MTG thread

I haven't been to my LGS in awhile, but fun fact: it's the same as Boogie's. I live near him and frequent the same stores. Most of his friends in videos are all people I know as well.
However, from what I've heard on facebook and such, their attendance is pretty high, especially for modern tournaments. They are getting like 40 for those every other week, and about the same FNM attendance as they had a year ago, somewhere between 16-32 depending on the week. The fact they are getting way more for modern is a sign that standard has been stale for awhile, and everyone wants to play their older favorite cards/decks.

I've dropped standard altogether because turn out went from 20ish every night around Kaladesh release to lucky if we had 6 players for the night.

Modern is always the same 10ish people.

FNM standard floats around 20 usually at my store. Sunday modern has gotten fucking huge and is averaging 30 or more pretty regularly.

Our FNMs are smallish, 8-20 each, but that's largely due to the population being spread out amongst 11-13 gaming stores all running FNM. EDH has replaced standard at about half the FNMs. Thursday night modern league at krypton averages around 30-40. Commander nights at the various shops (outside of FNM) generally bring anywhere between 4 and 24 players over the evening. The one Legacy event a month gets ~20-30 players.

A lot of former standard players locally saying they're "waiting for dominaria" or "waiting for ravnica" or "waiting for new phyrexia" before they jump back into standard.

Waiting for new phyrexia or ravnica? Did i miss that we are going back to those, or these wee things theyve been saying since before the last time we were there?

Arbitrary said:

It doesn't seem like there's all that much evidence that he harassed her unless you consider calling her a 4/10 in a YouTube video harassment. Her initial claim, that he harassed her over the spawn of two years, has even less evidence. It looks to me like he's an edgelord faggot internet warrior and she's a camgurl tier e-begger barnacle on the ass of MtG. I wouldn't want to have a cup of coffee with either of them.

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Not to keep beating a dead horse on this topic, especially since everyone involved is useless, but there is more evidence of WotC employees doing targeted harassment than this bearded goon.

Funkor said:

Not to keep beating a dead horse on this topic, especially since everyone involved is useless, but there is more evidence of WotC employees doing targeted harassment than this bearded goon.

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Fuck that guy.

Funkor said:

Not to keep beating a dead horse on this topic, especially since everyone involved is useless, but there is more evidence of WotC employees doing targeted harassment than this bearded goon.

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With what he's doing, it seems appropriate to me, he's making active attempts to attack their revenue stream - them doing the same back doesn't seem out of place.

Frankly, with the efforts he's making to undermine their business, I wouldn't be shocked to see them sue him into oblivion with the apparent traction his drama is starting to get.

Punko said:

What I gather from the posts on LGS here, is that standard is seeing less players everywhere

MTG is being ran into the ground from a business perspective. Wonder just how much below estimates income has been in recent years, must have been really bad.

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I think the only actual questionable decision(s) they've made is removing FNM promos for shitty tokens, and Iconic Masters. Another premium set in a year already packed with that shit was just plain old wallet fatigue for the player base, and that doesn't even get in to the 9.99 MSRP fucking all the LGS while the big box stores drank their milkshake. Sure some of the recent standard sets haven't been great, but that's just par for the course really? Not every set is going to be an innistrad/kaladesh/dragons of tarkir or whatever, always gonna be some theros or bfz in there as well. Though granted, ixilan isn't shaping up to be all that great and runs a real risk of just being overshadowed forever by kaladesh, but we'll see what the next half of it looks like.

My only real concern currently is their shitty goddamn card stock. Cards fresh out ixilan and iconic masters packs warp like fucking magazine paper half the time, and there is a tangible difference in quality between english cards and cards made in europe right now. It's downright embarrassing and wotc better be well on top of it by now, but of course we'll never know since they basically can't publicly admit to it or even really talk about it.

Now that I'm thinking about it I'm even more salty about their shitty card quality. This is some junk from FNM last Friday vs a Jasmine Boreal from 20 years ago that's been sitting in a cardboard box. Get your shit together wotc.

Vaclav said:

With what he's doing, it seems appropriate to me, he's making active attempts to attack their revenue stream - them doing the same back doesn't seem out of place.

Frankly, with the efforts he's making to undermine their business, I wouldn't be shocked to see them sue him into oblivion with the apparent traction his drama is starting to get.

