if they're going to keep improving threats, then they need to bring better answers or else we'll keep having extensive ban lists every time.
It looks like Wizard's recent design philosophy is to make bigger threats, so players simply compete on landing bigger threats, rather than using lower-costing answers to take care of those threats.
Wizards keeps citing their player satisfaction surveys where new players don't like their threats being countered or neutralized before they can use it. So, really good answers are unlikely to be made for Standard. The better creature removals recently seem to be in black. (Cast Down, Heartless Act)
They might scale back on the power creep for creatures, but removal will probably remain not as quick or efficient in Standard.
Which has been the biggest problem plaguing Standard for a long time now. The game is far healthier and more vibrant when threats and answers are roughly equal. When threats far outstrip answers, you are left with a shallow game of who can ramp and draw into their threat faster.
I don't know if Wizards will ever find the balance needed.
Make the answers too good, and nobody wants to play expensive threats. It really depends on how they design Standard. Players won't readily commit to a 6+ mana big monster only to have it taken down by 2-mana removal. It seems Wizards compensates for that scenario by adding ETB or on cast abilities to make those creatures worthwhile to play. Then, you end up with creatures that Mystic_X said previously are "use or lose" in Standard.
if they're going to keep improving threats, then they need to bring better answers or else we'll keep having extensive ban lists every time.
It looks like Wizard's recent design philosophy is to make bigger threats, so players simply compete on landing bigger threats, rather than using lower-costing answers to take care of those threats.
Wizards keeps citing their player satisfaction surveys where new players don't like their threats being countered or neutralized before they can use it. So, really good answers are unlikely to be made for Standard. The better creature removals recently seem to be in black. (Cast Down, Heartless Act)
They might scale back on the power creep for creatures, but removal will probably remain not as quick or efficient in Standard.
I don't think there will be as many individual players buying booster packs. $16 is a lot. If you look at the list of cards on mtgstocks.com, there are over 2/3 of the rares that are not worth more than $5 or are not staples in various formats. If you draw two lower-priced rares from that list, it's a major feel-bad.
Retailers and people with a lot of money will likely be the only ones buying the boxes outright to sell singles.
Agreed, but never underestimate the power of a lottery ticket. That's exactly what these are. Lottery tickets. The only difference is that you're guaranteed to get something from a pack of magic cards whereas you likely get nothing from the scratch ticket. Anybody who's ever bought packs of magic to try to get value knows this, and this is no different.
Yes, I know the feeling of that lottery ticket pull. I'm sure most of us here have tried to buy individual boosters, even against our better judgment.
For me, I actually cancelled my pre-orders of Double Masters and will just get singles for my lone Commander deck. I am seriously fatigued from these boosters.
I recently bought a box of Pokemon Sword and Shield Rebel Clash, and although most of the cards aren't worth very much on the secondary market, just pulling full art or foils in the "regular" booster is a great feeling. I don't feel so ripped off.
I don't think there will be as many individual players buying booster packs. $16 is a lot. If you look at the list of cards on mtgstocks.com, there are over 2/3 of the rares that are not worth more than $5 or are not staples in various formats. If you draw two lower-priced rares from that list, it's a major feel-bad.
Retailers and people with a lot of money will likely be the only ones buying the boxes outright to sell singles.
and while yes the net worth of a collection is indeed spread over the entire collection not just a small portion of it, with each reprint that spread reduces further in value.
That's why I said that the reprint window is not that frequent, but it is regular enough that it keeps prices rising slowly rather the rising quickly. This is a card game, after all, not an investment vehicle. I understand people want some value for trading purposes, but I don't want Magic to become a way to put a down payment on a house. That's when prices are too high and limiting accessibility for new players.
so while on paper this pack idea sounds great, it sounds like its what we all want, in practice... well in practice i think there's too many products with too much value at the top end, and too much volatility even there, to be long term viable. buying into products like these set a dangerous precedent and send the company clear messages that its all okay, that we'll keep buying, but in reality eventually... we won't and then we'll sit there wondering what happened.
At this point, Wizards hasn't even tried, so we can debate all about theoretical scenarios. I don't think the player base as a whole is that closed-minded that they would stop buying. I believe that if you make the staple/chase cards accessible, more players will come into the game driving up the demand, and the prices of such cards will definitely be more than the pack price (so long as Wizards doesn't try to gouge the pack price, like this $16 Double Masters pack...)
This no chaff booster is a silly idea, in that if they really did it immediately half the set (at least, probably more) would instantly become chaff/bulk. I don't know a ton about economics but it's pretty simple. For the packs to hold their price only very few cards can be worth the price of a pack. If half the set is worth $5+ then either those prices will crash or pack prices will rise. I know the proponents of this idea want the crash, but if they do then everyone will just be complaining about their "worthless" chaff in a month. People will be throwing away their paths and bolts from box openings cause they've got 24 of them at home.
