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Magic: the Gathering |OT13| Ixalan - Port to Sideboard

I don't buy that it is an essential archetype that warrants this type of support and to make limited worse. If they at least made mill viable in limited every now and then.

I've played kitchentable for 16 years almost exclusively and not one of my various crappy deck got new cards every set.
Close but not even every set has a pinger, but every set has one to a couple mill cards.
 

DrArchon

Member
I feel like most mill cards are just trap cards. I've heard plenty of new players compare mill to discard because you get rid of cards and they can't use them anymore, so it has to be just as good, right?

That being said, I'm sure Fleet Swallower + Fraying Sanity is the real deal. One turn mill their whole deck, all for the low low cost of untapping with a 7 mana creature with no ETB ability.
 
I'm thinking RG big creature aggro for the new Standard. There's so many huge haste drops on both 4 and 5 cc and good mana dorks too. Not to mention good burn to get those pesky blockers out of the way.
 

Tunoku

Member
Generally a year into Standard is the peak for staples like Chandra. Maybe you can afford to wait a little bit longer, because I don't see her price tag falling much before the end of the year.
 
Chandra sees play in modern and legacy in skred, ponza, mono red, jund basically any medium speed deck that's heavy red. There should be demand but not for any of the big players in either format
 
Will Chandra Torch of Defiance have Modern demand, or is now the time I should move her?

She was $20 on the back of modern demand. She spiked to $30 on the back of standard demand. She was 3rd most played walker for a bit, but Gideon Tribal has pushed 2 Gideons above her (per MtgTop8). For reference, AoZ has 1/10th the modern presence of ToD.
 

Yeef

Member
If they just left Sealed out of Arena, would anyone notice?
There are people who actually prefer sealed to draft. I think Sealed makes a better format for leagues than draft does.

What I really want to see in Arena is the ability to make your own cubes in-client and draft them with friends. That would be amazing.
 

Firemind

Member
There are people who actually prefer sealed to draft. I think Sealed makes a better format for leagues than draft does.

What I really want to see in Arena is the ability to make your own cubes in-client and draft them with friends. That would be amazing.
Yes. Please. No more draft leagues. Shit sucks.
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
This reddit post indicates that a third party survey has been commissioned by WotC to determine if they can get away with charging more for packs with digital codes in them. Which confirms digital codes, and should probably tell them that we want it to be no additional cost.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/72k9nv/interesting_wotc_survey/

In the comments there, the amount of people that assume MTGO for this stuff is weird.

Raising the cost of packs is a great way to piss off the existing playerbase that has no interest in Arena. Use Arena as a door to bring in new players that might start F2P in Arena and graduate them into paper Magic.

If they're hoping to get players who've never played MtG before, they gotta have sealed.

Arena is F2P. As long as they offer ways to earn packs for free and have good matchmaking with a kiddie pool, limited formats aren't must haves.
 

kirblar

Member
Raising the cost of packs is a great way to piss off the existing playerbase that has no interest in Arena. Use Arena as a door to bring in new players that might start F2P in Arena and graduate them into paper Magic.
WotC has been trying to stave off a MSRP price increase for years now. Wholesale costs have risen multiple times but they REALLY don't want to bust the 3.99 mark until they have to.

(This is inflation at work more than anything else.)
 

bigkrev

Member
This reddit post indicates that a third party survey has been commissioned by WotC to determine if they can get away with charging more for packs with digital codes in them. Which confirms digital codes, and should probably tell them that we want it to be no additional cost.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/72k9nv/interesting_wotc_survey/

In the comments there, the amount of people that assume MTGO for this stuff is weird.

WotC has been trying to stave off a MSRP price increase for years now. Wholesale costs have risen multiple times but they REALLY don't want to bust the 3.99 mark until they have to.

(This is inflation at work more than anything else.)

Marketing surveys are always full of impossible things- I got one from WWE asking if I would like NJPW (their top competitor who owns and operates their own streaming service) on the WWE Network a week or 2 ago.

