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By: one million words, Pete Jahn
Feb 27 2009 1:00am
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MED II is Leaving.   Now What?
 
Well, Wizards has done it. MEDII is going off sale – apparently forever. After one last flurry of selling packs, Wizards will have stopped adding some of the absolute staples for Legacy and Classic to the card pool. The dual lands – including the very best – will have been available only during a period of depressed usage, v3.0 teething pains and no leagues.
 
After March 25th, Wizards will be done selling MEDII packs.
 
Will there be enough?  Three years from now, when Wizards is trying to market MTGO, will there be cards to allow formats to flourish, or will online Classic be relegated to a curiosity format – like the people who meet every year to play Magic with Alpha decks under Alpha rules? In short, will it be an unsanctioned format played only by a handful of people who can acquire complete decks. 
 
I saw a guy advertising for an “Invasion Block Constructed ONLY!!” game in the causal play room a while back. He did not find an opponent for a long time. Classic and Legacy could be like that in a few years. Or like Momir Vig – and Momir Vig requires one copy of an avatar that was probably distributed in far larger numbers than dual lands – while Classic and Legacy often require a dozen copies of the duals.
 
I’m sorry, but I'm pessimistic about the future of these formats. I see three problems, and I’ll talk about them all.
 
1) MEDII was 5 great cards, 5 okay cards and 230 pieces of digital crap.
 
2) Players won’t sell duals.
 
3) Wizards won’t market the classic sets, like Mirage.
 
The result – if MTGO every grows much at all, players won’t be playing the formats because the cards simply won’t be available. 
 
My conclusion – I’m an economist, and I am having a very hard time convincing myself that it is worthwhile buying into this set. I see one of two possible futures. Either MTGO never grows the number of players much above the numbers we see now, in which case the problems of never being able to find enough players for most drafts in off-peak hours, lack of players in PEs, etc are permanent, or the number of players does grow, in which case the old formats become prohibitively expensive, or simply unobtainable.
 
Both options suck, and both make me worry about the long-term viability of the Classic and Legacy formats, and with them the value of these cards. I’d really like to feel better about them, but I just don’t see enough data that Wizards has made a good long term decision. It’s a fine short term decision – revenues should be up this quarter, but I am buying cards for the long term. 
 
I’m sure that – at this point – many of you are yelling at your computers and ready to rip me apart in the comments. Before you do, let me make two points.
 
1) My grad school courses were listed under “Economics” and “Econometrics” – how about yours?
 
2) I have been buying and playing games for a long time now.   I’ve watched games, formats and product lines I’ve bought and played die for over  30 years. I don’t think Magic or MTGO will die anytime soon, but I’m not too sure that Classic and Legacy online formats will still be vibrant in a couple years. 
 
I asked Wizards for more information – maybe they can share some. However, a lot of that stuff is confidential for a lot of very good business reasons, so I’m not holding my breath.
 
On to those three reasons.
 
1) MEDII was 5 great cards, 5 okay cards and 230 pieces of digital crap.
 
The five duals lands included in MEDII are amazing. The true dual lands hold their value better than any other non-restricted cards from the original set. Aside from Force of Will and Mana Drain, the duals are about the only cards, other than the power nine, that have simply kept climbing in value forever. They are the critical, must-have cards for paper Legacy and Vintage formats.
 
Underground Sea, Tundra, Badlands, Taiga and Savannah
 
Five great cards. 
 
After that, the set has Necropotence, Mana Crypt, Imperial Seal Imperial Recruiter and Helm of Obedience.    Demonic Consultation is excellent. Swords to Plowshares is also really, really good, but it was already available online.   Everything else survived on nostalgia – and it has been a long time since anyone played cards like Anarchy in actual tournaments. 
 
That sounds like opinion – let’s look at some numbers. 
 
Heath was kind enough to ship me a spreadsheet with the current (as of last Tuesday) prices for MEDII cards. Here’s the entire list of cards that retail for a dollar or more (and that’s retail before the discount you can get for paying via paypal at MTGOTraders.com.)
 
