If hasbro/wizards stopped doing anti-consumer stuff all the time, people would be making less negative content about them. They bring it on themselves.
I think the problem lies with us, the consumers and players, not Hasbro. We open our wallets and give local game stores and distributors $50-150 for a commander deck that should only be $40-50. We buy so-called collector boxes for $500 when they are only supposed to be $200. If people would actually put their money where their mouths are, and refused to spend these stupid amounts of money for products, the prices would ramp back down. Hasbro exists to make money, and as long as people are willing to pay these insane prices, they will continue to milk that cow. I’m not saying that it’s not scummy of them, it absolutely is, but it’s capitalism.
@@kozad86 $40 is still insane for a 100 card deck that requires 1-3 other decks to even play with. Never forget that a deck of standard playing cards retails for less than $10 But yes. Companies will do whatever they can get away with
Wizards: "We're combining Draft and Set boosters into Play boosters to reduce product confusion" Also Wizards: "So Value boosters" Please make up your mind.
I miss the days of just "boosters", and not having to consult a spread sheet to see what comes in what booster right now, let alone what boosters are in what set.
"Most players will never see it" is probably the most telling thing Mark could have said. If they are printing it, it's because they are expecting a profit. So WotC is expecting to make a profit on Magic cards that "most players will never see" ? Which directly means this product is aimed at people who don't know any better, and is by definition very predatory. The fact they are aiming at the little Timmys and kind Grannys to make a profit is evil. Such a greedy company, it's getting harder and harder for me to give them any of my money.
please stop being performative. People like you keep saying “oooohhhhhh is hard to give this company money!” But then you JUST DO ANYWAY because your own personal convenience is more important to you than anything else
Stop giving them money then. I don't mean to sound harsh, but as a former magic player I ended up switching to flesh and blood and it is so much more healthy of a company. Hasbro lost me with Universes Beyond and has done everything in their power to make me stay away.
Well, as I said in the video the issue with Value Boosters is it's not about us or whether we give them money. It's (as they said) the non-magic players that are being targetted. And I just think that's gross
If magic players openly divest from the game in response products like this, the folks being targeted by this product are less likely to buy it (you allude to this by recommending telling people you know not to buy it which also accomplishes the goal). Enfranchised players reducing or eliminating spending in response to this product would almost certainly cause a walkback, since enfranchised players buy the higher margin products. Fwiw, I think saying criticism is "performative" if you don't completely stop buying any mtg product is over the top, but I do think if you are not at least reducing your yearly spending on the game in response to wotc's increasingly scummy products, you are tacitly endorsing the direction they are choosing to take the game in. So I do think it's on "us" here.
An even more sinister thing about these is you may not even have the option to retun them unopened. Wal Marts and Targets here in the US have signs up saying that all sales are final on sports and trading cards after the insanity of the scalpers at the start of this decade.
While I was in university around that time I had some friends who were fond of printing off fake manufacturers coupons to get $5 fat packs from walmart, which probably didn't help with how those retailers stock trading cards now
@@RedBobcatGamesThere was a major issue a while ago with people buying packs, carefully opening them, taking anything worth money and replacing it with chaff, resealing the packs, and returning them to the store. Or for games where the difference in weight is detectable, weighing packs to determine which ones contain foils and returning the rest. Training employees to inspect packs for resealing can fix the first problem but not the second one. I don't blame them for just saying that they're not dealing with it.
This looks like someone at Hasbro went to a dollar store, saw one of those random repacks, and went “what a FANTASTIC idea. A set of cards that are basically unplayable, for similar cost to a pack that you could get something cool out of. We should do that.”
In a perfect world, WotC will eventually try to squeeze people so hard for so little actual value that they somehow fly too close to the gambling regulators, get sued for all they're worth, and are forced to price their cardboard game pieces as if they were cardboard game pieces, not speculative investments
@@RedBobcatGames it wouldn't even be necessary if more people were willing to call WotC's bluff and just proxy everything. It's the Netflix problem again: if real magic cards are more expensive and lower quality than what some printing company in Hong Kong can give me, what incentive do I have to buy them? If enough people cut into Hasbro's bottom line, they'll eventually have to correct their terrible business practices
Card games are already technically illegal under United States gambling regulations. The only reason trading card games haven't caught the attention of US lawmakers is the low cost. Every thousand dollar card printed and every booster pack price hike creates the kind attention that card games can't afford to generate.
I genuinely do believe the market for these packs is parents who don’t know what they’re buying and buy the cheapest option. Feels scummy to pray on just people who don’t know what they’re buying. You couldn’t be more right!
@@RedBobcatGames I was only introduced into the game a few months ago and it’s sad to see! Was excited to buy new products. For example I was really hyped for assassins creed, my first new franchise set. Then bam 7 card packs and had to avoid the set to not feel scammed🤦🏼♂️ try go back,” to get fallout packs I missed and bam only collector packs! £50 each or a £900 booster box🙄 want to spend money on it but nothing reasonable to buy, aside from precons!
It's rather ironic that WotC completely murdered all 60-card formats and left only Commander alive, because a format with no sanctioned events also has no penalties for proxying. A proxy offers: - Low price point regardless of card rarity or power - Any art you want, official or not - Higher card quality than official cards - Not supporting WotC It's honestly baffling how their product is circling the drain and they think "we need to cut MORE corners!" when the product quality has become so low that there's functionally no reason to purchase official material regardless of price point. If the only format I can play is built on "well our banlist is non-functional so just rule 0 to fix it", then we're going to also rule 0 proxies because we're fixing the game for its designers anyway.
@@RedBobcatGames And Magic30 wasn't even the first time they'd done that. At least the previous proxy sales were at a reasonable price point and had a 100% non changing list of cards you were told were in the product you purchased.
@@RedBobcatGames I assume they are referring to the championship decks, WOTC used to sell gold bordered versions of decks that did well at World's for you to play at home, non-tournament legal
Oh fair, but those (if I remember) still had regular backs though so you could mix them in with regular magic cards, so I don't feel that counts as like, a true proxy. Or am I remembering wrong?
Wizards seems REALLY desperate to try and sell these "make less, charge more" type packs ever since Aftermath, But the good news is the fact that they seem to be deliberately be targeting rookies with these packs, implied that the first 2 attempts failed and if we can keep our friends informed on the true nature of these products, this will fail too.
There is no value for the customer. Even without reselling, the rares and mythics are the power cards in a set. Commons and uncommons are chaff to fill up space and give the illusion of value. Yes, they are necessary for a complete and whole set, but the only format that actually looks at commons and uncommons with more then a 'how does this break the rares/mythics?" is pauper. They occupy the same deck building and collecting space as basic lands.
@@dbptwg I agree he is a volunteer not a prisoner, but I doubt he has much influence with the suits no matter how loudly we complain. We have a far better instrument to tell Hasbro something isn’t good and that’s not buying it. I never have and never will buy a Secret Lair. If the vast majority of the player/customer base did the same they wouldn’t be making them anymore.
I dont, Maro is a POS shill who constantly taps dances and makes excuses while he cashes a check He has LIED every. single. time. with nonsense promises "we will NEVER do this, I swear" right as they do it. Then if you call him out on it, he either ignores you or preaches from Mt Olympus Maro is absolute CANCER, a clown, and a sellout. Do not defend this man, he is our enemy and killed the game. He is a HACK, unlike Richard Garfield who at least is a legit game designer. Maro is nothing more than a yes man wearing a star trek t-shirt. Richard Garfield has more design talent in his pinkie toe than Maro has had in the 30 years of failure he calls "a career"
The fun thing is that this isn't even the first time they've done this. They used to have a product called 6-card boosters which cost 2 bucks, also didn't guarantee a rare, and only had one guaranteed uncommon. The only change between that product and this one is the extra guaranteed uncommon. It was incredibly scummy then and had to be discontinued, so I don't know why they're tweaking it and putting it out now.
