Yep. They've done the same with Multiplayer, first with ridiculously powerful Primordials that along with clones made multiplayer games a joke, then the took it back a notch and had curses that actually had to target, and now it's back to "Each Opponent" all over the place. Only it really sucks because Commander isn't a rotating format, so they can't fix the nitro they've added in the last few years. We've had to make huge house rules just to allow games to last more than 4 turns.
If those kinds of things are a problem in multiplayer, it means your group needs to be running more disruption and spot removal. It's the classic EDH complaint where people don't want to have to run cards to interact with their opponents over running "cool stuff".
I wasn't referring to the lack of existence of cards that counter or remove problematic cards, but to the escalating power of multiplayer cards over the last few years. The number of cards in sets that refer to "Each Opponent" has tripled in the last decade, which leads to a lack of interaction, as the caster doesn't care about targets, and as the vast majority of them are ETB effects, like Primordial's, they also don't care whether you target them or not once they hit. If you are referring to the few select cards that stop ETBs, those aren't very reliable in a 100 card deck. And finally if your answer is "it can be countered not sure what the big deal is", the banned list would like to have a word. There is clear evidence that WotC has spiraled up Mulitplayer with power rather than flavor, which I view as unsustainable in the long term.
The conspiracy theorist angle is my favourite one, thanks for the laughs folks. :]
People have been talking, and there was real potential, over a year ago. Like when I bought mine, when he was closer to $50, than $150.
Reprints, Masters sets value, whatever people want to complain about, thats fine, but the tin foil hats just make you look funny. Its a card that will power up some decks, maybe create some new ones, and thats it. You still die on Turn 3 to Burn.
Well, no the cards were unbanned for sales reasons. Wizards knows that they can't have another iconic masters and unbanning cards increases the market value of the set. If the set fails like iconic masters people will literally lose their jobs. It is not funny in the slightest. Its always all or nothing with these people. First no more core sets, then core sets are back. Then it's drop the power level in standard, then up it again with nitroglycerin.
Yep. They've done the same with Multiplayer, first with ridiculously powerful Primordials that along with clones made multiplayer games a joke, then the took it back a notch and had curses that actually had to target, and now it's back to "Each Opponent" all over the place. Only it really sucks because Commander isn't a rotating format, so they can't fix the nitro they've added in the last few years. We've had to make huge house rules just to allow games to last more than 4 turns.
I am fairly certain they did not unban him just to sell M25.
JTMS was banned for 6 years, 8 months, during which time he was printed only in Promo and Reprints for formats he was legal in (Eternal Masters). Within about 1 month of being reprinted in a set that is "Format Agnostic", he is unbanned for the most popular format this set could target. That is very unlikely to be a coincidence. There will be higher demand for Masters 25 due to this decision. I'm not saying they made these decisions together, but they most certainly timed the announcement with availability of product to satisfy resulting demand. 4th printing and they couldn't even give him new art to help preserve older value for collectors. For anything but the reserved list and the occasional promo, these moves make collections a liability these days.
And while it is true that "existing JTMS cards went way up too", JTMS was at one time $180 - after being banned. Then they reprinted - and reprinted again - with the same art. Now right when the original art might be able to retain some of it's original value in that range, they again reprint it - with the same art - ensuring Worldwake copies will not go above Masters 25 and give new collectors any reason not to just by a Masters 25 copy for slightly less (just like they did with Eternal Masters). These are very careful moves to make sure we are spending money only on new retail product, and I don't think it's sustainable or responsible in the long term to drive profits this way.
This seems frustratingly overpowered for multiplayer. I really wish they were more careful when they printed "Each Opponent". A 3 mana instant which in an EDH game is very commonly an immediate City's Blessing should not force a sacrifice of half the opponent's armies (rounded up!). This should have been Target Player or Target Opponent.
Wasn't there a 2nd wave of MM2 in response to such a low print run of MM1 that WotC didn't want to repeat that scenario?
