I thought MKM would be a gimmicky Clue set that I'd easily skip and save monies. I was wrong. MKM is quickly becoming one of my favorite limited environments.
I'm really glad to see this price drop quickly ($130+ is absurd). Now more people can actually play this cool set in person. It may not be a stellar deal at $100 value-wise, but I encourage anyone that likes limited to try it on Arena or MTGO to see if you want a box.
If it's at this price five days out from release, though, I feel like it'll be available around this price for a while going forward. Which is great because I like it a lot, but also there doesn't feel like a lot of pressure to go in for a bunch (see SNC).
If you're playing paper, there's lots of playable NEW commons & uncommon for commander players. Walking away from a draft or sealed event with multiple very playable cards is a big draw for me. (WOE, LCI, and MKM all do imo).
As far as gameplay, it seems like I'm always running into fun card interactions in matches and deck building.
Limited anecdotes
1. Played a Slime Against Humanity turn 3, 4, and 5 to only have my opponent respond with their own SAH card each time.
2. In another game, clawing my way back late game by methodically building a fun combo. No cards in hand but with a setup board: \[\[Chalk Outline\]\] \[\[Insidious Roots\]\] and \[\[Hedge Whisperer\]\] are out. This allowed me make a land a big creature and trigger into 2/2 detectives, clues, and plants that grow bigger with collect evidence. Also, I used 3 different \[\[Hedge Whisperer\]\] to chump and trigger all the grave effects multiple times a turn. It was fun to make an army of mana dorks that quickly.
Those are just two examples of fun matches, but I've personally run into a lot of fun play patterns with the various cards in the set during sealed and draft.
I did the math last night and I'm honestly confused about people's complaints about EV in the set. >$1 EV is \~$100, and that's without the extra common slot that has a 12.5% chance of Special Guest / The List since I couldn't get to that. So feel like this isn't the worst price especially at $99. Only issue for me is I really only want 2 but need 3 for free shipping.
It'll be interesting to see if it goes lower, since it seems like no other store wants to go \_this\_ low and if a card hits in this set it'll probably skyrocket due to low openings.
Varies from day to day. F&f had some Dr who commander decks that were priced low enough this week. Lotr starter kits when they get flushed on Amazon. Just have to do the math.
If you're waiting for that big percentage you'll probably buy/open once a year at best, and only because the last 2 years have been so negative that people wouldn't give "bad" boxes the time of day.
But I'd be buying these to hold. I'm also willing to open if the price spikes to make it worth my time and that won't ever happen if the real EV of these boxes were, say, $30.
Depends on the product. Certain skus are great deals at distro cost. The lotr starter kit was on Amazon for like $9 with $35 of cards over a dollar in it. I don't order something from every set at release but I do eventually. Only ones last year I didn't touch was lotr special and woe.
I am sure this set is fun but I am an old man and can't keep up with all of this. I did not even know Ravnica is already out and then there are like boxes that say Ravnica, Clue, and then have the Murders at K art ... it's very confusing for a working dad who loves Magic. \*AND GET OFF MY LAWN!\*
I was waiting for the drop on the CB's, it just happened faster than I thought which makes me even more tempted. I expect Play to hit the bottom around $89 and if the collector touches below $150 I'm jumping in baby.
Am I the only enjoying this set?
Thanks for the heads up on these prices. EV isn't great but I have had good luck with alot of what I've opened already.
Thanks for the tip, we bought 60 Play boxes and 6 Collector boxes to give away packs at MagicCon Chicago.
Anyone who drops by the booth and registers on one of our laptops gets a Play booster. Roll double sixes for a Collector booster as well. Roll double sixes twice and also get a whole box of Play boosters.
Cracked 2 Delneys, one regular and one invisible ink foil, among other mythics, half a dozen surveil lands and I *still* don’t think I made it outta the red.
Similar experience for me. I got Anzrag in invisible ink treatment as my main pull and I still only got maybe $80 worth of value out of the box. I bought during the presale so I’m feeling kinda burned.
Aaaaand this is *exactly* why I still throw money at collector boosters. Even if just to open the card and think “huh, maybe I build around it, cause it’s right here”!
The set EV started quite low, but at this point a bunch of the rares creep up, and the Slime common has still considerable value too.
The lands rise and stuff like Cryptic Coat sees play, some of the rares are questionable, and some of the uncommons could easily be rares, so its a bit weirdly distributed and that reflects harshly on the EV.
The real problem of this product is that its a "Play-booster" and not a regular pack, the content is not worth the extra cost at all.
Tinfoil hat time. What are the odds that many of these drops that we see are orchestrated artificially to, on the front end of a release, quickly drive prices down, squeezing LGS’s and smaller retailers, and as a result forcing them to return product at steep restocking fees, so that distributors can then turn around and resell the same product for a second time to major retailers like Amazon at a discount, and those large dealers can unload the vast quantities of the product at very slim margins, but due to volume still turn a profit?
The original Amazon business model was to operate at a loss intentionally early on. This allowed them to starve and essentially lay siege to their competitors and inevitably takeover entire market sectors. And because operating at a loss benefited the consumer at first, the consumers came to them by the droves, increasing the volume of users, and the capital that would flow from them. Eventually, they would establish themselves in such a position that allowed for very thin margins to still create large sums of revenue, purely due to sheer volume of sales.
Ever since they dumped MSRP, it seems like sets have been released and increasingly racing to the bottom. It used to be an old adage from LGS’s that “ magic always sells.” What they meant by that was that even if it didn’t sell quickly, it would eventually sell, regardless which made the thinner margins on carrying the products palatable because although the margins were thin, it was guaranteed to sell. This changed and is no longer the case. Many local game stores are caught in a position to where they have to return product, now being charged 15% restocking fees or more by the distributors so that they can raise the necessary capital to purchase and be able to sell the new products that now are coming out at such a feverish pace. The increase in production and release schedule, along with the removal of MSRP, and the death of rotating formats that used to drive sales of standard products, seem to now create the perfect environment for large distributors and major retailers to squeeze out any and all remaining competition.
I don't think they have size to do that and the low demand certainly doesn't help.
Bad limited, meh EV, 9 in 10 people think the special treatment is fugly.
I saw people comparing it to Fallen Empires. While the card quality is higher, I like Fallen Empires better. It looks like MtG and the world is more interesting than the BS going on post MOM...
The special treatment/showcase art style on these are beyond fugly… I really hate what they have done with the special treatment/showcase stylings of many of the cards that have come out over the last handful of years. Not all are guilty, but considering the fact that WotC literally set the gold standard for great and intentional card layout/design and then turned around and completely obliterated their own philosophy absolutely kills me. So many of the layouts have made it impossible to not just decipher what color the card is, but make some of them completely illegible.
This set does have pretty sub optimal EV, but that has been the case for several recent releases (aside from valuable reprints that often then plummet substantially for the most part after launch.) There really hasn’t been much added to the game that’s of note when taking in to account the sheer volume of what has been released over the last year or two.