@RedBobcatGames they were only available from 2009-2013, the last time they were available as the M14 core set. So easy to miss. Similar to this product they were available in Targets and Walmarts and that's just about it. I didn't read the product closely one time and bought a bunch of them because I thought I lucked into some packs that were marked 2 bucks off somehow. It was for m11. I think I bought 10 packs or something and I got exactly two rares: Stormtide Leviathan and Royal Assassin. Extremely bad for $20.
@RedBobcatGames hmmm. The wiki doesn't specify country but I wouldn't be surprised actually. It does specify that it was only English for most of it with some Japanese packs setting print and even fewer Spanish ones seeing print. So it's feasible they only made the English ones in North America.
Well, I dunno. I feel like before the peopel targetted at least had a better understand of what they were getting into. These Value Boosters are, as stated, going after people that don't play the game. Feels gross
This is just another reason for me to hope some one will make a successful “sorcerery the Collecting” some day for people who want to play magic but not support Wizards
Here in Canada, for $1.50 EACH, YES, ONE DOLLAR AND 50 CENTS, I can go to the dollar store and pick up a pack of repacked wildcards. Cards from ANY set (except for the super pricey sought after sets….. but i HAVE pulled less valuable cards from stuff like double masters out of them). If i want to “bolster” my collection as the newer player i am (only getting to intermediate play EDH gameplay now, after about 2 years), i buy these. Because i get a little bit of everything. I have a chance at some half decent mythics and rares (not expensive ones, but PLAYABLE ones) without ever breaking the bank. There isn’t a feeling of opening a whiff when i can buy multiple packs for under $10. I can open as many cards as i would in a prerelease box, for less than WOTC sells just 1 of these crap packs. Like it makes no sense at all. Im not one to brag about how cheap i can get a card or a pack for, because typical im not buying anything worth bragging about, But with this…. Come on now. Who WOULDN’T want a dollar store pack, over one of these? I have a friend who I finally got to try the game, and he got into it, and he started getting the itch to open packs. I had to stop him and break down all the different pack types, But then i just gifted him a pile of packs from the dollar store and told him to go wild. All of the cards were new to him, and all of them had a use. He was super happy with what he pulled, all out of packs full of cards worth less than a dollar for the most part (sometimes you get lucky and card values change after they land in a repack, so you can pull a desirable card as the landscape of the game changes) Dude was looking for dinosaurs, and he got some cheap dinosaurs. What more could he ask for. He dropped a bunch of money on LCI and Ikoria, Felt like he didn’t get what he wanted, But once i helped him pad out his collection, and he pulled more stuff (no matter how cheap or useless the cards might be, some of them were good for the deck he was gonna try to build) It was a learning experience for him. He learned to save his money, buy singles where he can, and to go easy on new sets that catch his eye if he’s gonna open full priced packs off the shelf, because $12 a pack of MH3 isn’t very beginner friendly. Took him to a proper LGS to buy the singles he needed after figuring out a basic strategy based on the cards he pulled, then he chose a commander and it was off to the races. The pack openings were necessary, but he learned alot. With these ripoff budget boosters, he’d have learned nothing other than “i gotta spend more money on better packs to open good cards” when thats not the case at all…. Unless you only buy from WOTC, and you pick up zero singles…. Thanks god i took him in and got him comfortable with talking to the clerk and asking if they have singles and stuff. WOTC is out to mess with players like him us, Not just people outside of the games community who aren’t as informed. There are new players that dont know better too, and they take full advantage of it. When i first started, I didn’t know why you’d wanna open a set booster over a draft booster, other than you might get a foil or a borderless card…. Boy was i wrong, and I didn’t realize as fast as I’d have liked to. It absolutely sucks that this product comes out ON MY BIRTHDAY, too. Gonna have it in the back of my mind, making me feel peeve’d right off the entire day.
Well sorry about that, and happy birthday. Also, reading your comment reminded me that one of the places I was buying singles from online during lock down had a thing where for an extra £1 they'd send you 10 random rares. I got some good stuff doing that, and that's WAYYYYY better value than whatever these "Value Boosters" will be sold for
Could be just what happens after a while, but about an hour ago I saw the algorithm took practically a 90% angle change on the number of people it was showing my video to. So I'm going to assume that's due to the thumbnail, and in an effort to to continue to get what I think is an important message out there I have sadly changed it
Theory: part of the reason the value boosters are terrible is because the big box stores they're partnering with don't want to get mobbed by collectors buying up their entire shelf in one go, like has happened with some Pokémon card releases
@@RedBobcatGames I don't think that's exactly "security reason".. More like some kind of "customer segregation"... They are clearly not trying to market them to any serious player or collectors .. They want them keeping on buying the "regular" products from regular gaming stores and the value boosters are likely aimed at other markets... Ie people going to "select retail stores" and buying them out of otter cuteness and curiosity.
They sold regular draft packs in big box stores forever. No reason a regular price pack with regular rates would cause issues unless the store somehow managed to severely underprice it. Which wotc could fix with this one wierd trick called "msrp"
@@jkattack2640 They might be selling both play boosters and the value boosters in the same stores anyway.. Why? Maybe it's just the old trick of making the regular booster seem better value when there's a worse alternative available.. Or if only the value boosters are awailalable in some stores it might lure the people who randomly pick them up to find where the "real" boosters are sold... Nobody said that selling regular boosters in some stores would be problematic or anything... They just said that some retailers requested cheaper products.. It might simply be something like hawing a half litre cartons of juice as well as one litre and the half litre is 70% of the price.. Most wont buy that except perhaps once but it might "boost the perceived value" of the full size package... Probably that won't really work on any informed customers but the retailers might want to try that out anyway..
7:25 I genuinely believe that the target for these packs are the kids of people who regularly have to shop at dollar stores, or more so the children of those who do. Yu-Gi-Oh does, or did, something similar with their legendary duelists, duels from the deep set, but those did come with at least a promo rare. But they came in a pack of 3 card boosters with a promo exclusive to dollar general
All the blogs and QnA's and corporate speak in the world can't change the simple fact that a large portion of the fan base has simply been priced out of the game - or that it doesn't cost WotC any more to print a rare than a common.
I believe the one point that everyone needs constantly reiterate is that it costs them the same amount regardless of what cards they print. They could fire up the printing presses and make nothing but mythics and it wouldn't be any different than commons. That is why it cracks me up that certain sets cost more than others. It's such a crock.
Yup. Every time I mention this I have people in the comments tell me how wrong I am, or that I don't understand economics. I think they don't understand that I don't care! It's cardboard, it shouldn't be that expensive. And IF WotC want to treat magic cards as something you can profit from by gambling for, then they should be regulated as such
@RedBobcatGames Even a normal draft booster could contain just as much "value" as a Play Booster. When the sets had a bonus sheet, or a dedicated slot, you could pull 2-3 Rares/Mythics out of the same pack, and they seemed more commonplace than Play Booster packs getting multiple rares. So the only thing you are getting to justify the price increase is a guaranteed foil card in every pack, which is more likely going to be a common or uncommon more often than not, and is also already offset by the reduction in pack size as well. Wizards is all about trying to squeeze more money from their playerbase, either directly via Booster price increase and shrinkflation, or this way, by producing a product designed to prey upon the less knowledgeable.
