The company will earn some easy and effortless $ with this Ultimate Masters product which the whales will buy, but I doubt nearly as much net profit if the set was well received and widely purchased by the player base. As Pete Jahn said, if a well-paid and financially secure couple cannot justify buying this product, who the heck can?
None of us here on PureMTGO will have the figures and sales/profit data which WotC will gather over the next couple of months, so maybe I'm wrong and it actually was a savvy financial decision on the part of the company, but it seems unlikely to me.
Wizards will likely need to admit that it was one huge Experimental Frenzy failure for them (There will be 2 lands on the top of their library).
Wow, they’re actually running MTGO ads during the PT coverage. They’re not particularly impressive ads, especially compared to the snazzy MTGA stuff, but still.
Your assessment is pretty spot on. Their draws really determine how the matchup plays out, but the games can often go on longer than you might expect because of cards like Cryptic Command and Timely Reinforcements. It's also a big advantage that you can kill them without damage, as life link will often put the game out of reach that way. Most games you win will be because you flipped an early Terminus and having access to it is the decks biggest asset.
As far as the boggles match up goes, I think it's close to even and probably slightly favored for the u/w player (I think you'd be hard pressed to find a control deck with a better Boggles matchup). Your biggest enemy after sideboarding is Gaddock Teeg who alone is a reason to keep all your paths in.
The paper price of UMA does seem a bit insane. No matter the EV, there just won’t be that many people able to afford it, so I guess that art, especially the ones from the toppers, will remain pretty exclusive, hence expensive. I don’t mind some things being expensive and exclusive, and I guess there is some balance with Arena bringing in the cheapest Magic experience ever, but I still think they went over the top. The symbolism of this being the last product of their anniversary year is also poor: “hey everyone, look how expensive our game can be, you can get a box with not enough cardboard to actually play a constructed game for the cost of a Nintendo Switch!” Is not what I’d call going out with a bang.
On the digital side, I’m happy to hear the full-topper art will come through treasure chests. We’ll have to see the details, but they might end up affordable enough, and some look terrific, I wouldn’t mind getting 4 of those snazzy reverse-angle Dark Depth.
Mobilized for War works nicely in my Haakon Knight deck but that might admittedly be more to do with the lack of alternatives for self-discard in the Knight tribe.
Yes, I well remember how good Hexmage is against Ball Lightning. *grumble grumble*
Anowon is another one that we didn't mention at all. He's not played much but he's not bad. The boltable butt is probably is biggest weakness though.
While browsing the mythic Vampires I stumbled upon Olivia, Mobilized for War, and boy, she really got a terrible second incarnation, didn't she? She may work a little in a reanimator deck, but even there she's outclassed by many other cards even in-tribe.
I feel like I should spend some words on Vampire Hexmage instead, because I rarely played her in Vampire tribal, but she's still good as a multipurpose fighter/controller who kills planeswalkers on sight and blocks Ball Lightnings. :)
The one consideration I did make towards the Halloween event was I removed Anowon, the Ruin Sage to make room for the Mathas, since the risk of the Vampire mirror-match was so much higher, but it is generally another fine consideration for my kill-everything style of Vampires.
I did some quick testing with a modified list of your deck and I even dislike Indulgent Aristocrat more then before. Removing him and bitterblossom gives you 5 slots for lords or disruption I would prefer.
While not a "doomsayer", I have my worries, and I have expressed them on reddit. I surprised by the responses I got. People weren't just dismissive of my worries, they pointed out to figures: prices are today pretty much where they were last year, not below (they obviously won't get better than where they were before Chest got introduced), participation in Standard remains very strong, and even draft leagues numbers are good despite GRN not being a particularly good format (allegedly). Chas made a video arguing the same. Basically, Arena could not exist and we could have the same numbers.
I wasn't going anywhere and I have continued to build up my Legacy collection despite my worries, but I'm feeling a lot more confident that things are not as dire as I thought they were. Things might be different in a few years time, but I'm not feeling like I'm throwing money out of the window. Except that attempt at reviving Hypergenesis, that money is gone forever...