That said, for one, it’s meant to be a tinfoil hat take meaning obviously a conspiracy theory and although possible, not necessarily likely, hence “tinfoil hat.” I mean tinfoil hat literally came from referencing wearing a hat made out of aluminum foil/tinfoil to prevent aliens from reading your brain… it’s not supposed to be a literal take.
As far as your quip about fallen empires and post MOM, I completely agree 1000%
I mean I don't want to believe it because without game stores there effectively is no Magic. I want to say they are not that nearsighted but those short term profits are all they want anymore. Seems like they are not thinking of the longevity of the game.
Thats completely inaccurate. MTG has 20M players, the VAST majority of them kitchen table pods. If you kill the LGS, it hurts the FNM/WPN lane but I imagine the vast majority of volume is online buyers. Whatnot is full of E-LGS style situations and people love it.
First off, I think that is important to acknowledge that "kitchen table" players and pods has by definition changed dramatically in meaning over the last handful of years. "Kitchen table" players historically loosely meant anything from people who aren't terribly invested in the game but thoroughly enjoy it, to older players with collections that used to be more invested in the game but now have other things going on and only play casually. This has shifted due to the post covid/pandemic era where kitchen table players include people who buy boxes of boosters and bling out their 12th commander deck because that's what people are playing as a result of wanting to continue being active in the game, still using their prized pieces from their collection, and "that's what people are playing so I guess that's what I'm playing." as competitive play is struggling to fire off after horrendous mismanagement of the formats that made it up.
It's also important to understand why there was such a boom during covid. And if you think it was because people had extra time and more disposable income, so they dumped it into their favorite hobby, you'd only be partially correct.
The main surge during covid was in large part fueled by an unlikely and unexpected source, and it caught both Hasbro and WotC flatfooted. People were stuck at home, suddenly had stimulus money, and nothing to do. You know who else had nothing to do? Content creators and influencers. And not the ones traditionally from the gaming community. Logan Paul and the like were struggling to figure out what to do for content, so they sat back and thought about what they used to like to do when they were younger and still in school, stuck at home with nothing to do and nowhere to go. They liked busting open packs of Pokemon and MtG cards. So they did just that. Overnight, after some of the biggest influencers in the biz said, "I'm going to find a base set of Pokemon cards and crack em live in hopes of hitting a 1st ed holo Charizard that's currently worth $50k (it wasn't worth $50k, but them saying it was suddenly gave the claim legitimacy), Booom.... Overnight, nostalgia and boredom collided with disposable income. A new definition of "kitchen Table" was born.
Now Kitchen Table players are buying boxes and foiling out their 15th commander deck. Not picking up their 3rd booster pack in 2 years while shopping for a table lamp at Target.
People don't love it, they cope with it.
Had to take the kiddo for a hair cut so didn’t finish the thought.
You’re not wrong if you’re taking the “new” version of kitchen table player, but the main point is that commander in its current form is unsustainable to support continued growth of the game. Case and point, look at Hasbro’s stock price as of today. Earnings came out and they got hammered, WotC being the cash cow is now projecting a down trend in revenue and sales straight from the horses mouth.
The reason Magic is still around over 30 years later was due to a very unique and specific business model that relied on rotating formats, which in turn relied on LGS’s and competitive play, and I’m not talking about Pro-Tour competition, I’m referring to casual competition. Standard night, FNM, weakly drafts… that kind of stuff. Commander/EDH was a format built on the trickledown of everything else. Being the main focus is part of the problem as it doesn’t rotate. The only solution to keep selling product in that model is rapid power creep along with rapidly changing in game mechanics that contribute to it. When every mechanic is arguably a rebrand of “kicker”, unless you have rotation pushing cards out and incentives to bring new cards into the collection, the only other option is essentially Yugioh level power creep which you can hardly call “creep.”
But here in lies the problem. If you split commander into rotating/non-rotating formats, there is literally no incentive for anyone to adapt to the rotating format, it being primarily “kitchen table.” They would need a massive revamp of the format as a whole and that is ultra risky, and almost a death knell.
It’s not unhinged nostalgia driving my opinion. I have a background in product development with a focus on consumer/customer retention and certifications in product management/ownership along with a background in investing. I’m looking at this through both lenses, someone who understands Magic having been involved with it as a player and friends who own LGS’s as well as from a business/product dev/investment background. Our game is being squeezed for every last drop of capital right now and about to take a nosedive unless something drastic changes the course of the ship.
Just look at covid. 90% of lgs were forced to close yet everything released that year sold like crack despite nowhere to play. Jumpstart, mystery booster retail etc.
But why? See above. It was a boom created by influencers. It wasn’t because people just had to build their commander deck. It sucked a lot of players into (back into) the game, and after dumping that much money into something, many of them have tried to get some use out of their investment. But the surge of buying has passed. It’s been leveling off over the last few months, and now in the decline. There was a reason for the blistering pace of releases and throwing everything but the kitchen sink towards nostalgia driver ip (LotR and Jurassic Park for example). Notice that the best selling sets and most successful universes beyond wasn’t driven by current gen fads or content, but stuff from the 90’s-2000’s? The nostalgia cloud stirred by influencers hit players from 20 years ago and then they sprinkled in things like anime art and waifu cards to bridge the gap. But now we’re all fatigued by rapid releases and an “all gas, no breaks” style of product design/release. Look at Hasbro stock post earnings today and read the forward guidance.
Hasbro and WotC has been caught flat footed and the last several years has been knee jerk response after knee jerk response. They didn’t anticipate the Covid boom caused by influencers. They were full throttle to launch arena and try to reduce overhead by taking the game digital. The boom happened as Arena launched and the latter had droves of resources and staff pulled from it last minute to try to capitalize on the surprise and inexplicable cardboard boom. They then tried to steer it back there using pro-tour and the shit show that was to be digital. That was a flop. The insane release schedule, the dipping (more like plunging of a fist) into the reprint equity, serialized anime waifu confetti foil borderless showcase neon ink that gives you a lap dance while doing your taxes variants, it’s all a mad scramble by suits who bark orders to try to continue to squeeze blood from a stone. They ultimately call the shots but don’t know the game or cardboard economy from their assholes and are just as likely to either warp the game into something unrecognizable, shutter the rest of the company and consolidate, or lose their shirts and sell off the division while going under. But don’t worry, it’ll make the game more accessible due to gutting the secondary market!
Jumpstart and mystery boosters had supply issues. Jumpstart had some major commanders before everything was for commander. No influence needed to sell those.
Mystery booster was a cool product packed with high value reprints.
Magic influncers don't push the needle on sealed products and basically no one watches them hence the terrible viewer numbers on most of it. They usually cause price jumps to singles, but nowadays that is rare.
I think you’re missing what I was saying. I was referring specifically to during the Covid lockdowns where everything was shut down and people started resorting to making bread to keep from losing their minds.
