State of the Program for July 26th, 2019
Mythic Championship IV: It's Modern! Coverage started well before this article went up, but you can check it out on Twitch.tv/Magic/. Let's see if there is anything new in the post Bridge from Below format!
Khans Cube: Designed by Elliot Raff, this cube takes Khans of Tarkir and gives it a sweet twist. It's available for a week, so make sure you log on and check it out!
Throne of Eldraine: Camelot meets fairy tales in the fall set! I talked about and linked to the Project Booster Fun article in The Hot Take Corner this week, so you can find out more about it there.
Magic Story moving to e-books: The Magic story is coming off the free side of stuff, and making a pivot to e-books starting with Throne of Eldraine. The Wildered Quest, by Kate Elliot will be available on Amazon and other places, and will cost 3.99.
Brawl is back, gets decks, Arena support: Things are happening with Brawl, which is fine, but at least Baral, Chief of Compliance isn't around to muck things up. Check out the news here.
Magic Schedule for Gen-Con: Cool things are going on at Gen-Con next week, Magic pretty much blew up after it's first showing at this con two decades ago, and this year there is a Commander Panel showcasing new cards from the next Commander product, cubing for keeps, and art coming to life! The cool events are talked about here.
This is a list of things we have been promised, or we just want to see coming back. Another good source for dates and times is the
calendar and the weekly blog, while the best source for known bugs is the bug blog which appears sporadically on MTGO.com. Not listed, but important: Wizards offers either one or two online MCQs each weekend, with qualifiers for limited MCQs running the days immediately prior to the MCQ.
Upcoming Events
|
Dates
|
Scheduled Downtimes
|
August 14th, 2019
|
Constructed Leagues End
|
September 25, 2019
|
Sealed Leagues End
|
September 30, 2019
|
Next B&R Announcement
|
July 8th, 2019
|
Khans Cube
|
July 31st, 2019
|
Modern Horizons Ends
|
August 14th, 2019
|
Throne of Eldraine
|
September 2019
|
“Baseball”
|
January, 2020
|
“Cricket”
|
Spring, 2020
|
2018 Magic Online Championship Series and other events
Complete details, including schedule, rules, and which online events qualify you for which online or paper events is
here. In addition, Wizards will be offering these special formats:
Limited MCQ Finals - Saturday
Modern MCQ Finals - Sunday
Magic Online Format Challenges
These are high stakes events that happen every weekend. They cost 25 Tix / 250 play points, and last a number of rounds based on participation (assume 5-8), plus a single elimination Top 8. Details, including prize payouts, are
here. Start times are:
Event Type
|
Start Time
|
|
Saturday, 8:00 am PT
|
|
Saturday, 10:00 am PT
|
|
Sunday, 8:00 am PT
|
|
Sunday, 10:00 am PT
|
Wizards of the Coast gave us some information about Throne of Eldraine this week at San Diego Comic Con. What interested me the most wasn't the setting, or the art, or even that Brawl is coming back with actual, factual support this time. What got me was the introduction of the idea that opening booster packs needed to be fun.
Y'all, opening a booster pack is already one of the most fun things one can do with Magic, because that typically means you're drafting. I digress. If they want to make opening something even more fun, by all means do it. The important take away that one can get from the Project Booster Fun article is that there are three booster packs for Throne of Eldraine. The first being what has basically always been around, the Draft booster. The second booster is the Theme booster, and they started showing up withe last trip back to Ravnica if I recall correctly, and the third, is the new booster, the Collector's booster.
The Draft booster as what we know and love is the 15 card booster that contains 1 Rare or Mythic, 3 Uncommons, 10 Commons and a land. You can open up a foil at a rate of 1 in 45 cards, which is no different from Magic 2020. You also have the chance to open up a borderless Planeswalker or a Showcase frame card. The Showcase Frame cards will only have non-foil versions in these boosters. They will also not have common Showcase cards in the booster. The tokens are also non-foil.
Let's ignore the theme booster, because those are just 35 card packs featuring a color.
The Collector's Booster is where things get interesting. There are 15 cards in it as well, and they expect the packs to sell for 20-25 dollars per. That to me is reasonable. In this pack you get a Rare or Mythic with Extended art. You also get a foil Rare or Mythic. There are 9 foil Commons and Uncommons. There are 3 special frame cards, be it Borderless Planeswalkers or Showcase Frames. The common showcase cards will be here. There is one ancillary card slot which will be the buy a box promo, cards from Planeswalker decks, or new cards from the Brawl decks. There will be a foil token in here.
This is nice and all, but I remember what the foil booster packs of Shards of Alara did to values of those cards, and I remember how long those packs sat on the shelf of my local game store.
