You guys are defending WOTC because you love magic, and so do I--- but lets not forget that WOTC has done this EXACT thing against countless other games. They even once sued a mom who bought the name dinobot.org for her son (that was his online name) because dinobot was a trademarked name under Hasbro. They had a licensing agreement with Nintendo over pokemon and sued the very day after it expired. You can read much more about this sort of thing here: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/735348/how-can-you-publish-a-tgc-without-being-sued-or-pa but in a nutshell, I believe this may be karma at work. WOTC have been patent nazi's for years, making the TCG market hazardous for anyone that cant afford top notch legal council throughout every step of the development process-- and even then they may still end up having to pay WOTC a licensing fee to avoid a lawsuit.
Which was the normal list minus the cards that weren't available on MTGO.
Correct-- though poorly worded, I suppose I chose my wording the way I did because not all of the rules of MTGOs Commander and EDH where the same at the time-- thus, even though it was the same banned list minus the cards that werent available on MTGO, the format was still slightly different in rules from one another prior to the formats hand off.
My favorite notable example (and one I wish they would bring back) was the Super-Legendary status of Commanders in MTGO. This allowed players to in a multiplayer game to show up and play with their commander decks as designed without penalty. The way it worked was, if I play "Commander A" and someone else shows up with the same card as their commander-- those commanders wouldn't die to the legend rule because they were commanders. However--- if you cloned one of them, the cloned copy would die because it was not a commander.
There is a problem when Emrakul is -- or was? -- banned and Progenitus wasn't.
Plus the only commander b/r list Wizards has officially is for Magic Online. So I am questioning whether or not to keep following it. Since I never play online.
And dangnabit!! I want to use my Worldfire in a Jhoira deck. Only reason I wanted it in the first place.
Emrakul was banned because of a combination of things--- mostly because he became the dominate game winning card no matter what deck he was in and games just boiled down to who could get him out first.
As for Wizards having no official list--- thats not really true. They once maintained a different list for magic online-- until they decided to allow the formats creators to take over the administration of the format with the launch of the commander decks. The format was officially renamed Commander (the mtgo name) from EDH (though everyone still calls it that), but the same people that created EDH are the ones who now run and get to decide what is and isnt banned in the format-- and MTGO simply abides by those decisions.
Open up a commander deck and youll get a link to www.wizards.com/commander. Go there and youll get a link to mtgcommander.net. Go down under Rules to Deck Construction, and it says pretty clearly "The following is the official banned list for commander games. These cards (and others like them) should not be played without prior agreement from the other players in the game. "
Do not forget, the Commander Banned List is in no way a list you have to follow.
But it does one thing, it gives you a clue about cards that are frustrating to play with in most the time.
A bunch of cards combine well to combos, but in casual its finally your choice if you want to do that.
For the cards on the Banned List, they are not really combo cards, just highly unfun by simply casting them.
A legit 1v1 EDH banned List would have to consider all insane combos that are just too strong to counter and get rid of single cards that are plain to powerfull.
If you go for a 1v1 EDH it plays pretty much like Legacy with Singelton cards and nobody cares for "fun" , then its just competition and the banned list should like allways reflect the actual idea of the format, which in the Commander case, is plain and simpel "have fun".
Its such a cop out now though to say that the banned list is just a suggested list of cards that should be avoided. It was valid when it was just a casual format with no real support behind it. But now, that's no longer the case. Its an official format with product releases coming out in support of it, and its fully implemented in mtgo. At this point, I think its entirely feasible for this format to be properly managed.
I guess my problem is this:
Every playgroup is going to use their own rules for what is and isnt ok to play with. Ive played in dozens of groups-- some play anything goes (no banned or restricted list), others are cool with everything but infinite combo-- others, anything but no mass ld. Some shun certain cards or decks that drag the game on and on. Playgroups will always decide what is and isnt ok on their own--- they dont need this to be the law of the land to do so, and they will apply these rules to any/all formats those groups play.