That said, I'm surprised we have had $4 for 15 cards for as long as we have had. We have seen big box stores raise the price to $4.19, and most other card games have less than 15 cards in the pack.

I've been an advocate for trying 12 card packs- drop the land and 2 commons, and maybe switch one uncommon to "Uncommon or Rare" to make up for the value loss. You would have to figure things out with limited- They already changed from 15 cards in a pack to 14 some time ago when they dropped a common for a land- they can probably come up with some solution that involved a slight shrink to each set to make limited better.

My favorite example of a company changing pricing/distribution was Decipher with the Star Wars CCG. They did 15 cards/2.99 for the first few sets, and then changed to 9 cards/1.99. It allowed players to get "more rares for their dollar", while allowing them to increase the price of the game.

My 2 cents on the idea of codes in packs: Don't do it. It's not worth it. Make the packs $1.50ish like they are in Hearthstone instead.
 
With the loss of masterpieces, the value of rares and mythics will go up again which is good for drafters but bad for standard players.
Codes might be what's needed to keep standard affordable.
 

OnPoint

Member
My 2 cents on the idea of codes in packs: Don't do it. It's not worth it. Make the packs $1.50ish like they are in Hearthstone instead.

If I got a booster box online as well as a booster box in person with one purchase, I would almost certainly also play online.
 

bigkrev

Member
With the loss of masterpieces, the value of rares and mythics will go up again which is good for drafters but bad for standard players.
Codes might be what's needed to keep standard affordable.

How to fix masterpieces:
-Make them twice as common- ie, one every 2-3 boxes, not one per case
-Make 15 per set
-The 15 cards are the 15 normal mythics in the expansion
-Change the frame once a year, not every set
 

sgjackson

Member
pretty much everything arena related is dependent on how they do draft

if i can use my digital packs as draft entries, that means i can pay 15-18 dollars for two drafts instead of 12-15 dollars for one, which is a good trade in my book
 

bigkrev

Member
pretty much everything arena related is dependent on how they do draft

if i can use my digital packs as draft entries, that means i can pay 15-18 dollars for two drafts instead of 12-15 dollars for one, which is a good trade in my book

If they are going to charge 15-18 for 2 drafts, than this program is fucking dead and buried before it even goes into beta lol

Hearthstone charges 2 dollars for its version of limited.
 
pretty much everything arena related is dependent on how they do draft

if i can use my digital packs as draft entries, that means i can pay 15-18 dollars for two drafts instead of 12-15 dollars for one, which is a good trade in my book

wut

Drafts will be $3-4 max. It will almost certainly be structured like HS where you don't keep the cards but you get fairly generous rewards based on how well you do.
 

Justin

Member
If they are going to charge 15-18 for 2 drafts, than this program is fucking dead and buried before it even goes into beta lol

Hearthstone charges 2 dollars for its version of limited.

sgjackson is saying he/she can go draft at a LGS and use the codes to draft again on arena if they do the 3 packs = a draft entry.

Harthstone drafts are not the same as Magic drafts though. Do you even get to keep the cards you draft?
Edit: Nevermind it was answered above.
 
My 2 cents on the idea of codes in packs: Don't do it. It's not worth it. Make the packs $1.50ish like they are in Hearthstone instead.

Depends on what they go for in terms of unlocking cards in-game, but the idea here is to not have to pay for things twice.

If they are going to charge 15-18 for 2 drafts, than this program is fucking dead and buried before it even goes into beta lol

Hearthstone charges 2 dollars for its version of limited.

Cmon man, reading comprehension. It's 15-18 for 2 drafts AND physical cards. Digital packs would not have the same price point as physical ones.

A lot of how things turn out depends on specifics of what they do, but generally we're anticipating more Hearthstone and less MTGO.
 

Justin

Member
I don't think drafting is going to be Hearthstone. It is going to be regular drafting with 8 players and three packs.

They might have a Hearthstone style draft mode for new players but it wont be the main mode.
 
