State of the Program for May 23rd 2014
In the News:
Wizards has Announced that the Current Client Will Be Switched Off in July: Details
here. Wizards feels that they have the Wide Beta running well enough to use, and have said that V3 will be gone by the time M15 arrives. You can provide feedback on the Wide Beta via email
here, take
this survey or post comments in
this thread.
More Vintage Masters Details Released: Wizards has announced that Vintage Masters will be on sale until the fall set is released. A partial
spoiler (approximate 250 of the 325cards) of has been released. The full card list will be released June 6
th. In related news, Wizards has announced that Vintage events will pay out in Vintage Masters packs.
Vintage Masters Prerelease and Release Events Announced: Wizards has told us more about the Vintage Masters set. Details
here. The prize payout for draft queues and Premier Seale3d w/ Top 8 Draft is comparable to past events, but the payout for Swiss Sealed and 64 player drafts are markedly lower than past events. Currently, sealed swiss release queues pay out 12/9/3 boosters for 4/3/2 match wins respectively. For VM, they are scheduled to pay out 9/6/2 boosters for 4/3/2 match wins. 64 Player Drafts with Top 8 in past events paid out 24/18/12/9/4/2 boosters for 1st/2nd/3-4/5-8/9-16/17-32 place to 12/9/6/4/3/1 boosters for the same finishes in VM. That is in addition to charging 4 TIX plus product for all VM events.
Fix for Lag Problems: Worth Wollpert @mtgworth tweeted:“We have a fix identified for the extreme lag issues some have been experiencing in the past couple weeks. Targeting 5/28 deploy.” We will see if this works. The lag for that date – May 28th – will be a long one.
Cube and Flashback Drafts to Return May 28th: Wizards will be bringing back CUBE draft, plus Kamigawa Block (May 28-June 4) and Innistrad/Dark Ascension (June 4-June 11) flashback drafts. Details
here.
HammyBot Discount Increases: HammyBot was set up to sell off Erik Friborg’s collection, with all proceeds going to his wife and son. So far, HammyBot has raised over $7,000, but there are over 23,000 cards left in the collection. Those cards are being sold at 10% below retail price. Erik died three years ago, so HammyBot does not include any standard legal sets, but it includes a ton of Masters Edition and Classic cards, and some nice Modern bargains.
The Timeline:
This is a list of things we have been promised, or just want to see coming back. Another good source for dates and times is the
MTGO calendar. Here’s what we know, want or are tracking. I also created another list for notable bugs. If you know of one that has not been fixed (and you or someone has filed a bug report) please let me know.
Item (date it will return) and notes
· Vintage Masters (June 16) Prerelease and release info is
here.
· Kamigawa Block Flashback drafts: (May 28-June 4)
· Innistrad / Dark Ascension flashback drafts: (June 4- June 11)
· Online PTQs & MOCS: (no date announced) Latest update is
here.
· V3 Client Shutdown (
JULY) Read the latest announcement
here.
· Leagues (2014) Wizards has promised that leagues will return this year.
· Magic 2015 (7/28/2014) M15 will be online end of July. Expect the Prereleases 3 days earlier, or four days earlier if Wizards has a Wide Beta Showcase.
· Duel Decks: Speed vs. Cunning (10/6/2014) Details
here.
Bugs Needing a Good Stomping:
A ton of bugs got stomped last downtime. Here’s what I have been told still doesn’t work. Let me know what needs to be added.
· Multiplayer Lag: it is really, really bad.
· Courser of Kruphix in multiplayer games , library displays overlap, so you cannot play your land.
· Card counts in the Wide Beta: not sure this is really a bug, but it is weird. The Wide Beta counts the number of different cards, not total cards. For instance, if your collection was just 49 copies of the Tempest
Canyon Minotaur, the V3 client would say your collection was 49 cards, and the Wide Beta would say your collection had 1 “card.”
Opinion Section: The EV of Vintage Masters?
