The EDH ban list has always been terrible. Remember when fucking Kokushko, the Evening Star was banned as a general? I still don't understand that.
Magic: the Gathering |OT12| Hour of Devastation - Hour of Jace getting dunked on
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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keeblerdrow
Member
Abraded is the full art participation promo for game day. That will keep the price down.
Not at all. I run both wasteland and strip mine in all my decks. Mana acceleration is one of the main ways to generate advantage in EDH.
If someone ever tempt with discovery strip and wasteland are 2 of the best options to grab, because they are likely making a ton of mana if possible.
It will be interesting to see if the value of Ixalan increases since it will not have masterpieces.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
It doesn't necessarily not have Masterpieces. They haven't announced that yet. MaRo was pretty specific on that point which suggests it actually does.
If it did they wouldn't have announced the cancellation yet.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Maro specifically said that they haven't announced anything on the matter for Ixalan specifically.
SigmasonicX
Member
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Yeah I saw that he went back and said he actually did announce it.
divisionbyzorro
Member
It's fucked over the value proposition for booster draft.
Should have reprinted the Zen fetches in standard. Ah well, maybe in three years or so.
SigmasonicX
Member
That feels kind of pointless. Dominaria Masterpieces would surely be older cards, most of which already use the old frame. Plus, it wouldn't be any different from timeshifted cards.
My guess is they would be "if we started Magic over knowing what we know now" card frames.
blindrocket
Member
lol
Yeah. I actually have a way to get some boosters free due to my wife saving up bonus points, discounts and offers at a local store. It's not even worth cracking packs for free and wasting her "free money".
That's pretty bad.
She did surprise me with a pack today though. I opened it, and opened Saheeli Rai, which I was excited to open, though it's only worth $4 or $5. A Mythic Rare Planeswalker that barely covers the MSRP pack price.
SigmasonicX
Member
So card prices lowering turned out to be a bad thing in the end?
Yup. It turns out that you make Standard a lot cheaper when you introduce masterpieces, but it comes at a very real cost: the median pack value crashes, making most packs worthless to bust. This in turn, has a very negative impact on anything involving boosters as prizes- whether it be draft, sealed, or your local Standard tournament. Wasn't an accident that they started pushing their "Standard Showdown" packs (because the normal packs weren't useful to players!)
blindrocket
Member
To crack packs, yes. (Draft, play the pack lottery)
To build standard decks, no.
WotC bottom line and brand confidence, probably very bad.
Turns out if prices are too low people aren't incentivized to open up packs since the chance of recouping your investment is low.
divisionbyzorro
Member
It's funny, because I thought that the Masterpieces were nothing but a good idea when we first saw them in BFZ. All they ended up doing was make the drafters absorb the extra cost that was saved by the Standard players.
I think they don't want to do fetch lands anymore? In standard, anyway
Yeah, I think we all though it'd be a net positive, but the crash in prices was way more severe than anticipated.
charlequin
Banned
Especially since it's a single set and only needs to hit 30ish options rather than 50+, I am 100% confident Dominaria will have Masterpieces. The only question is how heavily the frame is influenced by the classic one.
The thing is, they already pretty much fixed the problem with expensive lands. Back in the day with 121 rare sets it was pretty easy for important lands to go for $30+ since they were hard to pull from packs but still vital for Standard. These days the phenomenon is much rarer (so to speak) since they're always at the rare slot so their total value is limited -- even the fetchlands got down to $12-ish in Standard. Because land cycles represent 5 cards they're also good at splitting up value across the set.
The problem is it's a balancing act. Boosters cost a certain amount to buy, and the average value inside will always converge on that price from above. If that average value is heavily tied up in super-rare expensive cards, the median pack will have pretty bad value, which disadvantages booster buyers and drafters against large dealers who can open enough product to overcome the median, and fucks up the prize economy since there isn't a good way to reward people in tournaments outside of product.
The thing is that it's also bad if the median pack value is out of whack because of regular expansion cards (this is why i disagree with kirblar's Baneslayer example) or if Standard decks go way over the average to build from parts (ideally Standard decks should be in the $150 - $300 range; when you get $500+ prices on top decks it tanks participation.) Masterpieces were supposed to avoid the latter but they wind up being too much like the former.
The thing is that the actual best solution to this (other than lowering prices which isn't feasible for a wide variety of reasons) is a thing that Magic players vocally complain about endlessly: put a bunch of different staple cards at Rare so median pack value is closer to average and therefore any given staple isn't that far out of whack. This is why good rare land cycles are useful (they soak up a lot of value on broadly playable cards) and why better sets from this perspective are often ones with very usable rare cycles.