I personally don't think this is fun at all, but then again, I collect basketball cards. That is fun! From what I can gather, PaniniAmerica this year made the following sets. Pack information comes from Beckett.com who used to make a Magic magazine that I wrote for. It was fun! I couldn't find pricing information for everything, but I think the prices listed below will illustrate my point just fine.
NBA Hoops: 8 Cards per Pack. 24 packs per box. MSRP: $2.95
Donruss: 30 Cards per pack. 10 packs per box
Contenders: 10 Cards per pack. 12 packs per box.
Select: 5 Cards per pack. 12 packs per box. MSRP: $14.50
Revolution: 5 Cards per pack.
Threads: 5, 10, 15, 20 Cards per pack.
Spectra: 8 Cards per pack.
Prizm Mozaic: 10 Cards per pack
Prizm: 4, 12, or 15 Cards per pack MSRP: $3.95
Opulence: 8 Cards per pack, 1 pack per box MSRP: $1,000
Noir: 10 Cards per pack, 1 pack per box
National Treasures: 10 Cards per pack, 1 pack per box MSRP: $2,799. (First Edition) 1,000 (Second Printing)
Impeccable: 9 Cards per pack, 1 pack per box
Flawless Collegate Basketball: 10 Cards per pack, 1 pack per box MSRP: $1,350. (This is also my favorite set, since it features players in College uniforms)
Dominion: 6 Cards per pack, 1 pack per box
Crown Royale: 12 Cards per pack, 1 pack per box MSRP: $110.
Cornerstones: 6 Cards per pack, 1 pack per box MSRP: $100.
Chronicles: 8 Cards per pack, 6 pack per box
Optic: 4 Cards per pack, 20 packs per box MSRP: $5.
Court Kings: 10 Cards per pack, 1 pack per box
Certified: 5 Cards per pack, 10 packs per box
Absolute: 3 Cards per pack, 2 packs per box
Encased: 5 Cards per pack, 1 pack per box. MSRP: $200 (This product is interesting to me because there is a graded autographed card in each pack).
Contenders Optic: 6 Cards per pack, 1 pack per box. MSRP: $125.
That's 24 product releases for the 2018-2019 season. Encased just came out last week. Contenders Optic releases next week, and then there is a break, and the product release cycle starts over with NBA Hoops (Well probably the sticker set, and then NBA Hoops). Yeah, there really is a comma in some of those MSRPs. It's unreal!
Anyways Panini offers a product that is limited to current NBA players and past NBA players, and still managed to come out with 24 different releases that ranged from a few dollars to thousands of dollars per pack. These packs allow kids to collect, but also have different ranges of high end products.
Some of these sets are retro inspired. Donruss and NBA Hoops were cards that I grew up with as a teenager. Some showcase new printing techniques and frame designs. The lower end cards have autographs in them, but they are on stickers, and they have jersey cards, but you're not typically getting the best part of the jersey. You're getting plain. The upper end cards have on card autos, fancy jumbo jersey swatches and are embedded with jewels. Could Magic support something like that? Well, no, not at all. They are playing cards after all, and the characters and fictional, so getting a card with Jace's cape in it would be weird as hell. But could it replicate the model that Panini does for basketball?
Possibly.
My vision would be to release the draft packs first. The entry point of the set. The cards that look normal and that would be my entry point product, comparable to NBA Hoops at it's low price point. Foils would still exist here. This would be the normal pack. What we have come to know and love.
My tier above that would be the retro inspired tier. This would be a ten dollar pack, and would feature the new cards in the old border. It would keep the current wordings for ease of play, and the foil variant here would be the shooting star foil. (Picture from here on Twitter)
The next price point would be 25 dollars. That would be the experimental frames. Think the showcase frames that have been previewed, or something like the Future Sight frame. Foils would be closer to what they used to do with JSS cards the sunburst foil was really sweet I thought.
At a fifty dollar price point, that is where I would go Masterpiece style or Ultimate Box Topper style frames. Alternate art cards would go here as the variant. I can't think of a solid foiling process, the From the Vaults one was just not great.
The final price point, 100 would be strictly Rares, Mythics and playable commons and uncommons. With printing technology as fast as it is today, I think it would be incredibly easy to identify these cards and get them printed. Each card here would get the Mythic Edition frame, and since we're going full dreamworld here, we'd get artist sketch cards as the variant in this printing. Textless cards would also go here.
This essentially would be 5 printings of the same set spread out over the course of months, with something appealing to each player, be it the newest of the new or the most entrenched. It would target those with high budgets who want to bling out their decks, and those with low budgets who just want to play. Could it work? Maybe, but to me this would be a lot more fun than opening a Collector's booster and realizing that WotC tanked the value of foils already with the lower ratio, and just tanked them even more with basically all foil packs. This is my constructive criticism of the new packs types!