So if thats the case--- why not either completely scrap the banned list--- or at least do what they should do and come up with a Tournament ban list? Why only go half way with this thing? At the very least--- its a huge pain in the rear end for new players to the format, to sell them a commander deck which sends them to a website that tells them "here is the sort of maybe banned list" and then they have to figure out what is and isnt legal to play everywhere that they go. Because of that, the default for the format that every group seems to tolerate is the official list-- which by its own design isnt complete.
I think some people fail to realize that this Ban-List is completely optional per play group. Say your group doesn't want that banned, vote on it. It's a HIGHLY recommended ban-list, and if you were to show up at an EDH league, you'd follow it.
Thats exactly why Im losing faith with the banned list to begin with. The hands-off approach to the format was great in its infancy as a casual unofficial format. Its anything but that now, and we seem to be in a weird lag moment where people havent really figure that out yet.
Before, people discovered EDH by a friend introducing it at a table with friends. In that setting, having the ban-list as just a general guide line worked great. Then it came to MTGO, and suddenly got beamed into all sorts of nooks and crannies The problem there was that the entire optional per play group thing got tossed out the window. Furthermore, people that may have heard of EDH but never played it were suddenly exposed to being able to watch and try it out easily online. This helped lead to the format exploding wide open, and wizards officially adopting Commander as a paper product.
With Commander now becoming an official annually released product, the format is only set for more and more growth. As that growth kicks in, and tournaments go up--- its going to become harder and harder to explain to people that there isnt really a banned list-- just sort of a suggested list of cards that you should avoid playing kind of banned list that may or may not apply depending on the day, place of play. Because of that the official ban list is becoming more and more important-- and that is why it REALLY needs to be allowed to mature into something more formal.
Sorin is legal to keep life gain in check. What do you do when someone pulls off the many infinite life gain combos that are available? You Sorin or Magister Sphinx them. Its very similar to why Force will never be banned in legacy, it is needed.
Commander damage is there to keep life gain in check. You dont need Sorin. There are also other ways to deal with infinite life gain-- all colors have infect, there is mill, and cards that let you trade life totals with your opponents or to set each players life total to different numbers besides 10 that are more balanced--- including Repay In Kind and Blessed Wind. Not to mention Arbiter of Knollridge or Soul Conduit. Are they less optimal than Sorin? YES. But thats sort of the point. Sorin does what he does way too effectively, at too low of a cost, in a way thats really hard to deal with. As for the Sphinx-- its spread across 3 colors and is a bit more expensive to cast. It might be pushing it, but Im far more ok with it than Sorin.
Seriously, without Prime Time mono-g is nearly impossible to get wins with. Everyone has answers to what you're doing. Green has basically two of it's own answers in Beast Within and slightly less powerful Krosan Grip.
So what if everyone fought over Prime Time when he hit the field? nHe made the game more interesting putting more land into play and making everything bigger and more fun. As it stands now, someone will run Kokopuffs and everyone will fight over that, because if he dies the life swing will get ridiculous in bigger games. Rite of Replication is basically GG. And it's in the best color just giving blue more of an edge.
Azusa won just fine without PT. It will continue doing fine. I have one in all of my green decks, and will miss it--- but I cant think of a single deck that will really be crippled by this. Slightly less optimal, sure- but still fully functional.
Kokusho, on the other hand? Yeah-- sure, its bound to get crazy in some games. But Its 6 to play, and Rite is 9--- making it a bit harder to get both played at once. And if youre not playing blue-- youre going to be pretty hesitant to drop it in a match against blue knowing that Rite is a potential game ender against you. But really-- nothings changed there. Rite has always had the potential to be pretty much game ending if not out-right game ending.
I lost faith in their ability to manage the commander list ages ago.
Sorin Markov not banned, even though he throws someones life total down 30+ points in one swing for only 6 mana that you can do very little about if youre not running blue counterspells--- but Kokusho (until now) was banned. 2 mono black cards with a 6cc that can result in huge life swings, sure. But Kokusho could be exiled, gy hated out, required other cards to be abusive, and only resulted in a 5 point loss of life per opponent--- not nearly as damning as instantly losing 3/4 of your life in one hit.