Most expected and accounted for MM2 having a bigger run in decisions to buy boxes/packs/singles. EM had a larger initial print run and with many other products surrounding it, seemed to have run it's course naturally with stable prices - not a lot of unhappy customers that thought it wasn't available as with MM1. So the 2nd print run surprised many and for a lot of cards in the set chopped the market price in half or more. Then to make things worse, they didn't follow that same pattern and stuck to just 1 print run for Commander 2016 - which resulted in near tripling the original price in just 6 months.
Even though WotC can't publicly acknowledge secondary market prices, they need to work on smoothing out production.
May be the first set I'm online to potentially grab and passing on. The artwork hasn't driven high demand like usual on eBay and as others have pointed out the short and long term playability of these walkers is less than the past. Will pass for now - although I'm happy to see the box is smaller than the giant Garruk box of 2014...
Hmm, this will require some rules updates. Up until now, cards were only ever drawn one by one, so replacing multidraws is not supported...
Came here to say the same. My guess is 614.11 will be updated with an additional clause that applies to a groups of cards first, then to individual cards. Makes the most sense in my initial thinking on it, but we'll see what they do.
My advice to anyone considering pre-orders: don't unless you are immediately using the card for play. In current ebay practices sellers have a no-lose prospect due to the purchase cancellation policies. The vast majority of cards begin falling in price immediately after set release. For those few that don't, the seller simply cancels the transaction (claiming not enough inventory, etc) and re-lists them at the higher price or sells them locally. As the odds are in the seller's favor, even with negative feedback they still maintain a very high ratings, and most buyers / victims don't realized what happened.
Don't pre-order. Let the market prices stabilize a couple weeks after set release. Your gains will far outweigh the occasional rare card that spikes in value.
While some deviation is possible and even likely, it's entirely possible to have four decks with an even distribution across colors
Not just possible or likely, deviation is necessary to have an even color appearance across 4 decks unless they went 5 color for all. There is no other number that divided by 4 decks equals 5 colors. But yes, it's possible they could also break another commander tradition and not have the same number of colors in each deck, retaining an overall even distribution. From the remarks in the article this is probably unlikely.
This was a conscious decision. It is directly pointed out as a change, so I would conversely say this is not a "missed opportunity to make five decks" but a "taken opportunity to make four decks". I just don't see how the whole "missed opportunity" sentiment takes those things into account. Is it just the feeling of being taken away something you were used to have?
Commander has had almost twice as many releases than Archenemy and Planechase combined (it would have had it not missed 2012 and only done the Arsenal), and is a much more popular format by registered event count and online deck lists. I'm not sure either of them establish a pattern more powerful than Commander over 7 years.
But financially as there are only so many special releases per year, I do view this as a missed opportunity - put it this way from a collector's view, I buy a complete retail set every year and sleeve it for guest-friendly sealed play. I know multiple friends who do this. Buying 4 decks at MSRP instead of 5 is a missed business opportunity for single retail case purchasers like myself.
Now maybe some buyers 5 was too much but 4 is manageable. But that would require an increase of 25% in single retail case customers that were "all or nothing" to make up for the lost 5th deck sales. This is unlikely given how expensive the game is to begin with - and this a casual set on top of 2 retail blocks per year and plethora of other retail products.
So I wouldn't agree that it falls into the "most nonsensical comment" category - this is based in factual observations of production consumption, including my own. I also view it as a missed opportunity to put a really good 5th tribe deck together (how often do we get the opportunity to buy a 100 card tribe deck!), but that can be debated.
This may be a deliberate change and going forward we will only see 4 per year, aligning with Archenemy and Planechase (which did come before commander). I could see that.. and would actually be in favor of it if it means we see more consistent Planechase and Archenemy.
Missed opportunity to not do 5. Whatever colors they pick tribes should be an option. Make it tribe themed - great idea, but unless we see 4 5-color decks, one or more colors will be underrepresented. Personally we've consistently bought a case every year for this - and our playgroup of 5 loves it. Yuck. Cutting back on design costs - not a good sign.
Responses captured most of the pure pricing points here - but one additional note I'd add is MTGSalvation is a community. Aside from occasional moderator or admin intervention card sales are being handled directly by forum members with no commissions.