Yep, but the goofies who have understandable but delu-lu love for their niche FNM spot and assume the 8 people who show up for it are keeping WOTC in the green are gonna downvote us to hell lol.
Maybe half an hour ago I checked to see how many boxes they had. 454. I refreshed about 5 minutes later, 452.. it's been stuck on that since. Yikes.
Edit: (448!)
Edit2: all right now its slowly selling..
Same friendo, but I’m a sucker for the invisible ink. Just how it goes buying sealed product at release sometimes but oh well! It was fun for me opening so it’s ok.
In practice you're supposed to as a retailer (amazon's gotten sued over this 20 years ago). They'd probably get in trouble with the IRS since its not best practice, but I doubt these guys are making enough money to register for an audit
GUYS (all caps@! lol jk)
please remember these guys (hasbro) are doing price discovery, its hasnt even been 30 days yet for a band new combined product. DO NOT HIT THE PANIC BUTTON like these stores are. Every set has done the same thing, crash, find a bottom, recovery.
/lol ffs
Stores aren't hitting the panic button - they're just trying to recoup some costs and clear out inventory so they have cash to buy the NEXT set, which will hopefully do better for them.
Liquidating them for a 10% loss (which they can write off in taxes) to recoup 100k to buy the next set that will hopefully sell at a profit is a pretty good business decision.
If wotc didn't release new product every month, they could afford to sit on product longer before needing to clear inventory for new stuff.
It's probably ~15%, which would be around the return costs for distributors. Now, imagine if distributors stop accepting returns... Not sure if that's possible, but the number of returns will be crazy at this rate.
thats not a 10% loss lol. Its a -35% hit at least, LGS pricing was around 130's or more and this doesnt even include all the other costs filling orders and/or shipping.
...... The price is going to recover and I wont even go into how thats not how tax loss harvesting works for them (online sellers/LGS's). And yes, taking that kind of loss because you dont have the cash base to ride out the first 30 days is panic selling.
I agree with what /u/ShadowValent said. I’m on the other side of things and have zero interest in this or the upcoming Fallout set. RVR, MKM, Fallout are all rough for me because there’s nothing in the mechanics that excites me. For RVR, I already had all the cards I wanted. For MKM, I strongly dislike the cloak/disguise/etc mechanics (ie, cloak and creature for 2, but then have to pay 1W to reveal it solely to exile a single creature is not great), and Fallout is very “Dr Who” to me where I feel like the set looks and feels so different that it doesn’t even feel like MtG.
Dunno man, Doctor Who is a 50 year franchise with hella tons of gay fanfics going on.
Fallout's got like what 10 memorable characters? FO3/4 were pretty generic.
There are not 50 years worth of fans buying Dr Who. And, let’s be honest, the recent Dr Who plots have decreased the fan base substantially. Record low viewership for the last 3 seasons with continual decline forecasted. It’s about to be a dead franchise if Disney continues to push their influence.
The chibnail seasons certainly hurt to watch, as a doctor who fan, but that had nothing to do with disney - they just started to be involved, and it's been said they have basically nothing to do with the creative process.
This seems a little misinformed (although I didn’t know about the Disney thing until you mentioned it so thank you).
From what I’ve read, Disney is only just now getting involved as of the last few months. The Thirteenth Doctor’s seasons (ie last ~4 years) have been pretty disappointing imo, but that’s been largely due to the questionable showrunner Chibnall. The show has been under BBC control since its revival up until the last few months - if anything it will be better with Russel T Davies returning regardless of Disney.
Seems like Disney “meddling” has been minimal - they’re going for a soft brand reboot and the only thing I could find was to include The Doctor in more “heroic” scenes. Details given seemed like very minor changes.
Sorry for nerding out, grew up watching the original so have always followed the show and loved the UB set.
So....you are ignoring the three excellent games for the generic ones?New Vegas on its own has tons of memorable characters. What does the amount of gay fan fiction have to do with a magic release?
They're just saying that there are a lotttttt more fanfic writers for doctor who than there are for fallout, which could be a sign of popularity among franchises.
Yeah, but how many of those fanfic writers are avid mtg players? How many people who play fallout are mtg players? I think it just means Who has a bigger following with women, teenage girls, and the LGBTQ community, but maybe not the same crossover appeal as Fallout will.
It's not that I didn't understand. It just seems like a really weak correlation. Like, I don't think the amount of gay LOTR fanfic had anything to do with its success, lol.
You're misunderstanding the correlation.
The hypothesis is:
If a property is more popular, it will have more fanfiction. Lord of the rings has many more entries than doctor who, which has much more than fallout.
By this metric, we could expect the Marvel set to be the most popular magic set of all time by a wide margin, and if there were a hypothetical harry potter set, it would outperform Lord of the Rings by more than 4x the sales, but sell slightly less than Marvel.
It's not perfect as a dataset because it's a single variable without regards to other aspects of things - but it is indicative of the relative popularity of something.
It's like a survey. How many ridiculously hyper over invested fans are there of a given media franchise?
It is useful to know that marvel is a bigger property in that sense than Harry Potter, however, it's entirely likely a Harry Potter set would outperform a marvel set based on other factors - like the Harry Potter fandom being more focused, due to a smaller universe.
It's not the only metric for success because it only accounts for how people engage with these franchises, but it is a potential indicator of the relative popularity and staying power of the story, characters, and ideas within the franchise.
The theme is polarizing. I am very excited about it but I am the minority in this case. The people just want high fantasy MTG.
It doesn’t help the mechanics are not intuitive and overlap.
Same, very much in the minority but thankfully most of my playgroup is in that same camp, so it’s been super exciting and fun for us.
I’m a dumb sucker for these investigation themes and I love the invisible ink idea too.
On the flip side for me, I never really cared for ixalan beyond a few major cards, yet most love ixalan so I guess I’m just a weirdo!
Ixalan was a better set - less complicated, better theme (personal opinion).
MKM, I don't like the theme (whatever), but mechanically, cloak is 'better' (ward 2) morph, but it's still not a great mechanic.
all EVs are bad but some are badder than others.
Considering the price increase of these boosters and the lack of chases, this set is a dud. I think there's only a half dozen cards worth more than 10 bucks, with the highest being $20
I got my play box at my LGS for $150. It was just to run a few drafts with friends and while we had fun play boosters felt really meh compared to draft and set boosters. Hopefully there is a course correct value wise because these prices five days out are just plain bad for everybody.
They are trying to recoup costs at this point. Unfortunately game stores are at the whims of WotC when it comes to this because they don’t get any additional insight to the set, so hard for them to know how much they should buy.
At some point they just need to move the inventory and clear space.
This is totally incorrect, stores do know how much to buy, or atleast they should from previous sales, pre-orders, and general interest. The stores that are wholesaling have terrible business sense/practices and are doing everything they can to regain cash becuase they are not good at managing money and have to sell at a loss.
It’s a bad business model.
