MTG thread

Mist_sl said:

I seriously doubt Ceddy P will be doing less coverage. Dude loves to talk almost as much as he loves cake.

Click to expand...

He already said as much - he's moving to Roanoke and taking over Evan Erwin's old job at SCG I believe. I'm sure he will still be casting at the majority of SCG vents but in 2014/15 he was pretty much at 95% of them. SCG is also scaling back their event numbers and completely removing West Coast/Mountain locations and renaming everything to the "SCG Tour".

CFB will fill in the west coast. It was already too close for comfort for them.

CFB is creating a circuit of events? I know they host GPs and such, but that's entirely different then what SCG was doing.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see another circuit competing with SCG, but I didn't think they were in a position to do that, and TCG's circuit still needs work.

And then the Midwest can get the Passtimes Games Circuit. "2 out of 5 Critics agree, it's mostly better than not having any Magic to play!"

The pasttimes events are GPs or SCG events though, that's what I mean. Unless CFB starts running TCG events, I don't see how they'd be picking up the slack.

Punko_sl said:

cards tend to move towards each other in price

look at imperial recruiter, when the foil first came out it was dirt cheap, I picked up mine at a physical store for 75? each, while the originals were 175?, they are both around 150 now.

Click to expand...

No, they're not. P3K Recruiters are consistently over $300, and generally over $350.

The foil was cheap when it came out because there was a flood on the market as judges got their GP packets and sold them to pay travel costs. That's how it all used to work. Also, at the time it wasn't really a deck staple. Now that it sees fringe play in a few decks as a key combo piece, you need 4 of them or you don't need any at all so the price jumped. The P3K copies are still much rarer and more valuable, though.

Some cards just tank because there's no demand, but most promo printings are more or less independent of one another. My gen 1 judge Wastelands haven't really moved as a result of gen 2 ones hitting the market, and MPR are still higher. If people want a foil, they'll pick the art they really want. I *rarely* see legacy or vintage players excited over expeditions, however.

Time Vault acquired, this completing my first Vintage list. Will post once all the small stuff gets here from TCG.

14 judges from my region were just suspended today, including every L3 and our Regional Coordinator in connection with the leaked Kozilek spoiler like a month ago. A couple of them were 2 year suspensions and probably involved in it getting posted to reddit. The rest were suspended because they were in a chat channel where it got posted, but they didn't report it. That's unrelated to anything about judging; it's a player suspension and could have happened to anyone. Apparently just not telling WotC about a possible spoiler, which might even just be a fake, is now grounds for suspension.

Our RC is pretty damn pissed, and probably gone for good. He was responsible for a lot of what made judging in our region great.

what region would that be?

Also, that really sucks. I think they went a little too far in those bannings. Ban the guys who posted/leaked it, sure, but just being in the chat?? I see tons of fake spoilers early on, should I get banned because I didn't report all of them in case they are real?

enzie_sl said:

what region would that be?

Also, that really sucks. I think they went a little too far in those bannings. Ban the guys who posted/leaked it, sure, but just being in the chat?? I see tons of fake spoilers early on, should I get banned because I didn't report all of them in case they are real?

Click to expand...

Southeast. And yes, apparently you should be. It's a giant steaming pile of bullshit. The RC was suspended even though he *helped them* with the investigation.

You know this because the RC told you? Because as we all know, WotC doesn't comment on specifics.

Yes. The southeast is different from a lot of regions. We actually communicate and talk to one another, and try to encourage each other to be better judges. I talk to every judge within an hour of me almost daily on social media. This whole thing blew up huge.

Sounds like a great business decision WoTC. GJ.

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest but a fucking shame to hear.

Without knowing the exact details it's hard to say what would have been appropriate but I simply refuse to believe gutting an entire god damn region was anywhere fucking near the correct response. Sacrifice a scapegoat if someone involved was thesourcethat propagated the leak then shake fingers and educate the judge community as a whole on what should have happened and why. I really hope the judge community... not really makes waves but questions how this has been handled.

Funny thing is PT OGW is in Atlanta.

This is what happens when a company doesn't understand what it's product is. WOTC considers the leak to be a big blow to their company because it ruins the story. I can count on 0 hands the number of players that care more about the story than the cards behind it. This is like a company being mad that you DVR'd a TV show and then skip past the commercials that they cleverly built up suspense around. I'm sorry your crafty marketing scheme won't work so well on the weak minded, but they'll still read your articles and applaud your clever stories and maybe buy some crummy cards because you claim they are amazing.

The real person to blame is the community manager. Sorry, Trick Jarrett, but people crave information. It's been that way since the beginning of time. Maybe next time you put a little information out earlier so people can have something to chew on for the upcoming weeks of the product release. If you want to control the information; give the people what they want instead of holding it all back and blowing the money shot right before release.

I guess I'd love to be working for a company where we can tell customers they can't use our product because they shared some information about upcoming releases and get buzz going with other customers. In my business I share as much information as possible about everything coming down the R&D pipeline. For me, the only balance is getting customers excited about product that may be further down the pipe or may change during development. So I could understand if any of the information that was leaked was false and got people excited about a card that would be significantly changed before release. But all of these cards are the finished product.

This reaction is the kind of action that makes me want to stop being a customer of WOTC. Not the fact that I don't have to wait for the article releases to skip past all the text and find the card image, or just wait until someone pulls out all the cards from the articles and post them on MTGsalvation.

The judge manager sent out a lovely bit of science fiction to the other RCs this morning. It wasn't sent to any of the suspended parties. Basically WotC is accusing them of all the Oath leaks, and even says straight up in the letter that they're suspending people who weren't directly involved.

No one has been contacted for any information in spite of public statements to the contrary. No one was interviewed, had any kind of chat log requests, etc. They just got nuked without any notification.

Chickenpants_sl said:

For me, the only balance is getting customers excited about product that may be further down the pipe or may change during development. So I could understand if any of the information that was leaked was false and got people excited about a card that would be significantly changed before release. But all of these cards are the finished product.

Click to expand...

That's the thing though. Most of these guys got suspended by being in a chat channel with the person who posted those cards. They had the usual "fake / not fake?" banter and that was it. There wasn't any proof it was real and most of them ignored it. At least one of the suspended judges didn't even log in and SEE the chat. WotC still suspended him.

Suspensions are public, and the damage to reputations is real. There's no way to unfire the gun.

MtG/Wizards remind me more and more of the comics industry in the late 80s and early 90s. Pay shit wages, monetize their IP as much as possible, screw over their employees/industry helpers. They're pretty close to jumping the shark.