Yeah, I'm just looked up about the changes to the pull rates. Some of the odds to get those extra rares have been slashed. I may have to do a video covering it in the future
Apologies in advance for my English, it's not my original language. But I really like your videos and I totally agree with what you said. A point that caught me a lot and that I don't think you addressed was the name of the product: "Value Booster"! Not only does it go against the contents of the packages, but it is also a possible way to deceive those who do not know how the packages work. They induce lay people to believe that they are buying something of greater value in relation to possible others products on the shelves and, as Mark said, they will be precisely in places that normally fans who really understand, would not buy, only people who will buy for the fans they like.
Yeah, I totally agree with you. These "Value Boosters" really seem to just be targeting people who don't know any better. It's gross. (You're english was very good by the way. Thank you for watching, and thank you for your comment)
@@RedBobcatGames To iterate on the other commenter's statement, in the most popular digital client for mtg, "mtg: arena," the booster packs contain 8 cards. It's always been this way, even whenever 15-card boosters were the norm. The supposed reasoning for this was that "15 card boosters could be overwhelming and intimidating to new players" which I call total bullshit on.
oh I should also stipulate... the digital cards you open in these packs are wholly untradeable with other players, no matter what, and there's also no way too "sell" them back to the game as to trade in all your chaff for something actually worthwhile (a la hearthstone's dust system or ygo: master duel's card point system)
Since Conflux Wotc have been trying to make smaller boosters a thing. I didn't understand it at the time, but because of shovelware and mockbusters and pirates products I understood that there was a granny market. And it was targeted by greedy people most of the time.
I find it so disheartning that me and my friends all silently agreed that we wouldnt upgrade any of our decks since around 2016/2017. Finally, a set comes that peaks my interest only to learn that the price point to play any limited has doubled. Are prereleases now $50 too?
I massively respect RUclipsrs like you who don’t sell their soul and kiss the asses of big corporations just to release content that gets in ad revenue. We need more people like you who are willing to critique and show people the information that the greedy suits want to keep on the low down.
92.6% male?! Jeez. I forget what a boys club it is in this hobby sometimes. Love your content and I have been subbed since your first video. Thanks, a woman.
I actually preferred set boosters because I cared more about the alt art than I did about draft. I play exclusively Commander with my playgroup, sometimes with Planechase or Archenemy mixed in. So having a pretty art for my commander was nice. Actually, the swap over to Play boosters since the last set I actually bought a box of (I March of the Machine) has me more pissed off that I now no longer have a guaranteed alt art in every pack anymore. I'm content with them being draftable, but I care more about the contents from a collectible (NOT a reseller) standpoint. Who the hell wants to pay probably 5-10 dollars a pack for 6 cards that are worth less than the cardboard it's printed on? I *guess* it's cheaper than buying a box to try to hunt down a few common/uncommon alt arts, but so is going online and buying singles.
I honestly think they could of had a happy middle ground with play boosters. Extra rare like set, but draftable like draft boosters. Less cards like set BUT THE SAME PRICE AS DRAFT BOOSTERS. But no, they got greedy. And now they're trying to plug the gap with whatever the hell these Value boosters are
I have seen like 3-card Pokemon card packs at a Dollar store a few months ago. I usually don't visit them and was pretty surprised to notice it. Guess this is some kind of analogue, exactly for trying to reel the uneducated in.
The only difference is (at least when I used to play pokemon tcg) those dollar packs *actually* cost $1. If Value boosters would cost just $1, I'd personally be OK with it, but we all know that's not what WotC wants
Yeah, I've just looked up about it. Those odds of pulling rares have been totally slashed! This is crazy. I may have to cover this at some point in the future
I used to buy everything Magic put out. Then they said, not every product is made for you. So I took them at their word and bought less product. Then the prices started increasing, so I stopped buying bundles. Then they increased again, so I stopped buying premium sets booster boxes. Then the prices started increasing, so I stopped buying ancillary products. Next will be standard booster boxes, if they keep it up. I'll just stick to singles, like prof said. Let the whales have their fun. Maybe they can sustain the market while us poor shrimp glean from the teeth.
I hate that WOTC has made every single purchase feel adversarial and dirty. I long for the days of going to Wal-Mart, seeing that a new set came out and grabbing a pack. Now it feels like I need to do homework just to not get scammed!
just figured share, i am in fact here via the algorithm. First video i've seen form your channel, and already subscribed lmao. And its with the original thumbnail aswell.
Yugioh used to have something kinda like this, a small pack that was cheaper (like £1-2 I don't remember exactly) but they were reprint sets so at least if you were buying star packs for little timmy, it'd be something he'd recognise from the anime probably, usually sold alongside other sets, and also, got retired fairly soon, instead shifting the focus for small low cost packs to producing OTS packs, packs not designed to be sold, but given out as entry packs or prize support for local game stores alongside their normal packs, which were again, reprint sets, and had a small chance to contain ultimate rares foilings for the reprints (closest I can think to compare this to mtg is if someone opened a pack as prize for topping a draft and they pulled something normally only in a collector booster in their normal pack, which was exciting because you'd be opening them while in the store so get to share in teh excitement of someone finding an ulti, which would happen to one person per week more often than not.)
You make a good point actually. When I was younger I'd get collectible cards for games I would never play because I recognised the characters on them. Had a bunch of X-men and Pokémon trading cards. If WotC's lore was better, then maybe they could do something similar, at which point i would say that yeah, opening these cards is a way to "experience" the game
"opened a $4 uncommon" The last $4 uncommon from a premier/standard set as part of a main set list (required to qualify for a slot in a value booster) was An Offer You Can't Refuse, and the one before that was Bala Ged Recovery/Malakir Rebirth. At best, there is one uncommon in a set that fits this description, and there have been only a handful such cards since the implementation of the M15 card border.
I went to the bloomburrow prerelease last weekend and it was so fun for an intro to magic at my LGS. Sadly it seems like I'll have to just wait for the next set to do anything there that's not commander because I just don't like commander. Draft got too expensive for the people there, and no one plays standard or modern there either. Kinda makes me sad, I loved the limited card availability and wish I could do it more than once a set.
Approaching this video from the perspective of "Damn, it sucks how we don't have a cheap option for people who just want to play the game" - I totally agree. As for the value boosters themselves. I don't think such a booster is inherently evil. There are people who just want to buy a semi-randomized pack of cards that look cool for as cheap a price point as possible. For such individuals a booster at the most absolute dirt cheap price imaginable that no enfranchised player has any interest in is the best option - it costs the least overall if your goal is "to open 2 or 3 packs to enjoy opening random cards". The real question is going to be the same thing we always have to determine - is the estimated value going to be so utterly horrible that anyone buying them is getting fleeced beyond belief? Until we know the rarity rates and the cost of the packs it's difficult to say. Boosters are inherently exploitative products anyway, and even the experience of getting to draft some of them can only make up for that so much, after all. That said, if they cost anything more than about a dollar they'll almost certainly be complete money sinks, and I'm not really expecting them to cost a dollar...
I think you may be right, but I also suspect you're being a bit generous. A value booster may not be inherently evil, but reading the answers given when they were asked about who the product is for... yeah. May not be evil, but it certainly does seem that way
Thanks for putting this so eloquently. Hasbro/Wotc has no more respect for its customers and does not care about the game anymore, it's all about their f-ing bottom line.
0:40 hey Red, just throwing myself out there as another positive MtGtuber who loves reviewing the old janky precons and doing super casual kitchen table deckbuilding! 😀
I saw speculation that WotC had contracts with suppliers for a certain amount of small boosters over time, so when Aftermath flopped they pivoted to try different strategies with the remaining production lines they were already committed to doing. That wouldn't make this decision any less worthless and predatory, just maybe more understandable.