Likewise,
Sundering Titan. No one liked this card, sure, but he helped keep 5 color under control, while doing almost nothing to mono colored players. As such, he offered a foil to Iona-- a card that lets you name a color and then your opponents cant play spells of that color as long as she stays in play. If Sundering is broken and needs to be banned because he unfairly punishes players running 5 color, why leave Iona unchecked? They both should be banned or left in play. End of story.
Library of Alexandria. Great card, but its not nearly as good in commander as it is in regular magic, and even less effective in group games. Its cost is certainly prohibitive, but is this card really more OP than say-- Time Twister?. I can certainly see it going in allot of decks, but I dont see it making that much more of an impact than other good artifacts or generic lands-- like say sol ring, mana crypt, divining top.
I dont know. The list just feels clunky, under thought out, and mismanaged.
MTGO sucks and I can't believe the amount of money people will pay to get virtual cards.
Sort of like the millions who pay sub fees for MMOS, netflix, or for memberships to xbox live, right? Same thing, only MTGO is a better deal because you can decide what you want to pay into it and when-- and once youve bought your cards, can play with them whenever you want as many times as you want without ever dropping another dollar if you dont want to.
Have they modified their very lopsided, nay, one-way user agreement for me putting real money into their company and getting no guarantees other than "what we say goes and you'll like it"?
Went to buy in at the start. But the agreement was so one sided it seemed to be nothing more than a oneside money grab.
I have friends that enjoy the online game. It's clearly successful. But what a terrible bunch of T&C's.
Not for me. This seems all the more reason to not consider it.
Im not saying EULAs arent important to read and understand, but almost any games EULA will appear draconian, as theyre designed to do one thing and one thing only-- to protect the games owner in court. If people could be trusted to do the right things, we wouldnt need them. That said-- look at how long MTGO has been around. I barely drop $5 a month into it and get TONS of play out of it. Some months I pay nothing, and just play the decks I have as I have them and have a blast. Even if MTGO ended tomorrow, I could walk away feeling good about my investment as I couldnt have stretched my dollars worth of entertainment out any better. Another thing to think about-- the only people that have EVER had their digital cards pulled away from them have been people who are being abusive in some way. I mean you REALLY gotta be asking for it. If you (and I mean people in general) dont know where that line is, your parents have failed.
I don't consider Sol Ring to be an "expensive" card. When Wizards starts re-printing Thoughtseize, Wasteland, Vendilion Clique, and cards over $20 in the secondary market into a product, then watch LGSes raise the price on the product.
You're right that the Commander sets were not limited, which is a good thing.
Of your list, I will be surprised to see Damnation or Sensei's Divining Top in this product. The top was in a FTV, and Damnation is a "pricey" card that I will be surprised if they reprint.
Sol Ring was fetching 20-25 on ebay just before it was announced it was going to be in commander. Damnation can be had for about the same price. Chain Lightning was up there too before it got reprinted in a PFD. Magic has reprinted many valuable cards time and time again, they are sometimes in smaller print runs (judge foils, FTV), sometimes easily gotten (PDS, DDs, etc). Dont forget that a foil Koth was going for insane bucks when the venser vs koth decks first got announced, now you can pick one up for nothing. The illusion that magic cares about prices on reprints is a myth perpetuated by people who make no decisions within wizards design teams. The fact that people want to argue that it does, even in the face of said design teams saying they dont care squat about the secondary market (why would they--- they make NO money from it), just makes me sad.
You guys make me laugh. I can just imagine people sitting in the pit saying "No, we can't include THAT card! It'll make the pack sell! We can't do that! Making a profit on the products we produce is bad!" Seriously? They are going to put JUST ENOUGH in to make it sell, and no more. What is the ONE thing you could come up with that would make a product sell, no matter how much other garbage is in it? The shocklands. Peoples obsession with those lands is obscene.
