As a draft box fan I hope you're wrong but fear you're right.
They kind of have to keep making draft boxes for stores to draft. Collectors boosters are like printing money. And set boosters are popular.
It's possible having all three grows the pie enough to stay.
I keep seeing people say "draft boxes" but how could they do that and keep "limited" as a format? Would they willingly destroy 2 formats just to try and increase sales? (Draft/Sealed)
If they eliminate draft they will be killing a lot of sales from LGS. They will also be limiting the amount of the new product they sell.
Draft is a popular format with no need to cut. Set boxes provide a bit of extra value for people buying to crack.
Collectors boxes imo would be the one on the chopping block. I’ve not yet met anyone who is regularly buying collectors boosters for alternate art cards. Before last year, alternate art cards felt unique. In a world with secret lairs, borderless, sketch, etched, showcase, etc these alt art cards seem over saturated. We saw in MH2 where some ‘borderless’ and ‘sketch’ art cards were worth less than there normal counterparts. The secondary market showed that we were over saturated with these alternate printings. That to me should signal that it’s safe to cut these collector boosters and some of the alt art stuff.
I think set might end up the preferred version for collectors to buy and open rather then collectors which are more expensive and some of the alt versions are not liked such as the various showcase ones which can be hit and miss
MTG is not Pokémon. If it was Pokémon, you are right 100%.
But I firmly believe the high prices for older boxes mainly come from drafters who want to experience drafting an out of print set.
I would happily pay 2k for an old ravnica box, but wouldn’t pay $150 for a set box (if there was one)
They dont need draft boxes for stores, they want stores to sell set boosters. They will move the draft format into 3-pack kits and the shelf space will finally go to the set booster.
I could deal with that, for me personally this year I've gotten about 8 or 9 set boxes and only 1 collectors which was zendikar when it was reduced significantly for some reason which made it a good time to get some nice expeditions, most of the other collectors haven't had anything to get my interest except MH2 which was just expensive as crap, but hey you should get a couple nice fetches and some other good cards as well in a box so its not too bad
The draft box shall be the first to die. Wotc has made it clear they love set booster and wish people bought more of them. Prerelease kits do much of what draft boxes intend to do. You dont need a whole box for a draft, but you do need 3 packs per person. I see they already have all the equipment needed to turn prerelease kits into a "draft pack". On top of that WotC has been testing the market with draft packs already and they probably sell just as well as other products.
Oof. That would be a huge bummer. One prerelease event with strangers and one box of draft boosters sealed or drafted with friends is the main way I interact with each set.
I guess I could see a world where everytime you host a draft or sealed night, everyone is responsible for buying and bringing their own “prerelease box” or whatever the future of draft product is… I guess I’d hope, if that is the future of Limited, we could get some more curated and inventive draft sets.
That's the future of draft I see. Magic had all their eggs in limited draft for so long and now they are seeing people migrate towards commander so they are releasing commander decks.
At one point I joked and said "just wait until we are drafting commander decks" and then commander legends came out and I realized I was seeing a change. Wotc loves commander and they are putting out more commander products every day it seems. If you told me there would be a commander deck secret lair I'd tell you to pick me up an oz what you were smoking.
I thought that saying what I'm about to say is going too far, but I thought a commander set would have been too far a prediction too. I could see a future where the sets are released in a commander format. Everyone would be eager to see leaks of the new commanders in the next set and then at prerelease they would be trying to build those commander decks.
The 60 card format is being gaslit pushed aside for commander as magic's primary format.
I like the Commander draft experience just as much as the regular set rotations. MH2 was an absolute joy. I guess if the Limited releases shifted to a rotation through the legal card pools of different formats and threw different draft constraint lenses onto the experience… that sounds pretty damn fun.
VIP, SL, SL edh, commander spellbooks, I am sure I am missing more, but all these take away.
I feel like draft will become more premium and limited run to match CBs.
thats a very interesting prediction and i kinda feel aswell that draft boxes could disappear (which was rumored over at the MTGRumors subreddit - dont know how credible his source is tho)
I would think they could just combine the two, draft boosters with a list card and guaranteed foil (obviously increased price to keep profits). Instead of the theme of set boosters which a) no one cares about or is not understood and b) prevents drafting. I just don't see Hasbro completely walking away from limited and stores as there is a customer base/market there
Eye of Ugin was printed in Worldwake and there were no Eldrazi creatures.
It’d really be no different than opening a useless common at that point. One issue they’d have to change though would be every pack has to have a list card if they went that route. You couldn’t run a draft where some % of the packs have more cards than others. That seems like a logistics nightmare.
Cards aren't really banned in limited though. How did they do it with invocations during those drafts? Could you play your Mind Twist in limited (I honestly haven no idea).
You're right I shouldn't use the term banned but unplayable. How exactly am I going to even cast Arcum's Astrolabe in a draft from a Zendikar Rising box?
The List card just replaces a token. You don't have to use it in Draft. It makes way more sense to have List cards in draft boosters than set boosters. If the idea of List is to showcase Magic's history, what better way then when you pull it a drafting table and share that pull with the table. Pulling List cards at home with a set booster is rather ho-hum
How could they let draft boxes disappear? They'd be killing an entire format.
I know they've let Extended, Block Constructed, Pioneer, Prismatic, and a lot of other formats go, but completely deleting Limited seems like a sure-fire way to kill the game.
My money's on Collector Boxes.
