I must say, it's frustrating to me that the WotC business plan requires that I be interested in playing limited. I'm just not. It wastes too much money. The REAL costs of those formats are simply too high for my budget or my level of interest. Having said that, I am willing to pay the lower costs associated with playing constructed. And I'm not an evil customer who is never willing to spend anything - my plan is to update my singleton collection for each and every new set that comes out. Why is there not a place for me in the business plan? I'm a player who is willing to spend money buying tickets so I can buy singles and play in constructed events. They should just pay out tickets as prizes to these events. Why is it necessary for me to put up with the hassle of going to the secondary market to exchange prizes that I do not want? It's like giving a football helmet to the winner of a marathon.
Edit: Yes, I understand that it's bad for Wizards if tickets have a way to get into the system other than through the store.
I get it - limited and constructed are supposed to have a symbiotic relationship. But, that becomes an issue if one of the formats is less popular than the other - it causes the less popular format to harm the good format. I'm not sure if that is the case, but I do know that I enjoy constructed 100CS and do not particularly enjoy drafting the classic sets. For somebody like me, a reduction in the price of packs is not enough to make me want to draft. If there are more people like me than people who just want to draft, then we get exactly this problem. I think Wizards' model assumes that my preferences are quite elastic with respect to the price of packs, but they are not.
How about scheduling draft queues ahead of time within short windows (like 3 hours) at certain times so people interested in Mirage or Tempest know exactly when a draft is likely to fire? These sets obviously don't have critical mass to fire continuously, but maybe they'd fire consistently if the window of time was short enough and infrequent enough. I think there are some drafters out there who'd like to draft these sets, but we need a better way for them to find each other, because they are not necessarily willing to wait around for hours just to draft a classic set.
Maybe it's a bad idea. I'm just trying to think of a possible solution to this problem that doesn't require anybody to a) officially recognize that the market value of packs is not always 3.99 or b) somehow make Mirage block more fun to draft.
When you're not allowed to acknowledge some of the salient facts (expected value), this becomes a pretty difficult problem.
as far as I'm aware, he was on the team at the time, either that or he helped develope the team. My favorite team back then was the Phoenix Foundation, problem was I couldn't find their crazy Oath build, which was really awesome I heard, just posted bad results.
Dunno about later on but Zvi started out as a Neutral Ground NY regular not YMG which is up in Boston. Otherwise fun article. Always nice to read history surrounding particular cards.
Just like with the first article, I’ll loudly voice my support for Classic Packs.
I think Wizards is VERY interested in the MODO secondary market for packs, and has said so in the past if I remember. It’s just like with cardboard Magic: WotC doesn’t want unsold boxes of product sitting in stores, even though Wizards has already been paid for them. They want them out the door so that stores will order more, and they want people to get them in their hands so THEY will want more! What’s more, ~WIZARDS~ is the card store for MODO! So of course they want those classic packs sold. Offering a Classic Pack for limited events means WotC is making profit that they wouldn’t have otherwise. With Classic Packs, people would still be buying “Onslaught” product.
Reopening previously closed income streams – now THAT’S easy money.
Old packs could still be used in drafts. You could run a MD5 draft with a Darksteel pack and 2 Classic Packs, for instance.
I think that coding the implementation of Classic Packs would be actually relatively easy.
Thank you for reminding me that you were a part of the community cup. I had forgotten that you've talked with the Magic Online guys about issues such as these. I have no idea what you discussed in the round table however I don't want to beat a dead horse into the ground by discussing an idea that has already been discussed and rejected by WotC for some reason that I might not see due to the fact that I'm outside the company looking in.
Having said that, I like adjusting ideas to address criticism. How about this.
1) The entrance fee and prizes for classic drafts are changed to the current standard core set (M2010). [I'm guessing this can be done with the current coding, because prizes can be manually adjusted and entrance fees can be set to tickets or packs and tickets.]
2) The prizes for classic constructed tournaments are also changed to the current standard core set.
Result:
A) The core set packs act like a generic booster for older sets such as IPA but not for other recent sets like Zendikar.
B) People need to stay current on boosters. The prize packs for older drafts remain somewhat useful but become obsolete with the next core set.