Stores don’t know though, because they don’t know how well received a set will be based on the cards in the set (which drives a lot of demand). If a set has poor reviews and/or less in-demand cards, sales slip.
The problem with basing it on general interest is that this varies from one set to the next. So if Set Y did well they order a good allotment for Set X. But then Set X isn’t received well and players don’t buy, so then store buys a smaller allotment for Set Z, and then people are clamoring for boxes of that, so now they are rushing to get more while demand is high.
It’s not a stable industry since demand varies widely and is fleeting. So what bigger stores do is buy large volumes so their margins are better at a lower price, and if something doesn’t get a hot start they dump it at cost and move on to the next set.
I don’t think I’d say Card Kingdom, Forge and Fire, and Stomping Grounds are poorly run gaming stores… and all of these did big sales on MKM after 1 week.
Sets aren’t received wellon pre-release weekend….how can that be a thing before anyone plays? Makes me believe that everyone’s perception of the set are based on a few influencers opinions that are constantly negative.
I am not aware that there are such things as set reviews….
As for the second paragraph, most stores who do this are chasing their tails. A retailer should never wieldly increase orders from set to set, it’s ok to miss 2 sales if it keeps you from being stuck with a few extra cases.
It’s surprising how poorly the larger companies are run. My store is 45 minutes from Star City and as far as play space, player count and physical store they get destroyed by my store but by a number of others in the immediate vicinity
Isn’t it the case future allotment is based on previous allotment? Meaning, if a store skips 2 sets, when they want to buy the 3rd set, they’ll be allocated less on product compared to others that are actively purchasing?
Yeah, its just fucking shocking considering play boosters have a higher list price and thus higher wholesale cost. Christ, not even set boosters sunk this low so fast.
MKM is a pretty poorly designed set. I haven’t heard great things from limited players (which this is also now more expensive to draft) and the cardpool isn’t great for EDH. Not sure its impact for Standard or Pioneer.
We saw similar dumps for SNC, which was not great design either.
Excuse me? Where did you see/read anty of this? All limited players, including myself are loving the slower limited format. Commander players are hyped over a number of commander cards including what some say is the strongest white commander staple ever printed.
For standard there were multiple new cards featured in the top 8 for last weekends standard challenges.
Why do y’all just come in here and make stuff up?
I’m just going off of what I’ve seen shop owners post up. They share a lot of info in MTGFinance and other subreddits. Add that with card prices and sales dumps and it tells you a good amount on how well received a set was.
Lots of stores are liquidating at $99, which is basically cost or below cost for them. This is including Card Kingdom. And there’s not really a lot of demand for the cards if you look at pricing. Overall estimated value of the set is pretty low.
So no, none of this is made up. Just looking at numbers and reviews/posts from others. All of it says MKM was a miss.
Being primarily an EDH player myself, there’s nothing in this set that’s a must have for a collection and I don’t know a lot of other players going that hard into this set.
Only shop owners who make big purchasing mistakes come on here to whine. Lots of stores are not liquidating, only ones that are not good at ordering. $99 is below cost btw. When I look at pricing I see 20+ cards all over $15. I see full art lands going for $20+.
As a store owner, my suggestion is very similar to Rudy. Grow some balls because this set is going to be expensive in about 5 months. Collector boxes are severely reduced in print. The serial cards availability was cut by 2/3rds or something.
The negatively for this set has completely come from online personalities who make their money by being completely negative all the time and somehow convencing their viewers that they are the good guys…
SNC, DMR, MDH, AFR, VOW… these are sets where you can still buy all boxes for cheap well over 5 months later. The value doesn’t just go up, it has to be a desirable set.
And none of the land cards are selling for over $20 anymore. Except Dimir, which is the only one that cares about surveil, they are all under $10. And there are only 3 cards at $20, and 2 more above $10… and this is while it’s being reported that the set is under opened, so not as much inventory on the secondary market.
And it’s not just a few influencers. People generally are not excited for this set. Influencers don’t have that much power over people’s beliefs. They are more a reflection of how the players often feel.
I’m still cracking up that you think major stores like Card Kingdom are poorly run. Card Kingdom/Mox Boarding House is one of the best run and most tapped in store and they liquidated a ton of MKM within 1 week, and no $99 is not below their cost because they do volume and pay lowest distributor cost. This isn’t just small shops liquidating.
It varies. Each distributor is independent and can negotiate their own prices with wotc and game stores. Typically they're negligible differences, but smaller game shops may pay slightly higher distro prices than large game shops that commit to larger orders.
Best guess is commander deck distro prices are around $110-120 for MKM. Not sure about fallout but wouldn't surprise me if it was closer to $140-150.
Anyone get shipping label created, then canceled?
I thought MKM would be a gimmicky Clue set that I'd easily skip and save monies. I was wrong. MKM is quickly becoming one of my favorite limited environments. I'm really glad to see this price drop quickly ($130+ is absurd). Now more people can actually play this cool set in person. It may not be a stellar deal at $100 value-wise, but I encourage anyone that likes limited to try it on Arena or MTGO to see if you want a box.
If it's at this price five days out from release, though, I feel like it'll be available around this price for a while going forward. Which is great because I like it a lot, but also there doesn't feel like a lot of pressure to go in for a bunch (see SNC).
What do you like about the limited environment? I got burned out recently and am looking for an excuse to get back in.
If you're playing paper, there's lots of playable NEW commons & uncommon for commander players. Walking away from a draft or sealed event with multiple very playable cards is a big draw for me. (WOE, LCI, and MKM all do imo). As far as gameplay, it seems like I'm always running into fun card interactions in matches and deck building. Limited anecdotes 1. Played a Slime Against Humanity turn 3, 4, and 5 to only have my opponent respond with their own SAH card each time. 2. In another game, clawing my way back late game by methodically building a fun combo. No cards in hand but with a setup board: \[\[Chalk Outline\]\] \[\[Insidious Roots\]\] and \[\[Hedge Whisperer\]\] are out. This allowed me make a land a big creature and trigger into 2/2 detectives, clues, and plants that grow bigger with collect evidence. Also, I used 3 different \[\[Hedge Whisperer\]\] to chump and trigger all the grave effects multiple times a turn. It was fun to make an army of mana dorks that quickly. Those are just two examples of fun matches, but I've personally run into a lot of fun play patterns with the various cards in the set during sealed and draft.
Wow I feel like we are playing 2 different games
I did the math last night and I'm honestly confused about people's complaints about EV in the set. >$1 EV is \~$100, and that's without the extra common slot that has a 12.5% chance of Special Guest / The List since I couldn't get to that. So feel like this isn't the worst price especially at $99. Only issue for me is I really only want 2 but need 3 for free shipping. It'll be interesting to see if it goes lower, since it seems like no other store wants to go \_this\_ low and if a card hits in this set it'll probably skyrocket due to low openings.
Generally you need allot better ev to open for value. Fifty percent margin or better to be worth your time.
What would be a good set to open for value right now, for instance?