M10 had a ton of playable cards tho! (and a high value land cycle soaking)
I do believe BSA and other high-value chase cards are a good thing for the game in general. (just not when they turn into JTMS because you underprinted) That buildup and accumulation of resources is something people like.
I do believe BSA and other high-value chase cards are a good thing for the game in general. (just not when they turn into JTMS because you underprinted) That buildup and accumulation of resources is something people like.
StrategyFan
Member
how common is it to get store credit instead of packs for prizes?
one place where i play lets us take $2 credit instead of packs, so that helps me ignore whatever wotc is doing with packs so i can just worry about playing whatever mode i'm there to play
one place where i play lets us take $2 credit instead of packs, so that helps me ignore whatever wotc is doing with packs so i can just worry about playing whatever mode i'm there to play
charlequin
Banned
And I mean it's obviously better than the Masterpieces situation, but $50 is still super high, especially for something that turned into a $7 card a year later. In an ideal world you'd have multiple rares soaking value and multiple chase mythics to keep the value of each down a bit, I think.
I think the Mx sets got consistently underprinted in general w/ M10/11 until they figured it out later on. M10 was the start of the boom period due to DOTP.
charlequin
Banned
Yeah, like original Zendikar there are some super fucked up price dynamics around those sets because of the rapid growth of the playerbase.
Of course some of this will be something they have to think about again now with the Core Set returning and still getting rotated the fastest of anything.
I'd actually love it if they just made it so the core sets were on a separate rotation going forward where there's two at a time and the incoming one knocks out the older one of the two.
It would make it so the months in Standard would be 24/21/18/24 for sets during the year.
Yes, it's slightly more complicated, but it allows you do be a lot more consistent w/ manabases and such in Standard.
pseudocaesar
Member
Not trying to be an ass, but what is the difference between previous fetch lands and Evolving Wilds? Why isn't that more popular in standard? Is that not a "fetch land"?
CIPT tapped is a massive massive drawback.
What they won't do is fetch + dual-types again. That was a disaster, Standard doesn't have the tools to regulate those sorts of manabases.
pseudocaesar
Member
1. Goes and gets lands of a type, not basic lands. i.e. Evolving Wilds can only get one of six basic lands. Fetches can get anything with the type they say. So Steam Vents, for example, is an Island Mountain. Scalding Tarn can go get that. Evolving Wilds can not.
2. Coming into play tapped is a huge drawback, as Kirblar mentioned. It really slows you down.
3. Having more of the "fetches" and not Wilds will allow you to ever so slightly thin your deck and shave the margins where you would draw a land when you want action instead.
shrapnelmagnet
Member
I think I just finally understood that the thread title is a play on the pronunciation Devastation... Loosely 
SigmasonicX
Member
I think I just finally understood that the thread title is a play on the pronunciation Devastation... Loosely
As MaRo would say, "Maybe
"The answer is no, I just like the verb phrase "to get dunked on" and people not liking Jace is a meme.
charlequin
Banned
Specifically, they don't like to do fetch lands in Standard as much anymore because they're trying to reduce shuffling, and while Evolving Wilds is a pretty marginal card in Constructed, the pay 1 life fetchlands are ultra-playable everywhere.
The approval to land destruction pleases me.
Jacknicholsonnod.gif
TheBlackMarvel
Member
As MaRo would say, "Maybe
The answer is no, I just like the verb phrase "to get dunked on" and people not liking Jace is a meme.
I assumed it was riffing on the chorus for this.
yup
aside from the constant shuffeling, there's also the problem with them filling up your graveyard in no time and bringing down your life total for cards that care about these things, although that's more of a concern in Modern
Charlequin, putting a highly playable rare cyle in a set actually decreases median pack value, by definition of the median and keeping the total average bounded by MSRP. It does increase the median box/bundle value a lot, which is the actual important metric. I know what you're trying to say, but I guess you're more talking about the median value over an average of a certain number of packs. Whether the same value is concentrated in the top 2% or in the top 15% doesn't influence the median if the total average remains the same.
I feel like M10 and Zen was the period when super expensive new cards started to become acceptable. After that (and maybe because of the mythic rarity), cards preordering $40+ started to become far more common even though they dropped a lot after. Jace was the craziest card we ever had though, doubt we'll see a $80 card in Standard soon.
Fetches won't be in standard anytime soon because I feel they feared those crazy 4C or 5C manabases too hard. But I hope they do them once again, but it's going to take awhile I guess. Putting them in MM hasn't decreased their value as much as I'd like.