Underground Sea:    $36.00
Tundra:    $31.00
Taiga:    $22.00
Badlands:    $21.00
Savannah:    $18.00
Necropotence:    $8.00
Mana Crypt:    $4.50
Imperial Seal:    $4.25
Helm of Obedience:    $3.00
Imperial Recruiter:    $2.50
Sea Drake:    $2.50
Ravages of War:    $2.25
Swords to Plowshares:    $1.00
 
The other 231 cards are worth a lot less.
 
Okay – let’s look at the expected value of a booster pack.   Thanks to Heath, I can calculate the average value of rares, uncommons, commons, snow lands and so forth. However, the average is misleading.
 
Let me give you an example: Bill Gates is reading a story to 19 toddlers. What’s the average income of those people?   Well, Bill Gates’ income was, in 2007, somewhere north of $175 million, and the toddlers have no income, so the average will be in the range of $5-$10million, depending on how badly the economic downturn affected Mr. Gates.
 
On the other hand, if you chose one of those twenty people at random, 19 out of 20 times, you would choose someone with an income of zero.
 
The average (to statisticians, the mean) can be misleading. Statisticians also use the mode (the most common single value) or median (the value in the exact middle of the sample range) to help describe a set of figures.
 
The average (mean) value of a booster pack is $ 3.15.
The median value of a booster pack is $ 0.90.
The mode value of a booster pack is $ 0.75.
 
However you look at it, the odds say that if you buy and bust one booster pack, you will lose money.
 
Bulk Buy Discounts
 
When MEDI went off sale, Wizards offered a sale – buy 36 boosters, get four free. That was, in effect, a 10% discount. Let’s assume that Wizards does the exact same thing for MEDII – the exact same thing, because the numbers work out nicely. MEDII has 80 rares, and buying two discount packs gives you 80 boosters.
 
Here’s a question I don’t know the answer to, and can’t afford to test: if you have 80 boosters, and click on the open all button, are the rares random, or in sequence? Let’s assume that they are in sequence, and that you will end up with one of each rare if you open all 80 boosters simultaneously. (It makes the math a bit easier, and it is also pretty much a best case scenario. In any other, you have to get lucky, because the odds are against you.)
 
If you were to open 80 boosters, you should get the following:
1 of each rare.
3 of each uncommon.
Slightly under 10 of each common (foils replace some commons, so not quite 10)
16 of each snow land
Some foils
 
As of Monday, the MTGOTraders.com retail price of all the non-foils that would be opened in 80 booster packs was, after the Paypal discount, about $220. 
 
The purchase price for the 80 boosters, assuming Wizards offered the 40 or the price of 36 discount, and using the roughly 6% tax I get charged, was about $305.
 
I’m not sure of the exact distribution of foils in MEDII. In doing the calculation, I assumed that the foils appeared in 10% of the packs. That would mean that 80 packs would have 8 foils.   To break even, I would have to open foils worth a total of $90, or about $1.15 a piece.   That’s unlikely.
 
Another problem – I priced the commons at full retail value, less discount. Unless I am a dealer like Heath, how relevant is that? I will be getting almost 10 copies of each common. Online, anything after four copies is surplus, and valueless to me for constructed. That means I have to sell them, and can I, as a player, really expect to be able to sell my Aysen Bureaucrats for $0.03 each? I don’t think so. 
 
Let’s put this another way. Assuming I wanted to get playsets of everything, and the packs opened in sequence, I could do that by opening 320 booster packs. I would end up with playsets of all the rares, plus triple playsets of each uncommon and a whopping 37 copies of each common – plus some foils. That would cost me about $1,220.
 
Alternatively, I could go to MTGOTraders.com, add four copies of every non-foil card in MEDII to my cart, and Heath would charge me about $650. I don’t get the foils, but it’s half price. 
 