I was going to write about the likelihood that Vintage, as a format, could succeed. I soon realized that that question was heavily linked to the success of Vintage Masters, and I needed to discuss that before looking at Vintage. If Vintage Masters is not successful, then very few Power Nine Cards will enter the system, and players won’t be able to get/afford the cards they need to play Vintage. A lot more on that next week. This week, I just want to look at Vintage Masters. Specifically, whether enough Vintage Masters events will fire. How many are enough? Enough that the Power Nine are available to anyone able to pay for them. Expensive is a problem – more on that next week – but the absolute minimum number is enough that those players wanting to play Vintage can find the cards for sale, regardless of price. If no Black Lotuses are for sale anywhere, because the BOTs and store simply cannot get them, then Vintage is doomed.
As long as people keep drafting and playing Vintage Masters in large numbers through September, that won’t be a problem. However, that will only happen if three things are true:
1. The Wide Beta is successful,
2. The Vintage Masters EV is decent, and
3. Vintage Masters limited play is fun.
The Wide Beta is successful: Vintage Masters is rolling out in June, and will be on sale until September. The Wide Beta is scheduled to become the only interface in July. If it works, then players will shift over and play will continue. If it is bugging, or – worse yet – it crashes and MTGO shuts down for a few weeks (like the V2 to V3 changeover), then the number of people drafting Vintage Masters in the second half of its run may be very small. Morningtide and the original MED were both highly affected by the V2 to V3 transition, to the extent that both sets were seriously under-drafted. The result: Force of Will, Tarmogoyf and Vendilion Clique (all rares) were and are in relatively short supply, and their prices are very high. Now Wizards has learned, and drafting works quite well in the new client, but the risk is there.
The Vintage Masters EV has to be decent: This one is tougher. We do not have a complete spoiler, (Joshua's Note: The spoiler for Vintage Master's can be found
here.) and we do not have rarities on many of the cards we do know will be in the set. The Visual Spoiler shows images from other sets, at the rarity it was in that set. For example, the Dark Ritual pictured is from the FtV: 20 set, so it is shown as a Mythic. I doubt that Dark Ritual will be printed as a Mythic in this set. However, some of the cards on the visual spoiler are shown as they will appear in Vintage Masters, and have their appropriate badges. From this, we can see that
Jace, the Mind Sculptor,
Mana Drain and
Morphling are all going to be Mythics, and Force of Will will be a rare. We can guess at others; for example,
Palinchron will almost certainly be a rare, and
Keeneye Aven is a common. From that, I pulled together the following table of Rares and Mythics, together with the cost to buy a copy of those cards from
MTGOTraders.com today. Lots of caveats, of course. I am using the rarities of the cards as they were printed, or shown on the spoilers where I can tell. I also expect that, once the full list is released, the number of white and blue rares and Mythics will be equal. This is just what we know so far.
|
Card
|
Rarity
|
Value
|
Card
|
Rarity
|
Value
|
|
Armageddon
|
M
|
$ 2.28
|
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
|
M
|
$ 34.39
|
|
Balance
|
M
|
$ 0.90
|
Mana Drain
|
M
|
$ 24.68
|
|
Morphling
|
M
|
|
$ 0.24
|
|
Upheaval
|
M
|
|
$ 1.11
|
|
Magister of Worth
|
R
|
$ 2.00
|
Control Magic
|
R
|
$ 1.50
|
|
Decree of Justice
|
R
|
$ 0.41
|
Force of Will
|
R
|
$ 35.76
|
|
Eternal Dragon
|
R
|
$ 0.43
|
Ephemeron
|
R
|
$ 0.05
|
|
Jareth, Leonin Titan
|
R
|
$ 0.09
|
Flusterstorm
|
R
|
$ 26.50
|
|
Karmic Guide
|
R
|
$ 1.47
|
Future Sight
|
R
|
$ 0.65
|
|
Kongming, Sleeping Dragon
|
R
|
$ 0.30
|
Mind's Desire
|
R
|
$ 0.55
|
|
Parallax Wave
|
R
|
$ 3.58
|
Muzzio, Visionary Architect
|
R
|
(new)
|
|
Pianna, Nomad Captain
|
R
|
$ 0.08
|
Palinchron
|
R
|
$ 0.63
|
|
Radiant, Archangel
|
R
|
$ 0.05
|
Plea for Power
|
R
|
(new)
|
|
Sidar Jabar
|
R
|
$ 0.05
|
Sea Drake
|
R
|
$ 0.05
|
|
Spirit Mirror
|
R
|
$ 0.07
|
Serendib Efreet
|
R
|
$ 0.05
|
|
Winds of Rath
|
R
|
$ 0.45
|
Stroke of Genius
|
R
|
$ 1.39
|
|
Zahlfirin Crusader
|
R
|
$ 0.05
|
Thakalos Drifters
|
R
|
$ 0.05
|
|
Tradewind Rider
|
R
|
$ 0.70
|
|
Volrath's Shapeshifter
|
R
|
$ 0.05
|
One thing is probably immediately obvious: most of these rares are not money cards. For white and blue, the average value of the rares & Mythics is $1.59 for white and $7.65 for blue. Now we know that the Power Nine will add value, as will the dual lands. However, Power will show up once every 53 packs, so even if the average value of a piece of Power is $1,060 which means Lotus and Ancestral over $2k, Moxen ranging from $1000 down to maybe $250 for the green one, and Timetwister at $100 or so), then the Power only adds $2 to the EV of the pack.