We're happy to have you listening and commenting. The prices fall a lot. And then climb back up. It happens pretty much every year as some news sends flocks of players running for the hills which is not great but it does not signify a lot in the end. (I refer back to post VMA problems, Cawblade, m10 rules changes, Cancellation of Extended format, loss of the filters, etc.)
I think it is wise to keep an eye on things (prices included) but also to reserve judgment. Though I fault no one for leaving if it gets to be too much for them. Many people I valued highly as friends and players left after v4 became the only client. It is terrible and I hope they come back some day.
In your experience in the Bogles matchup, have you been able to cast your Terminus or Settle before they clock you? I used to play Bogles vs Jeskai Control when that was the prevalent control build (and they ran E.Explosives and Blessed Alliance in the board), but I've never played against UW Terminus yet because I switched to Devoted Company during the last year. I am guessing 40% you cast Terminus or Settle in time/60% you don't, then give yourself another 20% percentage to account for Bogles losing to itself. So overall it seems a 50/50 matchup (with Game 1 favored by whoever is on the play), that's my rough guess but I would love to hear your thoughts.
I am one of the people you referred to as the "sky is falling" doomsayers when it comes to MODO. I don't know if I will be right, but I do strongly believe that the prices on MODO will plummet in the future, even if the platform does happen to survive.
And beside the fact that MTGA is a videogame, with the (dubious) economy of an Electronic Arts mobile game, therefore you can't trade, therefore it's not Magic, why are we even so sure the Spikes and pros are going to use it as an actual tool, rather than a way to kill some time? I was in the closed beta, I'm playing MTGA every day for about an hour since six months, and I'm not sure it will ever be anything different than, say, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, or Minecraft.
First of all, let's say a competitive player wants to test the Standard deck they'll take to real tournaments. What's the appeal of doing it on MTGA? The better interface? Sure. Then what? You can't really go into MTGA and buy a Teferi Control deck. I mean, sure, you can in a roundabout way, you pour a few hundred of dollars into it, buy a ton of boosters, earn enough wild cards to acquire the cards you need (note that the draft packs don't contribute to this, so you can't draft to buy a specific deck). And those are entirely wasted money, because you can't trade the deck back if you change your mind or after some key card is banned or rotates.
But okay, someone doesn't care about money, does all of the above (which includes a lot of clicking to open boosters), builds its Teferi deck, then what? Play it against random kids? The upcoming option of challenging a friend helps, but is it really worth the bother when you can just put together the deck on MTGO in two minutes and then enter a competitive league?
Isn't this idea that MTGA will become the prime choice for competitive Standard players just a fantasy born out of the hopes of supporters and the fears of pessimists? And let's not even talk about drafters: is drafting without any chance to dump your surplus cards to fuel more drafts really appealing to frequent drafters?
And another thing: Pete compares MTGA to casual experiences like Thursday nights on the local store. But it really isn't. Your pairings in the casual queue get you opponents who aren't really good players (so that's not ideal for who's trying to seriously test a deck), but at the same time they all play the current best archetype lists you find online, down to a tee. It's partially due to the economy rewarding you from winning as fast as possible, and as consistently as possible, every single day.
SaffronOlive's most important point is made almost incidentally, but it's something I've been saying since a few months already, and everybody who's not starting any analysis there is missing the point entirely: MTGA is *not* MTG. It's not a digital experience of MTG, not even an approximation of it. It's just a videogame where you happen to be playing the same game.
But MTG is a Trading Card Game. That's the core of its business. If Magic weren't a TCG, do you think it would last 25 years? Of course not. It would have gone the way of The Great Dalmuti many years ago.
The secondary market is mightily important for the MTG business model. It's what keeps it alive. And we can be sure they care about it, because they're still absurdly enforcing a promise made 20 years ago to people who are likely not even active in the community anymore.
In short, if you can't trade, buy and sell cards, it's not Magic. And MTGA is expressly built in a way that will make this impossible. It's the heir of Duel of the Planeswalkers, not the replacement of MTGO. It doesn't even try to be that, its goal is explicitly *not* that.