Yeah that would be interesting if true. I wonder why they don't just do more cards per pack though. Keep the price low, but make the product playable and people like me will stop moaning as much
Here's what a real value booster could look like: 4 commons, 2 uncommons, 1 rare/mythic, 1 basic land. Costs about half a booster, whatever that even means any more. To play with one, remove the basic land and use the rest as your deck. You can't deck out. You may play your cards upside down as lands with all basic land types. If you have no cards in hand at the start of your turn, you may return all cards you own in all zones to your hand.
@@RedBobcatGames Oh, absolutely. I'm not claiming this is a revolutionary idea, I'm just sort of gesturing in the direction of what "value" might look like now that boosters have extra rares and cost more. The lowest realistic cost on both ends for a useable booster. The point isn't that they would or should, just that they still could, even if the only goal is profit.
@@RedBobcatGames There's a million other ways they could do it. 15 card set jumpstart boosters with a larger pool of possible themes would have poorer resale value due to some of the cards being land, but they could be a reasonable cross section of the set and they'd represent the minimum viable buy-in to play with the normal rules. Tiny boosters that just have a basic land, a common, an uncommon, and a rare/mythic, with the commander cards in the pool, would represent the lowest possible cost-per-rare while still including the whole set and maintaining the hierarchy of rarity for individual cards. Value is a very nebulous concept, but I think if you pick a definition you can design a booster that could make money by delivering that version of it. It's a shame they didn't.
Yeah, value boosters are exactly that : to trick people in big stores. And likely only in north america, since in Europe you have to disclose the % of chances of getting each type of cards and they don't want to tell how little you can get a rare.
Oh, and I added Alpha Investments to try and represent the spectrum of Magic content creators. More of a "this affects everyone on all sides" thing. I don't know him, so am not like, affiliated with him or whatever
Oh hey, I think it was you that asked about the "Okay Hand" gesture and if I'm... one of those guys. I can't find you're comment so sorry if you deleted it. Just wanted to confirm I'm not, and for a laugh you should check out the 13.26 minute mark of my video "MtG Trivia! Can you beat this Quiz! Magic the Questioning! (Ep - Farseek)" (the last quiz I did)
@@RedBobcatGames It might. Someone who got banned from WotC events for life because of their actions. Easier to google The Quartering and find out the stuff that they did then the Worst Nerd.
I proxy everything at all times. I even proxy cards i own and basics. I want everyone i play with to see that all my cards are fake. Doing your part to normalize proxies is the best thing you can do to cut into these loathsome vampire's profits
When I first heard the term value booster I said "what the hell is that?" Once I read up on it my reaction was pretty much the same..."Fuck off." If these packs were 1-2$ maybe I'd but one once in a blue moon. Odds are they'll be 3.50-4 and never worth it. If they sold a box of 48 you could do a low power draft for exactly eight people. For 100$ you could just pick up an older box rn like Markov and at least have more people, better cards (arguable), or prize support if it's exactly 8.
I don't see any issues with kids buying cheap packs of commons and uncommons at Walmart with their allowances. Mark Rosewaters points all make sense to me.
I like how the msrp for the Bloomburrow commanderd are around $35, like they used to be. I don’t like how there has been so much flack about MtG reselling at big box stores and now Wizards is just pulling the middle man. Worse is I know these won’t be just a dollar. Alliances packs were $2. Issue is, without Arena doing 4 player commander, people can just print their own cards to play at home. As an adult with a full time job I should be able to afford to buy as much as when I had a part time job and full time school, but I can afford less now when I’m making so much more. Make it make sense.
Looks like they are not even real. No Vendor got them. Not even Cardmarket. Nobody made an Opening. So i guess they realized how stupid these Packs are and pulled them before they hit shelf.
Well, I suspect they'll be in big box stores that wouldn't normally sell Magic stuff. Also, they're not officially out till the 2nd anyway so we have to wait and see for now
The worst part is if they really wanted to sell commons they could've created a pauper draft format and sold them as pauper draft boosters. But these can't even be used as that since they include uncommons and *sometimes* rares.
Yeah, these are very specifically unplayable and not even meant to be played with. He went to pains to explain that people who play aren't meant to buy these. Very strange
If these were priced at literally $1, they might actually be a nice way to give the pack cracking hit without breaking bank. However these will easily cost like 2 or 3 bucks which is a rip off.
Still? Wow, I changed that some time ago! Though it seems that this videos gone as far as it will so I may change it back now because why not? You know?
Given the set has no financial value in the NON VALUE set, this is even worse. If MH3 did this with their really good uncommons and commons, that would still bomb but would be fun to play with.
I'm sure the "erm let people enjoy things" crowd is gonna have a field day. "erm how does it affect you." My response to those people is always, where do you draw the line? What if each set had 50 different booster packs at 50 different price points? What if each set, they removed 10 of those packs, and introduced another 10 at a higher price point? Where does it end? Why does this game require so much excess
I came looking for concrete information on Value Boosters but I’m sticking around for turning Fallout Cards into a single player RPG. That sounds like my jam!
Great video, really I just came back to magic after almost 10 years away from it and seeing all these awful things happening really makes me skeptical about spending any of my money on it, the prices are through the roof and here in Brazil for now on there is no more Magic products in portuguese, everything feels a message for me to not come back at all
Thankfully, i live in a country where major stores don't sell mtg product. I think there's probably a "Walmart told us if we don't give them a product at a lower price point to sell we will stop stocking your product." Plus the need to protect LGSs must contribute a factor into it all, after all if value boosters were just like draft boosters and cheaper than play boosters, there an incentive there to shop at walmart over your LGS. But the truth of the fact is that value boosters could be much better at a lower price point after all all MTG cards are worth cents.
That's pretty much my theory too. Big box stores thought these were too expensive to sell, and I agree these packs could be worth buying IF they were playable
As someone incharge of ording for a LGS play and draft were never a problem we had draft buyers and set buyers. Now we just have play boosters sitting there.
You're not the only person I've heard say something similar. Play Boosters always felt like they were more for the shareholders of Hasbro than they were the players to me
☆Under valued channel. Watching thru the entirety of the channel, ●don't always agree ●Highly appreciate well thought out and expressed opinions & observations ● savage! 😂
I was there for the OG tumbnail! In my line of work they call this sort of thing an "economy" product, although for us it's the quality they skimp on, and they're absolutely targeted towards people who are either cheap and want the fix, can't afford the "premium" stuff, or don't know what to get but see it's cheap. I had a pretty similar reaction when I first saw value boosters, so I don't have too much to say on the matter that you haven't already said. Now I'm seriously debating dipping into Bloomburrow because it's the first set I've been interested in since Wilds, but this is a bad move I don't know if they even deserve sales of non-value booster product. I'd also like to know whether Arena had a direct hand in the declining sales of draft boosters. Like, did they push themselves out of their own market, go "woops", and decide that it wasn't worth trying to regain that group with paper Magic? Because that seems extremely shortsighted at best, and really stupid way to transition draft players to digital at worst.
