Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Eight Packs of Battle of Zendikar Online
These are really risky packs to open. BFZ has a large number of junk rares and junk mythics. I love cracking packs, though, and I am not renting 0's and 1's from Wizards for value, I rent them for fun! All the mythics were in these packs. I didn't strike gold. Oh, well.
Eight Packs of Battle of Zendikar Online
These are really risky packs to open. BFZ has a large number of junk rares and junk mythics. I love cracking packs, though, and I am not renting 0's and 1's from Wizards for value, I rent them for fun!
Saturday, June 17, 2017
Seven Packs of Oath of the Gatewatch Online
My pulls were OK. I did not hit the big pulls I was looking for, yet I will keep pulling later in the year. I sold the man-lands back to the bots since I already have playsets of them. This enabled me to buy 15 packs for $17, instead of $31.
Eight Packs of Oath of the Gatewatch Online
My pulls were OK. I did not hit the big pulls I was looking for, yet I will keep pulling later in the year.
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Legacy Frame Commanders
It's a shame that my small mountain of Legacy cards are collecting digital dust on MTGO. I am going to build a few decks with these in Solitaire just to dust these cards off a little. How about I build a few Commander decks? Here are my 63 Legacy frame legendary creatures.
Here are 28 that I am missing (some of these I have in the Modern frame):
Here are 28 that I am missing (some of these I have in the Modern frame):
Monday, June 12, 2017
We Are Back
It's great that Wizards will effectively be going back to where they were before the BFZ+ changes. This is what a year of Magic has been like (from October to August).
Before BFZ: Large-(Small or Large)-(Small or Large)-Core Set
BFZ+: Large-Small-Large-Small
2018+: Large-Large-Large-Core Set
There are so many things to like about this new plan (the so-called THREE+ONE plan).
1. The Core Set is back. That's the most important benefit of the new plan.
2. All sets are large. I love that. More cards, what's not to like?
3. Blocks will be from one to three sets long. Here are the possible ways this could go:
a. 1-2
b. 2-1
c. 1-1-1
d. 3
4. Take a break with the lottery tickets (Masterpieces, etc). Great!
5. What's the Gatewatch? (Just kidding, but yeah, slow that one down, please!).
My candidates for one set visits: Shards (three friendly colors), and Wedges (three enemy colors).
Two set visits: Artifacts, Culture-themed (Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Japanese, Mesoamerica).
Three set visits: Ravnica variants. Although, no kidding, I think a Ravnica variant could go on for two years (six sets) before I got tired of it.
Some themes can be sized at will. Tribal is what I am thinking about. Two sets would work, and I think three sets would work too. There is even a precedent for a one set tribal "block" with Dragons of Tarkir.
Some themes can be sized at will. Tribal is what I am thinking about. Two sets would work, and I think three sets would work too. There is even a precedent for a one set tribal "block" with Dragons of Tarkir.
Sunday, June 11, 2017
Make a Single Change, Test it
(Updated to reflect Metamorphoses 2.0 from Mark Rosewater June 12, 2017)
Yeah, that simple. That's the one and only principle Wizards should have followed. And here we are. Standard is still not fun. Aetherworks Marvel into Ulamog; gg. And we are already past a whole slew of bannings.
I want to shift from the negative to the positive. Next week there are supposed to be many announcements by Wizards. Here is what I hope to see:
1. (will happen Summer 2018) A core set no later than Summer 2018, or a product that serves the function of the missing core set. It does not have to be a core set, it just needs to do what the core set did, which is to provide a slew of simple cards for new players, and to keep the broken strategies in the expansions in check.
Actually, there is no No.2 for me. I am not clamoring for the undoing of the reserved list, and I am happy with all of the other products I will never buy, such as the $10 reprint sets. Oh, wait, I thought I was shifting to the positive.
2. (as expected, will not happen) A recalibration of the Modern and Legacy reprint sets to $4 packs instead of $10 packs. I know this will never happen because Magic does have a core of players who are willing to spend $200 to $300 on a newly issued booster box of classic reprints. To date, I have bought zero packs of any of the Modern Masters sets, Conspiracy, or Eternal Masters on paper.
And here we have an example of a missed opportunity, at least from my own troll-wannabe perspective. I spend about as much money as what many spend on Modern Masters and Eternal Masters exploring other TCGs, especially Yugioh, just because I can't see myself paying $10 for a pack of Magic reprints. I love to crack packs, but not $10 packs, and I don't care what's in them if I am paying $10. It's a psychological price point I cannot reach. It's like paying $20 for a hamburger. No, I am not doing that.
Wizards cannot listen to me here. I can only state that this is what I do, and maybe there are enough Magic players out there who could make Wizards as much money as they make out of $10 reprint packs if they went to $4 reprint packs. I don't see this happening, which means that I will continue to pass on reprint sets, except online.