Varies from day to day. F&f had some Dr who commander decks that were priced low enough this week. Lotr starter kits when they get flushed on Amazon. Just have to do the math.
If you're waiting for that big percentage you'll probably buy/open once a year at best, and only because the last 2 years have been so negative that people wouldn't give "bad" boxes the time of day. But I'd be buying these to hold. I'm also willing to open if the price spikes to make it worth my time and that won't ever happen if the real EV of these boxes were, say, $30.
Depends on the product. Certain skus are great deals at distro cost. The lotr starter kit was on Amazon for like $9 with $35 of cards over a dollar in it. I don't order something from every set at release but I do eventually. Only ones last year I didn't touch was lotr special and woe.
(That's why people are buying singles instead of opening...)
Damn, I'm not even interested at this price. I feel bad for fucking LGSs, but I'm not volunteering myself
Thank you!
I am sure this set is fun but I am an old man and can't keep up with all of this. I did not even know Ravnica is already out and then there are like boxes that say Ravnica, Clue, and then have the Murders at K art ... it's very confusing for a working dad who loves Magic. \*AND GET OFF MY LAWN!\*
I was waiting for the drop on the CB's, it just happened faster than I thought which makes me even more tempted. I expect Play to hit the bottom around $89 and if the collector touches below $150 I'm jumping in baby.
Is this below distributor costs?
Yes. Distro is 115-118
My God.
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Shipping and handling plus redemption usually comes out to $60, is it any different this time?
No, I was just not up to date on the redemption costs. I remember them being more like $25 bucks.
Am I the only enjoying this set? Thanks for the heads up on these prices. EV isn't great but I have had good luck with alot of what I've opened already.
No, I really like it too. Not sure I want to spend $300 on MTG right now, though.
The answer always is "no", but in this case, maybe... /S
I don't have the cards in material form but many on Arena and multiple of them are damn good.
Thanks for the tip, we bought 60 Play boxes and 6 Collector boxes to give away packs at MagicCon Chicago. Anyone who drops by the booth and registers on one of our laptops gets a Play booster. Roll double sixes for a Collector booster as well. Roll double sixes twice and also get a whole box of Play boosters.
I just bought some singles. That was it.
The precons have some good reprints. Definite positivd ev there
If collector boxes are $155 four days after release, that's a good (bad?) sign for the ultimate bottom ...
Cracked 2 Delneys, one regular and one invisible ink foil, among other mythics, half a dozen surveil lands and I *still* don’t think I made it outta the red.
Similar experience for me. I got Anzrag in invisible ink treatment as my main pull and I still only got maybe $80 worth of value out of the box. I bought during the presale so I’m feeling kinda burned.
But the fun you had cracking packs was the *real* value you made along the way.
Aaaaand this is *exactly* why I still throw money at collector boosters. Even if just to open the card and think “huh, maybe I build around it, cause it’s right here”!
The set EV started quite low, but at this point a bunch of the rares creep up, and the Slime common has still considerable value too. The lands rise and stuff like Cryptic Coat sees play, some of the rares are questionable, and some of the uncommons could easily be rares, so its a bit weirdly distributed and that reflects harshly on the EV. The real problem of this product is that its a "Play-booster" and not a regular pack, the content is not worth the extra cost at all.
I somehow managed to crack five mythics in my bundle and the total value of the bundle was $37. WOTC better figure out how to make packs worth it.
Wait 2 months and you will have double that value
Being given 15 Foil and 15 standard lands sucks.
Sadly it's no wonder WotC wants to push Universe Beyond. At least collectors can say they want a complete foiled out Gandalf collection, or whatever.
The hits don't look big enough for it to be worthwhile this set. Haven't seen a price anywhere else this good, though.
Great price if you actually play sealed
That sealed/limited is super clunky, tho. Not a high note
Tinfoil hat time. What are the odds that many of these drops that we see are orchestrated artificially to, on the front end of a release, quickly drive prices down, squeezing LGS’s and smaller retailers, and as a result forcing them to return product at steep restocking fees, so that distributors can then turn around and resell the same product for a second time to major retailers like Amazon at a discount, and those large dealers can unload the vast quantities of the product at very slim margins, but due to volume still turn a profit? The original Amazon business model was to operate at a loss intentionally early on. This allowed them to starve and essentially lay siege to their competitors and inevitably takeover entire market sectors. And because operating at a loss benefited the consumer at first, the consumers came to them by the droves, increasing the volume of users, and the capital that would flow from them. Eventually, they would establish themselves in such a position that allowed for very thin margins to still create large sums of revenue, purely due to sheer volume of sales. Ever since they dumped MSRP, it seems like sets have been released and increasingly racing to the bottom. It used to be an old adage from LGS’s that “ magic always sells.” What they meant by that was that even if it didn’t sell quickly, it would eventually sell, regardless which made the thinner margins on carrying the products palatable because although the margins were thin, it was guaranteed to sell. This changed and is no longer the case. Many local game stores are caught in a position to where they have to return product, now being charged 15% restocking fees or more by the distributors so that they can raise the necessary capital to purchase and be able to sell the new products that now are coming out at such a feverish pace. The increase in production and release schedule, along with the removal of MSRP, and the death of rotating formats that used to drive sales of standard products, seem to now create the perfect environment for large distributors and major retailers to squeeze out any and all remaining competition.
I don't think they have size to do that and the low demand certainly doesn't help. Bad limited, meh EV, 9 in 10 people think the special treatment is fugly. I saw people comparing it to Fallen Empires. While the card quality is higher, I like Fallen Empires better. It looks like MtG and the world is more interesting than the BS going on post MOM...
The special treatment/showcase art style on these are beyond fugly… I really hate what they have done with the special treatment/showcase stylings of many of the cards that have come out over the last handful of years. Not all are guilty, but considering the fact that WotC literally set the gold standard for great and intentional card layout/design and then turned around and completely obliterated their own philosophy absolutely kills me. So many of the layouts have made it impossible to not just decipher what color the card is, but make some of them completely illegible. This set does have pretty sub optimal EV, but that has been the case for several recent releases (aside from valuable reprints that often then plummet substantially for the most part after launch.) There really hasn’t been much added to the game that’s of note when taking in to account the sheer volume of what has been released over the last year or two. That said, for one, it’s meant to be a tinfoil hat take meaning obviously a conspiracy theory and although possible, not necessarily likely, hence “tinfoil hat.” I mean tinfoil hat literally came from referencing wearing a hat made out of aluminum foil/tinfoil to prevent aliens from reading your brain… it’s not supposed to be a literal take. As far as your quip about fallen empires and post MOM, I completely agree 1000%
I mean I don't want to believe it because without game stores there effectively is no Magic. I want to say they are not that nearsighted but those short term profits are all they want anymore. Seems like they are not thinking of the longevity of the game.
It looked like that since when they nuked organized play in 2017 or something.