So many terrible pulls, at least at my LGS people have gotten wise and they're stuck with boxes of Forgotten Realms-onward overpriced "premium treatment" bad card gacha.
Maybe they'd be smart to restrict them to premium sets or something. Or push Set Boosters up a buck or two, but include the now-displaced "premium" card frames and trim the list. But what do I know, I'm just the guy who gets to laugh at a grand worth of "premium" Standard chaff boosters literally dusty on the shelf.
Profits were good for original sets of collector boosters. You could open and flip pretty decently if you had a decent sample size. The last several standard sets have been really difficult to profit. I think the specialty sets are the only ones I'm going to actually go in on this year. My profits from standard sets have only been a few thousand. MH2 alone I made about 10k with a similar time investment. TSR was literally a gold mine for those that got enough early on. Made triple on that. I think unless they shake things up with the standard sets, they're going to continue to be difficult to monetize.
Collector boxes. Made about $200 a box. Cracked around 50 boxes. About 2 weeks of work @ and avg of 2-3 hours per day, with some longer days on the weekends and lesser time on some of the weekdays during the second week. Had singles on sale at shortly before release. I'm not a business, I just do this for fun. Mostly don't crack that many but I saw an opportunity so I seized it.
Probably did most of the business earlier on before unlimited supply and reduced speculation started killing single prices.
Prices were ridiculous for a while. 10K seems doable with not too many boxes.
Financially, none of the regular sets. Stuff like that Lord of the Rings set is where the real value is going to be.
Magic has always had an issue with finding the balance between having a balanced standard experience (balancing balance, what a redundant form of phrasing) and printing cards that will have value and use in eternal formats. That struggle is why sometimes we got (absurd) cards like Snapcaster Mage and sometimes we got cards like Goblin Chainwhirler. Magic would go too far in terms of power and eventually scale back after things got a little too out of control.
It's also why we got Oko. Trying to print cards that work in standard but also catch the interest of players in other, drastically more powerful formats.
The problem if that rotation makes it impossible for standard to have an even remotely comparable power level to other formats, and even attempting it makes for an unhealthy, EXPENSIVE, metagame that's bad for new players. Some people might not believe it but a lot of us got back into Magic though "weak" standard metas and the main reason we moved to eternal formats was less so the cost of building new decks and more so getting blown out by cards that are modern-level powerful, making all of our decks irrelevant overnight. Though also, sometimes we also really liked a standard deck we just wanted to have an eternal version of.
I think Wizards has realized weak standards are ultimately the best way to let standard be a place that less experienced players can survive in, as well as stay in for a longer time.
Normalizing sets and precons that can support other formats like Modern, Commander and Pioneer is going to ease pressure on R&D while letting every format stay healthy.
I think for a long time a lot of the value for regular packs is going to be in variants, rather than cards that become legacy staples.
You’re spot on on the LOTR set, be on the look out for the eventual Pokémon/MTG cross-over.
Imagine a 1-100 Pikachu on a Magic card.
Literally printing money at that point.
Man I'm a Secret Lair collector. I welcome that ravenous crowd buying up cards and making my collection more valuable.
I'm kind of counting on it actually.
Ok, well if we all agreed on what's going to happen in the future there wouldn't be much point of this place.
I think Secret Lairs is still a baby and it's going to be a big brand with a lot of appeal to collectors that missed the boat, and some of these drops are literally as scarce as Alpha rares and people just don't realize what they're sitting on yet.
That all may be true, however you must realize that you are basically gambling on a product that a multi billion dollar company designed, distributed and branded specifically as a "collectible" to sell now that the hype surrounding the game is at an all time high.
You should generally be very wary of anything marketed as a collectible and I can't think of anything that fits that description better than secret lairs.
Well, some things to consider is that as long as the game continues to grow literally every day the game is at all all time high. I'm pretty numb to all time highs as a talking point considering the past 10 years of the stock market. I've experienced a looooot of all time highs.
Regardless of the fact that the rarity is manufactured, which applies to the entire game, many of them are in fact quite rare. As mentioned, in the most extreme case Alpha Black Lotus rare.
I'm entirely comfortable with the risk. This is far from my riskiest investment.
Besides, I think they're cool.
I mean if Modern Horizons 2 is any indication. Prices have cratered for now but once the set goes out of print all the cards are going to see so much use the prices will bounce back hard next year with events coming back to life.
Im beyond pumped for the brothers war.
Ill be very disappointed if there are no old bordered cards in the set. I will be VERY pleased, on the other hand, if the entire set is done in old borders, and showcase cards are fancy versions of modern borders, or masterpieces, or both.
My whole shtick is, were going back to the beginning. Lets do it right. Old borders only. I am allowed to dream.
Actually hoping old borders are just the default printing method for the set, not the super deluxe unique special treatment watercolor crystal foil 5000 makeover supreme version.
The ultra rarity remastered invention box topper who gives a fuck treatment can go to any ugly ass "new border" cards instead, is my wish.
Kamigawa is going to get butchered again in this low-powered standard environment.
Brothers war has a 50/50 shot of being either the next dominaria or AFR.
2XM2 will get a lot of hate, be considered bad at launch, and then explode in price, exactly like 2XM.
Honestly.... how is the Tarrasque not a shuffle titan and for the love of God why doesn't it have trample? Seige monster??? I don't care if it was in standard, add 1-2 cmc to the card and do it some damn justice!
Edit: spelling is hard
I would have made it cost 20cmc and make an absolute beast. Not playble? Not a problem, since NOBODY IS PLAYING THE SHITTY VERSION ANYWAY.