If I am correct, as TCGs have matured, and TCG players have aged, there are more players like me. I am not a one-TCG player. I am a multiple-TCG player. I play and collect Magic, Pokemon, and Yugioh. I have dabbled in Cardfight Vanguard and the now-defunct World of Warcraft TCG, and I am also dabbling now in Force of Will (not the card, the TCG). In this multi-TCG world, Wizards needs to compete differently than it did when it could count on most of its players only playing their TCG. I think even five years ago, if Magic entered a rough spot, players would take a break and not play any other TCG. I am willing to guess that today, instead of taking a break from Magic and playing nothing, the same players will switch to other TCGs, and in some of those cases, not come back to Magic. As the big three TCGs mature, taking a break from one means focusing on one of the others. And there isn't a hierarchy here. It's not like all great players drift to Magic, and all scrubs drift to Yugioh. With three very mature TCGs, a good player with money to spend can get the same 'fix' in Magic as he/she can get out of Yugioh or Pokemon.
Magic continues to have the advantage in the Local Game Store (LGS) segment of the TCG world, but with the rise of online play, I see this segment getting smaller in the years to come, which is a shame, because face-to-face play is fun, even with the occasional cheating that goes on in the paper world. The casual market that is fueled by online play is the elephant in the room. Unless LGSs install computers and people go to an LGS to play MTGO, the LGS is in a slow decline to obsolescence.
What does this mean? This means that Wizards can no longer design sets in a vacuum that ignores the existence of other TCGs. The most important change that Wizards will need to make in this new, multi-TCG environment is to be price-competitive for reprints. Wizards needs to shift from premium reprint pricing to reprint pricing that matches the price of Standard sets. And until this happens, I will pass on every single reprint set on paper no matter what cards are in it. I can always play those cards on MTGO, and I can even play reserved list cards on MTGO.
Yeah, that simple. That's the one and only principle Wizards should have followed. And here we are. Standard is still not fun. Aetherworks Marvel into Ulamog; gg. And we are already past a whole slew of bannings.
I want to shift from the negative to the positive. Next week there are supposed to be many announcements by Wizards. Here is what I hope to see:
1. (will happen Summer 2018) A core set no later than Summer 2018, or a product that serves the function of the missing core set. It does not have to be a core set, it just needs to do what the core set did, which is to provide a slew of simple cards for new players, and to keep the broken strategies in the expansions in check.
Actually, there is no No.2 for me. I am not clamoring for the undoing of the reserved list, and I am happy with all of the other products I will never buy, such as the $10 reprint sets. Oh, wait, I thought I was shifting to the positive.
2. (as expected, will not happen) A recalibration of the Modern and Legacy reprint sets to $4 packs instead of $10 packs. I know this will never happen because Magic does have a core of players who are willing to spend $200 to $300 on a newly issued booster box of classic reprints. To date, I have bought zero packs of any of the Modern Masters sets, Conspiracy, or Eternal Masters on paper.
And here we have an example of a missed opportunity, at least from my own troll-wannabe perspective. I spend about as much money as what many spend on Modern Masters and Eternal Masters exploring other TCGs, especially Yugioh, just because I can't see myself paying $10 for a pack of Magic reprints. I love to crack packs, but not $10 packs, and I don't care what's in them if I am paying $10. It's a psychological price point I cannot reach. It's like paying $20 for a hamburger. No, I am not doing that.
Wizards cannot listen to me here. I can only state that this is what I do, and maybe there are enough Magic players out there who could make Wizards as much money as they make out of $10 reprint packs if they went to $4 reprint packs. I don't see this happening, which means that I will continue to pass on reprint sets, except online.
If I am correct, as TCGs have matured, and TCG players have aged, there are more players like me. I am not a one-TCG player. I am a multiple-TCG player. I play and collect Magic, Pokemon, and Yugioh. I have dabbled in Cardfight Vanguard and the now-defunct World of Warcraft TCG, and I am also dabbling now in Force of Will (not the card, the TCG). In this multi-TCG world, Wizards needs to compete differently than it did when it could count on most of its players only playing their TCG. I think even five years ago, if Magic entered a rough spot, players would take a break and not play any other TCG. I am willing to guess that today, instead of taking a break from Magic and playing nothing, the same players will switch to other TCGs, and in some of those cases, not come back to Magic. As the big three TCGs mature, taking a break from one means focusing on one of the others. And there isn't a hierarchy here. It's not like all great players drift to Magic, and all scrubs drift to Yugioh. With three very mature TCGs, a good player with money to spend can get the same 'fix' in Magic as he/she can get out of Yugioh or Pokemon.
Magic continues to have the advantage in the Local Game Store (LGS) segment of the TCG world, but with the rise of online play, I see this segment getting smaller in the years to come, which is a shame, because face-to-face play is fun, even with the occasional cheating that goes on in the paper world. The casual market that is fueled by online play is the elephant in the room. Unless LGSs install computers and people go to an LGS to play MTGO, the LGS is in a slow decline to obsolescence.
What does this mean? This means that Wizards can no longer design sets in a vacuum that ignores the existence of other TCGs. The most important change that Wizards will need to make in this new, multi-TCG environment is to be price-competitive for reprints. Wizards needs to shift from premium reprint pricing to reprint pricing that matches the price of Standard sets. And until this happens, I will pass on every single reprint set on paper no matter what cards are in it. I can always play those cards on MTGO, and I can even play reserved list cards on MTGO.