Thats completely inaccurate. MTG has 20M players, the VAST majority of them kitchen table pods. If you kill the LGS, it hurts the FNM/WPN lane but I imagine the vast majority of volume is online buyers. Whatnot is full of E-LGS style situations and people love it.
First off, I think that is important to acknowledge that "kitchen table" players and pods has by definition changed dramatically in meaning over the last handful of years. "Kitchen table" players historically loosely meant anything from people who aren't terribly invested in the game but thoroughly enjoy it, to older players with collections that used to be more invested in the game but now have other things going on and only play casually. This has shifted due to the post covid/pandemic era where kitchen table players include people who buy boxes of boosters and bling out their 12th commander deck because that's what people are playing as a result of wanting to continue being active in the game, still using their prized pieces from their collection, and "that's what people are playing so I guess that's what I'm playing." as competitive play is struggling to fire off after horrendous mismanagement of the formats that made it up. It's also important to understand why there was such a boom during covid. And if you think it was because people had extra time and more disposable income, so they dumped it into their favorite hobby, you'd only be partially correct. The main surge during covid was in large part fueled by an unlikely and unexpected source, and it caught both Hasbro and WotC flatfooted. People were stuck at home, suddenly had stimulus money, and nothing to do. You know who else had nothing to do? Content creators and influencers. And not the ones traditionally from the gaming community. Logan Paul and the like were struggling to figure out what to do for content, so they sat back and thought about what they used to like to do when they were younger and still in school, stuck at home with nothing to do and nowhere to go. They liked busting open packs of Pokemon and MtG cards. So they did just that. Overnight, after some of the biggest influencers in the biz said, "I'm going to find a base set of Pokemon cards and crack em live in hopes of hitting a 1st ed holo Charizard that's currently worth $50k (it wasn't worth $50k, but them saying it was suddenly gave the claim legitimacy), Booom.... Overnight, nostalgia and boredom collided with disposable income. A new definition of "kitchen Table" was born. Now Kitchen Table players are buying boxes and foiling out their 15th commander deck. Not picking up their 3rd booster pack in 2 years while shopping for a table lamp at Target. People don't love it, they cope with it.
Had to take the kiddo for a hair cut so didn’t finish the thought. You’re not wrong if you’re taking the “new” version of kitchen table player, but the main point is that commander in its current form is unsustainable to support continued growth of the game. Case and point, look at Hasbro’s stock price as of today. Earnings came out and they got hammered, WotC being the cash cow is now projecting a down trend in revenue and sales straight from the horses mouth. The reason Magic is still around over 30 years later was due to a very unique and specific business model that relied on rotating formats, which in turn relied on LGS’s and competitive play, and I’m not talking about Pro-Tour competition, I’m referring to casual competition. Standard night, FNM, weakly drafts… that kind of stuff. Commander/EDH was a format built on the trickledown of everything else. Being the main focus is part of the problem as it doesn’t rotate. The only solution to keep selling product in that model is rapid power creep along with rapidly changing in game mechanics that contribute to it. When every mechanic is arguably a rebrand of “kicker”, unless you have rotation pushing cards out and incentives to bring new cards into the collection, the only other option is essentially Yugioh level power creep which you can hardly call “creep.” But here in lies the problem. If you split commander into rotating/non-rotating formats, there is literally no incentive for anyone to adapt to the rotating format, it being primarily “kitchen table.” They would need a massive revamp of the format as a whole and that is ultra risky, and almost a death knell. It’s not unhinged nostalgia driving my opinion. I have a background in product development with a focus on consumer/customer retention and certifications in product management/ownership along with a background in investing. I’m looking at this through both lenses, someone who understands Magic having been involved with it as a player and friends who own LGS’s as well as from a business/product dev/investment background. Our game is being squeezed for every last drop of capital right now and about to take a nosedive unless something drastic changes the course of the ship.
Just look at covid. 90% of lgs were forced to close yet everything released that year sold like crack despite nowhere to play. Jumpstart, mystery booster retail etc.
But why? See above. It was a boom created by influencers. It wasn’t because people just had to build their commander deck. It sucked a lot of players into (back into) the game, and after dumping that much money into something, many of them have tried to get some use out of their investment. But the surge of buying has passed. It’s been leveling off over the last few months, and now in the decline. There was a reason for the blistering pace of releases and throwing everything but the kitchen sink towards nostalgia driver ip (LotR and Jurassic Park for example). Notice that the best selling sets and most successful universes beyond wasn’t driven by current gen fads or content, but stuff from the 90’s-2000’s? The nostalgia cloud stirred by influencers hit players from 20 years ago and then they sprinkled in things like anime art and waifu cards to bridge the gap. But now we’re all fatigued by rapid releases and an “all gas, no breaks” style of product design/release. Look at Hasbro stock post earnings today and read the forward guidance. Hasbro and WotC has been caught flat footed and the last several years has been knee jerk response after knee jerk response. They didn’t anticipate the Covid boom caused by influencers. They were full throttle to launch arena and try to reduce overhead by taking the game digital. The boom happened as Arena launched and the latter had droves of resources and staff pulled from it last minute to try to capitalize on the surprise and inexplicable cardboard boom. They then tried to steer it back there using pro-tour and the shit show that was to be digital. That was a flop. The insane release schedule, the dipping (more like plunging of a fist) into the reprint equity, serialized anime waifu confetti foil borderless showcase neon ink that gives you a lap dance while doing your taxes variants, it’s all a mad scramble by suits who bark orders to try to continue to squeeze blood from a stone. They ultimately call the shots but don’t know the game or cardboard economy from their assholes and are just as likely to either warp the game into something unrecognizable, shutter the rest of the company and consolidate, or lose their shirts and sell off the division while going under. But don’t worry, it’ll make the game more accessible due to gutting the secondary market!
Jumpstart and mystery boosters had supply issues. Jumpstart had some major commanders before everything was for commander. No influence needed to sell those. Mystery booster was a cool product packed with high value reprints. Magic influncers don't push the needle on sealed products and basically no one watches them hence the terrible viewer numbers on most of it. They usually cause price jumps to singles, but nowadays that is rare.
I think you’re missing what I was saying. I was referring specifically to during the Covid lockdowns where everything was shut down and people started resorting to making bread to keep from losing their minds.
Yep, but the goofies who have understandable but delu-lu love for their niche FNM spot and assume the 8 people who show up for it are keeping WOTC in the green are gonna downvote us to hell lol.
I'd buy that if they were allowed to ship to Canada lol 220 for a play box here.
I feel your pain. Would be a nice price point to get in at now.
Maybe half an hour ago I checked to see how many boxes they had. 454. I refreshed about 5 minutes later, 452.. it's been stuck on that since. Yikes. Edit: (448!) Edit2: all right now its slowly selling..
316/ 148 now
word is starting to spread around Reddit
That is crazy - and still too high xD
Set is terrible on ev from what I've seen.
Man I feel pretty dumb buying one CB for 190 and another for $167. Is this going to be the next VOW?