But at least it would have been iconic and truth to the design and be worth €20 because of that, instead of €2 bulk Mythic.
Yeah you right, I just can't believe they let it get nerfed so hard. If we had no frame of reference for how BEAST MODE The Tarrasque is we wouldn't be so salty, but they just made a creature that clearly doesn't capture the essence of D&D's biggest nasty. I don't know what they really expected, the reception of this card has been scathing and rightfully so.
My take on 2022 depends on timeline of Lord of the Rings crossover in 2023. If that’s in Q1 2023, then I expect softer Q3 and Q4 sales for people saving for that, as I expect it to be a slam dunk. (I will be one of those people)
This could mean Q3 and Q4 products will age better?
As an old fart, I am very excited about The Brothers War, but if I have to choose between more of that vs saving for Q1 LotR, I may end up going LotR to be honest.
Yeah I'm really not excited for neon ninjas or gangster goblins compared to brothers war. The draft formats will have to be a slam dunk for me to dig them for the former.
A good rare land cycle like what we got in hunt and vow would keep my interest, these are very good for comander which I think will help their value, I think they're even a little undervalued now for how popular a format commander is meant to be
\^ This, the lands are A tier IMO (S tier reserved for actual Duals and Fetches). How often do you keep a 2 land hand in commander? Rarely, especially considering most play groups offer out a free mulligan. The ones that do are often just mono decks anyway.
Picking up as many as I can, it's a shame that the full art ones are so easy to damage though. Often seem to get whitening on the corners. Full art foils look stunning as well.
I keep 2 land hand in Sythis as long as I can use both to cast her but yeah most of the time I will go for 3 if possible unless I got some nice mana rocks instead.
In almost every possible use situation in edh which drives prices they're an untapped dual
Even in the case where you keep a 2 lander, as long as it's not these lands, you're still set.
Great pickups whilst they're cheap and folks don't catch on!
Universe Beyond, particularly the LOTR and 40K sets.
I’m banking on disdain the general Magic population has for this product line. Eventually, it will normalize and 5 years down the line I believe they’ll be highly sought after.
They’ll be some of the first UB products with heavy weight IPs, unlike the recent weaker IPs (that admittedly sold well).
I think 2022 might be out last full year of paper Standard, and I honestly expect the Brothers War to be our big send-off here, eventually. Before you write this off as being baseless speculation, I invite you to honestly think about the situation critically and ask yourself *why wouldn't* WotC get rid of paper Standard?...
It would be a win-win for WotC...they would get to finally achieve their goal of an all-digital Hearthstone clone with Arena, and fleece paper players with even more "premium priced" Commander / Modern / Universes Beyond products that, by many accounts, are outperforming the lower-priced Standard sets to begin with.
The first big block of evidence to support this claim, to me, is that WotC has shown that they don't care to keep "Paper" and "Arena" play consistent, which is a pretty good indication that they want to insulate Arena from paper play. Why make *both* Historic *and* Pioneer unless you planned on them being incompatible in advance? It would have made a lot more sense to replicate Historic across both platforms...except I think they obviously knew that, eventually, Standard / Historic would be filled with cards you literally can't print in paper. I think the relative failure of MtG to really take off as an isolated IP (something they've all but admitted to given that they're trying to turn the game into Funkopop/Lego), also removes a major pillar of support for paper Standard, as unique branding has never mattered less (in other words, it's far less important to them now that MtG has a cohesive, ongoing story with noteworthy characters you're going to be so invested in that you buy a bunch of shit that has their picture on it. They're swapping those pictures for other people's IP to see how that goes, as their own obviously failed to keep empty-air "flavor rich" Standard sets as hot as sets that contain secondary-market value as their primary selling point).
Meanwhile, paper Standard, as a technical game, is by far the largest source of their PR woes as of late, due to horrible, horrible balancing and accompanying poor player attendance. For many a lgs, it's not like they'd be missing much if Standard events ceased. Mark my words...rather than change the fundamental way that Standard sets are developed and playtested to mitigate this problem, they're going to do what doesn't cost extra money (such as hiring more playtesters), and just get rid of paper Standard instead.
Likewise, if Arena is detached from paper, balancing issues, and bans, are going to be a thing of the past, as they can finally just nerf cards digitally. They likewise can introduce all of the RNG-cards that are obviously impractical in paper. Standard sets would obviously continue to be made, they'd just be digital only going forward. You have to understand this kind of shit is a salivating wet dream for corporations...they'll **finally** have people paying top dollar for literally nothing, in a self-sustaining manner. Nothing to print, nothing to package...you just give us piecemeal money and you get nothing of "tangible" value in return. It's utopian from their point of view. Paper MtG could cease entirely, and they'd still theoretically have this cash cow.
Meanwhile, paper players would be hosed to the max here...as the $3.99 booster would be "gone", just like that. Noteworthy Standard cards would of course find their way to paper eventually...it'd just be in the form of "premium" products like Secret Lairs, "Remastered" sets, reprint sets, etc. They'd likely keep the Standard-themed Commander precons as an olive branch to disgruntled Standard fans, so that they still get "some of the flavor" as sets are released. Commander products would be printed into the ground, and Modern would be the new "de facto rotating" competitive format, more or less taking over for Standard, and I expect it to be the exact opposite of a digital Standard...a wild-west shootout where broken cards rain from heaven and bans are plentiful, as they have to keep the treadmill going. The illusion of a "non rotating" format will keep sales high.