Both Ebay and TCGPlayer have a 10-20% commission of all sales after factoring in final value fees and shipping policies. Of course the shopping and selling experience is much better, inventory management is easier and buyers/sellers have much more protection. But for community members you trust (and I found the system here worked pretty well), TCGPlayer has the added benefit that secondary market value stays in the community.
For example if 10 traders bought and sold 50$ worth of cards 10 times over ($500 total being traded around about 10 times amongst various transactions), in these forums the only losses would be shipping fees. With TCGPlayer or Ebay, in that same scenario less than $150 of the original $500 would remain in the community. Over two thirds of the value would have gone to the online store commissions.
So for simple transactions, paying low TCGPlayer or Ebay still has value doing it here - it keeps the money in the community.
We're overthinking Create here. It's almost certainly short hand - and helps remove the ambiguity of zone transfer since tokens didn't really exist in another zone before resolution (unlike other cards which "Put" something from one place to another like our hand or graveyard). This will likely be token specific, and absolutely will continue to trigger effects that look for ETB.
One of the things you can do is put the whole deck up on eBay with a buy-it-now you'd be comfortable with, allow best offers and see what happens. Have clear, good pictures of the card conditions and make sure it's organized well so it looks like you have taken care of the cards. If you don't get any biters, you can break it down to playsets and smaller collections.
I can't recall if there are rules against this (hopefully not), but both Ebay and TCGPlayer have stores that are relatively easy to set up. You can see ending auction or lowest market price (i.e. what people are paying, not stores) and depending on the size of your collection sell that way. If you have a friend with a mature eBay account, that may be the best as seller ratings are better both for giving buyers confidence and avoiding scammers.
But lastly - don't get out of magic! Even if you just stick to longer term (i.e. rotated) mythics and rares, you can have a blast w/ kitchen table magic and not fret the standard or modern-tournament price regression blues. It's still a very fun game - maybe more fun once you aren't worrying about secondary market losses.
This set was pretty insulting to judges and a missed business opportunity IMO. It wouldn't cost Wizards much to preserve the artwork + border combination on judge foils. Plenty of artists would have loved to get new art in Eternal Masters. And collectors - whether they are judges are not - benefit from having a more diverse art set. This set is already a reprint based set, why make it a reprint of a reprint set. It instills anger at WotC for the treatment or lack of regard for Judge awards, and lessens the appeal for the eternal crowd who can actually afford to pay $15+/pack to buy one - as they are also the most likely crowd to already have premium versions of these exact cards.
Seeing Karakas in the spoiler list with the same exact artwork - so, so disappointing.
Not to ramble on... back to topic, yes I do think this will have a relevant impact on the Judge Foils, and especially those w/ the same art.
Yep. They've done the same with Multiplayer, first with ridiculously powerful Primordials that along with clones made multiplayer games a joke, then the took it back a notch and had curses that actually had to target, and now it's back to "Each Opponent" all over the place. Only it really sucks because Commander isn't a rotating format, so they can't fix the nitro they've added in the last few years. We've had to make huge house rules just to allow games to last more than 4 turns.
JTMS was banned for 6 years, 8 months, during which time he was printed only in Promo and Reprints for formats he was legal in (Eternal Masters). Within about 1 month of being reprinted in a set that is "Format Agnostic", he is unbanned for the most popular format this set could target. That is very unlikely to be a coincidence. There will be higher demand for Masters 25 due to this decision. I'm not saying they made these decisions together, but they most certainly timed the announcement with availability of product to satisfy resulting demand. 4th printing and they couldn't even give him new art to help preserve older value for collectors. For anything but the reserved list and the occasional promo, these moves make collections a liability these days.
And while it is true that "existing JTMS cards went way up too", JTMS was at one time $180 - after being banned. Then they reprinted - and reprinted again - with the same art. Now right when the original art might be able to retain some of it's original value in that range, they again reprint it - with the same art - ensuring Worldwake copies will not go above Masters 25 and give new collectors any reason not to just by a Masters 25 copy for slightly less (just like they did with Eternal Masters). These are very careful moves to make sure we are spending money only on new retail product, and I don't think it's sustainable or responsible in the long term to drive profits this way.