(That, of course, assumes that Heath had the cards. That, as I will show below, may not be a good assumption.)
 
Even with the end of the event discounts, and the ridiculous prices for the duals at the moment, buying packs in bulk is probably not worth it. It may pay off for dealers like Heath may, but that will take years and a lot of continued price increases.
 
Let’s look at problem number two.
 
2) Players won’t sell duals.
 
Here’s one area where I don’t have data – just speculation. I *think* we will see more attrition in dual lands than in most of the big ticket cards. I also *think* more non-tournament players will hang onto duals, making them unavailable to tournament players. That’s their right, of course, but my point is that, in the future, people might be unable to enter the Classic and Legacy formats because there are not enough duals to go around.
 
I am using attrition to mean cards lost when players abandon the game, but still have cards in their accounts.  Sure, some people cash out, but others either just drift away from the game, thinking they might return some day, or don’t feel they have enough value to justify the time involved in cashing out.    After all, it is not that easy to turn an account into cash. Sure, you can eBay it, but that has risks, works only if you have an eBay account in good standing, and may not be worth the effort if you don’t have much. to sell.   Anyway, the point is that people do disappear with cards left in their accounts. Only Wizards can know how many people do this, or what cards are stranded in such accounts.
 
If you look at the other expensive Classic staples – cards like (Lion’s Eye Diamond), Stifle, Force of Will, Standstill, Counterbalance, etc. – those are not the sort of cards that casual players will play and keep.   Dual lands, on the other hand, are. Casual players owning even a single dual land will tend to play it whenever possible.   Casual players are also likely to buy duals, and dual are much more likely to see play in multiplayer games than cards like LED or Stifle. 
 
In short, dual lands will have a demand far greater, and far broader, than cards like Force of Will or LED. They will tend to end up in the hands of many more players, and – on occasion – to disappear when those players disappear.
 
We are already seeing shortages and problems in just obtaining cards from Mirage and Weatherlight – and those are cards from sets that are still for sale (for a couple weeks, at least) , and are not in much demand in casual or multiplayer formats. I cannot help but conclude that availability of the dual lands will be much, much worse a couple years from now.
 
Of course, Wizards might decide that MED IV will have Tundra, Underground Sea and the like. If so, that might help.   I don’t think Wizards should reprint other staples – not even Force of Will – but I think that the duals are a special case. The future of Legacy and Classic depend on having far more copies of the duals in the card pool than we have at present.
 
3) Wizards can’t – or won’t -  market the classic sets, like Mirage.
 
I keep mentioning the current shortage of Mirage cards. That may, or may not, be lethal to the format. Several times in the last week I have looked around for cards like Null Rod and LED, and have found very, very few for sale. I have found a lot more buy requests than sell offers. All this tells me that the supply is short now, and only going to get shorter.
 
It would be nice if Wizards could do something to get a lot more Mirage block packs moving through the system.
 
I’ve talked about price reductions, and NIX TIX drafts, and so forth. Maybe those would not work. Maybe those could not work – not unless you made the price so low that it would cannibalize the current set drafts, and that is not a good solution. It’s a disaster.
 
I did the math on MED II, and it is not good. The expected return on Mirage is even worse. The problem is that Mirage is, in terms of the modern Classic metagame, almost completely constructed trash. How could it be otherwise – creatures, spells, abilities, etc. have all improved over time.   Mirage was what it was – and even a set like Urza’s Saga will only provide a limited number of cards that are good enough for Classic. The bar in Classic is really high. That bar is basically “be better or cheaper at something than any of the other 5,000 cards in the format.”
 
That is a high bar.
 
I talked about MEDII being full of chaff. It is - and that set was cherry-picked out of several paper sets. Mirage block isn’t cherry-picked.   It is the whole set. By definition, that is going to be worse than a “greatest hits” set like Masters Edition. 
 