SaffronOlive made a point that I think holds true today, a few weeks ago.
the point at which MTGO players need to start worrying is when Standard prices start to tank. So far, those prices have not. There are still drafters and standard players on the client. For how much longer, I am not sure, but I need to see a road map for Arena before I decide if the sky is falling or not.
Yes Arena does a lot of cool things, but it does not let me do a lot of other cool things. Will it ever support multiplayer commander? Will it go in modern, legacy or actual pauper?
It doesn't necessarily mean the people leaving were actually active, though. It's entirely anecdotic, but I have met a few people online who have cashed out and moved to MTGA but had stopped playing MTGO a while before. They just kept their collection around "in case of".
This is crunch time. Whoever is left and is still playing Standard and Limited on MTGO in few months time will be MTGO's players base for the foreseeable future. If it's insufficient, we might have an early lights out. If it's big enough, we'll a few years at least.
When it comes to adding further sets to MTGA and getting full Modern, Legacy, Vintage and retro-drafts, it might happen at some point, but it will take a lot of time. I know they changed the way individual cards are implemented in the new client, but it is still an enormous task, and it would require a complete overall of MTGA's current economical model (even more probably a parallel gem-only system).
And no, the client is not particularly adapted to such complex play: it is clearly meant to be played on a tablet, and it follows a "show one thing real big on the screen" model. You want to see your graveyard? Click it and it takes all the real estate. Same thing for any zone, same thing when a card gives you a choice. Try to play a Legacy game where both graveyards, exile zones, and a complex battlefield all matter at the same time. And learning thousands of new cards when each and everyone can only be checked one by one once on the battlefield is ludicrous. All of that is "solvable", but the simple reality is that MTGA is not aiming at representing that level of complexity.
As a sign that you are not the only one doing this, look at the value of full playsets of collections from Pete's articles. It went from around 22k 6 months before arena was announce to 15k 1 year after Arena is out.
Thats a drop of 7k (30%) and thats with 5-6 new sets into the system. (more cards , less money)
Its a sign that people are leaving.. people are cashing out.
Wizard will support MTGO as long as people supports and plays, but the clock is ticking..it will eventually go away when enough people leave.. they are even supporting streamers like they never did for MTGO. which is forcing them to start and move into Arena instead of MTGO..
They currently serve 2 different purpose, but Arena will eventually add those fonctionality and they Arena will be better.
In that case, I am very concerned for the future for Modo long-term, unless Wizards drastically change their employee/contractor hiring policy and go on a fire-and-hire spree (for example to run the bulk of MODO support offshore where labour is cheap, but that might pose its own challenges).
I do certainly fear for the Commander players - they will be the first casualty for sure because they don't directly contribute much profit (and as a group they probably pesker WOTC the most with their bug notifications for random interractions that can arise in Commander games).
We saw in the past how quickly WotC was willing to abandon the Tribal Wars and s100 communities, and that was merely because they wanted to save money by reducing the amount of filters!
It's always difficult to tell, but one can look at the leagues for Vintage, Legacy and Modern: having a quick look at the client, I see respectively (rounded) 90, 400, and 1,600 (putting Modern friendly and competitive together).
The question then is: how many regular participants could that represent? Rule of thumb is at least between 5 and 10 times as much, depending on whether most players play their leagues in one go or wait a day or more between matches. That's put modern as relatively active, Legacy at barely sustainable, and Vintage as a mini project for a few people. Numbers might spike during the weekend, although 400 to 500 for Legacy is what I usually see during the weekends.
It's hard to justify maintaining the client for these numbers, especially considering the work it takes to import new sets (and that would still need to be done). In comparison, GRN draft leagues is at 6,000 participants right now. Without THAT, new sets just wouldn't get released at nearly the same pace.
I think we'll have to wait and see how things go (I read an article today saying participation in Modern is lower at the moment the way it always is when a new Standard gets released), but it's hard to be optimistic.
Goodbye and good riddance to the Masters sets.
The company will earn some easy and effortless $ with this Ultimate Masters product which the whales will buy, but I doubt nearly as much net profit if the set was well received and widely purchased by the player base. As Pete Jahn said, if a well-paid and financially secure couple cannot justify buying this product, who the heck can?