C) Classic era constructed has a decent prize that most likely won't burn out.
I'm not saying it should be that way because it's always been that way. In fact - it WASN'T always that way - I played when there was only one type of Magic. In fact, I stopped playing paper pretty much right before the type 2 format was introduced.
The reason it is that way is because WoTC *wants* to reward players more for keeping up-to-date with all their releases. It's how they best make money.
Like I said, the "generic pack" has some benefits, but it will also have drawbacks, not the least of which is a sort of "heat death" on the trading of packs - there are too many factors to really predict that - but it's a possiblity. Also, unless those packs have an expiry date (something I think you'd find harder to program than you think - what if you have 240 packs in stock all with diff expiry dates?) WoTC has also lost on the sense of urgency to USE those packs before drafts are no longer available for said set.
I really want to urge the community to start moving away from the concept that somehow pack payout can be fixed to prop up Constructed play. If there was one thing that was abundantly clear the the impromptu round-table at the Community Cup, it was that they'd pretty much listened to every suggestion ever made and found them all wanting in some way or another. There was literally nothing we could say that they weren't immediately ready to poke a hole in or squash immediately. Not in a bad way, but in a very constructive "here's why what you suggest won't work".
There has to be other ways to accomplish the goal. Alternate options via more programming would be great, but even WOTC knows how turtle-like they are in that regard. There is something out there that would get non-STD/Block constructed going without the problems associated with EV. I just wish I could think of it.
I overall like the article and deck. It seems, though, that if you are preventing yourself from taking damage, the Lich's Tomb is actually completely superfluous?
I see it more like an area of magic that could use some improvement. Just because it has always been that way, doesn't mean it can't be improved.
Yes, you could just open the packs because they can't be used for anything else. Of course the main reason I started Magic Online to begin with is because packs can be used as entrance fees to tournaments. I've spent much more money on Magic Online than I would have spent on paper magic and I don't even claim to be close to going infinite, however I still like the concept that you can continue playing for free if you do well enough in tournaments. It's an attractive feature of Magic Online.
And yes, programming a generic classic pack will take some programming work up front but it also saves some work for WotC in the long run. Once something like a generic classic pack is in place...
1) Classic Events, Classic Drafts, and Classic Sealed Events will never need to rotate packs, and they will always have the same prizes.
2) Redundant Queues can be eliminated (no more Nix-Tix and Nix-Pax Queues for the same set.)
3) WotC can run daily classic set sealed events without worrying about whether or not players have the packs to enter those tournaments. (IE deciding whether or not it should be (packs and tix) or 30 tix entry fee.)
4) WotC can rotate draft queues more easily and reduce the number of draft queues available at any one time.
Again, you are looking at it from the view of only how to *best* use the pack. If it's worth getting into a draft, you use it that way, if it's not, can you sell it. Those, sadly are not the only ways to use a pack of cards. You can always just crack open the MED3 packs.
What that means is that any suggestions to improve participation *CAN'T* just be to rotate and recycle the pack distribution, because in most part that is meaningless extra work to WoTC.
An "uber-pack" that can just be turned into any pack at the store (though I still like this idea) has much of the same problem. Everyone will just take whatever pack is worth the most and then sell it until all the packs are devalued to $3.99, or likely slighty past that point, much like what happened with Tix once WoTC killed the Tix float.
Sadly, I don't have any solutions to the problem - not perfect ones anyway.
That being said, the reason I bring this all up is the last point of your article "The resale value of the packs that are awarded make some formats much more profitable than other formats."
... You say that like it is some sort of problem. Ever since Type 2 was invented, Magic has been set up to work this way.
I fully acknowledge that WotC probably isn't that interested in the secondary market for packs.
My main concern is the utility of those packs. If a draft queue doesn't fire, or if it takes several hours for it to fire, then that isn't good for WotC and it isn't good for those of us who have those packs.
I wish I had adequate statistics on how often the draft queues fire. The only data I have is based on observation of which drafts are in progress and which have finished for the last 3 hours. Every time I've looked, which is about 6 times a week, there's about 60 Zendikar Drafts, 30 M2010 drafts, and less than 10 of all the other drafts combined.
I wish I could do a detailed article on those statistics, however I don't have a method to gather accurate data.
