Seriously though. I actually kind of like this? I mean most of us barely play paper standard these days (thanks Arena!) but in the event that we are imposed playing more often (especially at RCQs), I guess that's fine? Cards already have longevity now because of Pioneer so I'm not super sure that this is the solution. But hey, Dr. Hewey told me first, and I'll give this guy a shot.
The way they've been designing sets lately, almost makes you think that they should just scrap standard anyways and convert the showcase format to Commander anyways.
Some of you grazed upon this point but the fact is WotC has killed competitive magic.
- no GPs
- no real way to get to a PT
- no pptq
- no nationals
All of these events usually were used as a platform to push standard, as they no longer exist, there is very little reason to actually want to play a format that is:
- Rotating constantly
- Every other format may have a higher bar of entry, but that bar of entry is only really paid once (although MH is kind of changing that landscape). Standard is the opposite of that, it's like having constant micro transactions to your game.
- Wotc pivoted the game towards Commander (as it believed that's what most of us wanted - but I think it's more likely that they figured they could make much more money with those products than with anything else, and I think they were right).
- Arena pulling all the standard players to its platform
WotC has been pretty tone-deaf of late (especially regarding this question) and will continue to be so, it appears. I'd love for the game to go back to having 3 block story sets and only 2 standard expansions a year with some supplementary products sprinkled here and there. Give us time to appreciate the card. Right now, every set released already has spoilers 2 weeks after for the next one! That's crazy!
But most importantly...bring back GPs, PTs, PPTQs, Nationals...make us care about competitive play. Right now in Asia, we're about to get the SEA championship. It took several months of weekly events to get its participants. It was not easy to win any of these. But those who are in, the "big" prize? 400$ freaking USD. How is that even worth it for anyone involved? Massive joke.
Remember when we had the big "Pay the pros" crisis...yikes. We all got kicked to the curb and ARE ASKING FOR MORE.
Anyone hoping for anything like before might as well jump ship over to F&B while it's still its own thing (Hasbro will eventually buy them).
I think the RL "reprints" are ultimately good news - that WOTC is willing to experiment with reprinting RL cards in a minimally invasive manner to the collectors market and their past promise. In the short term, it seems like bad news - a transient cash grab for absurdly expensive proxies - but has impressive long term prospects and implications for introducing RL EDH legal cards in the future. No way I personally would pay that price for proxies I can't use, but here's to a future with black border Mox Diamond and new art duals for commander, if this proves a success. This is merely testing the waters.
Exactly. In the future they can say "nobody complained that we reprinted Black Lotus (not tournament legal). They only complained about the price of the packs."
And hey, would anybody actually mind if they reprinted pack like these at reasonable prices? If instead of $250 a pack, these were the price of a standard pack, would you be annoyed? I certainly wouldn't. I'd love it.
That's the complaint from everyone I've seen so far. It's the price point. That price point is aimed at...who exactly? It would make sense to make this at 100$ entry point, but 1000$ does give credence to the "testing the waters" approach. I'm sure wotc knows very well that the price point is a total joke. This is the only logical game plan for this. If it's anything but this, they must truly believe that we will buy anything at any price. Scratch that, that's more likely what they are doing. Testing the waters to see how much they charge for gambling. If it sells out (which I'm sure it will), it only enforces the message that they were right and it's really all downhill from here.
1000$? That's a pretty funny joke. But at least they're poking the reserve list. The time to get rid of it altogether was about 10 years ago.
I hope all three people who will buy the gold border packs enjoy them. Yeah yeah, cash grab. But how much cash are they really grabbing? If they had charged 100$ instead of 1000, lots of people would have bought it. As is, anyone who buys in just looks stupid. They could have sold way more than 10x as much by charging 1/10th the price.
But again, the more they chip away at the existence of the reserve list the better. Tear it down!
This will have zero impact on the RL.
These are proxies, at best (1000$ for 60 randomized proxies at that). The CE/IE versions had no impact on the RL, they are worth thousands of dollars AND used to sell for 50$ for ALL of them.
If you believe this will do any "damage" to the RL, it's just wishful thinking. I thought initially that this would be a boon for the OS community, but after finding out both the price and the availability, this will not have any impact whatsoever.
Totally a missed opportunity on this one. What a massive fail on WotC's part. Hopefully this is their version of New Coke!