None of us here on PureMTGO will have the figures and sales/profit data which WotC will gather over the next couple of months, so maybe I'm wrong and it actually was a savvy financial decision on the part of the company, but it seems unlikely to me.
Wizards will likely need to admit that it was one huge Experimental Frenzy failure for them (There will be 2 lands on the top of their library).
Wow, they’re actually running MTGO ads during the PT coverage. They’re not particularly impressive ads, especially compared to the snazzy MTGA stuff, but still.
Thanks for the comment.
Your assessment is pretty spot on. Their draws really determine how the matchup plays out, but the games can often go on longer than you might expect because of cards like Cryptic Command and Timely Reinforcements. It's also a big advantage that you can kill them without damage, as life link will often put the game out of reach that way. Most games you win will be because you flipped an early Terminus and having access to it is the decks biggest asset.
As far as the boggles match up goes, I think it's close to even and probably slightly favored for the u/w player (I think you'd be hard pressed to find a control deck with a better Boggles matchup). Your biggest enemy after sideboarding is Gaddock Teeg who alone is a reason to keep all your paths in.
The paper price of UMA does seem a bit insane. No matter the EV, there just won’t be that many people able to afford it, so I guess that art, especially the ones from the toppers, will remain pretty exclusive, hence expensive. I don’t mind some things being expensive and exclusive, and I guess there is some balance with Arena bringing in the cheapest Magic experience ever, but I still think they went over the top. The symbolism of this being the last product of their anniversary year is also poor: “hey everyone, look how expensive our game can be, you can get a box with not enough cardboard to actually play a constructed game for the cost of a Nintendo Switch!” Is not what I’d call going out with a bang.
On the digital side, I’m happy to hear the full-topper art will come through treasure chests. We’ll have to see the details, but they might end up affordable enough, and some look terrific, I wouldn’t mind getting 4 of those snazzy reverse-angle Dark Depth.
(duplicate post)
Mobilized for War works nicely in my Haakon Knight deck but that might admittedly be more to do with the lack of alternatives for self-discard in the Knight tribe.
Yes, I well remember how good Hexmage is against Ball Lightning. *grumble grumble*
Olivia works nicely in a combo deck but you need to build around her or accept that she may underperform.
Anowon is another one that we didn't mention at all. He's not played much but he's not bad. The boltable butt is probably is biggest weakness though.
While browsing the mythic Vampires I stumbled upon Olivia, Mobilized for War, and boy, she really got a terrible second incarnation, didn't she? She may work a little in a reanimator deck, but even there she's outclassed by many other cards even in-tribe.
I feel like I should spend some words on Vampire Hexmage instead, because I rarely played her in Vampire tribal, but she's still good as a multipurpose fighter/controller who kills planeswalkers on sight and blocks Ball Lightnings. :)
The one consideration I did make towards the Halloween event was I removed Anowon, the Ruin Sage to make room for the Mathas, since the risk of the Vampire mirror-match was so much higher, but it is generally another fine consideration for my kill-everything style of Vampires.
Bitterblossom is essential to play the Pariah. Maybe you should do some more testing, but hey, to each his own style. :)
I did some quick testing with a modified list of your deck and I even dislike Indulgent Aristocrat more then before. Removing him and bitterblossom gives you 5 slots for lords or disruption I would prefer.
While not a "doomsayer", I have my worries, and I have expressed them on reddit. I surprised by the responses I got. People weren't just dismissive of my worries, they pointed out to figures: prices are today pretty much where they were last year, not below (they obviously won't get better than where they were before Chest got introduced), participation in Standard remains very strong, and even draft leagues numbers are good despite GRN not being a particularly good format (allegedly). Chas made a video arguing the same. Basically, Arena could not exist and we could have the same numbers.
I wasn't going anywhere and I have continued to build up my Legacy collection despite my worries, but I'm feeling a lot more confident that things are not as dire as I thought they were. Things might be different in a few years time, but I'm not feeling like I'm throwing money out of the window. Except that attempt at reviving Hypergenesis, that money is gone forever...