There is both history that supports and defeats this post. Some of wizards product releases have hardly included anything that could remotely justify the price of the MSRP. Others-- if you count the value of the cards BEFORE that fixed product was released--- have been worth a pretty solid amount above and beyond the MSRP. This fact alone, coupled with countless posts from the magic design team that they pay 0 attention to the secondary market when printing cards, is really all the evidence I need that they really dont care whats in demand when throwing these things together. If they did--- you would have seen force of will hit reprint by now. They could drop it into a garbage bag and slap a $40 price tag on it and it would fly off shelves without needing anything else included in the product of any value and simply cash in on its extremely limited print run--- but they havent. Since they make no money off of the secondary market, such a move would be far too tempting-- yet they resist.
Instead-- I think you are right about one thing--- these will likely have just enough value to push them. Few releases from wizards have ever been full of hits, and almost always contain random POS throw ins. That said, commander decks contained a good number of playable cards in that format. They certainly felt far less like thrown together money-grabs compared to other fixed release products in the past. Not to mention that theyre banking hard on commander right now--- they have a big interest in seeing staples get released here to further nurture this format. Because of that--- I just dont see shock lands here.
Instead-- I dont think the value of these decks will be based on the money value of the cards included--- it will be the playability of the cards included. I wouldnt expect to see much that is worth over $10-20 now, but I would expect to see a ton of $1-4 cards that see play on a regular basis in many decks.
Some good examples may include:
Divining Top
Bribery
Rite of Replication
Genesis Wave
Genesis
Blatant Thievery
Blood Moon
Kiki-Jiki
Damnation
The mirage block tutors (mystical, vampiric, enlightened)
Wrath
Rhystic Study
Lim-Duls Vault
Woodfall Primus
Not to mention that this will also, almost certainly, contain a large number of commons, uncommons, and trash. What would a magic release be without at least some trash. In this case though, Im hopeful that the trash will at least be playable cards that are just common and easily available (IE not really trash, just things you probably already have if youre already into commander).
While I agree with you, I think it's a bit too black and white to say they give no consideration. The reserve list policy is proof that they do, just not for the vast majority of cards. They're trying to cater to every party, collectors, spikes, and casual players and doing an okay job of it.
Back in the early days-- it was a misconception that if a card wasnt picked up in a core set, that it wouldnt be reprinted. These cards tended to be more valuable. When wizards brought back some cards that had been dropped, it created an uproar in those early days. Things were much different back then, and magic was seen as much as an investment collectible as a game-- and for good reason. Cards like Black Lotus, the duel lands, and even cards like fork (which was worth more back then) had all rotated out and went sky high. Cards that had only been printed a few years prior were fetching $20 left and right onwards into the hundreds. All of this worked together to create an uproar by LGS and players concerned about the secondary market--- and the reserve list was born as a compromise. It spelled out that certain cards would enjoy this level of protection to make those who viewed the game as an investment happy-- while making it completely clear that from then on, wizards didnt see magic as an investment property-- but as a game and that all bets would be off in the future. The reserved list wasnt born because they were concerned with the private market--- it was born to ensure that people knew that were not and as a way of offering a sort of peace offering to those who felt that the manufacturers hadnt been clear enough in spelling that out up to that point.
The legends/portal legends aren't all that impressive. Some people enjoy them, though, and they're unlikely to be reprinted in a deck, ever, because they'll print new legends for the commander slot and they aren't too hot as one of the 99. Even Mr Xiahou Dun isn't that impressive unless you're playing him competitively. He can be really strong heading a tuned, competitive list, but other than that, he's nothing.
As far as what they won't do, they don't want to put things in that will make the product unobtainable for a reasonable price as a sealed unit. The legends/portal legends are high dollar, but only because of scarcity, not stapleness. Similarly priced cards like, say, Dark Confidant could cause problems, though.