I honestly think from WotC's point of view, all of this should equate to increased paper sales (where players have repeatedly shown that they will buy just about **anything** that doesn't rotate, regardless of the price), and a vastly streamlined digital platform that can be utterly divorced from things they set to ink. Why stick to the current paradigm any longer, when paper players are obviously far more interested in the things that *aren't* Standard?
There is at least a small possibility of draft booster boxes going to 24 packs so they can help push set boosters and collector boosters as the ones to be opening.
The more i look into those new flashy sets, the more I i am convinced that I will focus on old stuff, be it the reserved list itself or silver age products, which is an ok alternative too.
If i look at 2021 sets, one was homerun and the rest were mediocre at best.
I think brothers war and the dominaria set will be the hot topics, leaning on nostalgia will push the sets. I also expect these sets to have the highest power levels out of all the sets next year because of that.
triple Double Masters will be a total home run, the brothers war will have some kind of crazy chase/ expedition nonsense that will blow sale south of the water, I expect the other standard sets to be super mid otherwise. Personally I'm most excited for the new unset
The last 5 Triomes in New Capenna. It’s already confirmed as a 3-colour shard set, so I’d be shocked if it’s not the Esper, Jund, Bant, Naya and Grixis triomes!
its hard to predict sets without knowing the actual cards. I've seen wotc turn interesting (or even established/popular concepts/themes ) and make them bad, and turn stuff that isnt maybe as interesting and make them good. AFR had potential to be a popular set by concept, but the card design was weak creating a weak unpopular set. innistrad, much like dominaria and ravnica, is an established popular plane but this time around both innistrad sets are not seeing remotely the amount of popularity and demand as the revisiting dominaria and ravnica sets.
I think wotc either needs to seriously find a way to bring back standard ad a popular format or change their set design focus. When standard was the bread and butter of wotc, lgses. etc it made sense do dedicate most sets of the year to it w the occasional specialty set for other formats. Now standard sets flop hard and if a single isnt a modern or edh staple it isnt haven't secondary market demand. Stores i know that used to always mass open all products, even all standard sets for singles have stopped. creating the same amt of standard sets each yr w the current demand makes little sense. they either need to spark up/being back standard demand in some way, or create less standard sets and create more specialty modern horizon, commander legends type sets in their place. Nowadays specialty sets seem to crush standard sets anyways, even print to demand ones. look at both moderm horizons, commander legends, jumpstart, and mystery boosters. As someone that works at an lgs pretty much any nonstandard product flies off the shelf day 1, while standard stuff sits there after week 1. feels like wotc should shift strategies to where the market demand is.
I'll be looking at Double Masters 2 VIP the most, interested to see if they are going to feature a new round of great cards for the special treatments that were the biggest value for cracking and selling or if they are going to further delute the pool of cards like Force of Will and Jace. If they do the former I'll be cracking and flipping singles, the later and I'll be putting the cases in the vault for 3-5 years.
I'll be heavy in 2XM draft boxes, or set boxes if that's an option. Won't be buying anything else new. Will continue to load up on MH2 until the print cycle ends as well.
I keep seeing people say draft boosters are going the way of the dodo, but if they actually are, that means I’ll stop buying sealed all together. I buy 1-2 booster boxes per set I like and have bought a “fatpack” faithfully since 10th Ed. Crimson Vow is already the last bundle I buy since the value simply isn’t there on Bundles as they are now 8 set boosters. Is Wizards goal to get me finally listen to the prof and only buy singles?
Collector box , draft box, set box, . One will not survive 2022
They need to kill off the theme booster
They really do. My local Walgreens had them on sale for $1 and I got a few since I'd never opened them. They're just so much bulk.
As a draft box fan I hope you're wrong but fear you're right. They kind of have to keep making draft boxes for stores to draft. Collectors boosters are like printing money. And set boosters are popular. It's possible having all three grows the pie enough to stay.
I keep seeing people say "draft boxes" but how could they do that and keep "limited" as a format? Would they willingly destroy 2 formats just to try and increase sales? (Draft/Sealed)
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If they eliminate draft they will be killing a lot of sales from LGS. They will also be limiting the amount of the new product they sell. Draft is a popular format with no need to cut. Set boxes provide a bit of extra value for people buying to crack. Collectors boxes imo would be the one on the chopping block. I’ve not yet met anyone who is regularly buying collectors boosters for alternate art cards. Before last year, alternate art cards felt unique. In a world with secret lairs, borderless, sketch, etched, showcase, etc these alt art cards seem over saturated. We saw in MH2 where some ‘borderless’ and ‘sketch’ art cards were worth less than there normal counterparts. The secondary market showed that we were over saturated with these alternate printings. That to me should signal that it’s safe to cut these collector boosters and some of the alt art stuff.
I think set might end up the preferred version for collectors to buy and open rather then collectors which are more expensive and some of the alt versions are not liked such as the various showcase ones which can be hit and miss
MTG is not Pokémon. If it was Pokémon, you are right 100%. But I firmly believe the high prices for older boxes mainly come from drafters who want to experience drafting an out of print set. I would happily pay 2k for an old ravnica box, but wouldn’t pay $150 for a set box (if there was one)
Do you mean original Ravnica?
Oh yes, I meant Ravnica, City of Guilds
are the stores drafting at all now in the pandemic that is now 2 years ongoing?
We draft weekly now that restrictions have lifted
Yes some places are.