To make this a little clearer, here's an analogy...
Zendikar and M2010 packs are like gift certificates to Walmart. They are readily usable and you can easily use them or exchange them for what you want.
Stronghold and ME3 packs are like gift certificates to the Halloween Store. They are only useable once in a while, and only if you are interested in buying a halloween costume.
WotC probably sees one gift certificate as being equal to any other gift certificate because they own all the stores. However if one kind of gift certificate is not being used, and people ignore the events that award those gift certificates, then WotC might want to do something about it.
One thing you might want to try is Saitou's version of jund that he 6-0d with at worlds. He basically plays siege gang commander and rampant growth and cuts the putrid leaches. It's a lot less luck based since you almost always get the correct lands and have powerful spells to cast with them. I hated the putrid leach version but love the rampant growth version of jund.
From WoTC's view, each and every one of your tables would be exactly the same in each column. This is because, to WoTC, each pack is worth exactly $3.99. Believe me when I tell you they aren't fond of viewing events by EV - though they aren't putting their head in the sand on the issue either.
The 2nd market should take care of itself. If packs are easier to obtain on the 2nd market than they are from WoTC, they expect that will simply up the drafting rate on those packs. This is also why they can get away with removing the classic sets from the store so quickly - there is simply a point where not enough people are online at the same time who want to draft those sets, so they kill the sales of those sets. For sets like Stronghold, this is pretty quick. MED3 had a very, very good run and lasted a couple of moths (and still fires off drafts, which is incredible) and so while having constructed payouts in MED3 does lower EV, WoTC is not going to make changes just so assuage concerns that you can't SELL YOUR PACKS for full value on the 2nd market.
To them, 3x of the packs and 2 tix will still get you an event. So long as that is true, they see EV of $3.99 on each and every pack given out. And even if you think that is a crazy way to look at things - that is how the accountants at WoTC HAVE to operate. Operating in any other way would be racketeering (making claims of value beyond the primary market for items you are the sole supplier of the primary market).
Well, I would like it if 4-3-2-2 were changed to 5-4-2-2. Unfortunetly I think that falls into the category of, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 4-3-2-2 drafts fire at a reasonable rate for Zendikar and M2010 drafts when compared to SWISS and 8-4, so WotC probably doesn't see a problem with them, even if it seems unfair to us that the extra pack is missing.
The classic draft and constructed tournament firing rates are abyssmal. That is a problem that WotC may want to change.
I'm confused. How does my classic pack idea have a negative effect on single's prices?
Also, have you seen the firing rate for ME3 drafts? That is the reason ME3 packs are so cheap. One ME3 draft fires about every 2-3 hours. I don't think WotC designed it so that players would have to wait an average of about 2 hours to start a ME3 draft. I would think that WotC would like the idea of increasing the firing rate of some of these draft queues.
I think staggering the pack payout for classic events is a relatively harmless way for WotC to test to see if the pack payout effects the firing rate of classic tournaments. (I know they've done some pack switching for pauper in the past) I'm convinced that this will show a significant impact, however I'm not sure how much of an impact this will have.
The problem with staggering the payout of classic events is that it doesn't do anything to address the long term CYCLICAL problem that classic packs are just so worthless because classic drafts rarely fire, and classic packs are hard to exchange.
My idea is that as long as a set is sold in the store, it is not covered by the classic pack. Only packs that are truly out-of-print are classic. (Tempest and Stronghold wouldn't be classic until Exodus rotates out) As long as packs can be bought in the store matching up packs to create a draft set is feasible. WotC can make it so this won't compete with packs in the store.
I don't think the inability to crack classic packs is a deal breaker. I don't necessarily think many players other than dealers, want to go around cracking packs outside of tournaments.
Given the amount of changes that have been made in the past year, I think WotC is quite willing to make changes. Especially ones that encourage play and remove difficulties.
How about just humans?
you might be able too...with black and blue as the actual colors i could see wizards as a possible tribe also construct, myr, or even elementals
I wonder If I could turn Deus Ex Machina into a tribal deck? Next week is going to be awesome :)
Next Monday, and Paul there was another list I was looking for. Anyway, I can't wait til I get my greedy hands on Oath! Oh how I will abuse thee oath!
