Quote from cfusionpm »Without Stoneforge, they will continue to be as unplayable as they've always been. Feast/Famine is absolutely nuts good, Light/Shadow is a great engine for creatures, Fire/Ice is an excellent value engine and clock.Quote from Quamobrem »Black/Red sword seems a lot better than Blue/White sword. If swords in general are ever good enough again (And that new goblin seems kind of specifically designed for them?), this is a great SB card.
And none of them see play.
These new ones will be great for Commander and Legacy. They will be ultimately meaningless in Modern.
Not in Legacy either no. These don't even come close to the level of SoFaI (which isn't even a locked in main deck slot half the time).
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Every point you mention is valid concern/obstacle. I suppose it's one of those things I'd really like to see happen, but only if it was done right. Unfortunately, any new product will likely flop and fall short if the driving force is attributed to Hasbro pressuring WotC to develop something that will make investors happy. I'm not sure if I could ever see WotC designing an entire set with just Modern in mind; I was thinking more along the lines of including a handful of new "modern-centric" cards in something like BattleBond 2.0, Conspiracy 3, Commander Pre-Cons, etc. If done right, I think WotC could use such a product to introduce some checks and balances to the format. On the other hand, I could definitely see backlash from the player base regardless of the impact any new cards have on the format, positive or negative, simply b/c WotC would in-turn set a precedent within the format for direct interventions in the future. Although I doubt they'd ever go back to it, I'd love to throw it back where all MTG products are released with an updated version of the 'beginner', 'advanced', or 'expert' designations and subsequently let those designations indicate which format(s) the cards for X supplemental product could be played in.
It seems like most players consider last year's Commander decks to be failures taking into account MSRP, perceived value, etc. I'm curious if it would've been the same general sentiment had those C18 cards been considered legal in Modern? I would argue yes, but can also understand why some would say no. You mention the lack of reliable data and that may actually be my biggest concern moving forward; it appears that Hasbro is going all-in on MTGA based on yesterday's investor report and that has made me a bit uneasy about not just the Modern market, but overall health of the format/game in paper. I don't typically jump to conclusions, but the recent rumors surrounding paper tourney coverage coupled with Hasbro's gushing over MTGA haven't given us any reasons not to be concerned. Obviously it's silly to think the paper game could just up and die, but I do wonder whether or not WotC has the personnel/incentive to continue monitoring the data and keeping tabs on the metagame. That's why I think some kind of new support for Modern would go a long way as a good faith effort. UMA essentially proved that players will buy product containing quality reprints and I just hope that whatever method they ultimately choose as a vessel for reprints (potentially new cards) is something well thought out and not just the top 50 Modern cards shoehorned into a series of random supplemental products.
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lol fact. Been saying this for years. WotC might be incompetent, but they're not completely clueless. Many companies pay a solid chunk of change to third parties to conduct market research and gather data from their customers/target audience. WotC just needs to task an intern with making a dummy Reddit account and taking notes.
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Zoinks! Interesting interview w/ Gavin Verhey on the Tolarian CC YouTube channel that somewhat dips into our earlier discussion regarding who's actually reading the story. Supposedly, the reason for including potentially "complex" cards like Planeswalkers as the face cards of beginner decks is b/c they represent the main "characters from the story that new players get excited about and want". Overall it's actually a pretty solid interview, but this explanation didn't make much sense to me; rather the reason is most likely due to the fact that Planeswalkers have perceived value and new players who don't know any better are conned into buying these pre-cons (ba dum tiss) thinking they're getting value in return. I don't have time to play as much as I'd like, so it's not often I talk to new players, but I find it hard to believe that anybody new to the game 1) Knows a story actually exists/where to find it and 2) Knows who the main characters of aforementioned story are and make purchases due to the excitement they have for those characters. The only exception would be if one of those walkers also appear on booster pack art.
Aside from that, there were actually two or three different segments of the interview that shed some light on the finance/reprint aspect of the game (without directly referencing any secondary market of course). A few notable things I got from the interview:
- It definitely doesn't seem like we'll ever see fetches reprinted in another Standard environment, confirming what many of us already believed.
- The "[Insert Planeswalker] Spellbook" product is something WotC intends to continue with and have at least the next two iterations already planned out. It was also teased that the namesake character doesn't necessarily have to be a walker and Gavin has a list of OG Magic characters that he wants to either reprint or flesh out with new cards.
- Challenger Decks are definitely returning and will continue so long as they achieve comparable sales to the first iteration. Decklists officially coming in March.
- In the absence of Masters sets, the plan for getting reprints out into the wild is via supplemental products, non-standard sets, Commander, etc. I don't recall the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of "Masters sets were too hungry for reprints and that made them unsustainable. Each of those sets only had a chunk of reprints that players actually wanted/needed, so now we can focus on that chunk of cards players want in order to make sure reprints are quality and relevant".
- Lastly, there was another interesting quote that more/less bluntly stated WotC actively monitors and are aware of which cards need reprinted and it's mostly about finding the right product in which to include them.