Wizards has stated time and time again that they give no consideration to the impacts of the secondary markets when deciding what will and will not be included in a set. Many used this same logic to argue that sol ring wouldnt be in the last batch of decks--- only to have it included in every deck. As for making the product unobtainable because of the value of cards included-- this actually did happen with the last commander release. LGS everywhere were jacking their prices up because of the high value of the cards included in these products. Some decks were priced up to $60 in my area. The result? Some paid. Others waited it out and picked them up freely from retailers for MSRP. The BRW one was going for $60, and I saw several of them at walmart, best buy, target for msrp. The key here is that these products arent limited releases. While your LGS has had the freedom of jacking up the prices on more limited releases in the past--- as demand would eventually consume the supply of those selling at MSRP, that isnt the case with these products. It may happen on initial release, but sooner or later these things will keep rolling in, demand will dampen, and you will be able to find them at MSRP.
As for dark confidant--- the guy is horrible in commander, so yeah I wouldnt expect to see him here.
Actually, portal/legends legends would probably be safe prints. There's zero reason a commander that would only see sparse play needs to be a $30 card. As hard a the judge foil hit Xiahou Dun and FTV hit Sun Quan and Cao Cao, I doubt any of them would make the Arsenal fly off the shelves excessively fast.
Im not really following this. Mostly because I didnt really say much about value of cards other than to say that I dont think wizards takes the secondary market into consideration with these products, as proof by the printing of sol ring. I said this because someone claimed that they wouldnt print cards if it had a big impact on the secondary market.... or at least thats how I read/remember it.
My big reason against seeing most legends in this set is because this isnt a deck product. Its also called Commander Arsenal, which seems to imply that this is a bunch of stuff you would want to use in commander games. Therefore, my speculation is that this wont have many cards inserted into it that are legends beyond those that might see allot of play in decks even outside of a commander role based on the idea that they may want to hold those commanders back for the eventual and actual commander decks that theyre planning to release every year after this one.
That said, I think you will see some legends that do see print here-- some even commander worthy as your general. But if its a really exciting legend, they may decide to hold it back for a future release.
back on topic as well :i doubt the price will be fifty dollars vessiah, are you from the usa? if not that would explain it. Otherwise i havent seen (m)any products commanding that price tag at all.
i agree with your other points on the product, they make a lot of sense.
one thi id add is a potential for foil stuff from the previous commander release
My $50 price point was a high potential point. I came up with it based on a few things--- the release is coming out before xmas, they could go after the gift giving crowd. Its also based on the product being a large fixed content release (we dont know that it is either of these things at this point). If it is though, its not such a stretch. Look at the price of FTV sets-- and theyre only 15 cards. Likewise, Fat Packs, PDS, and Commander all run in the $30+ area for a maximum of 100 cards. If these sets contain sleeves, large cards, foils, and a set size of a few hundred cards that are staples in a fixed set size-- I certainly dont see $50 being out of the question. Its less than the price of any 2 commander decks.
Correct-- though poorly worded, I suppose I chose my wording the way I did because not all of the rules of MTGOs Commander and EDH where the same at the time-- thus, even though it was the same banned list minus the cards that werent available on MTGO, the format was still slightly different in rules from one another prior to the formats hand off.
My favorite notable example (and one I wish they would bring back) was the Super-Legendary status of Commanders in MTGO. This allowed players to in a multiplayer game to show up and play with their commander decks as designed without penalty. The way it worked was, if I play "Commander A" and someone else shows up with the same card as their commander-- those commanders wouldn't die to the legend rule because they were commanders. However--- if you cloned one of them, the cloned copy would die because it was not a commander.
Emrakul was banned because of a combination of things--- mostly because he became the dominate game winning card no matter what deck he was in and games just boiled down to who could get him out first.
As for Wizards having no official list--- thats not really true. They once maintained a different list for magic online-- until they decided to allow the formats creators to take over the administration of the format with the launch of the commander decks. The format was officially renamed Commander (the mtgo name) from EDH (though everyone still calls it that), but the same people that created EDH are the ones who now run and get to decide what is and isnt banned in the format-- and MTGO simply abides by those decisions.