This week's theme is what would I play if I were a valid human and not scared of everything the outside has to offer if I had to play in paper events this week.
Standard: I love the Simic Flash deck, but there is something really appealing to me to play a deck that has copies of
The Mending of Dominaria in it. This ramp deck does some incredible things with
Scapeshift,
Hydroid Krasis and
Field of the Dead. It also is capable of just drawing every land ever printed which is what ramp decks do for me typically. Note the copy of
Golos, Tireless Pilgrim and realize that paid 5 mana to tutor for Field and then did nothing else with it, because with 30 lands you're still lacking colors to activate the artifact.
That's my brand. I love it.
Legacy: I dislike everything right now, so letting people play actual games of Magic would not be high on my list. Mono Red Prison would be what I played.
Modern: If wishes were fishes and I was at the MC this weekend, I would probably be on some form of
Time Warps.dec. Would it be good? Probably not, but
Leyline of the Void in the main might help a bit. However, I am not playing in the MC. I might play in the MCQ this weekend, considering I have the weekend off from kids, and I really need to keep distracting myself. I like the idea of being lord of the Merfolk like Nikachu.
Pauper: I would try to play Izzet Blitz with
Arcum's Astrolabe in it. I enjoy that deck the most in the format, and sadly can't seem to find a current list, which much mean it's not great right now. Thanks
Gush.
Vintage: Dear Stupids, if you're gonna win trade, maybe at least do it with halfway believable decks? Buneca at least played believable storm decks. This garbage DonJuanDeMarco and MagnusMTGO are bringing to the table is just trash. What with all your cheating you all can't afford a copy of Dredge yet? Get banned and leave MTGO please.
Skipping this this week as it is 3am and I am bouncing around trying to finish up the sites this week. I will try my best to get this week's winners added to next week.
MTGOTraders YouTube: Did you know that MTGOTraders.com has a YouTube page with videos added Monday, Wednesday and Friday? Well if not, now you do, and you can find it here!
Note: all my prices come from the fine folks at
MTGOTraders.com. These are retail prices, and generally the price of the lowest priced, actively traded version. (Prices for some rare promo versions are not updated when not in stock, so I skip those.) You can get these cards at
MTGOTraders.com web store, or from their bots: MTGOTradersBot(#) (they have bots 1-10), CardCaddy and CardWareHouse, or sell cards to MTGOTradersBuyBot(#) (they have buybots 1-4). I have bought cards from MTGOTraders for a decade and a half now, and have never been overcharged or disappointed.
Standard Staples: After removing
Firesong and Sunspeaker and
Aggressive Mammoth there are no longer any cards on the Standard list from sets that are rotating soon.
Modern Staples: These are the Modern cards that were on last week's Eternal table, plus the original printings that are still commanding more then ten dollars per copy. Is it a perfect list? No it's not. I wish I could go to a five dollar limit like the Standard table, but then the list would be really big.
Non-Rotating Staples: Again, the cards that were on last week's Eternal table, plus the original printings that are ten dollars or more, and for my own interests, the Power Nine and the original ten duals are here as well. Fun times!
Pauper Staples: Decided to try this out. Keeping it reasonable, removing copies of stuff that are clearly staples for Commander, or cards that have high prices that aren't seeing play like
Pit Scorpion.
Standard Legal Sets: This table tracks the cost of a single copy of every card in each Standard legal set, plus Treasure Chests and the current booster pack. I’ll keep tracking these because they are interesting (at least to me). This is being kept as a small tribute to Pete!
Complete Set |
Price |
Last Week |
Change |
% Change |
Core Set 2019 |
$93.28 |
$104.74 |
($11.46) |
-11% |
Dominaria |
$23.82 |
$24.46 |
($0.64) |
-3% |
Guilds of Ravnica |
$63.59 |
$61.94 |
$1.65 |
3% |
Ixalan |
$17.04 |
$14.03 |
$3.01 |
21% |
Ravnica Allegiances |
$106.43 |
$113.08 |
($6.65) |
-6% |
Rivals of Ixalan |
$15.28 |
$15.65 |
($0.37) |
-2% |
Treasure Chest |
$2.29 |
$2.39 |
($0.10) |
-4% |
War of the Spark |
$177.57 |
$177.97 |
($0.40) |
0% |
Core Set 2020 Booster |
$3.00 |
$2.78 |
$0.22 |
8% |
Core Set 2020 |
$145.07 |
$142.84 |
$2.23 |
2% |
Modern Horizons |
$265.41 |
$274.95 |
($9.54) |
-3% |
The following is a list of all the non-promo, non-foil cards on MTGO that retail for more than $25 per card. These are the big ticket items in the world of MTGO. The list is interesting, at the least. This is interesting to me because a lot of these cards have been reprinted more than once, and they are still commanding a high price.