I will do a complete EV on the packs once we get a complete spoiler, and information on rarities. Right now, it looks like the EV of an average pack will be less than the $6.99 retail price, even before calculating in the likely fall in prices for some of the less commonly played cards. For example, Flusterstorm is expensive because it has only been printed in one Commander set. If Vintage Masters does well, that price should drop. On top of that, Wizards is charging product plus 4 TIX for drafts and sealed, and It has reduced the prize payout for some on the events (see news, above.) I really doubt anyone can break even busting packs, without getting pretty lucky.
Vintage Masters limited play is fun: It is too early to tell what VM limited play will be like. The goal is something like Modern Masters, which extremely successful in the paper world, and heavily played while it was online. (However, after the initial run, it returned mainly in Phantom events.) Modern Masters played well. If Vintage Masters plays well, this should be a hit. If it does not, then this may be like flashback drafts to pre-Invasion sets: a lottery of interest mainly to the select few players who really like old cards. There is a lot riding on this, and Wizards is really, really good at designing sets, so I think Wizards probably got it right. At least, I really hope so.
Cutting Edge Tech:
Standard: Last weekend, SCG ran its spring State Championship events nationwide. The decklists – lots of decklists – can be found here. I’m featuring the Jund Monsters deck I played in a LGC event on Wednesday. I like it.
Theros Block Constructed: We have the entire block in play – and we had a Pro Tour in the format. Pat Chapin finally won a PT – after Top 8ing one in every decade since the game was created. Coverage, including decklists, is here. The winning deck was a Junk Aggro deck.
Vintage: Classic apparently failed to fire again this week. Here’s another Vintage deck to get you ready for the Power Nine’s arrival. You can be playing this deck in under a month. This deck won a 108 player event, and it is fairly unique in having no Black Lotus or Moxen (although it does have Ancestral and Time Walk.
Merfolk
Card Prices:
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).
Standard staples: Standard prices dropped about 7% almost across the board this week. A couple things are in play here. First, Journey into Nyx cards are finally entering the card pool. Prices are always insane during the prerelease and immediately thereafter, as constructed players claw for chase cards. A week or two afterwards, the prices drop back to reasonable levels. The few remaining chase cards are lands like Mana Confluence – cards in so much demand that even a couple weeks of heavy drafting won’t produce enough supply. Check back in a month from now or so.
