Introduction
Editorial Section
Discussion Items
Card Price Tables *spoilers*
Card Price Graphs *spoilers*
Tournament Details
Spoiler Section *spoilers*
Conclusion

Introduction:

A slightly more orthodox layout this week, and a huge, huge, huge thanks to everyone (yes, everyone) who gave me feedback last week on the layout of the article.  Love it or hate it, I was very happy to get the culminated impacts of the change.  Not to mention that it taught me a lot about my readers that I didn't know.  Like, some print this out.  Cool!  Also, some read it top to bottom.  I never really expected that too many people did this.  Evidently I was mistaken.  So, for this week, I'm going to be a little more orthodox this week in my layout as well as continue to try to make it work for as many people as I can.  The supreme goal of this article is to efficiently disseminate relevant information to the very diverse readers.  Not a small task, to be sure.  I'll keep working toward that goal, I'll just ask that you all keep giving me feedback as to what works and what doesn't as I continue to try things out.  What I love isn't going to always be the best for my readers.  Readers>Writer every time.  Without readers there's no point to writing, so thanks again for all the feedback last week!  

I would also like to take a moment to shout out a great challenge sponsored by the fine folks at www.mymtgo.com, and that is a 100 Card Singleton challenge with a small, little prize to the winner.  *cough**cough*

Also, the second and third place prizes are solid as well! (Grindstone,Sword of Light and Shadow, respectively).  The sign up is here, and it's well worth the effort to sign up for mymtgo.com.

Lastly for the introduction section, I'll be hiding the price data in spoiler tags.  I'm sorry for the additional work this causes for anyone, however I can't actually discuss about 90% of this week's changes without discussing spoilers.  And out of respect for those who wish to avoid that they're spoiler tagged for your avoidance

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Editorial Section:

"10" > "10" when the 10's in question are M10 and 10th edition, respectively.  A quick tweet from the folks at WotC this week gave us this nifty little statistic: as of September 2nd, 2009, M10 has outsold 10th Edition's lifetime sales.  For those playing along at home M10 has been on sale for a little under two months and 10th edition was on sale for 24 months.  Hence, 2 > 2 when M10 is > 10E.  Also of note, MTGO had its best month ever.  Ev-er.  I find it rather difficult to wrap my head around that statement.  V3’s August beat every other month of MTGO since its inception.   Maybe I am just in “negative-Nelly” mode from too much forum exposure but that is quite amazing.

Obviously those two statistics are interrelated.  But that doesn't make it any less amazing to see MTGO continually break its own record now that we have a platform that can handle more and more users.   Yes, even without leagues, without finished multiplayer, etc, etc, etc.  I know!  It’s not finished… but the numbers are still the numbers.  And like pretty much everything in the world there is more than one way to look at this information.  The obvious one is” Wow!   Best month ever and huge M10 sales!”  That’s the good news for MTGO.  In addition, that good news is very good news.

Great news!  What does it mean?
But the story most certainly doesn’t end there.  What are the impacts of such high volume M10 purchases/sealed/etc?  There are obvious implications to limited formats since part of the ability to fund additional draft or sealed events comes from the ability to resell your opened product.  And right now, that's a painful proposition.  I recently noticed that I could sell my white boarder Hypnotic Specters for 1.05 and BUY M10 Specters for 1.00.  White border > Black border?  Obviously not, but the sheer amount of M10 Hyppies in the system has completely tanked the rare prices of the set.  M10 Birds of Paradise for example is around two tickets (give or take about .5 tickets).  Seriously.  THE BoP@2?  Unbelievable.  At least to me.

But I'm putting the cart before the horse as I'm so wont to do lately.  What I'm very interested in talking about is the impacts of such a popular set on the ecosystem of MTGO.

Casual Implications:
I already mentioned the obvious one; limited.  There's also a very positive effect, which is casual single prices.  Or is it positive?  I'm still debating that thought with myself.  I'll let you all know which side wins. I'm not saying that low prices are *bad* for the casual players, but they surely are dangerous.  One of the top notch debates on MTGO is 'what is casual?’  This generally boils down to a tournament deck is NOT casual vs. everything in the room is casual.  But what happens when those tournament staples cost 1 ticket?  Suddenly there's far less restrictions on deck building, which of course leads to higher and higher powered decks for the same price as what would be considered mid-level decks a year ago.  Seriously.  For $20 you could build a deck with 4x Birds of Paradise, 4x Hypnotic Specter, 4x Mind Shatter and still have plenty of budget left.  Cheaper singles directly translates to more powerful and usually by extension, more cut-throat casual decks.  And this isn't just related to M10, but a deeper impact of the Mythic rarity on MTGO.  Since redemption pulls out 1x of everything it's now leaving rares stranded in the system that weren't before.  This is amplified when the set is hugely popular though, like with M10 for instance.

Limited Implications:
I'll delve a little bit deeper into the limited implications now as there are a few that should be taken into account.  The first and probably most important item is the EV of a pack of the given set.  This isn’t a very complex set of equations but they are rather involved (thanks again to bubba0077 for the equation!) which essentially helps to determine the expected value of each pack in the format you're opening.  I'll list the EV of the ACR, M10, Lorwyn, Shadowmoor and Tempest formats in the price graph section this week to illustrate where we are right now in relation with each format.  My gut says that M10 will be the lowest, followed by ACR, then LRW, SHM and Tempest.  We'll see how right I am when I run the numbers.  The thing about the expected value of a pack is that it's really only relevant to the players who are trying to go infinite or coast as much as possible.  It doesn't take into account the 'fun' of playing a format.  If Tempest IS the highest EV, that doesn't make a lot of difference to the people who want to play a "fun" format, as Tempest drafting really isn't a lot of fun (for most players.  I like it, but I'm not most players...).  I expect that a set as popular as M10 will have a very low EV at this point and not even the amazing Baneslayer Angel at 26+ tickets will be able to save that. 

