https://mtgadventures.blogspot.com/2018/11/ultimate-masters-peasants-perspective.html
A person in reddit wrote: "This is the most value-packed, unbelievable set ever printed. If you don't like it and aren't hyped about getting it, literally nothing will get you hyped for buying anything for this game. Perhaps you need to reevaluate whether you actually like Magic or not."
This statement summarizes well what Wizards is going for with this product. But there are a few assumptions under it that I find troubling:
1. That the most important cards that can be reprinted (all of Modern, a good number in Legacy, a smaller number in Vintage, a large number of Commander) can remain above $20, and in some cases hover between $50 and $100 indefinitely. This is the 'maintenance of reprint equity' business.
2. That it is good for the hobby that a competitive Modern deck cost approximately $1000.
3. That Legacy and Vintage be formats only available to those luckiest (players who bought the cards when they were much cheaper) or the wealthy.
You see, the point of a game is that there are a large number of possible players. You should be able to play competitively in Modern with no individual card costing more than $20. I know I would be laughed out of the room, and perhaps banned out of the reddits of Magic for advocating such a view. The 'law of the land' is that these ridiculous prices for playing pieces of cardboard are required because we must protect the value currently held in collections. If I want cheap cards, I am told, I should only stick to Standard, or just play at home, or buy a Commander pre-constructed deck.
OK. What happens if I run into someone socially and they want to play Magic with me, but they want to play with money cards, and I can't, or don't want to? Well, that is what happens when you segment your player base. The wealthy Magic player is not playing with the poor Magic player. That's social justice: as a peasant, I deserve to be excluded from playing with the wealthy. I have declared myself a social outcast by my decisions, or by my fate, in not being able to play above a cost threshold. Will I remain in such a game? Will I allow others to treat me like I am not worthy of the game? You know that there are many other games, right? I can play Pokemon games on the Nintendo 3DS (I do). I can play Fortnite on my family's Sony Playstation 4 (I occasionally do). You can bling all you want in Fortnite, yet you will always be able to play minus bling. That's the successful game formula. The Ultimate Masters calculus adds up to failure.
SO let's get into the Estimated Value business. Magic is a trading game, and the higher the value of a box of packs, the better your trades will be to make the decks you want. That makes perfect sense, and is an inmutable law in TCGs. The going rate is that you pay $90 to $100 for a booster box while the cards are in Standard, and that said box has an EV 30 percent lower than that. This is an acceptable return. The packs are $4 each. You will get similar numbers for Pokemon, Yugioh, even Force of Will TCG... any TCG that is still being published and supported by the company that makes it.
Wizards has decided that when you double all the numbers, and even when you triple all the numbers, the immutable EV law of TCGs still holds true. For Ultimate Masters, the packs are $12 instead of $4, and the EV of the box is $300 or more instead of $100. But they forgot a major constraint: that when individual cards go from a maximum of $20 to $40 to double or triple this range, the game is no longer considered affordable, or even just plain old affordable, to a wide range of players (many are children and young adults still in school). This is the "this product may not be for you" business I am puzzled about.
Anyways, Ultimate Masters is not for me. I need to move on. Maybe I need to move on from Magic altogether... This 'peasants and princes' business is rubbing me the wrong way. I am still working on my Ravnica super cube. Maybe after those sets come out I will 'call it a day' with Magic. I have been thinking about that as I see the player base segment into clearly defined asset classes. If Modern is made completely out of my price range, then I might as well play Force of Will. Either way, once my cards rotate out of Standard/New Frontiers, I will not be able to play with them (in FOW because Wanderer is a dead format, and in Magic because Modern is over-priced).
