I'll play Push to beat these people.
At the end of the day these "levels" seem to be cylindrical repeating themselves over and over. What I suspect is that it may just be better to play against the overall meta game than try to predict an inbred meta game. From what I see, when you make moves to try to predict a meta, you open new holes that other can exploit. If you just jam what you know (as long as it's a reasonable deck like idSurge pointed out) I really think people would see more success.
Thinking about the GP, I remember one poster saying that the level one players avoided playing Fatal Push thinking people would bring ramp decks in response to it's printing. This lead to an environment that was ripe for decks like Death's Shadow. Is it possible that Modern has finally gotten to a point where you just play the deck you know, and craft your sideboard to fight to meta, instead of trying to choose a meta deck? Before there where obvious boogie men in the format, but they've all been axed, neutered, or can be dealt with with crushing sideboard cards. It'd be a big milestone if Modern was actually at that point.
This is an article I'm going to have to bookmark for future re-reading and referencing. Really good work here, you've provided a great resource to the community.
It wouldn't be hard to do a few interviews before round play, and then show those interviews during intermission. I onow the mothership usually has articles with the winner, but wouodnt it be nice to have a video of the interview instead of just a transcript?
That being said, I highly doubt that Wizards is putting fetches in MM3. I'd love to be proven wrong, but Wizards can make far more money saving fetches for a Standard set. Also, unless Wizards reprints this set into the ground, these boxes would rival Modern Masters 1 prices. Fetches would spike the price hard on a limited print run set. You'd see a lot of pre order cancellations on the online pre orders, and the box prices would sky rocket. Even overprinted, it'd still grow in price over the years. MM2 has finally gotten to MSRP and Eternal Masters is creeping up there. If I'm wrong my cards loose a bit of value and I don't care. I play them, I don't use them as a stock market. If I'm right, then you'll see a small spike on the Zen fetches when they aren't in the set and I'll loose money.
While I do believe that Modern Masters was a mistake, I believe this for a different reason. I believe decoupling Modern reprints from Standard hurts both Modern and Standard. It signals that the cards in the MM sets probably won't see Standard again, which is bad for Modern as these sets traditionally have low print runs, limiting the effect of the reprints. For example, look at the Mythics in MM sets. Most have returned to their pre reprint pricing. The reprinting of key rares, uncommons, and commons has helped, don't get me wrong, but we are getting them in the wrong way.
As for Standard, not reprinting these cards into Standard lessens the eternal appeal of Standard. This will limit the number of players buying the Standard sets. This game lives and dies on Standard. Wizards needs to find a way to better support the non rotating and eternal formats through Standard to ensure the games survival. They've made mistakes, like printing Thoughtseize into a Standard with an exceptionally strong black strategy. But they could have printed something like Bitterblossom in Origins. It had the plane tie in with Nissa's backstory, and the card would have been good, but without Tribal support I don't think it would have been too much for Standard. Doing a decent reprint every set would generate more hype, sell more packs, and help sell standard packs. While Masterpieces have generated some eternal excitement, the more people learn of the odds, the less people are excited. The odds of getting an eternal card you want is stupidly low. Because it's so low, these "reprints" are doing nothing to the price of the cards.
Not doing this has lead to Standard players buying Standard sets. Modern players get in on MM sets. Commander players obviously buy the Commander products. Draft players got Conspiracy, with they have to share with Legacy and Vintage who also have Eternal Masters. That isn't good. Products have very little player base overlap, which means that each set isn't reaching the number of players that it could be. If you cut the Masters Sets, and instead pushed more need reprints into Intro Decks and Commander Products, while supporting these products with large print runs, and did more reprints in Standard, I think the game would be better off. This would, in my mind be better than dedicated Master Sets, Masterpieces, and Standard sets that don't even attempt to support older formats.
If you are just looking at emotional attachment, it will vary from person to person. Many have watched the Pokemon Anime, played it's gameboy games, it's TCG, and now Go. For these people the cards probably hold far greater value. But for the magic player who's been playing since 93-94, it would go the other way.
If you are just looking at the pokemon cards, I'd say they are about even with collecting vs playing the card game. Pokemon has a much better online client and a decent paper player base. If you throw in all the other Pokemon merch, it's all about collecting. That's what the whole thing is based on with "Gotta Catch 'em all!". There are innumerable toys and plushies, games, cards, shows, movies, it eclipses MTG.
I would not have that as your only deck however. When it was mine, I got targeted and murdered often in multiplayer games, and with good reason. Daretti is a great tool to break out when someone gets greedy, but not one I'd grind within a friendly play group.
I also don't think we will see any of these low preorder boxes actual ship if the boxes have a reasonable EV. I expect a lot of cancellations and refunds if the EV is higher than 200.
As for the set itself I expect BUG flashback to be an archtype, with the trilands being reprinted at uncommon. Snapcaster at rare with Spider Spawning and Mystical Teachings at uncommon. Spawning was a huge part of triple Innistrad, and I can't see them leaving it out.
I'd say it's a good start. I'm not a huge fan of Bitterblossom, and would swap it out for another Arena. With a third Arena, I'd also drop the Sign in Blood for another copy of Collective Brutality.
Proof?
Something like that might work. It'd look pretty sweet at an event. Or just show up with a cutting board
RL investing, and even ABUR investing can be done. It's less volatile than trying to invest in current sets, but carries a higher price, and the same risk of the game failing. The issue with worrying about the game failing is that A. according to Wizards the game has been on a steady growth pattern for years now and B.Every system can fail. "Sure", traditional investment opportunities failed during the financial crash in '08. It doesn't matter what you are investing in, there is always a risk that the system crashes.
You might call investing in magic silly, but there are people who have made quite a lot of money doing it. I have a hard time labeling those people as silly, especially is they have managed to do so for a long time.
Level 0: Fatal Push is a great card, I'll be playing x amount.
Level 1: I'll play Ramp to punish people playing Push.
Level 2: People may try to punish Fatal Push by playing Ramp. With that in mind I will not be playing a significant number of them.
Level 3: People will not be playing Push in fear of Ramp. I'll play a deck weak to Push and strong against Ramp to exploit this.
Level 4(?): Some people are going to play a strategy that punishes ramp, and hopes to dodge Fatal Push. I'll play Push to beat these people.
At the end of the day these "levels" seem to be cylindrical repeating themselves over and over. What I suspect is that it may just be better to play against the overall meta game than try to predict an inbred meta game. From what I see, when you make moves to try to predict a meta, you open new holes that other can exploit. If you just jam what you know (as long as it's a reasonable deck like idSurge pointed out) I really think people would see more success.