MTG Salvation

Quote from arcane7828 »

[quote from="drmarkb »" url="/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/797897-planeswalker-masterpieces?comment=69"]I am delighted the new walker MPs are not in boosters
I want spread of values in boosters when I draft, and all MPs do is drop the price of the other cards, leaving everyone with nothing unless they get the lottery ticket prize. I don't want to gamble and buy lottery tickets, I want to draft and walk away with a bit of cardboard back most weeks that I can trade instantly, store for five years and then sell/trade, and one way or the other turn into something I want. That does not happen when every card in the set is worth sod all.

Quote from WarMachinePrime »

That is the question. Yes, no or maybe? What changes would you make to update them? A name change perhaps? Pricing, etc.

Personally I'd love to see them come back. 3 rares(or 2 and a mythic), 10 uncommons and a chunk of commons and lands and a guaranteed foil of any rarity. 75 cards in a box with a rules insert. I'd name it something else though. Tournament pack really is a misnomer. It also has a side bonus of those who don't like the waste of mylar/plastic for 3 booster packs can keep the box for storage of dice, counters or bulk commons or lands.

Maybe it is a relic of the past, but I've been buying a few old ones recently and really enjoying the experience of opening them. Any thoughts?

Quote from Colt47 »

I was just thinking about this, but people are always complaining about modern not getting cards reprinted in standard because the cards are too good for standard, so why is it nobody is just tossing their arms up and doing a format that's all modern frame sets? It's basically legacy light, avoids the reserved list, and ultimately it's probably going to get all the non-RL cards eventually since wizards doesn't have an issue with reprinting those cards via commander, conspiracy, Battlebond, etc. Is it just because they are afraid the format will make the game too expensive? It's not like a ban list can't exist for it and such.

Quote from Manite »

Quote from draftguy2 »

I feel that might have been overkill, PEEK was not wrecking up the meta at any level. at 2 mana its bearly draft playable at 3 its not even draft playable.

It's not just a matter of what Gitaxian Probe itself did; peeking and drawing a card by itself is fairly innocuous. As I pointed out in my previous post, it's that Probe not only provides mana-free card draw (which is a significant advantage over Peek) but also provides easy Storm count (Ornithopter, Memnite, Gitaxian Probe, Gut Shot, Mutagenic Growth, Desperate Ritual, Infernal Plunge, Seething Song, Grapeshot, there you go) and fuel for Delve spells like Treasure Cruise and Become Immense. Imagine hitting four Probes turn 1, then being able to Murderous Cut any creature for B, or using three Probes and two Mutagenic Growths to fuel Become Immense for a T2 swing with Glistener Elf while also keeping mana open for an Apostle's Blessing in case the opponent gets cute with removal.

Heck, all those cheap Phyrexian Mana spells are basically superfuel for a Delve deck, hence why I feel most of them should have had 1 or 2 added to the cost.

Quote from NierAutomata »

Quote from KnickM »

Mostly your assessment is correct, but I wanted to call out this paragraph.

Quote from NierAutomata »

2. Card value is already too low. There are absolute minimums to which card prices can drop. A shockland can never be a penny. Why not? Because the price of the pack is $3.95 retail. It does not matter how many copies are out there, selling a shockland (the one rare in a pack) at a penny means someone somewhere somehow is taking a huge loss--player or game shop. Similarly reprinting mountains and islands does nothing to their price because they are more or less worthless.

That's not at all why a shockland will never be a penny. Shocklands are expensive because they're heavily played in Modern and EDH, and thus there's significant demand for them. There are definitely rares that are worth a fraction of the price of a booster pack. The store isn't losing money on selling those because they're selling other rares (typically, in a set that includes them, shocklands) for more than the price of a pack.

We're talking about different forces here both of which affect price. Mine is a supply side argument and yours is a demand side argument.

One reason why a car will never be a penny is because it costs way more to make the car than a penny. Manufacturers would have to willingly want to lose money to sell their cars for a penny each. Same as with shocklands.

The difference with magic is it's more complex. You're not looking at the physical price of manufacturing a shockland so much as how much money it costs to "generate" a shockland after Wizards R&D, paying the artist(s), promoting their product, and leaving enough money on the table to make a local game shop want to support Magic. It's not so much physically making the cardboard as it is about paying all the people along the way to make it happen. Magic cards can't sell for the price it costs to make them at their physical cardboard price because Wizards can't afford to promote the game at those prices, and local game shops who need to use their shops efficiently can't afford to sell mtg rares at those prices.


Now let's talk about your point which is demand side.

Demand for shocklands come from Modern and EDH. The higher the demand, the higher the price. Let's say a new Modern deck is tearing up the tournament scene and uses 4 Breeding Pools. If UG wasn't a popular color before, the sudden appearance of Breeding pools in a winning new brew will likely spike up demand, causing the prices to be raised.

More demand = Higher price.
Less demand = Lower price.

What if demand is zero, does that mean the price of shocklands is zero?
In a purely theoretical world, yes. If demand is truly zero, there is no sale of the product.

But in a practical world, no. Zero demand means that the price of a product has a floor--the floor being the price it costs to "make" it. And we're back to supply side forces dictating the price.


Edit:

I wanted to add that my discussion of supply side forces is food for thought. Realistically, demand forces overwhelmingly dictate the price of MTG cards.

Where supply side forces really come in is in the form of transaction costs such as shipping and handling, the trouble a seller has to take to sell the cards, or when the the prices of rares of a set cause the EV of boxes of a set to be well below MSRP.

Quote from Manite »

Quote from Silver_Spellthief »

Also no, it isn't really a problem on cards like Spined Thopter but that kind of illustrates the point people are making. Sure it's fine on thopter, but it isn't on Surgical Extraction, Birthing Pod, Mental Misstep, and certainly not Dismember. If your mechanic only seems okay on cards that could easily be artifacts or low power/French vanilla cards, that might be a red flag.

Phyrexian mana isn't the problem there, the 2 or 3 missing from those mana costs is the problem. Those cards would be problematic even if they didn't have phyrexian mana. That said, yes, a spell like Misstep had no business being phyrexian mana, because countering spells is one of the few effects design really doesn't want in colorless, along with cheap enchantment removal. But again, the problem isn't with the mechanic, it's the effect and the cost that are the real issues there.

Look at affinity for artifacts, said to be one of the most broken mechanics in the history of the game. It produced some of the most broken cards, but was Razor Golem broken? Was Qumulox broken? The problem wasn't that affinity existed, the problem was the way they used it on certan cards.

And how about Mutagenic Growth? You exchange 2 life for a one-turn +2/+2 boost; not terribly egregious on its own. Add in a 1-drop creature with infect and then it becomes a problem. The environment in which a card or mechanic exists is integral to determining that card or mechanic's balance. Would Aetherworks Marvel be nearly as broken if it was the only energy card in Standard? Would Heart of Kiran have been so good if not for Gideon, Ally of Zendikar? How about those Swords with Stoneforge Mystic, and vice versa?

All this said, I understand Gitaxian Probe's banning because it really was just that good, not only for Storm but also Delve (handy fuel for Become Immense and Treasure Cruise). That should have been a 1(U/P) at least, and honestly I think 2(U/P) would be safer since we're talking about basically cycling with upside.

Quote from genini2 »

If it cost 1 less on the front half I could see this being reasonable in an aggro deck, but a 5 mana play without an ETB or haste is a non-starter there. Maybe dredge (or something similar) will make a comeback in the new Ravnica block and this could be enabled there.