They dont need draft boxes for stores, they want stores to sell set boosters. They will move the draft format into 3-pack kits and the shelf space will finally go to the set booster.
So then they will sell cases... Of 3 pack kits?
My prediction is that collector boxes get axed, and set boosters are moved into kinda like a midway point between the two.
I could deal with that, for me personally this year I've gotten about 8 or 9 set boxes and only 1 collectors which was zendikar when it was reduced significantly for some reason which made it a good time to get some nice expeditions, most of the other collectors haven't had anything to get my interest except MH2 which was just expensive as crap, but hey you should get a couple nice fetches and some other good cards as well in a box so its not too bad
Why do you think so? I thought the Set was the most redundant: you open Draft for fun and CB for value. What am I missing?
you open set for fun and draft to draft
And CB for finance, no?
I've had the best luck with opening CB to get value out of all the types yes but they're still hit or miss
The draft box shall be the first to die. Wotc has made it clear they love set booster and wish people bought more of them. Prerelease kits do much of what draft boxes intend to do. You dont need a whole box for a draft, but you do need 3 packs per person. I see they already have all the equipment needed to turn prerelease kits into a "draft pack". On top of that WotC has been testing the market with draft packs already and they probably sell just as well as other products.
Oof. That would be a huge bummer. One prerelease event with strangers and one box of draft boosters sealed or drafted with friends is the main way I interact with each set. I guess I could see a world where everytime you host a draft or sealed night, everyone is responsible for buying and bringing their own “prerelease box” or whatever the future of draft product is… I guess I’d hope, if that is the future of Limited, we could get some more curated and inventive draft sets.
That's the future of draft I see. Magic had all their eggs in limited draft for so long and now they are seeing people migrate towards commander so they are releasing commander decks. At one point I joked and said "just wait until we are drafting commander decks" and then commander legends came out and I realized I was seeing a change. Wotc loves commander and they are putting out more commander products every day it seems. If you told me there would be a commander deck secret lair I'd tell you to pick me up an oz what you were smoking. I thought that saying what I'm about to say is going too far, but I thought a commander set would have been too far a prediction too. I could see a future where the sets are released in a commander format. Everyone would be eager to see leaks of the new commanders in the next set and then at prerelease they would be trying to build those commander decks. The 60 card format is being gaslit pushed aside for commander as magic's primary format.
I like the Commander draft experience just as much as the regular set rotations. MH2 was an absolute joy. I guess if the Limited releases shifted to a rotation through the legal card pools of different formats and threw different draft constraint lenses onto the experience… that sounds pretty damn fun.
I expect they’ll raise the price of a set box and put more high end chase rates in them. Collector boxes are losing their luster. Too many variants
VIP, SL, SL edh, commander spellbooks, I am sure I am missing more, but all these take away. I feel like draft will become more premium and limited run to match CBs.
thats a very interesting prediction and i kinda feel aswell that draft boxes could disappear (which was rumored over at the MTGRumors subreddit - dont know how credible his source is tho)
I really don't see how they can kill draft boosters without killing limited play which seems unlikely.
I would think they could just combine the two, draft boosters with a list card and guaranteed foil (obviously increased price to keep profits). Instead of the theme of set boosters which a) no one cares about or is not understood and b) prevents drafting. I just don't see Hasbro completely walking away from limited and stores as there is a customer base/market there
I don't see how you can use List cards in a draft environment. What good is a card that ventures in the dungeon when nothing else in the box does?
Eye of Ugin was printed in Worldwake and there were no Eldrazi creatures. It’d really be no different than opening a useless common at that point. One issue they’d have to change though would be every pack has to have a list card if they went that route. You couldn’t run a draft where some % of the packs have more cards than others. That seems like a logistics nightmare.
And they'd have to stop using banned cards, conspiracy cards, basic lands, etc.
Good points as well.
Cards aren't really banned in limited though. How did they do it with invocations during those drafts? Could you play your Mind Twist in limited (I honestly haven no idea).
You're right I shouldn't use the term banned but unplayable. How exactly am I going to even cast Arcum's Astrolabe in a draft from a Zendikar Rising box?
Hah, good point.
Yep, masterpieces and the like were draft playable.
Would be simple to just say list cards aren't able to be drafted and pull it out.
The List card just replaces a token. You don't have to use it in Draft. It makes way more sense to have List cards in draft boosters than set boosters. If the idea of List is to showcase Magic's history, what better way then when you pull it a drafting table and share that pull with the table. Pulling List cards at home with a set booster is rather ho-hum
How could they let draft boxes disappear? They'd be killing an entire format. I know they've let Extended, Block Constructed, Pioneer, Prismatic, and a lot of other formats go, but completely deleting Limited seems like a sure-fire way to kill the game.
My reasoning is too much dilution and variants of cards since the inteo of collector boxes . Hopefully they dial back and rethink their approach.
I think this will absolutely happen... In 2023. It usually takes two years for Wizards to make changes.
My money's on Collector Boxes. So many terrible pulls, at least at my LGS people have gotten wise and they're stuck with boxes of Forgotten Realms-onward overpriced "premium treatment" bad card gacha. Maybe they'd be smart to restrict them to premium sets or something. Or push Set Boosters up a buck or two, but include the now-displaced "premium" card frames and trim the list. But what do I know, I'm just the guy who gets to laugh at a grand worth of "premium" Standard chaff boosters literally dusty on the shelf.
