MTG thread

Speaking of Limited, I'm supposed to go to a private MM draft tomorrow afternoon. Last box of the store, beer + pool and cards. Should be fun.

Sterling_sl said:

The thing with reprinting some stuff is that other stuff will increase in price to keep formats relatively stable in price. So MM is likely to cause fetches and thoughtseize and so on a bit of a price bump upwards. If they start reprinting basically everything that gets played it can lower the price of the format a goodly amount but that will at some point alienate stores and collectors.

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Would it alienate stores though if Wizards went out of its way to stabilize prices on the mana base in a bid to keep the customer base? I say this because Magic is apparently at an all time popularity high which doesn't seem to be abating. By having the barrier of entry so high for Modern it could be argued they are losing potential customers and money. Granted, standard is far and away the most popular format, but still. I suppose this is the reason why Wizards is testing the waters with Modern Masters but I think their timeline is a bit too long range given Magic's current popularity.

Having literally just bought my way into Modern this weekend, the price barrier isn't significantly higher than Standard. The price of fetches is extremely high, but there are decks you can play that don't necessarily need them. That being said, they're important enough to the format that Modern as a whole will be unsustainable without a reprint of at least the Zendikar cycle, while adding the Onslaught fetches to the mix would further improve the mana base of the format (though probably not enough to make a huge difference). They'll see a reprint soon, probably next fall.

The main thing holding back Modern is that in many ways it's an entirely new buy-in after Standard already costs a fair bit. You can reuse some expensive cards (I'm looking at you Voice of Resurgence), but the same ~$450-500 that it costs for a top tier Standard deck has to be respent buying the rest of a Modern one. If they can reprint enough of the expensive uncommons (MM largely did this), and cycle the really absurdly overcosted rares like Thoughtseize and Mutavault through Standard a second time, Modern will be just fine.

Larger formats are always cheaper longterm it's the initial buyin that can be daunting. There are a number of modern decks that don't require fetches or goyfs or whatever, but it does limit your options some.

Xalara_sl said:

Would it alienate stores though if Wizards went out of its way to stabilize prices on the mana base in a bid to keep the customer base? I say this because Magic is apparently at an all time popularity high which doesn't seem to be abating. By having the barrier of entry so high for Modern it could be argued they are losing potential customers and money. Granted, standard is far and away the most popular format, but still. I suppose this is the reason why Wizards is testing the waters with Modern Masters but I think their timeline is a bit too long range given Magic's current popularity.

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Well, it wasn't specifically about just the fetches. If they reprinted the fetches in 2014 in the block following Theros I don't think it would be a huge big deal, other stuff would climb in price instead to equalize it. I meant if they did a massive reprint of almost everything. Not sure how large a print run was done with Modern Masters but it's a good bit less than they do for an actual expansion and with the 6.99 MSRP it won't hurt single prices the way a normal reprint in a regular expansion would. That said it does allow for like my store to have some Goyfs and Bobs and stuff in stock which is a pretty uncommon occurrence normally.

MM has already dramatically lowered the price of a number of staples. There's a good article detailing it on SCG Premium from yesterday. It hasn't touched Goyf or Bob, and Clique is rebounding, but anything printed at rare has seen a decent drop. It doesn't make it cheap to enter the format, but MM has succeeded in the short term in making the format less expensive.

I kinda disagree that things would rise in price to compensate if fetches dropped. They didn't actually rise until SCG started spiking the prices ahead of Modern season this year. If they went back down to preseason prices, demand for other cards wouldn't suddenly rise enough to push many cards up that much higher. Cards like Thoughtseize have the same problem in Modern that Voice has in Standard. They're so insanely good in multiple top tier decks that there simply aren't enough of them to go around. Cheaper fetches might entice more people into the format, but not necessarily those specific decks.

You'd see a little bit of rise if the Modern player pool expanded, but I still think a fetch reprint will ultimately drop the barrier to entry. I suspect that Ben Bleiwess is right and we'll see the filters in Theros, and the fetches next fall. It wouldn't surprise me to see WotC begin cycling those, the shocks and check lands as routine options for mana fixing in Standard for the next decade or so. Really, there aren't a lot of other ways to design mana fixing dual lands that haven't already been done.

Went to my first modern event tonight with some friends who were also fairly new. Way more fucking fun than standard, which I got pretty tired of in January after playing it for around 6 months. I made a lot of mistakes, but that should become less common as I get more familiar with modern.

Building up some legacy cards to give that a whirl as well. Little bit heftier buy in tho

I picked up a third Marsh Flat and a Misty Rainforest last night, so I'll at least have 8 fetches for Melira Pod this weekend. I've also got a line on a guy who wants my foil Sword of Fire and Ice, which I'm hoping to turn into a couple more Mistys and a little something else. Part of me feels like it's too early to trade it right now (it's been consistently sold out all over the net at $80), but it's also reasonably rare that you find the right collector who is into foils enough to trade for a high value one.

Played a practice match last night and won 1-2 vs. landfall/knight of the reliquary (I don't know the deck name). It was definitely fun, but man it's a complex deck to play.

Old art. Apparently it's been selling well because people want to finish out cycles with the artist that did the other Swords.

edit: Nabbed a Scalding Tarn and Misty Rainforest for it. I'm happy enough with that.

So.. mutavault is being reprinted in m14. Interesting.

Anyone else excited about slivers returning?

Not really. M14 has left me completely cold, except for Mutavault and the possibility of Thoughtseize.

Heylel_sl said:

Not really. M14 has left me completely cold, except for Mutavault and the possibility of Thoughtseize.

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I doubt that Thoughtseize is being reprinted based on what I overheard at a local game shop with someone who would be in the know. Based on what I heard the card is considered borderline ban worthy and it isn't banned now because it is relatively rare, which it wouldn't be were it reprinted.

Take the requisite grain of salt, but I 80% sure the conversion was about Thoughtseize, or at the least Thought-something.

Thoughtseize isn't remotely ban-worthy. It's the best discard spell they've printed, but it's not broken in the least (Hymn to Tourach is ban-worthy and arguably more powerful, but it's a claymore whereas Thoughtseize is a scalpel). Moreover, they don't choose what cards to ban or unban based on how many of it were printed. It's a major player in Modern that fits in numerous decks, so if they really want that format to survive they'll need to reprint it eventually.

Honestly, with the amount of aggro in Standard right now, Thoughtseize wouldn't rock the boat very much. It's most dangerous to control strategies which they've already done their absolute best to neuter.

Shrug I am only saying what I heard.

Xalara_sl said:

Shrug I am only saying what I heard.

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I believe you, I'm just not sure I agree with the reasoning behind whomever you overheard. It's a great card, but not a broken one.