|
Standard & Block Cards
|
Price
|
Last Week
|
Change
|
% Change
|
|
|
$14.40
|
$21.77
|
($7.37)
|
-34%
|
|
|
$20.97
|
$22.45
|
($1.48)
|
-7%
|
|
|
$14.38
|
$14.89
|
($0.51)
|
-3%
|
|
|
$6.81
|
$8.94
|
($2.13)
|
-24%
|
|
|
$8.55
|
$10.72
|
($2.17)
|
-20%
|
|
|
$8.67
|
$6.63
|
$2.04
|
31%
|
|
|
$12.95
|
$15.91
|
($2.96)
|
-19%
|
|
|
$17.53
|
$16.00
|
$1.53
|
10%
|
|
|
$9.00
|
$8.00
|
$1.00
|
13%
|
|
|
$15.22
|
$17.24
|
($2.02)
|
-12%
|
|
|
$9.42
|
$7.16
|
$2.26
|
32%
|
|
|
$12.68
|
$10.11
|
$2.57
|
25%
|
|
|
$16.09
|
$20.36
|
($4.27)
|
-21%
|
|
|
$7.35
|
$9.53
|
($2.18)
|
-23%
|
|
|
$7.60
|
$6.98
|
$0.62
|
9%
|
|
|
$8.38
|
$12.86
|
($4.48)
|
-35%
|
|
|
$4.53
|
$6.35
|
($1.82)
|
-29%
|
|
|
$25.32
|
$25.58
|
($0.26)
|
-1%
|
|
|
$9.70
|
$9.43
|
$0.27
|
3%
|
|
|
$9.37
|
$7.57
|
$1.80
|
24%
|
|
|
$28.26
|
$28.74
|
($0.48)
|
-2%
|
|
|
$5.95
|
$5.34
|
$0.61
|
11%
|
Modern staples: Modern staples have also moved around a bit this week, but the trend is generally downward. I wonder if we are seeing a bit of a drop because people are not too sure about Modern after the Wide Beta conversion. The lack of PTQs and large events may also have an impact. I don’t know – I’m just speculating.
|
Modern Cards
|
Price
|
Last Week
|
Change
|
% Change
|
|
|
$16.55
|
$16.96
|
($0.41)
|
-2%
|
|
|
$36.00
|
$36.00
|
$0.00
|
0%
|
|
|
$9.97
|
$10.00
|
($0.03)
|
0%
|
|
|
$21.53
|
$21.53
|
$0.00
|
0%
|
|
|
$19.18
|
$18.00
|
$1.18
|
7%
|
|
|
$12.56
|
$18.67
|
($6.11)
|
-33%
|
|
|
$30.13
|
$29.44
|
$0.69
|
2%
|
|
|
$10.33
|
$11.41
|
($1.08)
|
-9%
|
|
|
$25.79
|
$25.40
|
$0.39
|
2%
|
|
|
$16.20
|
$16.20
|
$0.00
|
0%
|
|
|
$20.88
|
$22.11
|
($1.23)
|
-6%
|
|
|
$21.45
|
$24.41
|
($2.96)
|
-12%
|
|
|
$38.14
|
$40.41
|
($2.27)
|
-6%
|
|
|
$37.30
|
$39.19
|
($1.89)
|
-5%
|
|
|
$81.91
|
$83.77
|
($1.86)
|
-2%
|
|
|
$21.73
|
$21.73
|
$0.00
|
0%
|
|
|
$51.60
|
$57.76
|
($6.16)
|
-11%
|
|
|
$26.11
|
$31.06
|
($4.95)
|
-16%
|
|
|
$20.48
|
$22.12
|
($1.64)
|
-7%
|
|
|
$19.27
|
$19.21
|
$0.06
|
0%
|
|
|
$33.63
|
$37.78
|
($4.15)
|
-11%
|
|
|
$17.11
|
$16.73
|
$0.38
|
2%
|
|
|
$16.06
|
$18.29
|
($2.23)
|
-12%
|
|
|
$10.25
|
$10.25
|
$0.00
|
0%
|
|
|
$88.13
|
$90.40
|
($2.27)
|
-3%
|
|
|
$44.34
|
$45.72
|
($1.38)
|
-3%
|
Pauper: Pauper is in serious trouble. The Premier events are not firing, and the dailies are gone. Prices are tumbling. We will see what vintage Masters can do for the format.