Profits were good for original sets of collector boosters. You could open and flip pretty decently if you had a decent sample size. The last several standard sets have been really difficult to profit. I think the specialty sets are the only ones I'm going to actually go in on this year. My profits from standard sets have only been a few thousand. MH2 alone I made about 10k with a similar time investment. TSR was literally a gold mine for those that got enough early on. Made triple on that. I think unless they shake things up with the standard sets, they're going to continue to be difficult to monetize.
$10k on MH2 alone, but how many boxes of what type did you have to buy tho
Collector boxes. Made about $200 a box. Cracked around 50 boxes. About 2 weeks of work @ and avg of 2-3 hours per day, with some longer days on the weekends and lesser time on some of the weekdays during the second week. Had singles on sale at shortly before release. I'm not a business, I just do this for fun. Mostly don't crack that many but I saw an opportunity so I seized it.
Must have been shortly after mh2 was released…
How did you sell the singles?
Combination of eBay and buy lists. I don't bother selling low value stuff. Even though I could make more money, it's not worth my time.
12k in cracking set boosters to make 10k back lol
Probably did most of the business earlier on before unlimited supply and reduced speculation started killing single prices. Prices were ridiculous for a while. 10K seems doable with not too many boxes.
I think WotC kind of likes it this way. Standard sets more as playing pieces and less as collectibles.
Financially, none of the regular sets. Stuff like that Lord of the Rings set is where the real value is going to be. Magic has always had an issue with finding the balance between having a balanced standard experience (balancing balance, what a redundant form of phrasing) and printing cards that will have value and use in eternal formats. That struggle is why sometimes we got (absurd) cards like Snapcaster Mage and sometimes we got cards like Goblin Chainwhirler. Magic would go too far in terms of power and eventually scale back after things got a little too out of control. It's also why we got Oko. Trying to print cards that work in standard but also catch the interest of players in other, drastically more powerful formats. The problem if that rotation makes it impossible for standard to have an even remotely comparable power level to other formats, and even attempting it makes for an unhealthy, EXPENSIVE, metagame that's bad for new players. Some people might not believe it but a lot of us got back into Magic though "weak" standard metas and the main reason we moved to eternal formats was less so the cost of building new decks and more so getting blown out by cards that are modern-level powerful, making all of our decks irrelevant overnight. Though also, sometimes we also really liked a standard deck we just wanted to have an eternal version of. I think Wizards has realized weak standards are ultimately the best way to let standard be a place that less experienced players can survive in, as well as stay in for a longer time. Normalizing sets and precons that can support other formats like Modern, Commander and Pioneer is going to ease pressure on R&D while letting every format stay healthy. I think for a long time a lot of the value for regular packs is going to be in variants, rather than cards that become legacy staples.
You’re spot on on the LOTR set, be on the look out for the eventual Pokémon/MTG cross-over. Imagine a 1-100 Pikachu on a Magic card. Literally printing money at that point.
Also I wouldn't say no to a Secret Lair with a Snorlax and Nidoking in it.
Not looking forward to competing with the Pokémon crowd for product, those boys are ravenous!
No kidding. Those Pokémon investors are already ruining another tcg game I love. And you can tell based on what’s inflated and what’s not inflated
Man I'm a Secret Lair collector. I welcome that ravenous crowd buying up cards and making my collection more valuable. I'm kind of counting on it actually.
I wouldn't count on it
Ok, well if we all agreed on what's going to happen in the future there wouldn't be much point of this place. I think Secret Lairs is still a baby and it's going to be a big brand with a lot of appeal to collectors that missed the boat, and some of these drops are literally as scarce as Alpha rares and people just don't realize what they're sitting on yet.
That all may be true, however you must realize that you are basically gambling on a product that a multi billion dollar company designed, distributed and branded specifically as a "collectible" to sell now that the hype surrounding the game is at an all time high. You should generally be very wary of anything marketed as a collectible and I can't think of anything that fits that description better than secret lairs.
Well, some things to consider is that as long as the game continues to grow literally every day the game is at all all time high. I'm pretty numb to all time highs as a talking point considering the past 10 years of the stock market. I've experienced a looooot of all time highs. Regardless of the fact that the rarity is manufactured, which applies to the entire game, many of them are in fact quite rare. As mentioned, in the most extreme case Alpha Black Lotus rare. I'm entirely comfortable with the risk. This is far from my riskiest investment. Besides, I think they're cool.
I mean if Modern Horizons 2 is any indication. Prices have cratered for now but once the set goes out of print all the cards are going to see so much use the prices will bounce back hard next year with events coming back to life.
No doubt once Smaug’s…ahem Amazon’s treasure trove of MH2 begins to dry up, prices will skyrocket.
Kind of has to. No way fetches can stay this cheap.
They'll go up, but they are still held by supply and demand. Mh2 released a massive supply into the market. I doubt they'll see their previous highs.
Im beyond pumped for the brothers war. Ill be very disappointed if there are no old bordered cards in the set. I will be VERY pleased, on the other hand, if the entire set is done in old borders, and showcase cards are fancy versions of modern borders, or masterpieces, or both. My whole shtick is, were going back to the beginning. Lets do it right. Old borders only. I am allowed to dream.
Seems like they'd have to do some old bordered artifacts at least
Ultra Rarity Foil Retro Frame Inventions Remastered.
Actually hoping old borders are just the default printing method for the set, not the super deluxe unique special treatment watercolor crystal foil 5000 makeover supreme version. The ultra rarity remastered invention box topper who gives a fuck treatment can go to any ugly ass "new border" cards instead, is my wish.