Most expected and accounted for MM2 having a bigger run in decisions to buy boxes/packs/singles. EM had a larger initial print run and with many other products surrounding it, seemed to have run it's course naturally with stable prices - not a lot of unhappy customers that thought it wasn't available as with MM1. So the 2nd print run surprised many and for a lot of cards in the set chopped the market price in half or more. Then to make things worse, they didn't follow that same pattern and stuck to just 1 print run for Commander 2016 - which resulted in near tripling the original price in just 6 months.
Even though WotC can't publicly acknowledge secondary market prices, they need to work on smoothing out production.
Came here to say the same. My guess is 614.11 will be updated with an additional clause that applies to a groups of cards first, then to individual cards. Makes the most sense in my initial thinking on it, but we'll see what they do.
Don't pre-order. Let the market prices stabilize a couple weeks after set release. Your gains will far outweigh the occasional rare card that spikes in value.
Please keep it civil, "most sensical" is unnecessarily hyperbolic.
Not just possible or likely, deviation is necessary to have an even color appearance across 4 decks unless they went 5 color for all. There is no other number that divided by 4 decks equals 5 colors. But yes, it's possible they could also break another commander tradition and not have the same number of colors in each deck, retaining an overall even distribution. From the remarks in the article this is probably unlikely.
Commander has had almost twice as many releases than Archenemy and Planechase combined (it would have had it not missed 2012 and only done the Arsenal), and is a much more popular format by registered event count and online deck lists. I'm not sure either of them establish a pattern more powerful than Commander over 7 years.
But financially as there are only so many special releases per year, I do view this as a missed opportunity - put it this way from a collector's view, I buy a complete retail set every year and sleeve it for guest-friendly sealed play. I know multiple friends who do this. Buying 4 decks at MSRP instead of 5 is a missed business opportunity for single retail case purchasers like myself.
Now maybe some buyers 5 was too much but 4 is manageable. But that would require an increase of 25% in single retail case customers that were "all or nothing" to make up for the lost 5th deck sales. This is unlikely given how expensive the game is to begin with - and this a casual set on top of 2 retail blocks per year and plethora of other retail products.
So I wouldn't agree that it falls into the "most nonsensical comment" category - this is based in factual observations of production consumption, including my own. I also view it as a missed opportunity to put a really good 5th tribe deck together (how often do we get the opportunity to buy a 100 card tribe deck!), but that can be debated.
This may be a deliberate change and going forward we will only see 4 per year, aligning with Archenemy and Planechase (which did come before commander). I could see that.. and would actually be in favor of it if it means we see more consistent Planechase and Archenemy.
Both Ebay and TCGPlayer have a 10-20% commission of all sales after factoring in final value fees and shipping policies. Of course the shopping and selling experience is much better, inventory management is easier and buyers/sellers have much more protection. But for community members you trust (and I found the system here worked pretty well), TCGPlayer has the added benefit that secondary market value stays in the community.
For example if 10 traders bought and sold 50$ worth of cards 10 times over ($500 total being traded around about 10 times amongst various transactions), in these forums the only losses would be shipping fees. With TCGPlayer or Ebay, in that same scenario less than $150 of the original $500 would remain in the community. Over two thirds of the value would have gone to the online store commissions.
So for simple transactions, paying low TCGPlayer or Ebay still has value doing it here - it keeps the money in the community.
But lastly - don't get out of magic! Even if you just stick to longer term (i.e. rotated) mythics and rares, you can have a blast w/ kitchen table magic and not fret the standard or modern-tournament price regression blues. It's still a very fun game - maybe more fun once you aren't worrying about secondary market losses.
Good luck
Seeing Karakas in the spoiler list with the same exact artwork - so, so disappointing.
Not to ramble on... back to topic, yes I do think this will have a relevant impact on the Judge Foils, and especially those w/ the same art.