I played Zendikar pre-release. Only the first edition printings contained the treasures.
One guy 2 rows down opened a Scrubland. That's the only card I ever saw in person (we were also not allowed to play with them).
You can find some vids on YT of some openings with some treasures. Some could be fake, it's hard to tell. But it was true, this did happen.
Anyways, now that we know its confirmed to be Legends, most folks only think about the RL stuff, but don't realize that Legends was a gargantuan set with an insane amount of chaff. Plus I heard a rumour that they were boxes that had been sent back to WotC for being defective back in the day (either containing cards from Sheet A or B but not both).
It's a cool gimmick that will have no impact on pack prices.
I am convinced this is a scientific test to see how much you can charge people to buy almost nothing.
Ya did you not see the full text basic lands? They are seriously treating the market like a bunch of donkeys. Sooner or later, this *****'s gonna blow up in their face and no one will play this stupid game. WotC brass is seriously annihilating the game. I miss WotC being a small company run by passionate people
long story short it’s not based in Harry Potter or any other magic school theme in anything
This will be 100% unqiue outside anything even tolarian academy
(Fun fact are tolarian academy was born before Harry Potter)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone, published in 1997
Urza's Saga (not sure if that was the first time Tolarian Academy was mentioned though) was released in 1998
Even if you take into account that the design took place one year before, at best, they were invented at the same time. But considering that Rowling came up with the story before it was officially published...Looks like Potter WAS before Tolarian
Edit: The first time the players heard of Tolarian was in 1998, so Potter precedes. But perhaps you're tacit to additional facts I missed?
I'm not seeing either Gideon, Thopter or Felidar. The last two I'm not surprised but why is Gideon missing? Considered too strong still? Even for Historic?
any gimmick to sell this flaming trash pile of a set i suppose.
would've been nice if they put effort into it to sell it on its own merit, and included relevant reprints in it as normal, dedicating more effort to balancing standard where necessary but sure i guess lets go with a gimmick instead
its a nice list... but its also a real *****ty list with no real theme or cohesion to anything. you can get an absurdly priced scroll rack, or you know, argothian scion. so we get a reduced chance to pull something from the list, and then an even further reduced chance to pull something of meaningful value from the list on top of that.
gotta keep them gambling away their dollars.
i'm just so absolutely over this FOMO gambling bull*****.
one of the rare times i will agree with a poster on this board.
This set is incredibly bad. BUT I think this is really really good for magic. We've reached a point where the power level was too high and needed to be reset (for standard at least). So it's just growing pains and I'm glad it finally happened.
Also any additional bonus from buying this thing is welcomed. Sure, you are unlikely to get anything good but at least there's a chance.
Also I would think the expeditions are what was added to sell the set more than anything else.
Okay that's great. That's marvel. That's not wizards, and that's not magic.
Though magic already has $100 boosters and a large portion of the playerbase is vocally opposed to that practice already.
At best this thread is baseless speculation done in an inflammatory way, at worst... well we'll see.
Although i'm with you on being opposed to the 100$ booster crap (it's going down a dark rabbit hole...) this stuff is selling like mad. So we've given them reason to do it and to keep pushing the envelope. Because people can't make a stand on anything it seems.
Seriously though. I actually kind of like this? I mean most of us barely play paper standard these days (thanks Arena!) but in the event that we are imposed playing more often (especially at RCQs), I guess that's fine? Cards already have longevity now because of Pioneer so I'm not super sure that this is the solution. But hey, Dr. Hewey told me first, and I'll give this guy a shot.
The way they've been designing sets lately, almost makes you think that they should just scrap standard anyways and convert the showcase format to Commander anyways.
- no GPs
- no real way to get to a PT
- no pptq
- no nationals
All of these events usually were used as a platform to push standard, as they no longer exist, there is very little reason to actually want to play a format that is:
- Rotating constantly
- Every other format may have a higher bar of entry, but that bar of entry is only really paid once (although MH is kind of changing that landscape). Standard is the opposite of that, it's like having constant micro transactions to your game.
- Wotc pivoted the game towards Commander (as it believed that's what most of us wanted - but I think it's more likely that they figured they could make much more money with those products than with anything else, and I think they were right).