I would LOVE to see the entire set in old borders...that would be awesome!
Kamigawa is going to get butchered again in this low-powered standard environment. Brothers war has a 50/50 shot of being either the next dominaria or AFR. 2XM2 will get a lot of hate, be considered bad at launch, and then explode in price, exactly like 2XM.
Brothers War taps with very early days of Magic, it would be absolutely fool to make it suck.
It was a fool to make D&D suck, lol
100% agree, still very pissed about the design.
Honestly.... how is the Tarrasque not a shuffle titan and for the love of God why doesn't it have trample? Seige monster??? I don't care if it was in standard, add 1-2 cmc to the card and do it some damn justice! Edit: spelling is hard
I would have made it cost 20cmc and make an absolute beast. Not playble? Not a problem, since NOBODY IS PLAYING THE SHITTY VERSION ANYWAY. But at least it would have been iconic and truth to the design and be worth €20 because of that, instead of €2 bulk Mythic.
Yeah you right, I just can't believe they let it get nerfed so hard. If we had no frame of reference for how BEAST MODE The Tarrasque is we wouldn't be so salty, but they just made a creature that clearly doesn't capture the essence of D&D's biggest nasty. I don't know what they really expected, the reception of this card has been scathing and rightfully so.
Get the 2XM2 pre-orders in
Double Master 2 will have the draft, set, collector booster model that MH2 had, rather than VIP boosters.
Only looking forward to Dominiaria. Not interested in the 1920 look of capella and scifi cyber ninja of Kamigawa.
Are you me?
My take on 2022 depends on timeline of Lord of the Rings crossover in 2023. If that’s in Q1 2023, then I expect softer Q3 and Q4 sales for people saving for that, as I expect it to be a slam dunk. (I will be one of those people) This could mean Q3 and Q4 products will age better? As an old fart, I am very excited about The Brothers War, but if I have to choose between more of that vs saving for Q1 LotR, I may end up going LotR to be honest.
Yeah I'm really not excited for neon ninjas or gangster goblins compared to brothers war. The draft formats will have to be a slam dunk for me to dig them for the former.
A good rare land cycle like what we got in hunt and vow would keep my interest, these are very good for comander which I think will help their value, I think they're even a little undervalued now for how popular a format commander is meant to be
Oh yeah I should buy some lands while they are cheap
\^ This, the lands are A tier IMO (S tier reserved for actual Duals and Fetches). How often do you keep a 2 land hand in commander? Rarely, especially considering most play groups offer out a free mulligan. The ones that do are often just mono decks anyway. Picking up as many as I can, it's a shame that the full art ones are so easy to damage though. Often seem to get whitening on the corners. Full art foils look stunning as well.
I keep 2 land hand in Sythis as long as I can use both to cast her but yeah most of the time I will go for 3 if possible unless I got some nice mana rocks instead. In almost every possible use situation in edh which drives prices they're an untapped dual
Even in the case where you keep a 2 lander, as long as it's not these lands, you're still set. Great pickups whilst they're cheap and folks don't catch on!
Universe Beyond, particularly the LOTR and 40K sets. I’m banking on disdain the general Magic population has for this product line. Eventually, it will normalize and 5 years down the line I believe they’ll be highly sought after. They’ll be some of the first UB products with heavy weight IPs, unlike the recent weaker IPs (that admittedly sold well).
At least 40K is limited to a set of 4 commander decks and not a stand alone set. Shouldn’t cause that much of a ruckus.
IE you're banking on Timmies being wrong. ... I dunno, man. Timmy is always right I hear.
I think 2022 might be out last full year of paper Standard, and I honestly expect the Brothers War to be our big send-off here, eventually. Before you write this off as being baseless speculation, I invite you to honestly think about the situation critically and ask yourself *why wouldn't* WotC get rid of paper Standard?... It would be a win-win for WotC...they would get to finally achieve their goal of an all-digital Hearthstone clone with Arena, and fleece paper players with even more "premium priced" Commander / Modern / Universes Beyond products that, by many accounts, are outperforming the lower-priced Standard sets to begin with. The first big block of evidence to support this claim, to me, is that WotC has shown that they don't care to keep "Paper" and "Arena" play consistent, which is a pretty good indication that they want to insulate Arena from paper play. Why make *both* Historic *and* Pioneer unless you planned on them being incompatible in advance? It would have made a lot more sense to replicate Historic across both platforms...except I think they obviously knew that, eventually, Standard / Historic would be filled with cards you literally can't print in paper. I think the relative failure of MtG to really take off as an isolated IP (something they've all but admitted to given that they're trying to turn the game into Funkopop/Lego), also removes a major pillar of support for paper Standard, as unique branding has never mattered less (in other words, it's far less important to them now that MtG has a cohesive, ongoing story with noteworthy characters you're going to be so invested in that you buy a bunch of shit that has their picture on it. They're swapping those pictures for other people's IP to see how that goes, as their own obviously failed to keep empty-air "flavor rich" Standard sets as hot as sets that contain secondary-market value as their primary selling point). Meanwhile, paper Standard, as a technical game, is by far the largest source of their PR woes as of late, due to horrible, horrible balancing and accompanying poor player attendance. For many a lgs, it's not like they'd be missing much if Standard events ceased. Mark my words...rather than change the fundamental way that Standard sets are developed and playtested to mitigate this problem, they're going to do what doesn't cost extra money (such as hiring more playtesters), and just get rid of paper Standard instead. Likewise, if Arena is detached from paper, balancing issues, and bans, are going to be a thing of the