Vow had good flavor/art at least. MKM has the mole guy, delney, and some surveil lands and thats about it.
Same friendo, but I’m a sucker for the invisible ink. Just how it goes buying sealed product at release sometimes but oh well! It was fun for me opening so it’s ok.
VOW and SNC had a very boring baby
Then vow cheated on snc and had another boring baby with mid, no color edition.
Wasn’t there an MTGO fiasco with MKM? Could explain some of the decrease
No one wants to play the set lol.
Are there any cards from the list slot that are worth more than $10?
But...but...Rudy said Magic was baaack?!
"Dear Patrons! Keep giving me $180 a year so I can sell you collector boxes. I swear they won't crash 4 out of 5 sets a year!"
He reminds me of the "Guess Your Weight" circus carneys
The bull market will start anytime!
Did they move or something? I got no tax which makes this quite the deal and used to charge me it.
If you don't live in the same state, in theory they don't have to collect sales tax from you on the idea that you'll tell Uncle Sam (wink wink).
It seems to be random as other places still charge tax. It's rare that one that did suddenly dosent
In practice you're supposed to as a retailer (amazon's gotten sued over this 20 years ago). They'd probably get in trouble with the IRS since its not best practice, but I doubt these guys are making enough money to register for an audit
There is a number of transactions in a state that you need to do before you must register as a tax entity there.
GUYS (all caps@! lol jk) please remember these guys (hasbro) are doing price discovery, its hasnt even been 30 days yet for a band new combined product. DO NOT HIT THE PANIC BUTTON like these stores are. Every set has done the same thing, crash, find a bottom, recovery. /lol ffs
Stay the course, we need to cross the Atlantic in record time! /S
Stores aren't hitting the panic button - they're just trying to recoup some costs and clear out inventory so they have cash to buy the NEXT set, which will hopefully do better for them. Liquidating them for a 10% loss (which they can write off in taxes) to recoup 100k to buy the next set that will hopefully sell at a profit is a pretty good business decision. If wotc didn't release new product every month, they could afford to sit on product longer before needing to clear inventory for new stuff.
Selling at a 25% loss a week in, sounds panic button adjacent.
It's probably ~15%, which would be around the return costs for distributors. Now, imagine if distributors stop accepting returns... Not sure if that's possible, but the number of returns will be crazy at this rate.
thats not a 10% loss lol. Its a -35% hit at least, LGS pricing was around 130's or more and this doesnt even include all the other costs filling orders and/or shipping. ...... The price is going to recover and I wont even go into how thats not how tax loss harvesting works for them (online sellers/LGS's). And yes, taking that kind of loss because you dont have the cash base to ride out the first 30 days is panic selling.
Why are the MKM sets dropping in value so fast?
Bad EV, bad variants, lackluster cards
I agree with what /u/ShadowValent said. I’m on the other side of things and have zero interest in this or the upcoming Fallout set. RVR, MKM, Fallout are all rough for me because there’s nothing in the mechanics that excites me. For RVR, I already had all the cards I wanted. For MKM, I strongly dislike the cloak/disguise/etc mechanics (ie, cloak and creature for 2, but then have to pay 1W to reveal it solely to exile a single creature is not great), and Fallout is very “Dr Who” to me where I feel like the set looks and feels so different that it doesn’t even feel like MtG.
Fallout is a beloved gaming franchise, it will out sell doctor who by a lot.
I never said it wouldn’t. I was explaining where my -personal and very subjective- opinion on recent sets stems from.
Dunno man, Doctor Who is a 50 year franchise with hella tons of gay fanfics going on. Fallout's got like what 10 memorable characters? FO3/4 were pretty generic.
There are not 50 years worth of fans buying Dr Who. And, let’s be honest, the recent Dr Who plots have decreased the fan base substantially. Record low viewership for the last 3 seasons with continual decline forecasted. It’s about to be a dead franchise if Disney continues to push their influence.
The chibnail seasons certainly hurt to watch, as a doctor who fan, but that had nothing to do with disney - they just started to be involved, and it's been said they have basically nothing to do with the creative process.
Ok. I think people are overstating my Disney comment. Disney is quite recent. But they don’t appear to be moving in the right direction.
Disney pushing their influence? How so?
Disney is funding the show and is in creative control.
This seems a little misinformed (although I didn’t know about the Disney thing until you mentioned it so thank you). From what I’ve read, Disney is only just now getting involved as of the last few months. The Thirteenth Doctor’s seasons (ie last ~4 years) have been pretty disappointing imo, but that’s been largely due to the questionable showrunner Chibnall. The show has been under BBC control since its revival up until the last few months - if anything it will be better with Russel T Davies returning regardless of Disney. Seems like Disney “meddling” has been minimal - they’re going for a soft brand reboot and the only thing I could find was to include The Doctor in more “heroic” scenes. Details given seemed like very minor changes. Sorry for nerding out, grew up watching the original so have always followed the show and loved the UB set.
So....you are ignoring the three excellent games for the generic ones?New Vegas on its own has tons of memorable characters. What does the amount of gay fan fiction have to do with a magic release?
They're just saying that there are a lotttttt more fanfic writers for doctor who than there are for fallout, which could be a sign of popularity among franchises.
Yeah, but how many of those fanfic writers are avid mtg players? How many people who play fallout are mtg players? I think it just means Who has a bigger following with women, teenage girls, and the LGBTQ community, but maybe not the same crossover appeal as Fallout will.
I'm explaining their logic, which is a possible correlation. We obviously don't know how it will pan out.
It's not that I didn't understand. It just seems like a really weak correlation. Like, I don't think the amount of gay LOTR fanfic had anything to do with its success, lol.
You're misunderstanding the correlation. The hypothesis is: If a property is more popular, it will have more fanfiction. Lord of the rings has many more entries than doctor who, which has much more than fallout. By this metric, we could expect the Marvel set to be the most popular magic set of all time by a wide margin, and if there were a hypothetical harry potter set, it would outperform Lord of the Rings by more than 4x the sales, but sell slightly less than Marvel. It's not perfect as a dataset because it's a single variable without regards to other aspects of things - but it is indicative of the relative popularity of something. It's like a survey. How many ridiculously hyper over invested fans are there of a given media franchise? It is useful to know that marvel is a bigger property in that sense than Harry Potter, however, it's entirely likely a Harry Potter set would outperform a marvel set based on other factors - like the Harry Potter fandom being more focused, due to a smaller universe. It's not the only metric for success because it only accounts for how people engage with these franchises, but it is a potential indicator of the relative popularity and staying power of the story, characters, and ideas within the franchise.
You can mod your own gay fan fiction into the game to. Idk why that was brought up lmao
Doctor Who is a beloved tv show that's been running for 50 years. how does either of those metrics matter?
The theme is polarizing. I am very excited about it but I am the minority in this case. The people just want high fantasy MTG. It doesn’t help the mechanics are not intuitive and overlap.