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Not out of place? Organizing people to spam reports on him to de-platform him because he's an unfunny memelord? They should have just sued him and let the civil courts sort it out since there is no way he could afford lawyers to go up against Hasbro/WotC. He would have shut up and this whole circle jerk storm of horseshit would stop. Letting your employees harass someone outside of your platform to take money away from them (via firing or a report campaign like this) is a terrible slippery slope nobody should be okay with.

ronne said:

I think the only actual questionable decision(s) they've made is removing FNM promos for shitty tokens, and Iconic Masters. Another premium set in a year already packed with that shit was just plain old wallet fatigue for the player base, and that doesn't even get in to the 9.99 MSRP fucking all the LGS while the big box stores drank their milkshake. Sure some of the recent standard sets haven't been great, but that's just par for the course really? Not every set is going to be an innistrad/kaladesh/dragons of tarkir or whatever, always gonna be some theros or bfz in there as well. Though granted, ixilan isn't shaping up to be all that great and runs a real risk of just being overshadowed forever by kaladesh, but we'll see what the next half of it looks

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yea, this.
My local LGS attendance was waaay up when kaladesh came out. Standard was getting closer to 30, which is the highest they ever get.
Its not that standard has been significantly worse then any other time, its just been about the same, and a few weak sets in a row combined with releasing too many products too closr together this year have caused issues.
Trying to tie the natural ebb and flow, and their release schedule mistakes, to their decisions on the jeremy thing is silly. Wotc, and magic, arent going down in an epic tail spin. They just had a weak year, and previous ones didnt sky rocket the player base like it did previously.
I mean, the game still has more then 2x the amount of players it had before RTR, to put it in perspective.
The modern results show there are still players, they just prefer a different format. It might also be a result of all the master sets, pushing interest to those formats. Overall income is probably the same, but they released extra products to get that income. It split the available money more. Like, their total sales may have been about the same if they just released one less product.
Now, if they keep trying to maintain this degree of product releases AND the next two blocks are both misses, they could be in some trouble.

It's even more ridiculous with foils. Bet you can't guess which of these cards is a decade old vs a few months

These cards are stone unplayable even in a sleeve:

Well that explains why I was dinged on condition for a few I mailed off, foils right from packs never played.

Funkor said:

Not out of place? Organizing people to spam reports on him to de-platform him because he's an unfunny memelord? They should have just sued him and let the civil courts sort it out since there is no way he could afford lawyers to go up against Hasbro/WotC. He would have shut up and this whole circle jerk storm of horseshit would stop. Letting your employees harass someone outside of your platform to take money away from them (via firing or a report campaign like this) is a terrible slippery slope nobody should be okay with.

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He's been doing it for weeks already, and only been building more steam and getting MORE people's attention. I don't think there's any chance he was going to peter out on his own.

What you're saying would be akin to saying "Oh, let the terrorists blow up a few buildings - they'll get bored of blowing them up eventually" - perhaps it would work out, but it's a really risky proposition versus removing the problem quickly. (Which civil suits would be a slow process I'd imagine versus patreon which could hamstring him in days theoretically)

Vaclav said:

He's been doing it for weeks already, and only been building more steam and getting MORE people's attention. I don't think there's any chance he was going to peter out on his own.

What you're saying would be akin to saying "Oh, let the terrorists blow up a few buildings - they'll get bored of blowing them up eventually" - perhaps it would work out, but it's a really risky proposition versus removing the problem quickly. (Which civil suits would be a slow process I'd imagine versus patreon which could hamstring him in days theoretically)

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A guy making snarky youtube videos is akin to people blowing up buildings? Are you insane? If Wizards can't handle the HOT STEAM coming from this unfunny bearded moron I think they need to go back to business school.

The category that MTG falls in for Hasbro had gaming revenue of something like $273.3 million (Hasbro Reports Revenue, Operating Profit and Net Earnings Growth for Second Quarter 2017 (NASDAQ:HAS)). A company pulling in this much profit decides the best way to handle a single guy is to ban his DCI number, nuke his MTGO account, and then join some report spam campaign to get him off Patreon? Christ, the next time somebody leaves a negative review on my Ebay account I'll just shoot them in the face. Or maybe they could have just ignored him because he is an insect compared to them.