We're happy to have you listening and commenting. The prices fall a lot. And then climb back up. It happens pretty much every year as some news sends flocks of players running for the hills which is not great but it does not signify a lot in the end. (I refer back to post VMA problems, Cawblade, m10 rules changes, Cancellation of Extended format, loss of the filters, etc.)
I think it is wise to keep an eye on things (prices included) but also to reserve judgment. Though I fault no one for leaving if it gets to be too much for them. Many people I valued highly as friends and players left after v4 became the only client. It is terrible and I hope they come back some day.
Great article, thanks.
In your experience in the Bogles matchup, have you been able to cast your Terminus or Settle before they clock you? I used to play Bogles vs Jeskai Control when that was the prevalent control build (and they ran E.Explosives and Blessed Alliance in the board), but I've never played against UW Terminus yet because I switched to Devoted Company during the last year. I am guessing 40% you cast Terminus or Settle in time/60% you don't, then give yourself another 20% percentage to account for Bogles losing to itself. So overall it seems a 50/50 matchup (with Game 1 favored by whoever is on the play), that's my rough guess but I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for this nice podcast.
I am one of the people you referred to as the "sky is falling" doomsayers when it comes to MODO. I don't know if I will be right, but I do strongly believe that the prices on MODO will plummet in the future, even if the platform does happen to survive.
And beside the fact that MTGA is a videogame, with the (dubious) economy of an Electronic Arts mobile game, therefore you can't trade, therefore it's not Magic, why are we even so sure the Spikes and pros are going to use it as an actual tool, rather than a way to kill some time? I was in the closed beta, I'm playing MTGA every day for about an hour since six months, and I'm not sure it will ever be anything different than, say, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, or Minecraft.
First of all, let's say a competitive player wants to test the Standard deck they'll take to real tournaments. What's the appeal of doing it on MTGA? The better interface? Sure. Then what? You can't really go into MTGA and buy a Teferi Control deck. I mean, sure, you can in a roundabout way, you pour a few hundred of dollars into it, buy a ton of boosters, earn enough wild cards to acquire the cards you need (note that the draft packs don't contribute to this, so you can't draft to buy a specific deck). And those are entirely wasted money, because you can't trade the deck back if you change your mind or after some key card is banned or rotates.
But okay, someone doesn't care about money, does all of the above (which includes a lot of clicking to open boosters), builds its Teferi deck, then what? Play it against random kids? The upcoming option of challenging a friend helps, but is it really worth the bother when you can just put together the deck on MTGO in two minutes and then enter a competitive league?
Isn't this idea that MTGA will become the prime choice for competitive Standard players just a fantasy born out of the hopes of supporters and the fears of pessimists? And let's not even talk about drafters: is drafting without any chance to dump your surplus cards to fuel more drafts really appealing to frequent drafters?
And another thing: Pete compares MTGA to casual experiences like Thursday nights on the local store. But it really isn't. Your pairings in the casual queue get you opponents who aren't really good players (so that's not ideal for who's trying to seriously test a deck), but at the same time they all play the current best archetype lists you find online, down to a tee. It's partially due to the economy rewarding you from winning as fast as possible, and as consistently as possible, every single day.
SaffronOlive's most important point is made almost incidentally, but it's something I've been saying since a few months already, and everybody who's not starting any analysis there is missing the point entirely: MTGA is *not* MTG. It's not a digital experience of MTG, not even an approximation of it. It's just a videogame where you happen to be playing the same game.
But MTG is a Trading Card Game. That's the core of its business. If Magic weren't a TCG, do you think it would last 25 years? Of course not. It would have gone the way of The Great Dalmuti many years ago.
The secondary market is mightily important for the MTG business model. It's what keeps it alive. And we can be sure they care about it, because they're still absurdly enforcing a promise made 20 years ago to people who are likely not even active in the community anymore.
In short, if you can't trade, buy and sell cards, it's not Magic. And MTGA is expressly built in a way that will make this impossible. It's the heir of Duel of the Planeswalkers, not the replacement of MTGO. It doesn't even try to be that, its goal is explicitly *not* that.