I avoid arena like the plague so I'm not the best one to answer. Though the rest of your comment reminds me of what Terry Pratchett used to say about a poor man's shoes
Oh why thank you very much. I'm working on something similar again but this time for the X-Men! No idea when it's coming out though. WotC keep dropping clangers like these Value Boosters and I feel the need to react haha
Ok, a lot of your points are accurate (selling cards for a game that are never meant to be seen by the people that play/resell just stinks of exploiting those who don't know better), but there is something to be said for the cost of the cards vs. the cost of the boosters having to match - it costs the same amount to print any denomination of bank note, but you'd be crazy to claim that they should be worth the same - that said, given that MTG cards don't come with an explicit value available to the customer, that's something that we have to figure out for ourselves and balance based on the numbers that we find in the packs that WotC sell us. That isn't quite saying that they can just print as many as they want of whatever cards to fill out smaller boosters with though, as they've effectively got their own internal pricing scheme for the cards - there isn't going to be any point calling cards rares or mythics if they're pumped out willy-nilly, and when a play booster averages about 1.25 rare or higher cards (because that's what I've got to check the probabilities, and it probably somewhat reflects the wider distribution), there's not enough rare or higher cards to guarantee one in a 7-card booster without making that booster disproportionately valuable - everyone who wants those cards and isn't forced into buying other packs (by, say, drafting) would be buying them out and forcing the ratio of rares and higher to be closer to one in seven, as apposed to the current ~1 in 10.2. It's not something they have to stick to, but they have decided to make the rares and mythics a specific portion of the available cards, and they cannot maintain that and give Value Boosters and 100% chance of getting even one of them.
So, two points. First, if we were to follow your argument to it's logical conclusions as to what WotC's aims are, then they'd never have made Play Boosters but instead kept Draft Boosters because there were fewer rares per pack. If more Rares in the environment is bad in their eyes, why would they standardise a pack that contains more rares in it? And secondly, the bank notes example is bad. The note itself is a denomination of a currency, not a reflection of cost to produce. If WotC are treating their cards this way, and printing currency in packs with randomized odds then that's literally gambling and they need to be regulated
I've been someone who enjoys cracking packs for the "playing with what I'm given" aspect of draft and kitchen table, but with the price hikes and card cutting, its been harder and harder to justify buying packs that I got into buying singles. I used to never care to buy singles.
There’s more value in The Red Bobcats patreon than in a value booster
Well this is getting pinned
and you also get a guaranteed rare treatment!
@@marcoottina654 but can we get him in a textured foil?
@@thecrimsonfkr2818 IDK, but to me it's already * shiny *
True.
If hasbro/wizards stopped doing anti-consumer stuff all the time, people would be making less negative content about them. They bring it on themselves.
Yeah pretty much. I do get people upset how negative some of my videos are but like... look at what I'm working with, you know?
“Any publicity is good publicity” ahh company
Eugh, yeah maybe. Hopefully this publicity is blatant enough to get the message across though haha
I think the problem lies with us, the consumers and players, not Hasbro. We open our wallets and give local game stores and distributors $50-150 for a commander deck that should only be $40-50. We buy so-called collector boxes for $500 when they are only supposed to be $200. If people would actually put their money where their mouths are, and refused to spend these stupid amounts of money for products, the prices would ramp back down. Hasbro exists to make money, and as long as people are willing to pay these insane prices, they will continue to milk that cow. I’m not saying that it’s not scummy of them, it absolutely is, but it’s capitalism.
@@kozad86 $40 is still insane for a 100 card deck that requires 1-3 other decks to even play with.
Never forget that a deck of standard playing cards retails for less than $10
But yes. Companies will do whatever they can get away with
WotC saw those junk blisters/playcubes at Target/Walmart and thought “why aren’t we scamming grandmas ourselves”
Seemingly, yeah
😭😭😭
Indeed
Lol, I used to buy those just for the storage cubes :p Ah, to be young again
Wizards: "We're combining Draft and Set boosters into Play boosters to reduce product confusion"
Also Wizards: "So Value boosters"
Please make up your mind.
Yup
Let's not forget the Beyond Boosters too
I'd keep that list going but I basically did that already in the video haha. Also I forgot Theme Boosters!
I miss the days of just "boosters", and not having to consult a spread sheet to see what comes in what booster right now, let alone what boosters are in what set.
Have you seen what's happening with D&D? The books have pre-order tiers now. FOR PHYSICAL BOOKS
@@RedBobcatGames I don't know how you can have DLC for a book, but I'm sure they'll find a way
The video gamification of literally every form of entertainment now
You get a bonus golden dragon to use on D&D beyond if you preorder all 3 books. That's how they have DLC for it, but not making it a book anymore
And also how they change the card slots and ratios of the boosters each and every set.
"Most players will never see it" is probably the most telling thing Mark could have said. If they are printing it, it's because they are expecting a profit. So WotC is expecting to make a profit on Magic cards that "most players will never see" ? Which directly means this product is aimed at people who don't know any better, and is by definition very predatory. The fact they are aiming at the little Timmys and kind Grannys to make a profit is evil. Such a greedy company, it's getting harder and harder for me to give them any of my money.
Yup, my thoughts exactly
please stop being performative. People like you keep saying “oooohhhhhh is hard to give this company money!” But then you JUST DO ANYWAY because your own personal convenience is more important to you than anything else
Stop giving them money then. I don't mean to sound harsh, but as a former magic player I ended up switching to flesh and blood and it is so much more healthy of a company. Hasbro lost me with Universes Beyond and has done everything in their power to make me stay away.
Well, as I said in the video the issue with Value Boosters is it's not about us or whether we give them money. It's (as they said) the non-magic players that are being targetted. And I just think that's gross
If magic players openly divest from the game in response products like this, the folks being targeted by this product are less likely to buy it (you allude to this by recommending telling people you know not to buy it which also accomplishes the goal). Enfranchised players reducing or eliminating spending in response to this product would almost certainly cause a walkback, since enfranchised players buy the higher margin products. Fwiw, I think saying criticism is "performative" if you don't completely stop buying any mtg product is over the top, but I do think if you are not at least reducing your yearly spending on the game in response to wotc's increasingly scummy products, you are tacitly endorsing the direction they are choosing to take the game in. So I do think it's on "us" here.
An even more sinister thing about these is you may not even have the option to retun them unopened. Wal Marts and Targets here in the US have signs up saying that all sales are final on sports and trading cards after the insanity of the scalpers at the start of this decade.
OH! Okay, now I'm double mad! HELL NO!
While I was in university around that time I had some friends who were fond of printing off fake manufacturers coupons to get $5 fat packs from walmart, which probably didn't help with how those retailers stock trading cards now
Depending on the state you live in, they actually have to honor refunds on unopened products, regardless of "Company Policy."
Yeah see, I'd kick off if I couldn't return something unopened. Though, I kick off about a lot of things it seems haha
@@RedBobcatGamesThere was a major issue a while ago with people buying packs, carefully opening them, taking anything worth money and replacing it with chaff, resealing the packs, and returning them to the store. Or for games where the difference in weight is detectable, weighing packs to determine which ones contain foils and returning the rest. Training employees to inspect packs for resealing can fix the first problem but not the second one. I don't blame them for just saying that they're not dealing with it.
This looks like someone at Hasbro went to a dollar store, saw one of those random repacks, and went “what a FANTASTIC idea. A set of cards that are basically unplayable, for similar cost to a pack that you could get something cool out of. We should do that.”
Yeah, pretty much. It's awful
In a perfect world, WotC will eventually try to squeeze people so hard for so little actual value that they somehow fly too close to the gambling regulators, get sued for all they're worth, and are forced to price their cardboard game pieces as if they were cardboard game pieces, not speculative investments
I am starting to think that regulation might not be a bad thing
@@RedBobcatGames it wouldn't even be necessary if more people were willing to call WotC's bluff and just proxy everything. It's the Netflix problem again: if real magic cards are more expensive and lower quality than what some printing company in Hong Kong can give me, what incentive do I have to buy them? If enough people cut into Hasbro's bottom line, they'll eventually have to correct their terrible business practices
Very true
Card games are already technically illegal under United States gambling regulations. The only reason trading card games haven't caught the attention of US lawmakers is the low cost. Every thousand dollar card printed and every booster pack price hike creates the kind attention that card games can't afford to generate.