I must say, it's frustrating to me that the WotC business plan requires that I be interested in playing limited. I'm just not. It wastes too much money. The REAL costs of those formats are simply too high for my budget or my level of interest. Having said that, I am willing to pay the lower costs associated with playing constructed. And I'm not an evil customer who is never willing to spend anything - my plan is to update my singleton collection for each and every new set that comes out. Why is there not a place for me in the business plan? I'm a player who is willing to spend money buying tickets so I can buy singles and play in constructed events. They should just pay out tickets as prizes to these events. Why is it necessary for me to put up with the hassle of going to the secondary market to exchange prizes that I do not want? It's like giving a football helmet to the winner of a marathon.
Edit: Yes, I understand that it's bad for Wizards if tickets have a way to get into the system other than through the store.
I get it - limited and constructed are supposed to have a symbiotic relationship. But, that becomes an issue if one of the formats is less popular than the other - it causes the less popular format to harm the good format. I'm not sure if that is the case, but I do know that I enjoy constructed 100CS and do not particularly enjoy drafting the classic sets. For somebody like me, a reduction in the price of packs is not enough to make me want to draft. If there are more people like me than people who just want to draft, then we get exactly this problem. I think Wizards' model assumes that my preferences are quite elastic with respect to the price of packs, but they are not.
How about scheduling draft queues ahead of time within short windows (like 3 hours) at certain times so people interested in Mirage or Tempest know exactly when a draft is likely to fire? These sets obviously don't have critical mass to fire continuously, but maybe they'd fire consistently if the window of time was short enough and infrequent enough. I think there are some drafters out there who'd like to draft these sets, but we need a better way for them to find each other, because they are not necessarily willing to wait around for hours just to draft a classic set.
Maybe it's a bad idea. I'm just trying to think of a possible solution to this problem that doesn't require anybody to a) officially recognize that the market value of packs is not always 3.99 or b) somehow make Mirage block more fun to draft.
When you're not allowed to acknowledge some of the salient facts (expected value), this becomes a pretty difficult problem.
Awesome article, when does Exodus hit MTGO?
see: http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/article.asp?x=PTCHICAGO9900/top8decklists (Dirk Baberowski's list)
as far as I'm aware, he was on the team at the time, either that or he helped develope the team. My favorite team back then was the Phoenix Foundation, problem was I couldn't find their crazy Oath build, which was really awesome I heard, just posted bad results.
Dunno about later on but Zvi started out as a Neutral Ground NY regular not YMG which is up in Boston. Otherwise fun article. Always nice to read history surrounding particular cards.
Just like with the first article, I’ll loudly voice my support for Classic Packs.
I think Wizards is VERY interested in the MODO secondary market for packs, and has said so in the past if I remember. It’s just like with cardboard Magic: WotC doesn’t want unsold boxes of product sitting in stores, even though Wizards has already been paid for them. They want them out the door so that stores will order more, and they want people to get them in their hands so THEY will want more! What’s more, ~WIZARDS~ is the card store for MODO! So of course they want those classic packs sold. Offering a Classic Pack for limited events means WotC is making profit that they wouldn’t have otherwise. With Classic Packs, people would still be buying “Onslaught” product.
Reopening previously closed income streams – now THAT’S easy money.
Old packs could still be used in drafts. You could run a MD5 draft with a Darksteel pack and 2 Classic Packs, for instance.
I think that coding the implementation of Classic Packs would be actually relatively easy.
Thank you for reminding me that you were a part of the community cup. I had forgotten that you've talked with the Magic Online guys about issues such as these. I have no idea what you discussed in the round table however I don't want to beat a dead horse into the ground by discussing an idea that has already been discussed and rejected by WotC for some reason that I might not see due to the fact that I'm outside the company looking in.
Having said that, I like adjusting ideas to address criticism. How about this.
1) The entrance fee and prizes for classic drafts are changed to the current standard core set (M2010). [I'm guessing this can be done with the current coding, because prizes can be manually adjusted and entrance fees can be set to tickets or packs and tickets.]
2) The prizes for classic constructed tournaments are also changed to the current standard core set.
Result:
A) The core set packs act like a generic booster for older sets such as IPA but not for other recent sets like Zendikar.