Name |
Set |
Rarity |
Price |
Black Lotus |
1E |
Rare |
325.55 |
Mox Sapphire |
1E |
Rare |
166.73 |
Mox Ruby |
1E |
Rare |
116.24 |
Mox Emerald |
1E |
Rare |
115.75 |
Ancestral Recall |
1E |
Rare |
101.18 |
Mox Jet |
1E |
Rare |
95.53 |
Wrenn and Six |
MH1 |
Mythic |
90.51 |
Mox Pearl |
1E |
Rare |
84.37 |
Time Walk |
1E |
Rare |
71.6 |
Liliana of the Veil |
PRM |
Mythic |
69.37 |
Karn Liberated |
UBT |
Mythic |
68.91 |
Lord Windgrace |
PZ2 |
Mythic |
62.48 |
Timetwister |
1E |
Rare |
50.66 |
Liliana of the Veil |
UMA |
Mythic |
49.2 |
Finale of Promise |
WAR |
Mythic |
43.85 |
Dark Depths |
V16 |
Mythic |
42.43 |
Engineered Explosives |
UBT |
Mythic |
41.95 |
Liliana of the Veil |
UBT |
Mythic |
41.81 |
Mox Opal |
MM2 |
Mythic |
39.25 |
Surgical Extraction |
PRM |
Rare |
38.05 |
Unmask |
V16 |
Mythic |
36.72 |
Force of Negation |
MH1 |
Rare |
36.51 |
Mox Opal |
MS2 |
Bonus |
35.95 |
Mox Opal |
SOM |
Mythic |
35.42 |
Narset, Parter of Veils |
PRM |
Uncommon |
34.59 |
Black Lotus |
PRM |
Rare |
34 |
Dark Depths |
UBT |
Mythic |
33.15 |
Surgical Extraction |
NPH |
Rare |
32.55 |
Surgical Extraction |
MM2 |
Rare |
32.46 |
Noble Hierarch |
UBT |
Mythic |
31.66 |
Liliana, the Last Hope |
MS4 |
Mythic |
31.27 |
Cavern of Souls |
UMA |
Mythic |
30.72 |
Karn Liberated |
UMA |
Mythic |
30.63 |
Mox Sapphire |
PRM |
Rare |
30 |
True-Name Nemesis |
PZ1 |
Mythic |
28.94 |
Jace, the Mind Sculptor |
A25 |
Mythic |
28.92 |
Karn, the Great Creator |
PRM |
Rare |
28.88 |
Jace, the Mind Sculptor |
WWK |
Mythic |
27.14 |
Liliana of the Veil |
MM3 |
Mythic |
27.14 |
Jace, the Mind Sculptor |
VMA |
Mythic |
26.95 |
Liliana of the Veil |
ISD |
Mythic |
26.88 |
Teferi, Time Raveler |
PRM |
Rare |
26.21 |
City of Traitors |
EX |
Rare |
26.11 |
Chalice of the Void |
MS2 |
Bonus |
25.98 |
Karn, the Great Creator |
WAR |
Rare |
25.61 |
Force of Will |
MED |
Rare |
25.57 |
Jace, the Mind Sculptor |
EMA |
Mythic |
25.52 |
Chalice of the Void |
A25 |
Mythic |
25.42 |
Expropriate |
PZ2 |
Mythic |
25.37 |
Chalice of the Void |
PRM |
Mythic |
25.37 |
Snapcaster Mage |
UMA |
Mythic |
25.28 |
Ancestral Recall |
PRM |
Rare |
25 |
The big number is the retail price of a playset (4 copies) of every card available on MTGO. Assuming you bought the least expensive versions available, the cost of owning a playset of every card on MTGO is approximately a number that I cannot figure out still. I have actually asked Pete to do this for me, because Open Office is weird, and I have no idea what I am doing, and I am pretty close to just being a dog in a labcoat.
Nevermind, ignore all of that, Pete got it done for me, because he is just the dang best. The big number this week is $16,245. Last week it was $16,350. It went down, but only slightly, losing 105 on the week.
This has basically been the worst week of my 39 year old life, Sunday was bad, Monday was even worse and Friday is the 20th year since my father passed away. Despite the stress, I've spent time with exposure therapy and written this and streamed multiple times during the week. It's fine, I really needed the distraction.
This series is an ongoing tribute to Erik “Hamtastic” Friborg.