All in all, I definitely recommend giving it a watch. Although a lot of the information given was stuff we already assumed to be true, but I don't remember the last time any WotC employee has gone on record to confirm so many assumptions, answer questions, give insight into their thinking/reasoning, and provide information about what to expect in the near future. Really hoping it's not just a coincidence, but between this and yesterday's B&R announcement it appears that WotC might be making an actual effort toward community interaction.
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SFM stock always ticks up prior to a B&R announcement. Fraudulent posts that pretend to be leaks just throw fuel onto that fire; I'm sure plenty of people saw that post and immediately went to pick up copies of the card without any confirmation of legitimacy.
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All about appealing to the lowest common denominator. Shame. I remember reading the books that used to come in fat packs and while they were never literary works of art, they were at the very least interesting and didn't read like a teenager's attempt at Marvel fan-fiction. Maybe that's just nostalgia talking and the story has always sucked ass, but it still made for solid lore. The whole gatewatch wannabe superhero club thing is awful and I'd hate to see the potential of a return to new phyrexia ruined by their campy oath ***** and happy-go-lucky attitudes. Jace suffering a brutal death due to explosive phyrexian diarrhea would be a move in the right direction...
Re: Challenger Decks, I can definitely see Teferi & Search for Azcanta getting reprints along with a handful of other cards along the lines of History of Benalia. Arclight Phoenix seems like another solid target, but one that ultimately won't be included simply b/c it's not from one of the sets rotating out in the Fall. IIRC, most of the notable inclusions from the first set of challenger decks were mostly all from sets due to rotate out (Chandra, Walking Ballista, Hazoret, Push, etc). I wouldn't be surprised if they chose to reprint most/all of the flip cards from Ixalan and spread them out among the various decks to make it so there isn't one deck that's more sought out than the rest, ala whatever challenger deck had Chandra/Hazoret.
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Legacy is only in the state that it is today b/c of the RL; support for the format would look a whole lot different if duals weren't so cost prohibitive. If Modern were to ever experience "slow dying", it'd be due to a lack of player interest and not due to a lack of availability of format staples. Let's stop this woe is me Modern is dying bull*****. Modern was supposedly dead when enemy fetches were pricing players out of playing certain decks, then it was supposed to be dead when WotC started reprinting too many format staples, dead after the banning of [pod, twin, etc], dead from eldrazi winter, and lest not forget, death at the hand of Frontier and its merry band of Siege Rhinos.
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Right? It's hard to tell from the angle, but Lilly and Karakas are foils; the only non-foil mythic to come from those 9 boosters was Snappy and he was actually in the same pack as Lilly. Crazy *****. I was going to do the same and sell off the foils & Snap, but that plan got squashed when I started checking out eBay's recently sold listings; non-foil staples from UMA are rebounding across the board, but it appears pack-foils can still be found without a significant multiplier. I remember that being fairly common in previous Masters sets (notably, there was a period of 1-2 months post MM15 when Karn foils were being sold for only $10-15 above non-foil prices), but I'm curious how things will shake out with UMA foils, specifically those with a box topper variant. Obviously the box toppers will hold a premium, but it'll be interesting to see what the market determines is an appropriate price vs pack foils.
Also, is it just me or does anyone else have the feeling that we will see additional, not so insignificant, waves of UMA hitting the market? WotC had to have known that the ***** would sell like gangbusters, so I just find it hard to believe that they wouldn't milk it. One could argue that they likely expected strong sales from IMA/M25 as well, so they wanted to play it safe with UMA and throttle the supply. However, I'm not sold. I'm sure someone with a better understanding of the printing processes/logistics involved with distribution and the overall production timeline would be able to clear this up, but wasn't UMA printed in Japan? Assuming WotC didn't make the transition to all future sets printed in Japan, it would make sense for them to assess sales/reception following the initial UMA offering in order to make a decision on whether or not to fire up the presses again to meet demand. If whichever set currently in production is being manufactured outside Japan, pulling the trigger on another UMA run would appear to be a plausible scenario. Especially when prices are recovering at the rate that they are now, there just seems to be very few reasons why WotC wouldn't keep the gravy train flowing. Sure market stability and consumer confidence are two things that should be taken into consideration, but shareholders only see the profit margins. Thoughts/opinions? Like I said, please do correct me if there's something I'm not seeing, but after thinking it over I just don't think it'd be a surprise if there was additional product injected into the market sometime between now and mid January.
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Truth. Especially when it comes to Modern staples. However, paying attention to price trends and knowing when to buy or sell are important habits to have for anyone who wants to make their hobby self-sustaining. I rarely crack sealed product, but I'll usually pick up 3-4 boosters of every Masters set; I had a Target gift card to burn + a 15% off toys/games sale they were running, so I ended up grabbing three of the UMA 3-pack blisters. My cup runneth over with luck.
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Hyperbolic much?
And "boxes of complete randomness" have been WotC's bread and butter for 25 years; what were you expecting this time around?
As soon as the first UMA reprints were revealed, anybody who typically sticks to buying singles creamed their pants. My list of reprint pick ups is getting longer by the day, however, I'm reluctant to pull the trigger until word starts to get around about just how large a print run we're looking at. Any given staple that was reprinted could either tank or spike tomorrow and it wouldn't be a surprise if it was a knee-jerk reaction in response to any info indicating the number of boxes in circulation/in the pipeline waiting to enter circulation.