I genuinely do believe the market for these packs is parents who don’t know what they’re buying and buy the cheapest option. Feels scummy to pray on just people who don’t know what they’re buying. You couldn’t be more right!
Thank you, I don't want to be right of course. But I look at all the evidence and...
@@RedBobcatGames I was only introduced into the game a few months ago and it’s sad to see! Was excited to buy new products. For example I was really hyped for assassins creed, my first new franchise set. Then bam 7 card packs and had to avoid the set to not feel scammed🤦🏼♂️ try go back,” to get fallout packs I missed and bam only collector packs! £50 each or a £900 booster box🙄 want to spend money on it but nothing reasonable to buy, aside from precons!
Yeah, the prices are all over the place. I honestly think WotC need to break away from Hasbro
Even then, wouldn’t you want the parents to buy more expensive products instead of cheaper products?
@@robertneilson2780 true! probably aimed at the people who can’t afford it as much. Which is even worse…
It's rather ironic that WotC completely murdered all 60-card formats and left only Commander alive, because a format with no sanctioned events also has no penalties for proxying. A proxy offers:
- Low price point regardless of card rarity or power
- Any art you want, official or not
- Higher card quality than official cards
- Not supporting WotC
It's honestly baffling how their product is circling the drain and they think "we need to cut MORE corners!" when the product quality has become so low that there's functionally no reason to purchase official material regardless of price point.
If the only format I can play is built on "well our banlist is non-functional so just rule 0 to fix it", then we're going to also rule 0 proxies because we're fixing the game for its designers anyway.
And don't forget with Magic30, they even tried to sell us proxies haha
@@RedBobcatGames And Magic30 wasn't even the first time they'd done that. At least the previous proxy sales were at a reasonable price point and had a 100% non changing list of cards you were told were in the product you purchased.
They printed proxies before? I don't remember that!
@@RedBobcatGames I assume they are referring to the championship decks, WOTC used to sell gold bordered versions of decks that did well at World's for you to play at home, non-tournament legal
Oh fair, but those (if I remember) still had regular backs though so you could mix them in with regular magic cards, so I don't feel that counts as like, a true proxy. Or am I remembering wrong?
Wizards seems REALLY desperate to try and sell these "make less, charge more" type packs ever since Aftermath,
But the good news is the fact that they seem to be deliberately be targeting rookies with these packs, implied that the first 2 attempts failed and if we can keep our friends informed on the true nature of these products, this will fail too.
Hopefully. I just worry what damage this will do to the game, if non-magic players think it's a rip off based on these packs
@@RedBobcatGamesdon't worry - non magic players are aware of how much of a rip off this game is already!
Haha, ouch. But yeah
I got to see the original thumbnail! I agree with the sentiment!
Thank you! And it's still up (for now)
Negativity is a form of love, too. Criticism and critique, honest direct and caring, comes from a place of love.
Thank you. Not everyone feels that way. I've already had some people moan at me in the comments. I did try to get ahead of it this time too haha
Star Wars fans/former fans' most sacred sentiment.
Preach!
There is no value for the customer. Even without reselling, the rares and mythics are the power cards in a set. Commons and uncommons are chaff to fill up space and give the illusion of value. Yes, they are necessary for a complete and whole set, but the only format that actually looks at commons and uncommons with more then a 'how does this break the rares/mythics?" is pauper. They occupy the same deck building and collecting space as basic lands.
Pauper packs would have actually been cooler than these
Yeah, if these were in any way designed to be played with I'd have been a lot more okay with it
I feel really bad for Rosewater. The suits make a decision and he is left to ‘explain’ it.
Yeah, I do too. But that's the system they've set up so okay. Guess I'll direct my ire at him then
@@dbptwg I agree he is a volunteer not a prisoner, but I doubt he has much influence with the suits no matter how loudly we complain. We have a far better instrument to tell Hasbro something isn’t good and that’s not buying it. I never have and never will buy a Secret Lair. If the vast majority of the player/customer base did the same they wouldn’t be making them anymore.
Well, as it stands now the only people even able to buy them are bots and scammers
I dont, Maro is a POS shill who constantly taps dances and makes excuses while he cashes a check
He has LIED every. single. time. with nonsense promises "we will NEVER do this, I swear" right as they do it. Then if you call him out on it, he either ignores you or preaches from Mt Olympus
Maro is absolute CANCER, a clown, and a sellout. Do not defend this man, he is our enemy and killed the game. He is a HACK, unlike Richard Garfield who at least is a legit game designer. Maro is nothing more than a yes man wearing a star trek t-shirt. Richard Garfield has more design talent in his pinkie toe than Maro has had in the 30 years of failure he calls "a career"
The fun thing is that this isn't even the first time they've done this. They used to have a product called 6-card boosters which cost 2 bucks, also didn't guarantee a rare, and only had one guaranteed uncommon. The only change between that product and this one is the extra guaranteed uncommon.
It was incredibly scummy then and had to be discontinued, so I don't know why they're tweaking it and putting it out now.
Oh that's interesting. I didn't know that, and I don't think I've ever seen one. Good to know though
@RedBobcatGames they were only available from 2009-2013, the last time they were available as the M14 core set. So easy to miss. Similar to this product they were available in Targets and Walmarts and that's just about it. I didn't read the product closely one time and bought a bunch of them because I thought I lucked into some packs that were marked 2 bucks off somehow. It was for m11. I think I bought 10 packs or something and I got exactly two rares: Stormtide Leviathan and Royal Assassin. Extremely bad for $20.
I wonder if this was only in the US. I feel I would have seen these otherwise
@RedBobcatGames hmmm. The wiki doesn't specify country but I wouldn't be surprised actually. It does specify that it was only English for most of it with some Japanese packs setting print and even fewer Spanish ones seeing print. So it's feasible they only made the English ones in North America.
Or I'm just blind haha
I literally have to warn my mom about these for the exact reason this video mentions.
And there we go. That's the exact reason I made this video
Value Boosters: 'We encourage youth gambling.'
Seemingly. Maybe it's time they got regulated?
This is the entire booster pack model. Nothing has changed.
Well, I dunno. I feel like before the peopel targetted at least had a better understand of what they were getting into. These Value Boosters are, as stated, going after people that don't play the game. Feels gross
This is just another reason for me to hope some one will make a successful “sorcerery the Collecting” some day for people who want to play magic but not support Wizards
Personally i'd like to see WotC spin off from Hasbro. I think Hasbro are mostly to blame
@@RedBobcatGames True, and this would also be expectable
@@RedBobcatGames it really feels like Hasbro realized that WoTC was there last profitable piece and decided, “got to fix that!”
Or like "Squeeze it for all it's worth"
Proxy!!
Here in Canada, for $1.50 EACH,
YES, ONE DOLLAR AND 50 CENTS,
I can go to the dollar store and pick up a pack of repacked wildcards.
Cards from ANY set (except for the super pricey sought after sets….. but i HAVE pulled less valuable cards from stuff like double masters out of them).
If i want to “bolster” my collection as the newer player i am
(only getting to intermediate play EDH gameplay now, after about 2 years),
i buy these.
Because i get a little bit of everything.
I have a chance at some half decent mythics and rares (not expensive ones, but PLAYABLE ones) without ever breaking the bank.