I have been looking through Mirage, Visions and Weatherlight, and listing the cards I really want. It’s a long list, but I can’t justify buying the packs to even try drafting into the cards.   Sure, I could draft and open Phyrexian Dreadnought, Vampiric Tutor and Null Rod, but I could equally well end up finishing the draft with nothing but a collection of commons I already own, plus a couple packs if I am lucky. More importantly, I have only a limited amount of time to draft – and I could draft Mirage block, MEDII , Tenth or play in the Conflux release. I have packs for all of those. I win packs in MED II, and Tenth, and really want to play Conflux. I’m trying to imagine what Wizards could do to convince me to play Mirage when I have those options. I can’t – at least, nothing that could be even remotely profitable for Wizards. 
 
Conclusions
 
I looked again at Mirage block while I was writing this article – and I just decided I can’t justify drafting Mirage. I went over to MTGOTraders.com and paid full retail for Natural Order and Vampiric Tutor.   I will also probably grab a few of the uncommons and commons off the MTGOTradersbot later – things like Enlightened Tutor, Magma Mine and Elephant Grass
 
On the other hand, it’s clear I am planning on buying into Classic. Overall, I think Wizards will act to save the format. 
 
I did not buy duals – I am trying to draft into them. I still have six MEDII boosters. Last night – for the first time in a week – I got into an MED II draft.   They are firing faster – and the payout is positive if you can win just one round.  (On a strange side note, I’m not sure whether winning the next two rounds is worth it or not. I got home from work about 8:30pm, got into one draft and the third round did not finish until 11 or so – too late for me to get into another draft. This morning, Ingrid and I discussed whether it would have been better to just concede the last round and enter another draft instead. {my deck was too slow to be able to play in two drafts at once.} I rarely worry about that in other draft formats.)
 
Oen other point – Wizards has a pair of MEDII sealed events this weekend. They should be worth entering. I would, but I have immovable conflicts. If they were any less important, I’d play – and you should, too.
 
I did ask Worth for any information on these issues.  No response yet, but if he sends me something, I’ll edit this or add to the comments. (We'll see. Corporations simply don’t supply sales figures to outside parties, unless they are announcing something really surprisingly big.)
 
PRJ
 
“one million words” in the MEDII draft queues.

19 Comments

Nice ! by LOurs at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 07:06
LOurs's picture
4

interesting analysis again & nice article, good job!

maybe i would just add some elements to your reasoning about MED2 packs value (i am also graduated in economy & econometrics ;) )
Your analyzis seems true if you exclude the draft process, i mean if you just cracked some packs.
If you are running draft, the value you can obtain from ME2 is different imo : it does not change value of cards itself, but if you are winning at least 1 round, your chance to earn much more are increased, especially if you drafted dual. With one dual, you earn 20 tix minimum; if it is a foil one, it is like a jackpot ! If you drafted a foil savanah, you immediatly win .... 120 tix for 1 card! for a foil sea, it is an awesome 230 tix jackpot ! I am not sure so incredible jackpots exist over all other available draft... And that must be included in the reasoning imho.
My own experience : I drafted a lot ME2 because i joined mtgo a bit earlier than its release, and i could say that it was a great opportunity to me to earn a lots of tix by drafting ME2 and selling duals. Sure, you however need to win round 1 at least and you need to be lucky a bit to drafter one of the 6 good cards of the sets ...

That being said, i have to agree with you about the pour value of the set, that could have been much better (as ME1 was)

It is miscealenous, but you could add brainstorm & counterspell, and to the good cards available, even if it was available before too.

Waiting for the next article, peace

Great Article by TheMiseDotCom at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 09:19
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5

I dont agree with the draft comment because that is true for every draft format you play. Hitting a dual while drafting is jackpot like hitting a tarmogoyf,figure of destiny or eng explosives. Or even Ajani Vengeant and Elspeth. Im sure that wizards discussed this topic within their boundaries and If they are aware of this its in their interest to make every format healthy right? Thats the reasoning behind bans or entering more of a specific set in MTGO. If they choose to get this prices boost up I believe they have a good business reason for them and of course a fairly good reason for us MTGO players because they know that we are the ones "paying their salaries." hope to get your thoughts on that.
Good Job

complements by LOurs at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 10:18
LOurs's picture

Thank you TheMiseDotCom for your comment.