Long term value Implications:
So the EV is lowered?  What does that mean to the players?  It usually means less drafting or sealed, since the cost to play in a new event increases on the player.  Like I said “usually”.  In our case, it seems that people are far more interested in shelling out a few more dollars and playing some more than they are in playing less.  That’s a good thing for MTGO in general and probably why we just shattered 10^th Edition’s sales numbers.   It also means that the market equilibrium is going to be skewed even lower than normal.  In the past, the market would stabilize when people stopped paying some amount out of pocket.  This would then allow the prices to stabilize and the single prices would level off and then new playable cards would begin to increase.  That equilibrium amount would generally be reached quite early after the release events ended.  However this time it appears that nothing will stop the players from continuing to play M10 limited.  A week after the release events I logged in to see over 2500 players on the server, with lots of players in the tournament room.  Why?  Two reasons I can think of.  The first is that it’s going to be a ‘real’ format for high level events this year.  The second is related to the first, and that is that many pros are actively writing about the format.  I read a lot of articles on the internet, mainly about MTGO stuff.  I’ve never seen a core set as well discussed as this.  It’s beginning to rival a real block in terms of coverage, strategy, discussion, debates and details.  All those discussions generate interest and intrigue for the format.  And thanks to the paper supply issues, even more people are turning to MTGO to draft M10.

Redemption:
Lastly is Set Redemption.  I'd love to get some information on how many M10 redemptions have been filled, but that data is generally not given out.  Or more specifically, these details usually aren’t given out in any way that we can actually utilize and crunch.  However, just going on some speculations it seems likely that M10 redemptions should be pretty hot ticket item.  Especially since we’ve been told that there is still a bit of a supply issue with M10 in paper stores.  I asked the supreme mugwump Worth if there were any ballpark statistics about M10 redemptions he could share.  Sadly, his answer was 'no'.  But that 'no' actually means a lot.  I'll wager that they're not 'low'.  And I also feel that if things were 'normal' that could be said.  Which leaves 'high' to be the answer of conclusion-jumping.  If only one could know what 'high' meant in this context... oh well.

Last thoughts:
Will Master’s Edition 3 take some wind out of the M10 Sales?  I don’t think so, at least not too much.  The intended markets are vastly different and the cards have a hugely divergent player base.  The amount of draw for the duals is far lower than there is for practicing for M10 events.  In fact, I don’t expect to see a lot of changes until we get to the Zendikar events.  Until then I expect that this set is likely to continue to be drafted at a record pace. 

Good Game, WotC.  Good Game indeed.
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Discussion Items:
I'm going to be honest... the new forums are a mess to navigate.  I've been trying ever so hard to make things makes sense over there but sadly failing.  Add in the fact that the MTGO boards are in their usual upcoming new set slump and it's a sad place over there.  There have been a few good topics started and carried on, but by and large, there's not a lot of discussions to be had on the MTGO front right now. 

Data Mining, Mods, and the taste of feet -
I usually don't like to poke fun at the WotC's and generally give them some *major* benefit of the doubt.  However, a recent tweet by Aaron Forsythe left me reeling: "Hey data-vaulters! Don't look for handouts; write mods like the WoW players did!".  Now to be fair there's history behind that quote.  Recently, an article on channelfireball.com made a very long argument about getting a lot of important data from MTGO.  An argument that I support, of course.  To respond to this, AaFo essentially opened a can of craw wurm with the above tweet.  Now, my belief is that it's an ignorant statement of either WoW, MTGO, our Terms of Service or some variations thereof: Entwined + Kicked.  We can't 'mod' MTGO without getting banned.  We can't get the data that was asked for from the client side... I'm still unsure of what he thought was asked for and why he thought we could do it ourselves. 

Mythics, Redemption, Paper Prices -
Good ol' Mythics!  I have to admit that for a lot of things, I like what Mythics have done for MTG and MTGO.  Decreased rare prices, higher value 'crap timmy' cards, etc.  The only real downside thus far is that it usually means that one or two cards end up carrying most of the price of the set... oh wait, we already had that... (goyf, Figure of Destiny, etc).  Actually, as near as I can tell, the price curve is almost exactly the same with one or two cards being head and shoulders above the rest, then a clump of good cards (like Maelstrom Pulse), then the rest. 

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Price Tables:

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Price Graphs:

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Tournament:
Master's Edition 3 Pre-Release events start happen this Friday and Saturday, followed by the official release of the product in the store on Monday.
Release events will last from Wednesday the 9th of September until Friday the 18th of September.  That means that the window of opportunity will be pretty small to get in on the events.  If Classic/Legacy is your eventual goal plan for a busy few days over the next few weeks.
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Spoilers: 

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Conclusion:
Just like last time, I'd love to get feedback on the formatting of the article.  This should resolve a few of the issues that were mentioned last week about the flow, and the ability to just keep moving through the article while also allowing for navigation short-cuts.  I'll also apologize to our content editor JXClaytor for the div tags.... I know they're a pain to edit (since you have to do it in Source View... *frown-town* )! 

See ya in 7!
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