I feel like M10 and Zen was the period when super expensive new cards started to become acceptable. After that (and maybe because of the mythic rarity), cards preordering $40+ started to become far more common even though they dropped a lot after. Jace was the craziest card we ever had though, doubt we'll see a $80 card in Standard soon.
Fetches won't be in standard anytime soon because I feel they feared those crazy 4C or 5C manabases too hard. But I hope they do them once again, but it's going to take awhile I guess. Putting them in MM hasn't decreased their value as much as I'd like.
No, it doesn't. You don't understand how the distibution works with rare/mythics.
There's bad bulk cards, marginal cards, and good ones. The crap will always outnumber the good. And the more playable cards you have distributing value, the higher the median pack. There will never be so many playable cards that you completely flatten out median value because you added too many of them.
Like you said, the crap always outnumbers the good. And if there are always 42 rares and 25 of them are crap (ignoring mythics for this reasoning), that means that pack value #21/22 will always be crap value. And since the median is defined as the exact middle of all the values a pack can have, the median won't be influenced a lot by the top 5 or 10 cards. The only thing when the median changes a lot is when you introduce 25 playable cards so the middle value is quite high, but this is bound by the average remaining the same. Median is often used as a statistical parameter because it hides the influence of a skewed top or bottom, hence why it is more important in discussing human income compared to the average.
It becomes something else when you take random slices of 10 packs for example, calculate their average and then compare the median of the averages, that value will significantly increase when the value is spread more evenly over the top cards.
You are aware that the issue w/ Median pack value really doesn't have a thing to do w/ rare quality and has everything to do w/ Masterpieces, no?
I just realized your entire original post is a sidetrack from the actual issue of median pack values getting murdered by Masterpieces, making it a bad idea for players to crack packs.
Oh no, I wasn't aware of that it had to with the Masterpiece, since Charlequin was reasoning about putting in land cycles or otherwise powerful rare cycles. But yes then, if you introduce 25 new possible very high pack values and those only have a 1/100 chance of occuring, it totally screws with the median value and the average value of a set. I was more arguing that median value isn't a good metric whether a set is worth it or not, because I think Amonkhet without Invocations and Khans of Tarkir had probably the same median at launch while we obviously know which is the better deal. Then again taking a median out of values with different occurence isn't always a good idea either.
Giant Panda
Member
As a player with not a ton of time or money to invest into standard, if there hadn't been masterpieces crushing card values, I simply wouldn't have played standard at all. Though Ixalan looks cool, if the lack of masterpieces causes card prices to jump, I won't be able to play.
I don't crack many packs, so I really don't care that masterpieces were messing up median pack value. Their removal is only going to hurt me.
I don't crack many packs, so I really don't care that masterpieces were messing up median pack value. Their removal is only going to hurt me.
Been thinking about something recently...
When they eliminated the Modern Pro Tour, the justification they gave was that they wanted the new set to be showed off, which usually doesn't happen in Modern. Now, though, they are moving the Pro Tour away from the release of new sets (PT Ixilan is like 6 weeks after the set releases), with the justification that the Pro Tour led to standard being solved too quickly.
Wouldn't, I dunno, bringing back a Modern Pro Tour solve that problem? Now that there is so much time between set and tournament, the use of it as a marketing event is lower. And it would definitely make Standard seem more fresh, because pro teams would be focusing on Modern instead!
The fact that the Jund Deaths Shadow deck that emerged post Gitaxian probe ban 100% existed in the format, just unfound for a while, shows that a team of motivated people can still break the format with effort.
When they eliminated the Modern Pro Tour, the justification they gave was that they wanted the new set to be showed off, which usually doesn't happen in Modern. Now, though, they are moving the Pro Tour away from the release of new sets (PT Ixilan is like 6 weeks after the set releases), with the justification that the Pro Tour led to standard being solved too quickly.
Wouldn't, I dunno, bringing back a Modern Pro Tour solve that problem? Now that there is so much time between set and tournament, the use of it as a marketing event is lower. And it would definitely make Standard seem more fresh, because pro teams would be focusing on Modern instead!
The fact that the Jund Deaths Shadow deck that emerged post Gitaxian probe ban 100% existed in the format, just unfound for a while, shows that a team of motivated people can still break the format with effort.
Imperfected
Member
Nevermind that Modern's generally done about as good of a job of showing off new sets, anyway, unless specifically talking about the sort of "showing off" that results in bans of the most recently printed sets.
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