First, let's take a look to prices refering to MTGO traders prices =

Card (regular price/foil price)

Figure (34/53)
Elspeth (17/28)
Ajani (17/28)
Tarmo (18/29)
EE (30/54)

Savannah (18/118)
Underground Sea (36/234)
Tundra (31/201)
Taiga (22/143)
Badlands (21/137)
Necro (8/52)

I can observe a HUGE difference between price of other jackpot and ME2's jackpot, isnt it ? especially if you're looking at foil prices. So values could not be considered as equivalent imo.
Another important point : there are 6 Jackpot in ME2 instead in other set you mentionned, you could find only 2 or 3 jackpots maximum. So probabilities to get a jackpot seem to be much lower ... (in 5th dawn, you could run for EE but also for a V.Shackles at 19/32 or Eternal Witness 5/21 and that's all ...). So ME2 is the unique set in this case i think.

The aim of my comment is not to say that ME2 was great : i total agree with the idea that ME2 counts 6 good cards and too much other craps. This is an unbalanced set about that. However, in a mathematics approach as the article did, i think these elements must be included in the reasonning, and it could have an influence about the conclusion. :)

The real problem of ME2 is the price & playability of the rest of cards to me, as almost everybody i think.

Drafts as a lottery by one million words at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 11:54
one million words's picture

I did look at foil prices, but they fluctuate, and I am not sure of the frequency of foils or foil distribution. The best I could do was "the value of the foils has to be at least $90 to break even."

Not that the MTGOTraders sell price is the absolute tops - selling to a dealer, you are likely to get far less (closer to half). Even if you are purchasing, you can generally get a discount. For february, MTGOTraders is offering a 16% disount on orders of $100 or more, so that foil Underground Sea would retail for just (just!) $197.

The expected value of the big ticket cards is tricky. Expected value is the price times the odds of getting it. That depends on two variables I don't know: how often do foils appear? what's the relative distribution of foil rares to foil commons?

Here's the best case scenario: a foil every six packs, and the odds are equal that it could be any card in MEDII. In that case, the odds of opening a Foil Underground Sea (or any other Foil card) are 6*245, or 1 in 1,470, or 1 in 290 for any given draft. (I'm ignoring the chane of getting one pick two - no one is going to pass a foil Underground Sea.) Under these assumptions, the expected value of a Foil Underground Sea is $197/290, or about $0.68 Summing the retail prices for the 6 foils you listed, the sum of expected values is $2.56. That's significant - if the assumptions are valid.

Worst case scenario: a foil every ten packs, and Wizards keeps the common, uncommon, rare ratios. Then the odds are 3 in 10 (packs per foil) * (80 rares + 3* 80 uncommons + 11 * 80 commons), or 1 in 4,000. In that case, the expected value of the Underground Sea would be about five cents. The expected value of all six, combined, is $0.18. Not enough to change the outcome.

I suspect the odds of cracking and Underground Sea are somewhere in that range, but closer tothe first scenario. However, I don't think it is high enough to influence my analysis.

In general, I think foil rares are like lottery tickets. People buy lottery tickets on hope, not rational expectation. Aside from some badly designed lotteries, the odds for winning are far worse than not playing, unless you get randomly lucky. That's all foil duals are - a nice treat if you are randomly lucky.

Or maybe I'm just bitter. Looking over my history, it looks like I have drafted MEDII (or played MEDII sealed) maybe 30 times. That's around 90 packs. I have never opened a normal Underground Sea, much less a foil one. For that matter, I have not yet opened a foil rare at all, to my knowledge. (I opened, and passed, Jester's Mask in two straight drafts last night, so maybe my bad luck means someone else has good luck, to compensate.)