Prices only crash in the short term. Most of the staples players ask for are always in demand, so those prices would rise back up. It also helps to let new players in the game, since there is a time window where cards are inexpensive. I don't expect Wizards to do this every year, but if they do this every 3-5 years, it would keep prices from going to really ridiculous values. Rather than concentrating the financial value in scarcity, the value is in totality of all the cards.
If a few years went by without a reprint, in example (a), a single card would increase in value greatly, but the supply is constricted. In example (b), 10 cards would rise in value, although not as much as example (a). Nonetheless, example (b) did rise in value.
As Wizards do periodical reprints, more cards would be in circulation, but if they are good, in-demand cards, those reprints would rise in price anyway.
If one was simply a speculator, that person's "net worth" would not be concentrated on only a few cards, but it would be spread out over many cards (volume).
Agreed. One question I have is how much will this reduce the prices. They increased the number of rares and mythics, so that the chance of any particular rare/mythic showing up in a pack is no greater than with a regular set. And the packs are $15. So how much will that impact the prices? Take a well-desired mythic from ultimate masters, which had $10ish packs - these packs are 50% more expensive. More printings will obviously help but I'm not anticipating huge price drops for cards except those that were only expensive due to scarcity.
Cards that have constant demand, like Doubling Season, will likely see the smallest discount (max 25%) for a short time, especially since Masters booster boxes have a limited print run.
Players are better off letting the retailers and big money individuals assume the financial risk of opening Double Masters packs and just buying singles.
If you got to https://www.mtgstocks.com/sets/354 and look at just the rares, you can get a good idea how much value you could pull out of a booster. As of this writing, only 5 rares are worth near or more than $15 average (6 if you add Mana Reflection from today's reveals). Those are the cards that will recover from the discount faster than the others after Double Masters goes out of print. There are another 10 or so rares that are $5-$10 that are discounted a lot from this release, but their prices will recover in 1-2 years if they are not reprinted, because they are mostly used in Commander.
I really wish Wizards made a booster that has known useful constructed cards only. But, Wizards wouldn't be able to keep the price down, because they know how much such cards are worth on the secondary market and would seek to maximize profit on the booster.
Unless you are literally asking wizards to sell you a pack with 8-12 $5+ Rares in it and nothing else, the non-rares in each “set-without-chaff” would be the same because there simply aren’t enough of them.
...not that this is necessarily a bad thing, mind you. Having a non-draft set as a cross between a core set/masters set that has all of the non-rare staples and a rotating selection of chase cards would be pretty cool... though yeah, the price would be a bit absurd.
Something like that.
Each rarity sheet would be a list of known usable cards. Usable cards does not mean expensive cards, as there are cards that in the $2-$5 range that wold be useful. Since Wizards doesn't officially acknowledge the secondary market (even though they do), they should be able to do this.
For example, you might pull yet another Path to Exile in my hypothetical pack, but that card gets used a lot, so it's not a complete loss of value.
I really wish Wizards made a booster that has known useful constructed cards only. But, Wizards wouldn't be able to keep the price down, because they know how much such cards are worth on the secondary market and would seek to maximize profit on the booster.
But the interesting part to me is mythics are 8% more likely to be pulled from here on out starting In zendikar rising In all types of packs and sets
The chance of getting a mythic was 1 in 8 rare slots. With Zendikar Rising, it's 1 in 7.4 rare slots. An individual would still have to to open a ton of these to see the 0.6 improvement. If you aren't a retailer or an individual with a lot of money to buy a lot of boosters, that 0.6 improvement isn't noticeable. Also, each box has variance. Some people can see as few as 3-4 mythics in a box while others managed to find 6-7 mythics in a box.
This is another marketing gimmick by Wizards to try to get people to buy this. It's still a pack lottery.
I've always wondered a bit about Thoughtseize... Duress is a common, does not cost you two life, but does not hit creatures. So, the question is: Is hitting creatures Thoughtseize's power move?
Thoughtseize works on lands and creatures. Thoughtseize hits anything in the player's hand for one mana, so if players are building a deck where discard is a pivotal strategy, players want the most efficient card possible, even if it costs you life. And there a lot of low cost creature threats. Thoughtseize can handle any meta.
Most discard-focused decks use a playset of Thoughtseize followed by 1 or 2 Inquisition of Kozilek (as it's considered the next best discard card). Duress is a budget option but not the optimal option.
I don't know if Wizards will ever find the balance needed.
Make the answers too good, and nobody wants to play expensive threats. It really depends on how they design Standard. Players won't readily commit to a 6+ mana big monster only to have it taken down by 2-mana removal. It seems Wizards compensates for that scenario by adding ETB or on cast abilities to make those creatures worthwhile to play. Then, you end up with creatures that Mystic_X said previously are "use or lose" in Standard.