|
Pauper Cards
|
Price
|
Last Week
|
Change
|
% Change
|
|
|
$1.47
|
$1.49
|
($0.02)
|
-1%
|
|
|
$3.55
|
$3.79
|
($0.24)
|
-6%
|
|
|
$1.38
|
$1.76
|
($0.38)
|
-22%
|
|
|
$3.31
|
$3.58
|
($0.27)
|
-8%
|
|
|
$1.69
|
$1.69
|
$0.00
|
0%
|
|
|
$2.28
|
$2.50
|
($0.22)
|
-9%
|
|
|
$8.00
|
$9.60
|
($1.60)
|
-17%
|
|
|
$0.85
|
$1.02
|
($0.17)
|
-17%
|
|
|
$2.13
|
$3.16
|
($1.03)
|
-33%
|
|
|
$2.79
|
$3.67
|
($0.88)
|
-24%
|
|
|
$6.23
|
$6.52
|
($0.29)
|
-4%
|
|
|
$2.70
|
$2.93
|
($0.23)
|
-8%
|
|
|
$1.42
|
$2.01
|
($0.59)
|
-29%
|
|
|
$1.79
|
$5.00
|
($3.21)
|
-64%
|
|
|
$0.44
|
$0.52
|
($0.08)
|
-15%
|
|
|
$1.68
|
$2.97
|
($1.29)
|
-43%
|
|
|
$0.56
|
$0.73
|
($0.17)
|
-23%
|
|
|
$3.95
|
$3.56
|
$0.39
|
11%
|
|
|
$2.65
|
$3.53
|
($0.88)
|
-25%
|
|
|
$0.89
|
$0.74
|
$0.15
|
20%
|
|
|
$0.24
|
$0.77
|
($0.53)
|
-69%
|
|
|
$0.64
|
$1.06
|
($0.42)
|
-40%
|
Legacy / Classic: the prices for vintage playable staples fell this week. With many of the money cards already shown to be in Vintage Masters, and concerns that the rest may follow, prices are tanking.
|
Legacy / Classic Cards
|
Price
|
Last Week
|
Change
|
% Change
|
|
|
$13.73
|
$15.00
|
($1.27)
|
-8%
|
|
|
$32.17
|
$36.59
|
($4.42)
|
-12%
|
|
|
$21.58
|
$21.58
|
$0.00
|
0%
|
|
|
$19.12
|
$19.49
|
($0.37)
|
-2%
|
|
|
$28.04
|
$29.34
|
($1.30)
|
-4%
|
|
|
$64.00
|
$92.67
|
($28.67)
|
-31%
|
|
|
$59.71
|
$64.71
|
($5.00)
|
-8%
|
|
|
$22.13
|
$22.97
|
($0.84)
|
-4%
|
|
|
$19.22
|
$19.22
|
$0.00
|
0%
|
|
|
$36.36
|
$38.82
|
($2.46)
|
-6%
|
|
|
$84.74
|
$99.09
|
($14.35)
|
-14%
|
|
|
$24.68
|
$28.14
|
($3.46)
|
-12%
|
|
|
$66.60
|
$71.98
|
($5.38)
|
-7%
|
|
|
$24.75
|
$30.57
|
($5.82)
|
-19%
|
|
|
$19.38
|
$21.56
|
($2.18)
|
-10%
|
|
|
$15.57
|
$16.28
|
($0.71)
|
-4%
|
|
|
$18.00
|
$18.00
|
$0.00
|
0%
|
|
|
$47.00
|
$47.00
|
$0.00
|
0%
|
|
|
$107.09
|
$109.55
|
($2.46)
|
-2%
|
|
|
$57.94
|
$61.89
|
($3.95)
|
-6%
|
|
|
$28.80
|
$31.11
|
($2.31)
|
-7%
|
|
|
$30.65
|
$30.65
|
$0.00
|
0%
|
|
|
$34.75
|
$39.58
|
($4.83)
|
-12%
|
|
Vampiric Tutor
|
$32.28
|
$33.54
|
($1.26)
|
-4%
|
|
|
$23.29
|
$23.29
|
$0.00
|
0%
|
|
|
$69.61
|
$76.66
|
($7.05)
|
-9%
|
Set Redemption: You can redeem complete sets on MTGO. You need to purchase a redemption voucher from the store for $25. During the next downtime, Wizards removes a complete set from your account, and sends you the same set in paper. For those of you who redeem, here are the retail prices of one of everything in each current set. Those prices have fallen again this week, even though Theros redemption is back.