- Arena pulling all the standard players to its platform
WotC has been pretty tone-deaf of late (especially regarding this question) and will continue to be so, it appears. I'd love for the game to go back to having 3 block story sets and only 2 standard expansions a year with some supplementary products sprinkled here and there. Give us time to appreciate the card. Right now, every set released already has spoilers 2 weeks after for the next one! That's crazy!
But most importantly...bring back GPs, PTs, PPTQs, Nationals...make us care about competitive play. Right now in Asia, we're about to get the SEA championship. It took several months of weekly events to get its participants. It was not easy to win any of these. But those who are in, the "big" prize? 400$ freaking USD. How is that even worth it for anyone involved? Massive joke.
Remember when we had the big "Pay the pros" crisis...yikes. We all got kicked to the curb and ARE ASKING FOR MORE.
Anyone hoping for anything like before might as well jump ship over to F&B while it's still its own thing (Hasbro will eventually buy them).
That's the complaint from everyone I've seen so far. It's the price point. That price point is aimed at...who exactly? It would make sense to make this at 100$ entry point, but 1000$ does give credence to the "testing the waters" approach. I'm sure wotc knows very well that the price point is a total joke. This is the only logical game plan for this. If it's anything but this, they must truly believe that we will buy anything at any price. Scratch that, that's more likely what they are doing. Testing the waters to see how much they charge for gambling. If it sells out (which I'm sure it will), it only enforces the message that they were right and it's really all downhill from here.
This will have zero impact on the RL.
These are proxies, at best (1000$ for 60 randomized proxies at that). The CE/IE versions had no impact on the RL, they are worth thousands of dollars AND used to sell for 50$ for ALL of them.
If you believe this will do any "damage" to the RL, it's just wishful thinking. I thought initially that this would be a boon for the OS community, but after finding out both the price and the availability, this will not have any impact whatsoever.
Totally a missed opportunity on this one. What a massive fail on WotC's part. Hopefully this is their version of New Coke!
One guy 2 rows down opened a Scrubland. That's the only card I ever saw in person (we were also not allowed to play with them).
You can find some vids on YT of some openings with some treasures. Some could be fake, it's hard to tell. But it was true, this did happen.
Anyways, now that we know its confirmed to be Legends, most folks only think about the RL stuff, but don't realize that Legends was a gargantuan set with an insane amount of chaff. Plus I heard a rumour that they were boxes that had been sent back to WotC for being defective back in the day (either containing cards from Sheet A or B but not both).
It's a cool gimmick that will have no impact on pack prices.
I asssume some of these will be very popular and in demand by the American market since y'all love Japanese cards for some reason.
Here.
Ya did you not see the full text basic lands? They are seriously treating the market like a bunch of donkeys. Sooner or later, this *****'s gonna blow up in their face and no one will play this stupid game. WotC brass is seriously annihilating the game. I miss WotC being a small company run by passionate people
Hmmm there's two cards that already do exactly this, you clearly forgot
Gifts Ungiven
Realms Uncharted
So this essentially does that for just creatures!
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone, published in 1997
Urza's Saga (not sure if that was the first time Tolarian Academy was mentioned though) was released in 1998
Even if you take into account that the design took place one year before, at best, they were invented at the same time. But considering that Rowling came up with the story before it was officially published...Looks like Potter WAS before Tolarian
Edit: The first time the players heard of Tolarian was in 1998, so Potter precedes. But perhaps you're tacit to additional facts I missed?
You sure about that?
I'm not seeing either Gideon, Thopter or Felidar. The last two I'm not surprised but why is Gideon missing? Considered too strong still? Even for Historic?
It would be madness if someone went so far out of their way to create this for absolutely no value whatsoever.
one of the rare times i will agree with a poster on this board.
This set is incredibly bad. BUT I think this is really really good for magic. We've reached a point where the power level was too high and needed to be reset (for standard at least). So it's just growing pains and I'm glad it finally happened.
Also any additional bonus from buying this thing is welcomed. Sure, you are unlikely to get anything good but at least there's a chance.
Also I would think the expeditions are what was added to sell the set more than anything else.
Although i'm with you on being opposed to the 100$ booster crap (it's going down a dark rabbit hole...) this stuff is selling like mad. So we've given them reason to do it and to keep pushing the envelope. Because people can't make a stand on anything it seems.