MTG thread

Have you drafted UG Clues in SoI yet? It must be right up your alley.

I'm enjoying the EMA spoilers. It's not a set marketed to me, but it looks like it'll get people excited. Some reasonable reprints that might funnel a few new players into older formats. I guess we'll see.

My one major disappointment is the lack of P3K cards. It's getting less and less likely that we see Imperial Recruiter, and that's a desperately needed reprint.

Drtyrm_sl said:

They put in Worldgorger/Animate Dead. Respect.

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And Entomb. Now I'm expecting Stroke of Genius and Careful Study.

Hoping my go store LGS will be able to let me preorder a box of EM.

I care because I play vintage, but I already have them so any pack copies i get will end up in an edh deck forgotten somewhere.

Mana Crypt will stay pretty high because it's an EDH all star, assuming they don't ban it once it becomes easier to acquire. Demand is there though.

EDH demand is not small at all. It's actually pretty huge these days.

Crypt started preselling on scg for $60, and is up to $90 now, so there's obviously people buying them. I feel bad for people holding value in judge foils because EMA contains a shitload of them, with the same art in most cases. Shardless Agent is especially offensive given that it just released to judges a month ago.

EDH and casual/kitchen table are by far the biggest market in the hobby. Also EDH players tend to not swap cards between decks, so they will often own multiple copies of chase cards. Plus they also tend to not sell single cards out of a deck. Crypt is a good card in a lot of EDH decks as well as being wanted for Cube, I don't see it's value falling too far.

Seeing rumors that Wotc is going to announce a new format to coincide with EMA, possibly something like legacy with no reserved list cards being legal. Would be interesting if true. EMA has been kind of lack luster to me because at the end of the day I'm not going to shell out $300-$400 a piece for revised duals, so there's no real point in pickup up a bunch of the EMA cards.

You don't have to pay that much for duals. The only ones that come close to that are Seas and Volcanics, and you can find played copies for much less. Legacy is in fact a cheaper hobby than competitive standard, it just has more of the cost frontloaded.

No reserve legacy would be a terrible format.

Yeah, I won't buy played copies though. When I'm buying magic cards or other collectibles I want NM. I also pretty much only but from SCG. It costs more but I never have an issue with their grading, they have great customer service, and packages arrive quickly.

I have Death and Taxes built except for one Karakas so I am excited that the EMA reprint is pushing down the price of the original. I'll pick up my 3rd.

I agree buying one legacy deck is generally cheaper than keeping up with standard for a year to 18 months or whatever, but that doesn't really have anything to do with me not wanting to drop money on revised duals.

I think legacy with shocks would probably be lame but I've never tried it. Hopefully it won't only be that if they do a new format. Maybe it could also have a restricted list or something. Who knows.

Number crunch is looking like a 10 card land cycle will be revealed tomorrow. Shocks and filterlands both fit what's been revealed so far. Hope it's not shocks.

Heylel_sl said:

You don't have to pay that much for duals. The only ones that come close to that are Seas and Volcanics, and you can find played copies for much less. Legacy is in fact a cheaper hobby than competitive standard, it just has more of the cost frontloaded.

No reserve legacy would be a terrible format.

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You have a completely different perspective on what is expensive is the problem. For the vast, vast majority of people the idea of dumping 2k+ in to just a land base of duals for legacy is completely untenable.

Welp, Wotc tweeted the new format rumor was false.

Ronne_sl said:

You have a completely different perspective on what is expensive is the problem. For the vast, vast majority of people the idea of dumping 2k+ in to just a land base of duals for legacy is completely untenable.

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I'm not assuming any casual player is going to jump right into legacy, or even your typical FNMer. However, for a serious standard player it doesn't take long for standard to become more expensive given the demand for new cards is fickle, and prices never stick.

Look at last rotation with 4 color company and $80 Jaces. You had a tier 1 standard deck that was approaching modern prices, much of it on the back of a single mythic rare you just happened to need 4 of in every significant deck at the time. So it's a choice, you can dump $320 on a playset of flip Jace and play standard, or you could take that $320 and buy duals. All the duals in Maverick cost less than $320 combined, for example. It buys you an absolutely pristine Underground Sea with a bit left over, or two played Tundras.

Six months from now, those Tundras or Seas are still worth what you paid, and standard has moved on. That money has evaporated. Cracking boxes is even worse. I bet we all know standard players who buy a box, maybe even two or three, of every set. That's every 3 months they're throwing money at the wall, and unless they've got an out for all that cardboard it'll sit and lose value. Add it all up, and the hidden cost of standard is quite high with few chances to recoup the loss without a storefront.

I readily acknowledge that my perspective differs, but it's not one I came to in a vacuum. I scraped my way into everything I've got just like everyone else, and I never dropped huge sums on anything but power (and as i explained earlier in the thread, only a fraction of the total cost was actual cash). If you really want to be playing Magic in 5 years, it makes more sense to buy a dual land that will always have value for as long as the game exists than a standard card that will spike for a couple months, and maybe retain half that value when it rotates if you're lucky. Most standard staples retain much less.

Heylel_sl said:

It's just not that hard to acquire cards with a little effort. Even vintage only took me four months or so, and I didn't commit much in the way of actual money.

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Heylel_sl said:

You don't have to pay that much for duals.

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You talk about the game in the compacted, familiar way that enthusiasts converse with other enthusiasts. That will always make you look like a crazy person.

Arbitrary_sl said:

You talk about the game in the compacted, familiar way that enthusiasts converse with other enthusiasts. That will always make you look like a crazy person.

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I guess, but I'm speaking from direct experience. If you're pricing everything at SCG retail then yeah, things are going to look very expensive. But they don't really cost that much, and if you actually track standard spending then it can easily cost more than legacy. I didn't suggest that duals weren't expensive, only that $300-400 for an Underground Sea isn't necessary. It was a statement in reference to what I quoted, not a generalization. Most don't come near that cost under any circumstance.

Old reserved cards cost money, but this is a hobby. It's 100% discretionary income, and it costs less than a lot of other hobbies. A gaming computer can easily cost as much as a legacy deck. So yes, I'm speaking as an enthusiast, but no oneotherthan an enthusiast is going to care about building a competitive eternal deck, much less something like power.

Does any of this apply to three guys who love to grid draft while they sit and drink beer? No, not at all. They're just as well off printing proxies. For a competitive player though, legacy represents a smaller long term investment with much higher chances of recouping costs. Furthermore, anyone plugged into the Magic community around them is going to have access to resources that make building a collection easier if they put a little time in. I don't really see how that's a radical statement.

Yes, it all seems very normal and reasonable.

Mmm, dry sarcasm. What's not normal or reasonable in what I said?

I'm just not sure why I'm getting snark over engaging in a conversation about the thread topic.