It looks like Wizard's recent design philosophy is to make bigger threats, so players simply compete on landing bigger threats, rather than using lower-costing answers to take care of those threats.
Wizards keeps citing their player satisfaction surveys where new players don't like their threats being countered or neutralized before they can use it. So, really good answers are unlikely to be made for Standard. The better creature removals recently seem to be in black. (Cast Down, Heartless Act)
They might scale back on the power creep for creatures, but removal will probably remain not as quick or efficient in Standard.
Yes, I know the feeling of that lottery ticket pull. I'm sure most of us here have tried to buy individual boosters, even against our better judgment.
For me, I actually cancelled my pre-orders of Double Masters and will just get singles for my lone Commander deck. I am seriously fatigued from these boosters.
I recently bought a box of Pokemon Sword and Shield Rebel Clash, and although most of the cards aren't worth very much on the secondary market, just pulling full art or foils in the "regular" booster is a great feeling. I don't feel so ripped off.
Retailers and people with a lot of money will likely be the only ones buying the boxes outright to sell singles.
That's why I said that the reprint window is not that frequent, but it is regular enough that it keeps prices rising slowly rather the rising quickly. This is a card game, after all, not an investment vehicle. I understand people want some value for trading purposes, but I don't want Magic to become a way to put a down payment on a house. That's when prices are too high and limiting accessibility for new players.
At this point, Wizards hasn't even tried, so we can debate all about theoretical scenarios. I don't think the player base as a whole is that closed-minded that they would stop buying. I believe that if you make the staple/chase cards accessible, more players will come into the game driving up the demand, and the prices of such cards will definitely be more than the pack price (so long as Wizards doesn't try to gouge the pack price, like this $16 Double Masters pack...)
Prices only crash in the short term. Most of the staples players ask for are always in demand, so those prices would rise back up. It also helps to let new players in the game, since there is a time window where cards are inexpensive. I don't expect Wizards to do this every year, but if they do this every 3-5 years, it would keep prices from going to really ridiculous values. Rather than concentrating the financial value in scarcity, the value is in totality of all the cards.
Example:
(a) 1 card worth $100
vs.
(b) 10 cards worth $10
If a few years went by without a reprint, in example (a), a single card would increase in value greatly, but the supply is constricted. In example (b), 10 cards would rise in value, although not as much as example (a). Nonetheless, example (b) did rise in value.
As Wizards do periodical reprints, more cards would be in circulation, but if they are good, in-demand cards, those reprints would rise in price anyway.
If one was simply a speculator, that person's "net worth" would not be concentrated on only a few cards, but it would be spread out over many cards (volume).
It's similar to stock market shares.
The showcase sword reminds me of the Soul Calibur sword.
Cards that have constant demand, like Doubling Season, will likely see the smallest discount (max 25%) for a short time, especially since Masters booster boxes have a limited print run.
Players are better off letting the retailers and big money individuals assume the financial risk of opening Double Masters packs and just buying singles.
If you got to https://www.mtgstocks.com/sets/354 and look at just the rares, you can get a good idea how much value you could pull out of a booster. As of this writing, only 5 rares are worth near or more than $15 average (6 if you add Mana Reflection from today's reveals). Those are the cards that will recover from the discount faster than the others after Double Masters goes out of print. There are another 10 or so rares that are $5-$10 that are discounted a lot from this release, but their prices will recover in 1-2 years if they are not reprinted, because they are mostly used in Commander.
Something like that.
Each rarity sheet would be a list of known usable cards. Usable cards does not mean expensive cards, as there are cards that in the $2-$5 range that wold be useful. Since Wizards doesn't officially acknowledge the secondary market (even though they do), they should be able to do this.
For example, you might pull yet another Path to Exile in my hypothetical pack, but that card gets used a lot, so it's not a complete loss of value.
Well, if the Nissa leak is anything to go by, Nissa will be the G/B this time around.
The chance of getting a mythic was 1 in 8 rare slots. With Zendikar Rising, it's 1 in 7.4 rare slots. An individual would still have to to open a ton of these to see the 0.6 improvement. If you aren't a retailer or an individual with a lot of money to buy a lot of boosters, that 0.6 improvement isn't noticeable. Also, each box has variance. Some people can see as few as 3-4 mythics in a box while others managed to find 6-7 mythics in a box.
This is another marketing gimmick by Wizards to try to get people to buy this. It's still a pack lottery.
Thoughtseize works on lands and creatures. Thoughtseize hits anything in the player's hand for one mana, so if players are building a deck where discard is a pivotal strategy, players want the most efficient card possible, even if it costs you life. And there a lot of low cost creature threats. Thoughtseize can handle any meta.
Most discard-focused decks use a playset of Thoughtseize followed by 1 or 2 Inquisition of Kozilek (as it's considered the next best discard card). Duress is a budget option but not the optimal option.