SaffronOlive made a point that I think holds true today, a few weeks ago.
the point at which MTGO players need to start worrying is when Standard prices start to tank. So far, those prices have not. There are still drafters and standard players on the client. For how much longer, I am not sure, but I need to see a road map for Arena before I decide if the sky is falling or not.
Yes Arena does a lot of cool things, but it does not let me do a lot of other cool things. Will it ever support multiplayer commander? Will it go in modern, legacy or actual pauper?
We will see I reckon.
It doesn't necessarily mean the people leaving were actually active, though. It's entirely anecdotic, but I have met a few people online who have cashed out and moved to MTGA but had stopped playing MTGO a while before. They just kept their collection around "in case of".
This is crunch time. Whoever is left and is still playing Standard and Limited on MTGO in few months time will be MTGO's players base for the foreseeable future. If it's insufficient, we might have an early lights out. If it's big enough, we'll a few years at least.
When it comes to adding further sets to MTGA and getting full Modern, Legacy, Vintage and retro-drafts, it might happen at some point, but it will take a lot of time. I know they changed the way individual cards are implemented in the new client, but it is still an enormous task, and it would require a complete overall of MTGA's current economical model (even more probably a parallel gem-only system).
And no, the client is not particularly adapted to such complex play: it is clearly meant to be played on a tablet, and it follows a "show one thing real big on the screen" model. You want to see your graveyard? Click it and it takes all the real estate. Same thing for any zone, same thing when a card gives you a choice. Try to play a Legacy game where both graveyards, exile zones, and a complex battlefield all matter at the same time. And learning thousands of new cards when each and everyone can only be checked one by one once on the battlefield is ludicrous. All of that is "solvable", but the simple reality is that MTGA is not aiming at representing that level of complexity.
Yes the writing is on the wall. It is sad but true.
You are absolutly right
As a sign that you are not the only one doing this, look at the value of full playsets of collections from Pete's articles. It went from around 22k 6 months before arena was announce to 15k 1 year after Arena is out.
Thats a drop of 7k (30%) and thats with 5-6 new sets into the system. (more cards , less money)
Its a sign that people are leaving.. people are cashing out.
Wizard will support MTGO as long as people supports and plays, but the clock is ticking..it will eventually go away when enough people leave.. they are even supporting streamers like they never did for MTGO. which is forcing them to start and move into Arena instead of MTGO..
They currently serve 2 different purpose, but Arena will eventually add those fonctionality and they Arena will be better.
My 2 cents
Wow thanks Alphi for your helpful reply.
In that case, I am very concerned for the future for Modo long-term, unless Wizards drastically change their employee/contractor hiring policy and go on a fire-and-hire spree (for example to run the bulk of MODO support offshore where labour is cheap, but that might pose its own challenges).
I do certainly fear for the Commander players - they will be the first casualty for sure because they don't directly contribute much profit (and as a group they probably pesker WOTC the most with their bug notifications for random interractions that can arise in Commander games).
We saw in the past how quickly WotC was willing to abandon the Tribal Wars and s100 communities, and that was merely because they wanted to save money by reducing the amount of filters!
It's always difficult to tell, but one can look at the leagues for Vintage, Legacy and Modern: having a quick look at the client, I see respectively (rounded) 90, 400, and 1,600 (putting Modern friendly and competitive together).
The question then is: how many regular participants could that represent? Rule of thumb is at least between 5 and 10 times as much, depending on whether most players play their leagues in one go or wait a day or more between matches. That's put modern as relatively active, Legacy at barely sustainable, and Vintage as a mini project for a few people. Numbers might spike during the weekend, although 400 to 500 for Legacy is what I usually see during the weekends.
It's hard to justify maintaining the client for these numbers, especially considering the work it takes to import new sets (and that would still need to be done). In comparison, GRN draft leagues is at 6,000 participants right now. Without THAT, new sets just wouldn't get released at nearly the same pace.
I think we'll have to wait and see how things go (I read an article today saying participation in Modern is lower at the moment the way it always is when a new Standard gets released), but it's hard to be optimistic.
they listed their favorite card as BMW, so I'm pretty sure that was just a bot.
Jimlasia, we are all just dying to hear your insightful views about RUG Tron!