|
Complete Set
|
Price
|
Last Week
|
Change
|
% Change
|
|
Born of the Gods
|
$59.31
|
$64.51
|
($5.20)
|
-8%
|
|
Dragon's Maze
|
$53.79
|
$57.26
|
($3.47)
|
-6%
|
|
Gatecrash
|
$79.31
|
$88.38
|
($9.07)
|
-10%
|
|
Journey into Nix
|
$97.87
|
$124.67
|
($26.80)
|
-21%
|
|
M14
|
$106.07
|
$118.49
|
($12.42)
|
-10%
|
|
Return to Ravnica
|
$114.05
|
$123.96
|
($9.91)
|
-8%
|
|
Theros
|
$95.72
|
$88.37
|
$7.35
|
8%
|
The Good Stuff:
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. A massacre this week, as a lot of the cards that will be reprinted in Vintage Masters have dropped. Force of Will leads that list. (To see individual card price changes, see above.)
|
Card
|
Rarity
|
Set
|
Price
|
|
Rishadan Port
|
R
|
MM
|
$ 107.09
|
|
Tarmogoyf
|
M
|
MMA
|
$ 90.40
|
|
Tarmogoyf
|
R
|
FUT
|
$ 88.13
|
|
Lion's Eye Diamond
|
R
|
MI
|
$ 84.74
|
|
Liliana of the Veil
|
M
|
ISD
|
$ 81.91
|
|
Wasteland
|
U
|
TE
|
$ 69.61
|
|
Misdirection
|
R
|
MM
|
$ 66.60
|
|
Force of Will
|
R
|
MED
|
$ 64.00
|
|
Gaea's Cradle
|
R
|
UZ
|
$ 59.71
|
|
Show and Tell
|
R
|
UZ
|
$ 57.94
|
|
Mox Opal
|
M
|
SOM
|
$ 51.60
|
|
Tundra
|
R
|
ME2
|
$ 49.43
|
|
Tundra
|
R
|
ME4
|
$ 47.95
|
|
Polluted Delta
|
R
|
ONS
|
$ 47.00
|
|
Vendilion Clique
|
M
|
MMA
|
$ 45.72
|
|
Vendilion Clique
|
R
|
MOR
|
$ 44.34
|
|
Volcanic Island
|
R
|
ME4
|
$ 39.71
|
|
Volcanic Island
|
R
|
ME3
|
$ 38.33
|
|
Griselbrand
|
M
|
AVR
|
$ 38.14
|
|
Karn Liberated
|
M
|
NPH
|
$ 37.30
|
|
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
|
M
|
WWK
|
$ 36.36
|
|
Batterskull
|
M
|
NPH
|
$ 36.00
|
|
Underground Sea
|
R
|
ME2
|
$ 34.75
|
|
Scalding Tarn
|
R
|
ZEN
|
$ 33.63
|
|
Bayou
|
R
|
ME4
|
$ 33.47
|
|
Vampiric Tutor
|
R
|
VI
|
$ 32.28
|
|
City of Traitors
|
R
|
EX
|
$ 32.17
|
|
Underground Sea
|
R
|
ME4
|
$ 31.95
|
|
Bayou
|
R
|
ME3
|
$ 31.39
|
|
True-Name Nemesis
|
R
|
C13
|
$ 30.65
|
|
Flooded Strand
|
R
|
ONS
|
$ 30.25
|
|
Cryptic Command
|
R
|
LRW
|
$ 30.13
|
|
Mana Crypt
|
R
|
ME2
|
$ 29.89
|
|
Cryptic Command
|
R
|
MMA
|
$ 29.00
|
|
Sneak Attack
|
R
|
UZ
|
$ 28.80
|
|
Voice of Resurgence
|
M
|
DGM
|
$ 28.26
|
|
Flusterstorm
|
R
|
CMD
|
$ 28.04
|
|
Misty Rainforest
|
R
|
ZEN
|
$ 27.62
|
|
Threads of Disloyalty
|
R
|
BOK
|
$ 27.31
|
|
Dark Confidant
|
R
|
RAV
|
$ 26.72
|
|
Tropical Island
|
R
|
ME3
|
$ 26.32
|
|
Toxic Deluge
|
R
|
C13
|
$ 26.19
|
|
Noble Hierarch
|
R
|
CON
|
$ 26.11
|
|
Dark Confidant
|
M
|
MMA
|
$ 25.79
|
|
Sphinx's Revelation
|
M
|
RTR
|
$ 25.32
|
The big number is the retail price of a playset (4 copies) of every card available on MTGO. Assuming you bought the least expensive version available, the cost of owning a playset of every card on MTGO you can own is $ 25,090. $26,354. That’s down almost $1,300 from where we were last week. Pushing down the price of a lot of high end cards will do that.