Open up a commander deck and youll get a link to www.wizards.com/commander. Go there and youll get a link to mtgcommander.net. Go down under Rules to Deck Construction, and it says pretty clearly "The following is the official banned list for commander games. These cards (and others like them) should not be played without prior agreement from the other players in the game. "
Its such a cop out now though to say that the banned list is just a suggested list of cards that should be avoided. It was valid when it was just a casual format with no real support behind it. But now, that's no longer the case. Its an official format with product releases coming out in support of it, and its fully implemented in mtgo. At this point, I think its entirely feasible for this format to be properly managed.
I guess my problem is this:
Every playgroup is going to use their own rules for what is and isnt ok to play with. Ive played in dozens of groups-- some play anything goes (no banned or restricted list), others are cool with everything but infinite combo-- others, anything but no mass ld. Some shun certain cards or decks that drag the game on and on. Playgroups will always decide what is and isnt ok on their own--- they dont need this to be the law of the land to do so, and they will apply these rules to any/all formats those groups play.
So if thats the case--- why not either completely scrap the banned list--- or at least do what they should do and come up with a Tournament ban list? Why only go half way with this thing? At the very least--- its a huge pain in the rear end for new players to the format, to sell them a commander deck which sends them to a website that tells them "here is the sort of maybe banned list" and then they have to figure out what is and isnt legal to play everywhere that they go. Because of that, the default for the format that every group seems to tolerate is the official list-- which by its own design isnt complete.
Thats exactly why Im losing faith with the banned list to begin with. The hands-off approach to the format was great in its infancy as a casual unofficial format. Its anything but that now, and we seem to be in a weird lag moment where people havent really figure that out yet.
Before, people discovered EDH by a friend introducing it at a table with friends. In that setting, having the ban-list as just a general guide line worked great. Then it came to MTGO, and suddenly got beamed into all sorts of nooks and crannies The problem there was that the entire optional per play group thing got tossed out the window. Furthermore, people that may have heard of EDH but never played it were suddenly exposed to being able to watch and try it out easily online. This helped lead to the format exploding wide open, and wizards officially adopting Commander as a paper product.
With Commander now becoming an official annually released product, the format is only set for more and more growth. As that growth kicks in, and tournaments go up--- its going to become harder and harder to explain to people that there isnt really a banned list-- just sort of a suggested list of cards that you should avoid playing kind of banned list that may or may not apply depending on the day, place of play. Because of that the official ban list is becoming more and more important-- and that is why it REALLY needs to be allowed to mature into something more formal.
Commander damage is there to keep life gain in check. You dont need Sorin. There are also other ways to deal with infinite life gain-- all colors have infect, there is mill, and cards that let you trade life totals with your opponents or to set each players life total to different numbers besides 10 that are more balanced--- including Repay In Kind and Blessed Wind. Not to mention Arbiter of Knollridge or Soul Conduit. Are they less optimal than Sorin? YES. But thats sort of the point. Sorin does what he does way too effectively, at too low of a cost, in a way thats really hard to deal with. As for the Sphinx-- its spread across 3 colors and is a bit more expensive to cast. It might be pushing it, but Im far more ok with it than Sorin.
Azusa won just fine without PT. It will continue doing fine. I have one in all of my green decks, and will miss it--- but I cant think of a single deck that will really be crippled by this. Slightly less optimal, sure- but still fully functional.
Kokusho, on the other hand? Yeah-- sure, its bound to get crazy in some games. But Its 6 to play, and Rite is 9--- making it a bit harder to get both played at once. And if youre not playing blue-- youre going to be pretty hesitant to drop it in a match against blue knowing that Rite is a potential game ender against you. But really-- nothings changed there. Rite has always had the potential to be pretty much game ending if not out-right game ending.
Sorin Markov not banned, even though he throws someones life total down 30+ points in one swing for only 6 mana that you can do very little about if youre not running blue counterspells--- but Kokusho (until now) was banned. 2 mono black cards with a 6cc that can result in huge life swings, sure. But Kokusho could be exiled, gy hated out, required other cards to be abusive, and only resulted in a 5 point loss of life per opponent--- not nearly as damning as instantly losing 3/4 of your life in one hit.