There isn’t a feeling of opening a whiff when i can buy multiple packs for under $10.
I can open as many cards as i would in a prerelease box, for less than WOTC sells just 1 of these crap packs.
Like it makes no sense at all.
Im not one to brag about how cheap i can get a card or a pack for, because typical im not buying anything worth bragging about,
But with this…. Come on now.
Who WOULDN’T want a dollar store pack, over one of these?
I have a friend who I finally got to try the game, and he got into it, and he started getting the itch to open packs.
I had to stop him and break down all the different pack types,
But then i just gifted him a pile of packs from the dollar store and told him to go wild.
All of the cards were new to him, and all of them had a use.
He was super happy with what he pulled, all out of packs full of cards worth less than a dollar for the most part (sometimes you get lucky and card values change after they land in a repack, so you can pull a desirable card as the landscape of the game changes)
Dude was looking for dinosaurs, and he got some cheap dinosaurs.
What more could he ask for.
He dropped a bunch of money on LCI and Ikoria,
Felt like he didn’t get what he wanted,
But once i helped him pad out his collection, and he pulled more stuff (no matter how cheap or useless the cards might be, some of them were good for the deck he was gonna try to build)
It was a learning experience for him.
He learned to save his money, buy singles where he can, and to go easy on new sets that catch his eye if he’s gonna open full priced packs off the shelf, because $12 a pack of MH3 isn’t very beginner friendly.
Took him to a proper LGS to buy the singles he needed after figuring out a basic strategy based on the cards he pulled, then he chose a commander and it was off to the races.
The pack openings were necessary, but he learned alot.
With these ripoff budget boosters, he’d have learned nothing other than “i gotta spend more money on better packs to open good cards” when thats not the case at all…. Unless you only buy from WOTC, and you pick up zero singles…. Thanks god i took him in and got him comfortable with talking to the clerk and asking if they have singles and stuff.
WOTC is out to mess with players like him us,
Not just people outside of the games community who aren’t as informed.
There are new players that dont know better too, and they take full advantage of it.
When i first started, I didn’t know why you’d wanna open a set booster over a draft booster, other than you might get a foil or a borderless card…. Boy was i wrong, and I didn’t realize as fast as I’d have liked to.
It absolutely sucks that this product comes out ON MY BIRTHDAY, too.
Gonna have it in the back of my mind, making me feel peeve’d right off the entire day.
Thanks for listening to my TedTalk/ passionate tirade.
I couldn’t help it. I needed to say my piece about how wrong this all is.
Well sorry about that, and happy birthday. Also, reading your comment reminded me that one of the places I was buying singles from online during lock down had a thing where for an extra £1 they'd send you 10 random rares. I got some good stuff doing that, and that's WAYYYYY better value than whatever these "Value Boosters" will be sold for
Could be just what happens after a while, but about an hour ago I saw the algorithm took practically a 90% angle change on the number of people it was showing my video to. So I'm going to assume that's due to the thumbnail, and in an effort to to continue to get what I think is an important message out there I have sadly changed it
Theory: part of the reason the value boosters are terrible is because the big box stores they're partnering with don't want to get mobbed by collectors buying up their entire shelf in one go, like has happened with some Pokémon card releases
Oh, so what make them intentionally bad for security reasons? Interesting
@@RedBobcatGames I don't think that's exactly "security reason".. More like some kind of "customer segregation"... They are clearly not trying to market them to any serious player or collectors .. They want them keeping on buying the "regular" products from regular gaming stores and the value boosters are likely aimed at other markets... Ie people going to "select retail stores" and buying them out of otter cuteness and curiosity.
They sold regular draft packs in big box stores forever. No reason a regular price pack with regular rates would cause issues unless the store somehow managed to severely underprice it. Which wotc could fix with this one wierd trick called "msrp"
@@jkattack2640 They might be selling both play boosters and the value boosters in the same stores anyway.. Why? Maybe it's just the old trick of making the regular booster seem better value when there's a worse alternative available.. Or if only the value boosters are awailalable in some stores it might lure the people who randomly pick them up to find where the "real" boosters are sold... Nobody said that selling regular boosters in some stores would be problematic or anything... They just said that some retailers requested cheaper products.. It might simply be something like hawing a half litre cartons of juice as well as one litre and the half litre is 70% of the price.. Most wont buy that except perhaps once but it might "boost the perceived value" of the full size package... Probably that won't really work on any informed customers but the retailers might want to try that out anyway..
My gut vibe is that big box stores are refusing to put up with all these constant price hikes and reduction of content
Knowing my friend who has opened dozens of them, collectors boosters are designed for shoplifters on top of scalpers
I knew there was a market haha
dude the jangliing keys bit was totally directed at me im an absolute midwit
If it helps at all, like most of my rage it was mostly just targeted at "anywhere other than inside me". This entire channel is one large vent haha
the intro reminded me of the one guy complaining how horrible the internet is for showing him porn all the time
Haha! This made me laugh. Pretty much my point exactly though
Wait... RedBobCat is starting a pron channel? Making it rain in value boosters...
Yeah, I'm calling it "AngryFans"
got to see the original thumbnail, but also the video had been out for about 8 minutes, would be impressive if RUclips already had struck it down
Currently at 53 mins and it's still up
Yeah, fingers crossed it's okay and can stay up this way
2 hours in still up!
Nice!
2 hours in....still says "fuck off" Oh red, thank you!
Haha, no no, thank you
7:25 I genuinely believe that the target for these packs are the kids of people who regularly have to shop at dollar stores, or more so the children of those who do. Yu-Gi-Oh does, or did, something similar with their legendary duelists, duels from the deep set, but those did come with at least a promo rare. But they came in a pack of 3 card boosters with a promo exclusive to dollar general
Stuff like that is such a false economy though. Especially seeing as only a few years back we had draft boosters. I really wish they'd bring them back
All the blogs and QnA's and corporate speak in the world can't change the simple fact that a large portion of the fan base has simply been priced out of the game - or that it doesn't cost WotC any more to print a rare than a common.
No, exactly. This idea that rares cost more is poison
Aha!!! The problem is their product flooding and all the 500 different commanders left on the shelves at the store
Yeah, agreed
I believe the one point that everyone needs constantly reiterate is that it costs them the same amount regardless of what cards they print. They could fire up the printing presses and make nothing but mythics and it wouldn't be any different than commons. That is why it cracks me up that certain sets cost more than others. It's such a crock.
Yup. Every time I mention this I have people in the comments tell me how wrong I am, or that I don't understand economics. I think they don't understand that I don't care! It's cardboard, it shouldn't be that expensive. And IF WotC want to treat magic cards as something you can profit from by gambling for, then they should be regulated as such
Many people have found that without a bonus sheet, play boosters have not had nearly as good of drop rates for rares/mythics as set boosters :/
* For bloomburrow that is
Now that's interesting. So they're actually worse than Set boosters too? Huh...
@RedBobcatGames Even a normal draft booster could contain just as much "value" as a Play Booster. When the sets had a bonus sheet, or a dedicated slot, you could pull 2-3 Rares/Mythics out of the same pack, and they seemed more commonplace than Play Booster packs getting multiple rares.
So the only thing you are getting to justify the price increase is a guaranteed foil card in every pack, which is more likely going to be a common or uncommon more often than not, and is also already offset by the reduction in pack size as well.
Wizards is all about trying to squeeze more money from their playerbase, either directly via Booster price increase and shrinkflation, or this way, by producing a product designed to prey upon the less knowledgeable.