As far as calculating the payback of drafts into costs - you had better be good. I think I have a halfway decent knowledge of this format, and my rating was 1757 going into last night. I drafted twice, got beat in the first round both times, and *I was the second lowest rated drafter in both drafts.* It's not so easy to win MEDII drafts any more.

conclusion by LOurs at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 12:43
LOurs's picture

unfortunatly, i cannot help you more about foil distribution (i really dont know)

"In general, I think foil rares are like lottery tickets. People buy lottery tickets on hope, not rational expectation. Aside from some badly designed lotteries, the odds for winning are far worse than not playing, unless you get randomly lucky. That's all foil duals are - a nice treat if you are randomly lucky."

i agree 300% !!! We have common opinion about that.
That makes of ME2 the biggest and the most valuable lottery of MTGO and simultaneously, the lottery where the probabilities to win are the highest ....
That being said, i could say : more you draft it, better you become in this draft, more packs you win => more chance to become "randomly lucky". And this is this phenomen i wanted to highlight in the reasonning.
As you well mentionned, it could be a more emotional than rational attraction, and this situation exists only on ME2.

You seem to have been unlucky until today in ME2 draft (i wish you it'd change). it appears that my experience was closer to Rasparthe's experience ... i won a lot thank to ME2, so i am considering myself as lucky.

PS : once we got the distribution rules, it would be interesting to calculate the expecting ROI to draft ME2 until drawing foild dual...

"no one is going to pass a by Anonymous (not verified) at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 17:08
Anonymous's picture

"no one is going to pass a foil Underground Sea."

Well... You are probably right that no one will pass a foil Sea, But way back in 7th I got passed a Foil Birds of Paradise and literally fell out of my chair!

Draft comment by Rasparthe at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 10:52
Rasparthe's picture

I disagree with your disagreement. :) Even Figure of Destiny foils are worth slightly less than double the regular ones. The duals are much better value since there are 5 and and worst is worth 18+. The foils are worth 5 times.

How many 18+ tix cards are in Shadowmoor Block? Reflecting Pool is 16. Cascade Bluffs is 11. Glen Endra Archmage is 13. Only FoD at 34. There is 460+ cards in Shadowmoor Block only 280+ in MED2.

I draft MED2 regularly just for this reason. There is more chance of hitting a big money card. I have opened a foil Savannah it netted me a playset plus 1 extra which was sold to buy another draft set. A foil FoD doesn't get you all that. If you draft it enough you will hit the jackpot every once in awhile. Its just too bad as the article stated the rest of the set is crap.

That doesn't even take into consideration the future value. Which will hold value in the future? The duals or FoD? I seem to remember that Tarmo was nearing 50 tix when it was still Standard legal. Now, I guess as testament to just how good it is, it still hovers around 17 tix. The point is, what happens when Lor-Shad rotates out of Standard? I have a feeling the price of duals won't be affected. Unless Wizards does something foolish and reissue the set in the future.

I hope to draft a playset of each of the duals and as soon as I hit four of any I sell any extra I get. Between the 5th duals and prizes I have not needed to pay for a draftset of MED2 in awhile and I think my MED2 collection just topped 1200 cards and four packs in the binder.

But in fairness I mostly only play Block Limited and Constructed for the fun and challenge and draft MED2 for the collection so my priorities are slightly different than most. As a side note though, if you are looking to draft MED2 you can almost set your watch to it firing between 8 and 9PM EST. Its almost uncanny the way one usually fires within a few minutes of 830. I can usually sit down at 815 and be playing before 845 or at least that has been my experience.

I'm convinced they will reprint the duals by Ivo at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 10:19
Ivo's picture

The duals are just that important for Classic AND Legacy (when it shows up) that I can't imagine them not reprinting them. Plus there is a sort of "precedent" as the duals were reprinted some times in paper (unlike FoW). Also, lands typically got reprinted in core sets, so I really expect that something is done on that front.