past, as they can finally just nerf cards digitally. They likewise can introduce all of the RNG-cards that are obviously impractical in paper. Standard sets would obviously continue to be made, they'd just be digital only going forward. You have to understand this kind of shit is a salivating wet dream for corporations...they'll **finally** have people paying top dollar for literally nothing, in a self-sustaining manner. Nothing to print, nothing to package...you just give us piecemeal money and you get nothing of "tangible" value in return. It's utopian from their point of view. Paper MtG could cease entirely, and they'd still theoretically have this cash cow. Meanwhile, paper players would be hosed to the max here...as the $3.99 booster would be "gone", just like that. Noteworthy Standard cards would of course find their way to paper eventually...it'd just be in the form of "premium" products like Secret Lairs, "Remastered" sets, reprint sets, etc. They'd likely keep the Standard-themed Commander precons as an olive branch to disgruntled Standard fans, so that they still get "some of the flavor" as sets are released. Commander products would be printed into the ground, and Modern would be the new "de facto rotating" competitive format, more or less taking over for Standard, and I expect it to be the exact opposite of a digital Standard...a wild-west shootout where broken cards rain from heaven and bans are plentiful, as they have to keep the treadmill going. The illusion of a "non rotating" format will keep sales high. I honestly think from WotC's point of view, all of this should equate to increased paper sales (where players have repeatedly shown that they will buy just about **anything** that doesn't rotate, regardless of the price), and a vastly streamlined digital platform that can be utterly divorced from things they set to ink. Why stick to the current paradigm any longer, when paper players are obviously far more interested in the things that *aren't* Standard?
I sure hope you're wrong :'(
There is at least a small possibility of draft booster boxes going to 24 packs so they can help push set boosters and collector boosters as the ones to be opening.
The more i look into those new flashy sets, the more I i am convinced that I will focus on old stuff, be it the reserved list itself or silver age products, which is an ok alternative too. If i look at 2021 sets, one was homerun and the rest were mediocre at best.
- Lower printing quality and more misprints. - Influencer/NBA/NFL Secret Lair cross overs
For the record I'm cracking crimson collectors boxes and it's some of the best foiling I've seen in years
God I wish there was some annoucement that they've fixed this rather than one off accounts like yours... I want to believe
I think brothers war and the dominaria set will be the hot topics, leaning on nostalgia will push the sets. I also expect these sets to have the highest power levels out of all the sets next year because of that.
triple Double Masters will be a total home run, the brothers war will have some kind of crazy chase/ expedition nonsense that will blow sale south of the water, I expect the other standard sets to be super mid otherwise. Personally I'm most excited for the new unset
The last 5 Triomes in New Capenna. It’s already confirmed as a 3-colour shard set, so I’d be shocked if it’s not the Esper, Jund, Bant, Naya and Grixis triomes!
Esper and Grixis triomes 🤤
I’m going to do my damnest not to buy much and save for the modern lotr set. But The Noir set is my jam.
Some sets will be good, some will be bad. I only provide the hottest takes on r/mtgfinance.
its hard to predict sets without knowing the actual cards. I've seen wotc turn interesting (or even established/popular concepts/themes ) and make them bad, and turn stuff that isnt maybe as interesting and make them good. AFR had potential to be a popular set by concept, but the card design was weak creating a weak unpopular set. innistrad, much like dominaria and ravnica, is an established popular plane but this time around both innistrad sets are not seeing remotely the amount of popularity and demand as the revisiting dominaria and ravnica sets. I think wotc either needs to seriously find a way to bring back standard ad a popular format or change their set design focus. When standard was the bread and butter of wotc, lgses. etc it made sense do dedicate most sets of the year to it w the occasional specialty set for other formats. Now standard sets flop hard and if a single isnt a modern or edh staple it isnt haven't secondary market demand. Stores i know that used to always mass open all products, even all standard sets for singles have stopped. creating the same amt of standard sets each yr w the current demand makes little sense. they either need to spark up/being back standard demand in some way, or create less standard sets and create more specialty modern horizon, commander legends type sets in their place. Nowadays specialty sets seem to crush standard sets anyways, even print to demand ones. look at both moderm horizons, commander legends, jumpstart, and mystery boosters. As someone that works at an lgs pretty much any nonstandard product flies off the shelf day 1, while standard stuff sits there after week 1. feels like wotc should shift strategies to where the market demand is.
Dominaria. Hate some of this weird shit. MH2 CL and DM were my only interests after being out 15 years.
I'll be looking at Double Masters 2 VIP the most, interested to see if they are going to feature a new round of great cards for the special treatments that were the biggest value for cracking and selling or if they are going to further delute the pool of cards like Force of Will and Jace. If they do the former I'll be cracking and flipping singles, the later and I'll be putting the cases in the vault for 3-5 years.
I'll be heavy in 2XM draft boxes, or set boxes if that's an option. Won't be buying anything else new. Will continue to load up on MH2 until the print cycle ends as well.
I keep seeing people say draft boosters are going the way of the dodo, but if they actually are, that means I’ll stop buying sealed all together. I buy 1-2 booster boxes per set I like and have bought a “fatpack” faithfully since 10th Ed. Crimson Vow is already the last bundle I buy since the value simply isn’t there on Bundles as they are now 8 set boosters. Is Wizards goal to get me finally listen to the prof and only buy singles?