B) People need to stay current on boosters. The prize packs for older drafts remain somewhat useful but become obsolete with the next core set.
C) Classic era constructed has a decent prize that most likely won't burn out.
I'm not saying it should be that way because it's always been that way. In fact - it WASN'T always that way - I played when there was only one type of Magic. In fact, I stopped playing paper pretty much right before the type 2 format was introduced.
The reason it is that way is because WoTC *wants* to reward players more for keeping up-to-date with all their releases. It's how they best make money.
Like I said, the "generic pack" has some benefits, but it will also have drawbacks, not the least of which is a sort of "heat death" on the trading of packs - there are too many factors to really predict that - but it's a possiblity. Also, unless those packs have an expiry date (something I think you'd find harder to program than you think - what if you have 240 packs in stock all with diff expiry dates?) WoTC has also lost on the sense of urgency to USE those packs before drafts are no longer available for said set.
I really want to urge the community to start moving away from the concept that somehow pack payout can be fixed to prop up Constructed play. If there was one thing that was abundantly clear the the impromptu round-table at the Community Cup, it was that they'd pretty much listened to every suggestion ever made and found them all wanting in some way or another. There was literally nothing we could say that they weren't immediately ready to poke a hole in or squash immediately. Not in a bad way, but in a very constructive "here's why what you suggest won't work".
There has to be other ways to accomplish the goal. Alternate options via more programming would be great, but even WOTC knows how turtle-like they are in that regard. There is something out there that would get non-STD/Block constructed going without the problems associated with EV. I just wish I could think of it.
I overall like the article and deck. It seems, though, that if you are preventing yourself from taking damage, the Lich's Tomb is actually completely superfluous?
I see it more like an area of magic that could use some improvement. Just because it has always been that way, doesn't mean it can't be improved.
Yes, you could just open the packs because they can't be used for anything else. Of course the main reason I started Magic Online to begin with is because packs can be used as entrance fees to tournaments. I've spent much more money on Magic Online than I would have spent on paper magic and I don't even claim to be close to going infinite, however I still like the concept that you can continue playing for free if you do well enough in tournaments. It's an attractive feature of Magic Online.
And yes, programming a generic classic pack will take some programming work up front but it also saves some work for WotC in the long run. Once something like a generic classic pack is in place...
1) Classic Events, Classic Drafts, and Classic Sealed Events will never need to rotate packs, and they will always have the same prizes.
2) Redundant Queues can be eliminated (no more Nix-Tix and Nix-Pax Queues for the same set.)
3) WotC can run daily classic set sealed events without worrying about whether or not players have the packs to enter those tournaments. (IE deciding whether or not it should be (packs and tix) or 30 tix entry fee.)
4) WotC can rotate draft queues more easily and reduce the number of draft queues available at any one time.
Again, you are looking at it from the view of only how to *best* use the pack. If it's worth getting into a draft, you use it that way, if it's not, can you sell it. Those, sadly are not the only ways to use a pack of cards. You can always just crack open the MED3 packs.
What that means is that any suggestions to improve participation *CAN'T* just be to rotate and recycle the pack distribution, because in most part that is meaningless extra work to WoTC.
An "uber-pack" that can just be turned into any pack at the store (though I still like this idea) has much of the same problem. Everyone will just take whatever pack is worth the most and then sell it until all the packs are devalued to $3.99, or likely slighty past that point, much like what happened with Tix once WoTC killed the Tix float.
Sadly, I don't have any solutions to the problem - not perfect ones anyway.
That being said, the reason I bring this all up is the last point of your article "The resale value of the packs that are awarded make some formats much more profitable than other formats."
... You say that like it is some sort of problem. Ever since Type 2 was invented, Magic has been set up to work this way.
I fully acknowledge that WotC probably isn't that interested in the secondary market for packs.
My main concern is the utility of those packs. If a draft queue doesn't fire, or if it takes several hours for it to fire, then that isn't good for WotC and it isn't good for those of us who have those packs.
I wish I had adequate statistics on how often the draft queues fire. The only data I have is based on observation of which drafts are in progress and which have finished for the last 3 hours. Every time I've looked, which is about 6 times a week, there's about 60 Zendikar Drafts, 30 M2010 drafts, and less than 10 of all the other drafts combined.