I don't think drafting is going to be Hearthstone. It is going to be regular drafting with 8 players and three packs.

They might have a Hearthstone style draft mode for new players but it wont be the main mode.

They've already said you'll draft with other players so it most likely will be the same structurally, it's just the financial model that is changing.
 

Ri'Orius

Member
Come to think of it, I didn't get a code for the Arena beta from the prerelease. Was that a thing? It was never clear to me if they were giving out codes or if they were just going by DCI number.
 

Justin

Member
Come to think of it, I didn't get a code for the Arena beta from the prerelease. Was that a thing? It was never clear to me if they were giving out codes or if they were just going by DCI number.

They are going by DCI number so you should be good as long as you registered for the beta with the same DCI. My LGS did hand out treasure tokens that had the Arena beta ad on the back before the event started.

Edit: exiled to community :(
 

Recall

Member
Aggro pirates with cutlass or Dino tricks are fun to draft.

From a lore point of view it's a weird set but from a drafting one it's fun, familiar with its archetypes at the moment but fun.
 

Supast4r

Junior Member
I feel like most mill cards are just trap cards. I've heard plenty of new players compare mill to discard because you get rid of cards and they can't use them anymore, so it has to be just as good, right?

That being said, I'm sure Fleet Swallower + Fraying Sanity is the real deal. One turn mill their whole deck, all for the low low cost of untapping with a 7 mana creature with no ETB ability.
I mean the best mill card ever printed IS a trap...
 

Dragoshi1

Member
Did my first Tutorial style Commander game last night with my friends from work, it was a 6 way, and I was using a borrowed deck.

It was...confusing to keep track of 6 people.

But, I enjoyed myself all the same. So, I put an order in to my local store to hopefully get set up for a Dino themed Commander deck. Dinos are the BEST.


I guess I'll also be buying packs here and there hoping for the more expensive ones, such as Regisaur alpha and Carnage Tyrant.
 

aidan

Hugo Award Winning Author and Editor
Did my first Tutorial style Commander game last night with my friends from work, it was a 6 way, and I was using a borrowed deck.

It was...confusing to keep track of 6 people.

But, I enjoyed myself all the same. So, I put an order in to my local store to hopefully get set up for a Dino themed Commander deck. Dinos are the BEST.

I guess I'll also be buying packs here and there hoping for the more expensive ones, such as Regisaur alpha and Carnage Tyrant.

If you're interested in specific cards, especially for Commander, it's much more efficient/cheaper in the long run to just buy the cards you want.
 
Though in those cases, it would be best just to wait until the prices go down.

It's generally advised not to buy booster packs unless you plan to use them in a way besides just opening them, such as by playing draft with your friends.
 

sgjackson

Member
If they are going to charge 15-18 for 2 drafts, than this program is fucking dead and buried before it even goes into beta lol

Hearthstone charges 2 dollars for its version of limited.

nah i meant using potential digital pack codes in physical packs for arena drafting since we were discussing the survey. if they up the price of physical packs but i get pack codes i can use for digital drafting i'm okay with it.

my bad on not being specific
 

Tunoku

Member
If they do phantom drafts they might as well make cubes. heh!

That’s not what keeping them having cube drafts. Implementing so many different cards with a ton of mechanics from the last 3 decades seems like a crazy feat if your goal is to make Standard work smoothly.
 

Justin

Member
oh that, I know they poached some wizards people ages ago but it never was big here past elementary school.

I believe that Pokemon has been growing and growing in recent years. I am not sure where it is in terms of Magic but it is probably a close 2nd in the CCG world at this point. And yes, they do 1:1 physical to digital in their booster packs.
 

red13th

Member
That’s not what keeping them having cube drafts. Implementing so many different cards with a ton of mechanics from the last 3 decades seems like a crazy feat if your goal is to make Standard work smoothly.

?
They can make an evolving cube with whatever sets they have already programmed and continuously update it with new releases.
 
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