MTG thread

Just curious, would people still play MtG in the same numbers (or more) if all cards were easy/cheap to obtain?

Nope, you'd miss out on all the Collectors, with a capital c. You may gain a few more people due to cheap/easy to get, but you'd lose even more due to no more real collecting.

Thinking of investing some cash in MtG for the first time in over a decade but only on new releases. My thinking is WotC are concerned about Hex infringing on their player base and sales and are likely to react by putting out some powerful cards to attract players and get a reaction from existing players.

What are folks thoughts on the following picks and feel free to suggest any others from near future releases :

1.From the Vault: Annihilation Announced | GatheringMagic.com - Magic: The Gathering Websiterelease date 22 Aug - Mist I bet you have a few of these on order ? Only question in my mind is whether to turn the Earthquakes around in the next 12 months or hang on long term.

2. Looking at pre-ordering a play set ofZurgo HellsmasherDestined to be a staple of Commander and oh so much more. (Note that this card is in theDuel Deck : Speed vrs Cunningreleased early September which also makes that a great buy IMO if you can pick it up at a decent price).

3. A few of the duel deck anthology (release Dec 12) Couple of suppliers presently letting you pre order which of the four you want at a quarter price of the set.


The trick seems to be finding a supplier who won't rip you off too much on RRP

Flight_sl said:

2. Looking at pre-ordering a play set ofZurgo HellsmasherDestined to be a staple of Commander and oh so much more. (Note that this card is in theDuel Deck : Speed vrs Cunningreleased early September which also makes that a great buy IMO

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Zurgo will not be a staple in the least.

Derpa_sl said:

Zurgo will not be a staple in the least.

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Do you think it's a decent buy for pennies ? I suspect it is and have ordered 4 as well as a couple of the duel decks.

Sourced a few of the Annihilation at cost.

Vaclav_sl said:

You didn't see the good ones then Heylel - we had some good ones come through our local shop - and they were indistinguishable as far as I could tell, including handling bare when they let me.

There's been all ranges of counterfeits over the years though - and I've definitely seen many that sleeving would cover their issues, but the most recent "good fakes" weren't like that at all. [Lots of old fakes were supposedly printed and glued on legit backs - these newer fakes clearly were completely printed top to bottom, even the edge cuts looked perfect]

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There are people here in the UK that make train tickets. They are indistinguishable from the real thing and some people have been using them for years (?300+ tickets). They've been examined hundreds of times and never ever been spotted. Hundreds of people try this all the time and fail severely. The trick is to use an actual train ticket in the printing process. I'd assume they do the same thing with Magic counterfeits. The trick is finding a solution that removes the ink without damaging the card. If you drop a train ticket in acetone over night, the ink completely disappears and in the morning the ticket is completely fine, not soggy or worn at all. Now it's ready for printing. There's even a way of editing the magnetic strip to make it say whatever you want, all you need is an old cassette tape. If they have a way of doing something like this with Magic cards (surely there's a chemical process capable of doing it.. I remember using a basic eraser to make fake "blank" misprints) then the counterfeits would indeed be indistinguishable as long as you got the printing right, which while reasonably difficult, is nowhere near the realm of impossible. I have no doubt there are counterfeits out there that have been PSA graded and whatever and are said to be genuine.

No measures can prevent counterfeiting completely, just like no copy protection will protect data integrity. Someone with enough time, effort and skill will find a way to circumvent it. The trick is to keep the bar so high that it dissuades casual interest, and to make it difficult to accomplish at scale.

Palum_sl said:

Just curious, would people still play MtG in the same numbers (or more) if all cards were easy/cheap to obtain?

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The cards being valuable is a big part of the culture. Putting together that costly Modern or Legacy deck that you really like doesn't seem any different than the people building their dream car one part at a time. Sure, there are people that can just allocate the resources to have whatever cards they want but they are a tiny minority. The costs also add a sense of validation to these people's pursuits. No one feels like they wasting their money or time on some worthless pursuit. The prices also create an environment where traders, collectors, business types, speculators, and makers of related gaming supplies can exist.

If you could go back in time to the release of Chronicles and instead of creating a reserve list after the backlash do the opposite and state no card was ever off limits from reprinting, that every tier of the game would always be reasonably accessible, than maybe the game would have gotten just as big or bigger. But you can't unring the bell on that one for Magic. If there is a time in the future when Magic is failing and WotC decides to abandon the reserve list they will kill the game on the spot.

I'm very curious how big Hearthstone will get. That game is on a very different trajectory and it should be interesting for the CCG genre to see how things go.

Yeah, Modern is showing evidence that WotC finally understands how to print cards effectively to keep the secondary market alive. It also happens to be a fun format with its own unique archetypes. As much as I love playing legacy, I find myself having more fun with modern of late. That doesn't mean the format couldn't use a good shake up sometime soon. Allied fetches would be enough to spawn some new archetypes.

Mist_sl said:

Modern cards hold decent value despite the fact that they could be reprinted at any time.

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I'll been perpetually wrong about Magic for about four years now when it comes to the secondary market but I will stand by my prediction that if the game ever falters and WotC chooses to abandon the reserve list that Magic will die.

Like I said I've been perpetually wrong from the release of Mythics onward but when I look at the secondary market I can't see anything other than a massive bubble waiting to be burst. If WotC decided to slowly unwind themselves from the reprint policy in a very controlled and public manner I think they could do it and it would be a net positive in the long run. If they game was on a slide and abandoning the reprint policy was seen as the path back to prosperity the whole thing would implode.

Modern though I think is a fucking great idea and sidesteps the issue. Just support Modern. You can do little Modern Masters sets every other year and then throw a few decent reprints into the core set along with whatever is going on in From the Vaults or the Commander decks. Leave Vintage and Legacy to the dinosaurs. Modern is the eternal format for the people!

Or just ban duals from Legacy!

Foils are where the real speculative money ends up going, because there are dramatically fewer of them on the market. Print runs are so large now that very few cards will have sustainable modern value for long. Foils, on the other hand, are priced almost arbitrarily. The market is MUCH smaller, but they're also willing to pay out the nose for a shiny version of a cheaper card.

Investing in Magic cards is a bad idea in my opinion. For the same time and effort you could be earning a lot more in the stock market. Furthermore a lot of the rules by which people make money in the magic market are breaking down as more and more casuals join the game and create high availability for competitive playable cards since the competitive player base is small in comparison to the casual player base.

There have been several posts on StarCityGames and r/mtgfinance about this recently.

Xalara_sl said:

Investing in Magic cards is a bad idea in my opinion. For the same time and effort you could be earning a lot more in the stock market. Furthermore a lot of the rules by which people make money in the magic market are breaking down as more and more casuals join the game and create high availability for competitive playable cards since the competitive player base is small in comparison to the casual player base.

There have been several posts on StarCityGames and r/mtgfinance about this recently.

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Nod, the entire concept of singles is honestly my biggest dread with opening my storefront - I really don't care to deal with it but at the same time, feel like I'm going to be forced to... fun times.

It was 5 or 6 years ago (or more) now, but I read an article on how, unless you only ever hit the exact high money cards (aka, never picked a dud); that cards rose in value slower than natural inflation.

*shrug* maybe things have changed, maybe the article was full of shit?

Mist: it also seems like you're only talking for the short term. a couple of months, a year, 2 years. That may skew the results some.