Weekly Highlights:
I am working with a judge candidate, and we met up at a LGS I haven’t attended before. I played Chris VanMeter’s Jund Monsters deck, with a couple minor modifications to cover cards I don’t own. The deck performed really well. I, however, did not. In game two of the finals, I missed a Courser of Kruphix trigger. As a result, he was able to hit me for exactly lethal with a pair of Stormbreath Dragons and an unblockable dude. Had I remembered the trigger, I would have been at one life, he would have been dead and the event would have been over. While having MTGO remind you of every trigger is great in many respects, it does tend to make you (well, me at least) sloppy. On the plus side, I came in second, and Jacob is shaping up to be a very good judge.
PRJ
“one million words” on MTGO
This series is an ongoing tribute to Erik “Hamtastic" Friborg.
16 Comments
The full Vintage Masters spoiler is now up, and I was really surprised at how much garbage is in the set. Modern Masters worked so well as a limited format because, in part, it provided an all-star lineup of draft archetypes from a period in magic where limited formats had very strongly established and clear themes. The older sets that VM is drawing from were much less well developed in terms of archetypes and themes, which leads me to believe that the set will be nowhere near as accessible to draft as MM was.
The other major disappointment with the complete spoiler is the lost opportunity to reprint Wasteland and a number of hard-to-get Masques Block cards like Rishadan Port and Misdirection. Unless Wizards does something about this it's going to be very difficult for Vintage to succeed as a format. As of this morning I couldn't find any Wastelands available on MTGO -- I checked cardbot and mtgotraders along with a general search of the trading area. I find it stunning that Wizards had the guts to reprint Force of Will at rare (a great move imo) but lacked the foresight to reprint Wasteland at all.
I also want to thank you for highlighting the drop in prize support for Sealed Swiss and 64 Player Drafts which were inexplicably cut. It would be a good public service if you highlighted this more aggressively in your posts up to the release date. Sealed Swiss was cut by 33% and 64 man drafts by about half. I crunched the numbers and the prize support (as a ratio of cost to enter to prize) is stunning. The 64 man draft PEs have markedly worse prize support than normal draft queues! A lot of players are going to get suckered into this early on thinking that there will be normal prize support, and you could do a lot for the community by ensuring that as many people as possible know what's up and don't get tricked.
wastelands went up ~$30 last night. how can they not reprint it?
They specifically went up BECAUSE they're not reprinting it.
Yeah, but I think his point was that that should have been an expected outcome, and therefore influenced the decision to reprint or not.
On the other hand, it would be amusing if an uncommon became the most expensive card on MTGO.
* an uncommon in a set that wasn't widely printed and was only played by diehards.
Sure, but it would still be an uncommon that cost more than Black Lotus. :)
I have a theory on the reason why cards like Wasteland, Rishadan Port and Misdirection have been left out of Vintage Masters.
We know Vintage Masters's main rule was "cards not legal in Modern". But I believe (and maybe someone at Wizards even said it out loud, on one of the two hundred different media outlets they use) that Vintage Masters had a secondary rule: "cards not legal in Legacy". In fact, almost the entire Legacy ban list is in Vintage Masters.
Now, the above-mentioned cards are played in Vintage as well, but they are Legacy staples for sure. Say they want to do a Legacy Masters set next year. They had to save something juicy for that occasion. So now they focused on what only a set named Vintage Masters can host (plus the Conspiracy burden that has an entirely different genesis). Next year, we'll get a new draftable set of online reprints, and that'll be the occasion to revisit everything that Vintage Masters left out.
Of course, one year from now, Wasteland may have easily become the most ridiculous anomaly this game ever had.
Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't Legacy only spring in to existence as a format because people wanted to play without needing to spend a used cars worth of money on the most broken cards?
Given that they intent to push Vintage online where that's not really as much of an issue, isn't there some chance that they don't intend to continue heavily supporting Legacy as a format online in the long run? I'm not talking about stopping all +EV events (though they did just that for pauper when they thought it was getting too much focus), but it doesn't seem like something they would be bothering to make another online only set for.
I personally think there's not a chance in hell Vintage will play out online much differently than it does in the paper world. It's for hardcore enthusiasts only. They might manage to lure a bigger crowd here because Black Lotus won't cost $5k. (I can't even start predicting how much it will cost, but I see the figures Pete is using in his examples are still totally incompatible with 99.5% of the MTGO users). But Legacy will still be the eternal format of choice for events using a pool larger than Modern. (It's right there in the name.)
It's a matter of gameplay, too. Let's be honest, Black Lotus isn't a card. It's a mistake. It stems from a time when the game design was still a rough approximation with not enough data to predict the interactions of such a card over time, in a competitive environment. Black Lotus and co. shouldn't exist. It's cool that there's still a format where you can play with one copy of them (if you just try and play with more, the game itself ceases to make any sense.) But it's not a format they can push too much, organized play-wise, because it's still the format where you play with the cards that were made by mistake, so essentially the cards "you shouldn't play with".
Plus, yeah, you can buy a car with one of those Vintage paper decks. A sport car. Online, we'll see. A scooter, maybe?
Vintage online will still be a niche format, but it's going to completely change the landscape of the format. Currently people who own those $20,000 paper Vintage decks might get to play them a couple times a month at most. And then only if they live the Northeast United States or in Europe. And the types of decks they are facing is not a complete metagame. It's 8 or 12 other guys who bring the same thing every time and don't actually own all the cards they need. (This is all a gross simplification from anecdotes I've read on message boards.)
But changing that to a way for people to play opponents world wide 24/7 will change the Vintage meta ridiculously fast. As a percentage of online play though, it will still be pretty niche because it has a high cost barrier to entry and high learning curve. If you're into competitive eternal, the next year is going to be amazing. If not, well you might draft a money card or two in VMA and move on.
Sorry for you casual room folks - you can only play one Ponder now. Maybe switch to casual legacy? Then you can't play Sol Ring. No way to win!
very interesting idea: legacy masters! the lack of wasteland and rishadan port hints at sneak attack, misdirection, and show and tell. the reprint of city in a bottle (lol) hints at apocalypse chime and golgothian sylex (lol x 3). i like the idea... glass is half full! but in the mean time...
has wizards made any specific declarations that they are either (a) attempting to gain new players by hosting the vintage format online, or (b) merely trying to fulfill the never ending requests to print the power nine coming from existing players?
how can wasteland cost more than dual lands?!?! just seems illogical when you think about it from a nostalgic viewpoint. and isn't nostalgia the real theme of vintage masters?
i would say that if they want new players, not printing wasteland is a major fail.
if they are just trying to satiate existing players/collectors... or simply make some more money... then they are doing just fine.
i also agree that there will always be a card or cards that seem overpriced, and will be seen as a "hurdle" discouraging new players from entering the format. sadly, though, those prices aren't defined by wizards, they are defined by **US** - it's the players who decide what they are willing to pay and what they aren't.
Pete says at the top that only 250 of 325 is spoiled and the remaining 75 will be spoiled June 6th.
There very well could be port and wasteland in those 75. I'm not jumping ton conclusions until the whole set has been released.
I will say if I pay $7 for a pack and pull a fudgin' Jareth as my rare I'm gonna be cheesed. Also the skull clamp previewed has the VM logo and I noticed it is mythic?? It jumps two rarities? Again gonna be peeved if I pull a 37 cent mythic out of a seven dollar pack.
If you go and count the cards on the spoiler page, you'll see that all 325 are there.
I wrote this last Wed. The whole set is up now.
I thought I cleared that up when I linked the spoiler list.
My apologies for missing it and creating confusion.
Current VM image gallery shows all the 325 cards at mothership, there is no chance for wasteland here, maybe we will see it as upcoming MOCS Promo.