Likewise,
Sundering Titan. No one liked this card, sure, but he helped keep 5 color under control, while doing almost nothing to mono colored players. As such, he offered a foil to Iona-- a card that lets you name a color and then your opponents cant play spells of that color as long as she stays in play. If Sundering is broken and needs to be banned because he unfairly punishes players running 5 color, why leave Iona unchecked? They both should be banned or left in play. End of story.
Library of Alexandria. Great card, but its not nearly as good in commander as it is in regular magic, and even less effective in group games. Its cost is certainly prohibitive, but is this card really more OP than say-- Time Twister?. I can certainly see it going in allot of decks, but I dont see it making that much more of an impact than other good artifacts or generic lands-- like say sol ring, mana crypt, divining top.
I dont know. The list just feels clunky, under thought out, and mismanaged.
Teenage Ninja Mutant Otters
..........or thursday night magic online if youre a stiff.
Sort of like the millions who pay sub fees for MMOS, netflix, or for memberships to xbox live, right? Same thing, only MTGO is a better deal because you can decide what you want to pay into it and when-- and once youve bought your cards, can play with them whenever you want as many times as you want without ever dropping another dollar if you dont want to.
Im not saying EULAs arent important to read and understand, but almost any games EULA will appear draconian, as theyre designed to do one thing and one thing only-- to protect the games owner in court. If people could be trusted to do the right things, we wouldnt need them. That said-- look at how long MTGO has been around. I barely drop $5 a month into it and get TONS of play out of it. Some months I pay nothing, and just play the decks I have as I have them and have a blast. Even if MTGO ended tomorrow, I could walk away feeling good about my investment as I couldnt have stretched my dollars worth of entertainment out any better. Another thing to think about-- the only people that have EVER had their digital cards pulled away from them have been people who are being abusive in some way. I mean you REALLY gotta be asking for it. If you (and I mean people in general) dont know where that line is, your parents have failed.
Sol Ring was fetching 20-25 on ebay just before it was announced it was going to be in commander. Damnation can be had for about the same price. Chain Lightning was up there too before it got reprinted in a PFD. Magic has reprinted many valuable cards time and time again, they are sometimes in smaller print runs (judge foils, FTV), sometimes easily gotten (PDS, DDs, etc). Dont forget that a foil Koth was going for insane bucks when the venser vs koth decks first got announced, now you can pick one up for nothing. The illusion that magic cares about prices on reprints is a myth perpetuated by people who make no decisions within wizards design teams. The fact that people want to argue that it does, even in the face of said design teams saying they dont care squat about the secondary market (why would they--- they make NO money from it), just makes me sad.
There is both history that supports and defeats this post. Some of wizards product releases have hardly included anything that could remotely justify the price of the MSRP. Others-- if you count the value of the cards BEFORE that fixed product was released--- have been worth a pretty solid amount above and beyond the MSRP. This fact alone, coupled with countless posts from the magic design team that they pay 0 attention to the secondary market when printing cards, is really all the evidence I need that they really dont care whats in demand when throwing these things together. If they did--- you would have seen force of will hit reprint by now. They could drop it into a garbage bag and slap a $40 price tag on it and it would fly off shelves without needing anything else included in the product of any value and simply cash in on its extremely limited print run--- but they havent. Since they make no money off of the secondary market, such a move would be far too tempting-- yet they resist.
Instead-- I think you are right about one thing--- these will likely have just enough value to push them. Few releases from wizards have ever been full of hits, and almost always contain random POS throw ins. That said, commander decks contained a good number of playable cards in that format. They certainly felt far less like thrown together money-grabs compared to other fixed release products in the past. Not to mention that theyre banking hard on commander right now--- they have a big interest in seeing staples get released here to further nurture this format. Because of that--- I just dont see shock lands here.
Instead-- I dont think the value of these decks will be based on the money value of the cards included--- it will be the playability of the cards included. I wouldnt expect to see much that is worth over $10-20 now, but I would expect to see a ton of $1-4 cards that see play on a regular basis in many decks.