On a slightly unrelated note, the new "risk averse" duals coming in M2010 may be interesting for control decks in eternal formats (probably not for aggro, though), but they just won't "obsolete" the duals, so it would only be a "budget" option at best (and at worse it is something like Fetches that needs the real duals to be good - e.g. if it is the Future Sight uw land, but now in a cycle for all 5 allied combinations or even all 10 somehow, it keys off basic land types of your other lands).

The duals are probably even more important to the health of the format than FoW (but that card isn't worth discussing with Worth having shot FoW reprinting down - there we have to wait for promos somehow).

Sea drake could go up by Anonymous (not verified) at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 10:28
Anonymous's picture

Sea drake could go up (greatly) in value and become a classic staple after Exodus is released. Sea stompy is a contender in legacy, which is fairly close to online classic (and it would fare better in vintage than a lot of other legacy decks), but right now it isn't workable online. Stronghold will give us another mox and exodus will give us another land that taps for 2, and then we can find out whether serendib and sea drake have a home in classic.

...Or the deck could flop and all the speculators who currently value it for "future potential" will dump theirs leading to a price drop.

Pack value by Chad (not verified) at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 11:17
Chad's picture

The expected value of a pack, which is equal to mean value, will never exceed the cost of a pack for any amount of time. It's theoretically possible that this can happen briefly -- thinking of Jitte in the rat deck. But the product is bought out from every location, and becomes unavailable -- if the supply of that kind of pack meets the demand, the price of the chase cards will drop until the expected value of the pack drops to its actual cost.

If you are a gambler, you can open packs hoping to get something valuable, but opening packs to try to get ahead is like scratch off tickets. In the long run, you won't ever come out ahead.

If you enjoy drafting, then it's a fine way to acquire cards. However if you don't like drafting the format, it's another terrible way to acquire cards. You're far better off working a real job for a couple of hours even at minimum wage, and buying the cards you want.

I'm not sure I follow your second point entirely regarding dual lands and attrition. I think the reason that the mirage block cards are harder to get is because mirage block in general is an extremely unbalanced set for limited. Weatherlight, in my opinion, makes for a truly horrible draft set. The fewer the number of people that play it, the less packs are opened. As you pointed out, when there are less cards that are good in a set, then the one or two that are good inherit all the value. Vampiric tutor is a really good example of that. I think MED2 was better, and more enjoyable for limited than ME1 was. It's still not polished like modern sets, but hopefully ME3 + 4 are fun to play also.

Drafting to fill sets by DRAGONDUNG at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 16:58
DRAGONDUNG's picture
4

I find drafting a great way to go during release week to fill sets, I consistantly win first game and pull stuff i want or need. Duals i think i pulled 8 or 9 from draft that i kept and 2-3 that i traded for others i needed. Other rares and uncommons I needed I pulled helm, necro, what not. The only rare from med2 I bought was my last three necros and then later i ended up pulling two more out of draft. I will say it goes in streaks. Last four med2 drafts I pulled utter crap, other than one luck pick i ran across a demonic consultation foil, which i promptly traded for two sea drakes and tickets. I would say from personal experience drafting to fill your play sets works best during release weeks. Drafts fire more, lots of less skilled players to keep you winning rounds. This of course is dependent on you winning your first round consistantly. If you can not win the first round its cheaper to just buy what you want.

ya know what sucks? by Anonymous (not verified) at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 17:14
Anonymous's picture

I dont know what youd call it and I just wanted to type in for food for thought. My very 1st MED2 draft 1st pack was Foil Tundra, taiga....man that sucked passing a taiga.

Poor you =) by spg at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 18:14
spg's picture

Poor you =)

In paper magic, the revised by vandwedge (not verified) at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 21:25
vandwedge's picture

In paper magic, the revised duals are not still being printed. Yet vintage and legacy formats continue to thrive. Why would mtgo and classic be any different?

