MTG thread

I've continuously underestimated how much money people are willing to spend forever now (see also, League of Legends) but a combination of those new mythic design with faster rotation has got to increase burnout among the player base.

Heylel_sl said:

Mentor does have me looking at some older cards and wondering if they might have new life. Ephara, for instance, seems very strong with Mentor. She'll trigger a token, which will trigger cantrip ability. Now every spell you cast nets you a dude an draws you a card.

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I don't necessarily disagree, but Gods are creatures in all zones, including the stack. So, she would not trigger mentor's ability. Same reason you can't negate a god, but can always remove soul/nullify regardless of devotion.

Part of the whole mythic thing was a response to smaller sets. People bitched about how big Standard was sometimes so they shrunk sets. So instead of 80 rares you now have 53 rares and 15 mythics. Making sets 15-20 percent smaller without changing rarity at all would likely lead to reduced pack sales which I'm sure is not something they're looking for. You now get roughly 4 copies of a current rare in same number of packs as you'd get 3 copies of the old rares. But mythics are at 2:3 ratio compared to rares from older sets. This applies to large sets, but the numbers are similar for the small sets as well. The faster rotation likely will make Standard card prices more volatile, but Modern certainly creates a more stable middle format economy than Extended ever did since it won't rotate.

Arbitrary_sl said:

I've continuously underestimated how much money people are willing to spend forever now (see also, League of Legends) but a combination of those new mythic design with faster rotation has got to increase burnout among the player base.

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Possibly, but at the same time it appears they are gonna eventually make Modern so accessible, that anyone who doesn't want to keep up with Standard can just play Modern and rarely update their deck. The argument that Legacy players love to make, about it being cheaper in the long term (which isn't strictly true), may actually be correct for Modern soon.

There is an interesting thing going on with magic finance due to the explosion of the player base. They have been printing cards at a higher volume to keep up with demand, but they have had 25% growth for 3-4 years in a row, that's not sustainable for any business long term. So, once that growth slows (already showing signs of this) then those sets will be in higher supply relative to others. There's a reason things like, the shocklands, birthing pod, etc.. have basically stayed at the same price for over 6 months even though they are being played a fair amount all over modern. There's just plenty of copies around relative to the players that need them.
Anthony Capece Brainstorm Brewery
that article goes into more depth. But, the summary is that something like thoughtseize, which should be the closest thing to a 'safe' investment as you can get in magic.. probably will just sit at it's same price when it rotates for a year or two. There's at least 4x more Theros copies then Lorwyn copies of that card, but there won't be 4x more legacy/modern players then there was 5 years ago. Most of the playerbase growth has been in Standard players, some will transition to Modern, and even less to Legacy, but it's such a small number compared to the actual cards available.

The first set of a block used to have 110 rares before going to 88 with Mirrodin and that decrease didn't require the creation of a new rarity. Potential reduced pack sales is a flimsy justification. Wizards releases far more premium product (duel decks, from the vault, modern masters, commander decks, all foil decks, event decks, probably forgetting some) than it ever used to. With all that is it the expectation that the players also buy larger amounts of new sets?

enzie_sl said:

I don't necessarily disagree, but Gods are creatures in all zones, including the stack. So, she would not trigger mentor's ability. Same reason you can't negate a god, but can always remove soul/nullify regardless of devotion.

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Yeah, I brain farted on that one. I still think Ephara could be quite strong alongside Mentor but it won't make a token right away.

A good idea. But Treasure Cruise exists.

Is getting 900 for a Mox Sapphire a decent deal?

The price of a card like that is going to vary quite a bit based on condition. If it is in amazing condition than you can do much better but if it's in average condition than 900 is fine.

Went 6-2 in a PTQ today with a slightly modified Abzan Aggro list. Was mostly pleasant except for one round where I played someone that was the bad kind of spike. The kind that can top eight PTQs but isn't actually all that good.

After he won game one off of a particularly grindy game he started pile shuffling after a mulligan and I called him on it for slow play. By the time I was going to call a judge it was over. I at least had a judge around to watch for further slow play and the difference was night and day in terms of pace of play when the judge was around. The particular edge he was trying to get there was to slow play game two after winning game one for a free win.

The Mox in question:

Sabbat_sl said:

The Mox in question:

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Have you seen it in person? If not can you get higher quality scans? There are a lot of fakes floating around. The grey color in the text on the card and on the mana cost should look different than the rest of the card upon closer inspection, it will have a little dot formation. The rest of the card should have a kind of hexagon pattern if you look really really closely. I have some Power earlier in the thread if you want to see an example of it.

The quality on the back is pretty awesome but the edges on the front show some serious wear. With a just slightly wet Q-tip you can actually scrub a lot of that gunk off the white borders and make your cards look a lot nicer in the process. If doing that interests you I'd buy some unlimited basic lands (like $1) and practice on them before you touch your Power with it.

With all this said, I think 900 is on the upper end of reasonable for this piece.

I think he's the seller from his phrasing.

Arbitrary_sl said:

I've continuously underestimated how much money people are willing to spend forever now (see also, League of Legends) but a combination of those new mythic design with faster rotation has got to increase burnout among the player base.

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It has for me, I dropped standard play completely.

Vaclav_sl said:

I think he's the seller from his phrasing.

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Derp...I think you're right. My bad!

Join the drafting master race, friend convinced me to go to draft a week ago despute not playing in a tournament for 5 years. Opened first deck, pulled out Polluted Delta, which paid for the whole evening then and there

Zaphid_sl said:

Join the drafting master race, friend convinced me to go to draft a week ago despute not playing in a tournament for 5 years. Opened first deck, pulled out Polluted Delta, which paid for the whole evening then and there

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I keep telling people this! It's so much better than playing the same people playing the same decks every single week. Although I hear it's not as bad as usual as the standard meta keeps shifting right now. But even in that case only so many folks are going to have the cards or the money to move between decks.

Most players are terrible drafters as well so if you're willing to put in a little effort to figure out what works best/for you when drafting it's not that hard to go near infinite depending on the venues attendance/prize structure. Lots of people cry about never winning because they never open a bomb or some other reason. But the problem is they actually just suck at either drafting or playing in general. The number of people who lose to a turn 10 bomb after using removal on turn 5 to swing in for 2 or to save a creature they didn't need from a combat trick is too damn high.

For my crabbing about Mythics and what not I really, really do like drafting and look forward to showing up at FNM each week. It's a great time.

Draft to get cards, its the smart way.

I won our 8 man pod today. P1P1 Dead Drop into a Mardu base with some extra fixing let me take a Siege Rhino passed to me in pack 2. Ended up with 2x Debilitating Injury, 2x Throttle, 2x Mardu Roughrider and splashing in the Rhino, Death Frenzy and Armament Corps.