Some good examples may include:
Divining Top
Bribery
Rite of Replication
Genesis Wave
Genesis
Blatant Thievery
Blood Moon
Kiki-Jiki
Damnation
The mirage block tutors (mystical, vampiric, enlightened)
Wrath
Rhystic Study
Lim-Duls Vault
Woodfall Primus
Not to mention that this will also, almost certainly, contain a large number of commons, uncommons, and trash. What would a magic release be without at least some trash. In this case though, Im hopeful that the trash will at least be playable cards that are just common and easily available (IE not really trash, just things you probably already have if youre already into commander).
Back in the early days-- it was a misconception that if a card wasnt picked up in a core set, that it wouldnt be reprinted. These cards tended to be more valuable. When wizards brought back some cards that had been dropped, it created an uproar in those early days. Things were much different back then, and magic was seen as much as an investment collectible as a game-- and for good reason. Cards like Black Lotus, the duel lands, and even cards like fork (which was worth more back then) had all rotated out and went sky high. Cards that had only been printed a few years prior were fetching $20 left and right onwards into the hundreds. All of this worked together to create an uproar by LGS and players concerned about the secondary market--- and the reserve list was born as a compromise. It spelled out that certain cards would enjoy this level of protection to make those who viewed the game as an investment happy-- while making it completely clear that from then on, wizards didnt see magic as an investment property-- but as a game and that all bets would be off in the future. The reserved list wasnt born because they were concerned with the private market--- it was born to ensure that people knew that were not and as a way of offering a sort of peace offering to those who felt that the manufacturers hadnt been clear enough in spelling that out up to that point.
Wizards has stated time and time again that they give no consideration to the impacts of the secondary markets when deciding what will and will not be included in a set. Many used this same logic to argue that sol ring wouldnt be in the last batch of decks--- only to have it included in every deck. As for making the product unobtainable because of the value of cards included-- this actually did happen with the last commander release. LGS everywhere were jacking their prices up because of the high value of the cards included in these products. Some decks were priced up to $60 in my area. The result? Some paid. Others waited it out and picked them up freely from retailers for MSRP. The BRW one was going for $60, and I saw several of them at walmart, best buy, target for msrp. The key here is that these products arent limited releases. While your LGS has had the freedom of jacking up the prices on more limited releases in the past--- as demand would eventually consume the supply of those selling at MSRP, that isnt the case with these products. It may happen on initial release, but sooner or later these things will keep rolling in, demand will dampen, and you will be able to find them at MSRP.
As for dark confidant--- the guy is horrible in commander, so yeah I wouldnt expect to see him here.
Im not really following this. Mostly because I didnt really say much about value of cards other than to say that I dont think wizards takes the secondary market into consideration with these products, as proof by the printing of sol ring. I said this because someone claimed that they wouldnt print cards if it had a big impact on the secondary market.... or at least thats how I read/remember it.
My big reason against seeing most legends in this set is because this isnt a deck product. Its also called Commander Arsenal, which seems to imply that this is a bunch of stuff you would want to use in commander games. Therefore, my speculation is that this wont have many cards inserted into it that are legends beyond those that might see allot of play in decks even outside of a commander role based on the idea that they may want to hold those commanders back for the eventual and actual commander decks that theyre planning to release every year after this one.
That said, I think you will see some legends that do see print here-- some even commander worthy as your general. But if its a really exciting legend, they may decide to hold it back for a future release.
My $50 price point was a high potential point. I came up with it based on a few things--- the release is coming out before xmas, they could go after the gift giving crowd. Its also based on the product being a large fixed content release (we dont know that it is either of these things at this point). If it is though, its not such a stretch. Look at the price of FTV sets-- and theyre only 15 cards. Likewise, Fat Packs, PDS, and Commander all run in the $30+ area for a maximum of 100 cards. If these sets contain sleeves, large cards, foils, and a set size of a few hundred cards that are staples in a fixed set size-- I certainly dont see $50 being out of the question. Its less than the price of any 2 commander decks.