I wish I could do a detailed article on those statistics, however I don't have a method to gather accurate data.
To make this a little clearer, here's an analogy...
Zendikar and M2010 packs are like gift certificates to Walmart. They are readily usable and you can easily use them or exchange them for what you want.
Stronghold and ME3 packs are like gift certificates to the Halloween Store. They are only useable once in a while, and only if you are interested in buying a halloween costume.
WotC probably sees one gift certificate as being equal to any other gift certificate because they own all the stores. However if one kind of gift certificate is not being used, and people ignore the events that award those gift certificates, then WotC might want to do something about it.
One thing you might want to try is Saitou's version of jund that he 6-0d with at worlds. He basically plays siege gang commander and rampant growth and cuts the putrid leaches. It's a lot less luck based since you almost always get the correct lands and have powerful spells to cast with them. I hated the putrid leach version but love the rampant growth version of jund.
From WoTC's view, each and every one of your tables would be exactly the same in each column. This is because, to WoTC, each pack is worth exactly $3.99. Believe me when I tell you they aren't fond of viewing events by EV - though they aren't putting their head in the sand on the issue either.
The 2nd market should take care of itself. If packs are easier to obtain on the 2nd market than they are from WoTC, they expect that will simply up the drafting rate on those packs. This is also why they can get away with removing the classic sets from the store so quickly - there is simply a point where not enough people are online at the same time who want to draft those sets, so they kill the sales of those sets. For sets like Stronghold, this is pretty quick. MED3 had a very, very good run and lasted a couple of moths (and still fires off drafts, which is incredible) and so while having constructed payouts in MED3 does lower EV, WoTC is not going to make changes just so assuage concerns that you can't SELL YOUR PACKS for full value on the 2nd market.
To them, 3x of the packs and 2 tix will still get you an event. So long as that is true, they see EV of $3.99 on each and every pack given out. And even if you think that is a crazy way to look at things - that is how the accountants at WoTC HAVE to operate. Operating in any other way would be racketeering (making claims of value beyond the primary market for items you are the sole supplier of the primary market).
You're writing is good, but you're missing the oomph.
This article, as your first one, lacks some kind message beyond "i play annoying cards".
Long live DS9! Though I am certain that quote does not originate with that series. :)
Well, I would like it if 4-3-2-2 were changed to 5-4-2-2. Unfortunetly I think that falls into the category of, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 4-3-2-2 drafts fire at a reasonable rate for Zendikar and M2010 drafts when compared to SWISS and 8-4, so WotC probably doesn't see a problem with them, even if it seems unfair to us that the extra pack is missing.
The classic draft and constructed tournament firing rates are abyssmal. That is a problem that WotC may want to change.
I'm confused. How does my classic pack idea have a negative effect on single's prices?
Also, have you seen the firing rate for ME3 drafts? That is the reason ME3 packs are so cheap. One ME3 draft fires about every 2-3 hours. I don't think WotC designed it so that players would have to wait an average of about 2 hours to start a ME3 draft. I would think that WotC would like the idea of increasing the firing rate of some of these draft queues.
I think staggering the pack payout for classic events is a relatively harmless way for WotC to test to see if the pack payout effects the firing rate of classic tournaments. (I know they've done some pack switching for pauper in the past) I'm convinced that this will show a significant impact, however I'm not sure how much of an impact this will have.
The problem with staggering the payout of classic events is that it doesn't do anything to address the long term CYCLICAL problem that classic packs are just so worthless because classic drafts rarely fire, and classic packs are hard to exchange.
My idea is that as long as a set is sold in the store, it is not covered by the classic pack. Only packs that are truly out-of-print are classic. (Tempest and Stronghold wouldn't be classic until Exodus rotates out) As long as packs can be bought in the store matching up packs to create a draft set is feasible. WotC can make it so this won't compete with packs in the store.
I don't think the inability to crack classic packs is a deal breaker. I don't necessarily think many players other than dealers, want to go around cracking packs outside of tournaments.
Given the amount of changes that have been made in the past year, I think WotC is quite willing to make changes. Especially ones that encourage play and remove difficulties.