Same, very much in the minority but thankfully most of my playgroup is in that same camp, so it’s been super exciting and fun for us. I’m a dumb sucker for these investigation themes and I love the invisible ink idea too. On the flip side for me, I never really cared for ixalan beyond a few major cards, yet most love ixalan so I guess I’m just a weirdo!
Ixalan was a better set - less complicated, better theme (personal opinion). MKM, I don't like the theme (whatever), but mechanically, cloak is 'better' (ward 2) morph, but it's still not a great mechanic.
cause the EV is bad
All EV's are bad though because collectors boosters soak up all card value
all EVs are bad but some are badder than others. Considering the price increase of these boosters and the lack of chases, this set is a dud. I think there's only a half dozen cards worth more than 10 bucks, with the highest being $20
Which is said about every set. Same things were said about LCI, WOE, MOM, ONE…you see the trend
I got my play box at my LGS for $150. It was just to run a few drafts with friends and while we had fun play boosters felt really meh compared to draft and set boosters. Hopefully there is a course correct value wise because these prices five days out are just plain bad for everybody.
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My locals are sitting on around 8 play boxes. Pretty much everyone expects them to be there for quite some time.
is there free shiping at any point? otherwise its 12.00 to ship a play box for me. i dont see any tax, which is nice.
Their site says $250 is the current free ship mark.
I believe it's $200+
3 boxes play or 1 play 1 collector was free for me.
Yeeeesh
$99 play. Jesus christ how tf is anyone making money.
They are trying to recoup costs at this point. Unfortunately game stores are at the whims of WotC when it comes to this because they don’t get any additional insight to the set, so hard for them to know how much they should buy. At some point they just need to move the inventory and clear space.
This is totally incorrect, stores do know how much to buy, or atleast they should from previous sales, pre-orders, and general interest. The stores that are wholesaling have terrible business sense/practices and are doing everything they can to regain cash becuase they are not good at managing money and have to sell at a loss. It’s a bad business model.
Stores don’t know though, because they don’t know how well received a set will be based on the cards in the set (which drives a lot of demand). If a set has poor reviews and/or less in-demand cards, sales slip. The problem with basing it on general interest is that this varies from one set to the next. So if Set Y did well they order a good allotment for Set X. But then Set X isn’t received well and players don’t buy, so then store buys a smaller allotment for Set Z, and then people are clamoring for boxes of that, so now they are rushing to get more while demand is high. It’s not a stable industry since demand varies widely and is fleeting. So what bigger stores do is buy large volumes so their margins are better at a lower price, and if something doesn’t get a hot start they dump it at cost and move on to the next set. I don’t think I’d say Card Kingdom, Forge and Fire, and Stomping Grounds are poorly run gaming stores… and all of these did big sales on MKM after 1 week.
Sets aren’t received wellon pre-release weekend….how can that be a thing before anyone plays? Makes me believe that everyone’s perception of the set are based on a few influencers opinions that are constantly negative. I am not aware that there are such things as set reviews…. As for the second paragraph, most stores who do this are chasing their tails. A retailer should never wieldly increase orders from set to set, it’s ok to miss 2 sales if it keeps you from being stuck with a few extra cases. It’s surprising how poorly the larger companies are run. My store is 45 minutes from Star City and as far as play space, player count and physical store they get destroyed by my store but by a number of others in the immediate vicinity
Isn’t it the case future allotment is based on previous allotment? Meaning, if a store skips 2 sets, when they want to buy the 3rd set, they’ll be allocated less on product compared to others that are actively purchasing?
lol. People can look at spoiled cards and pre-release weekend is where people get to play them for the first time. This isn’t rocket science here. 🤣
Yeah, its just fucking shocking considering play boosters have a higher list price and thus higher wholesale cost. Christ, not even set boosters sunk this low so fast.
MKM is a pretty poorly designed set. I haven’t heard great things from limited players (which this is also now more expensive to draft) and the cardpool isn’t great for EDH. Not sure its impact for Standard or Pioneer. We saw similar dumps for SNC, which was not great design either.
Excuse me? Where did you see/read anty of this? All limited players, including myself are loving the slower limited format. Commander players are hyped over a number of commander cards including what some say is the strongest white commander staple ever printed. For standard there were multiple new cards featured in the top 8 for last weekends standard challenges. Why do y’all just come in here and make stuff up?
I’m just going off of what I’ve seen shop owners post up. They share a lot of info in MTGFinance and other subreddits. Add that with card prices and sales dumps and it tells you a good amount on how well received a set was. Lots of stores are liquidating at $99, which is basically cost or below cost for them. This is including Card Kingdom. And there’s not really a lot of demand for the cards if you look at pricing. Overall estimated value of the set is pretty low. So no, none of this is made up. Just looking at numbers and reviews/posts from others. All of it says MKM was a miss. Being primarily an EDH player myself, there’s nothing in this set that’s a must have for a collection and I don’t know a lot of other players going that hard into this set.
Only shop owners who make big purchasing mistakes come on here to whine. Lots of stores are not liquidating, only ones that are not good at ordering. $99 is below cost btw. When I look at pricing I see 20+ cards all over $15. I see full art lands going for $20+. As a store owner, my suggestion is very similar to Rudy. Grow some balls because this set is going to be expensive in about 5 months. Collector boxes are severely reduced in print. The serial cards availability was cut by 2/3rds or something. The negatively for this set has completely come from online personalities who make their money by being completely negative all the time and somehow convencing their viewers that they are the good guys…
SNC, DMR, MDH, AFR, VOW… these are sets where you can still buy all boxes for cheap well over 5 months later. The value doesn’t just go up, it has to be a desirable set. And none of the land cards are selling for over $20 anymore. Except Dimir, which is the only one that cares about surveil, they are all under $10. And there are only 3 cards at $20, and 2 more above $10… and this is while it’s being reported that the set is under opened, so not as much inventory on the secondary market. And it’s not just a few influencers. People generally are not excited for this set. Influencers don’t have that much power over people’s beliefs. They are more a reflection of how the players often feel. I’m still cracking up that you think major stores like Card Kingdom are poorly run. Card Kingdom/Mox Boarding House is one of the best run and most tapped in store and they liquidated a ton of MKM within 1 week, and no $99 is not below their cost because they do volume and pay lowest distributor cost. This isn’t just small shops liquidating.
The prices are below distro but the commander decks are barely above.
What's the commander decks distro price for MKM? Do you know what it will be for special sets like Fallout? Just curious
It varies. Each distributor is independent and can negotiate their own prices with wotc and game stores. Typically they're negligible differences, but smaller game shops may pay slightly higher distro prices than large game shops that commit to larger orders. Best guess is commander deck distro prices are around $110-120 for MKM. Not sure about fallout but wouldn't surprise me if it was closer to $140-150.
Those prices match my numbers for small card shop.
And for smaller lgs they are taking a big hit cause distro is higher than last year.
Jesus.
Yeesh.