Number of cards by one million words at Sat, 02/28/2009 - 11:26
one million words's picture

The print run for revised edition alone is estimated at 500 million cards. That means that literally millions of copies of each and every dual were printed. I doubt we are close to that on MODO.

source: crystalkeep.com/magic/products/revised

"If you enjoy drafting, then by Anonymous (not verified) at Fri, 02/27/2009 - 22:20
Anonymous's picture
5

"If you enjoy drafting, then it's a fine way to acquire cards. However if you don't like drafting the format, it's another terrible way to acquire cards. You're far better off working a real job for a couple of hours even at minimum wage, and buying the cards you want."

I agree with that 100%. I loved drafting MVW, because I could literally "raredraft" 1/3 of my picks (commons and uncommons were valuable too) and come out ahead a reasonable amount of the time. People would pass me Fireblasts, Crypt Rats, Buried Alives, Goblin Bombs etc all day. If I wanted to, I could guarantee myself at least 10 tickets back, albeit with a terrible deck.

However, I liked the gameplay, more or less. The gameplay for MED2 is beyond awful. To put it in persepective, even if I were guaranteed a random dual for every MED2 sealed I did, but the stipulation was that I had to actually play out all 5+ rounds of Swiss, I wouldn't take it.

I stopped doing MVW because the queues became too diffucult. The same people would be in every draft and they knew not to pass money anymore, and my carefree attitude didn't allow me many wins.

They really need to put more time into the sets in regards to limited. It's a driving force behind how many overall packs are opened, and thus how much a lot of the cards in the set are worth.

Again, I agree on the subject by blandestk at Sat, 02/28/2009 - 01:36
blandestk's picture
4

Again, I agree on the subject and think it's a fairly negative thing to end the sale of these sets, no matter how little the packs were selling or events firing. It costs them extremely little to keep the sets available.

As far as the article goes, I lose a lot of interest when you start talking about your personal collection. It seems more like a blog when I read about how you are trying to build your personal collection, and I come here to read articles, not personal blogs.

You're Right by Katastrophe at Sun, 03/01/2009 - 16:20
Katastrophe's picture
4

In the comments you mentioned how there are millions of duals. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Alpha + Beta = 4300 of each rare (1100 + 3200)
Unlimited = 18500 of each rare
Revised = 289,000 of each rare

So 310,700 Volcanic Islands were printed in English. I'll consider the FBB copies a bonus, although they might be as significant as the Revised printings. Now how are we doing online? If I'm doing this right then 22,800 Black Lotuses were printed. How many digital Chants are there? We probably have more Chants than we have Null Rods, too. And if I'm wrong about that, I'll eat my hat if there are more digital duals today than paper ones.

The problem as I see it isn't with rare cards. I proudly own a bunch of rare crap (and 1 small piece of power) in real life. I love that the cards hold their value. The problem I see is that cards online are being taken away from us. Back to Revised again. There were not 300,000 Volcanic Islands in 1995. Despite the famous Revised shortage there were plenty of uncracked Revised packs out there. I bet several thousand duals didn't enter circulation until after 1995. Online this kind of post-OOP correction cannot happen because WotC destroys the unsold boosters. In paper I can buy Time Spiral, Fifth Dawn, and 9E no problem. And I can either have a really crazy draft or crack them all and add to my extended collection. But online we feel threatened because the end of a set means THE END OF ALL CARDS.

And thank you for the expected value of cracking a pack.

* Besides Black Knight from MED1 going into 11E. And promos. And Tundra being the lone dual in MED7.

OOP boosters are available by bubba0077 at Mon, 03/02/2009 - 14:28
bubba0077's picture

OOP boosters are available through dealers, just like in paper. All those packs you are buying after they go OOP in paper were bought by the stores before they went offsale. Digital is no different.

I'm not even a dealer and I have enough OTJ and MDF to run a full draft pod of each.