This is why I am done buying booster
Yeah, I'm just looked up about the changes to the pull rates. Some of the odds to get those extra rares have been slashed. I may have to do a video covering it in the future
It’s almost like they could make a singular type of pack that comes in a box of 32…
Oh, but money though!
@@RedBobcatGames It’s sadly true.
Yeah :(
Once apon a time, there was only ONE type of booster...
And times were good
I like all the Red Bobcat's videos
Thank you!
Apologies in advance for my English, it's not my original language. But I really like your videos and I totally agree with what you said. A point that caught me a lot and that I don't think you addressed was the name of the product: "Value Booster"! Not only does it go against the contents of the packages, but it is also a possible way to deceive those who do not know how the packages work. They induce lay people to believe that they are buying something of greater value in relation to possible others products on the shelves and, as Mark said, they will be precisely in places that normally fans who really understand, would not buy, only people who will buy for the fans they like.
Yeah, I totally agree with you. These "Value Boosters" really seem to just be targeting people who don't know any better. It's gross. (You're english was very good by the way. Thank you for watching, and thank you for your comment)
This just reminds me about how mad I am that they've also reduced support for non-English languages.
Oh yes indeed
1. It's the size of an arena booster
2. Trading cards are often non refundable
What the hell is an arena booster?
@@RedBobcatGames the mobile mtg game
@@RedBobcatGames To iterate on the other commenter's statement, in the most popular digital client for mtg, "mtg: arena," the booster packs contain 8 cards. It's always been this way, even whenever 15-card boosters were the norm. The supposed reasoning for this was that "15 card boosters could be overwhelming and intimidating to new players" which I call total bullshit on.
oh I should also stipulate...
the digital cards you open in these packs are wholly untradeable with other players, no matter what, and there's also no way too "sell" them back to the game as to trade in all your chaff for something actually worthwhile (a la hearthstone's dust system or ygo: master duel's card point system)
I mean, I don't know what I expected. I avoid Arena at all costs, but somehow this is worse than I imagined
Since Conflux Wotc have been trying to make smaller boosters a thing. I didn't understand it at the time, but because of shovelware and mockbusters and pirates products I understood that there was a granny market. And it was targeted by greedy people most of the time.
Yeah, this is the first time I think I've noticed WotC specifically going after that demographic quite in this manner
Value boosters are basically free Samples from your local crack dealer
Except they're not even going to be free!!!
@@RedBobcatGames that feeling when free sample decks has more rares than "value booster"
@@RedBobcatGames True Crack dealers are more generous than WOTC.
I wonder if I can get sponsered by WotC to open some. That's real value, getting paid to open them haha
Time for our daily routine of shaking our fists in the air and shouting:"WIZAAAAAAARDS!"
You only have to do that once a day? Man, I'm so jealous!
I find it so disheartning that me and my friends all silently agreed that we wouldnt upgrade any of our decks since around 2016/2017. Finally, a set comes that peaks my interest only to learn that the price point to play any limited has doubled. Are prereleases now $50 too?
Yup. Because those Play Boosters are just so much better, you see...
I massively respect RUclipsrs like you who don’t sell their soul and kiss the asses of big corporations just to release content that gets in ad revenue. We need more people like you who are willing to critique and show people the information that the greedy suits want to keep on the low down.
Thank you. Sadly not a lot of money in it this way but that's the trade off I suppose haha
This is the type of stuff that needs to be said. Amen brother.
Thank you, I appriciate it
92.6% male?! Jeez. I forget what a boys club it is in this hobby sometimes. Love your content and I have been subbed since your first video. Thanks, a woman.
You're welcome! And thank you for the support!
Another woman here who enjoys the content and hates that Hasbro corporate brain has so deeply infected WOTC.
Well these comments have been very kind. Thank you both very much
“How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man!”
Some people never learn haha
I actually preferred set boosters because I cared more about the alt art than I did about draft. I play exclusively Commander with my playgroup, sometimes with Planechase or Archenemy mixed in. So having a pretty art for my commander was nice. Actually, the swap over to Play boosters since the last set I actually bought a box of (I March of the Machine) has me more pissed off that I now no longer have a guaranteed alt art in every pack anymore. I'm content with them being draftable, but I care more about the contents from a collectible (NOT a reseller) standpoint.
Who the hell wants to pay probably 5-10 dollars a pack for 6 cards that are worth less than the cardboard it's printed on? I *guess* it's cheaper than buying a box to try to hunt down a few common/uncommon alt arts, but so is going online and buying singles.
I honestly think they could of had a happy middle ground with play boosters. Extra rare like set, but draftable like draft boosters. Less cards like set BUT THE SAME PRICE AS DRAFT BOOSTERS. But no, they got greedy. And now they're trying to plug the gap with whatever the hell these Value boosters are
I have seen like 3-card Pokemon card packs at a Dollar store a few months ago. I usually don't visit them and was pretty surprised to notice it. Guess this is some kind of analogue, exactly for trying to reel the uneducated in.
Uggghhhhhhhh. This world sometimes
The Magic Historian basically described these “value” boosters as “confused grandma” boosters
HA! That's pretty good actually
The only difference is (at least when I used to play pokemon tcg) those dollar packs *actually* cost $1. If Value boosters would cost just $1, I'd personally be OK with it, but we all know that's not what WotC wants
Yeah, I've just looked up about it. Those odds of pulling rares have been totally slashed! This is crazy. I may have to cover this at some point in the future
I used to buy everything Magic put out. Then they said, not every product is made for you. So I took them at their word and bought less product. Then the prices started increasing, so I stopped buying bundles. Then they increased again, so I stopped buying premium sets booster boxes. Then the prices started increasing, so I stopped buying ancillary products. Next will be standard booster boxes, if they keep it up. I'll just stick to singles, like prof said.
Let the whales have their fun. Maybe they can sustain the market while us poor shrimp glean from the teeth.
This was pretty much my experience too
I hate that WOTC has made every single purchase feel adversarial and dirty. I long for the days of going to Wal-Mart, seeing that a new set came out and grabbing a pack. Now it feels like I need to do homework just to not get scammed!
Yeah, I've literally just found out they've reduced the number of rares of Play Booster pack. So things are going well over there it seems
just figured share, i am in fact here via the algorithm. First video i've seen form your channel, and already subscribed lmao. And its with the original thumbnail aswell.
Ayyy, nice to know I'm not burried yet!
Yugioh used to have something kinda like this, a small pack that was cheaper (like £1-2 I don't remember exactly) but they were reprint sets so at least if you were buying star packs for little timmy, it'd be something he'd recognise from the anime probably, usually sold alongside other sets, and also, got retired fairly soon, instead shifting the focus for small low cost packs to producing OTS packs, packs not designed to be sold, but given out as entry packs or prize support for local game stores alongside their normal packs, which were again, reprint sets, and had a small chance to contain ultimate rares foilings for the reprints (closest I can think to compare this to mtg is if someone opened a pack as prize for topping a draft and they pulled something normally only in a collector booster in their normal pack, which was exciting because you'd be opening them while in the store so get to share in teh excitement of someone finding an ulti, which would happen to one person per week more often than not.)
You make a good point actually. When I was younger I'd get collectible cards for games I would never play because I recognised the characters on them. Had a bunch of X-men and Pokémon trading cards. If WotC's lore was better, then maybe they could do something similar, at which point i would say that yeah, opening these cards is a way to "experience" the game
"opened a $4 uncommon"
The last $4 uncommon from a premier/standard set as part of a main set list (required to qualify for a slot in a value booster) was An Offer You Can't Refuse, and the one before that was Bala Ged Recovery/Malakir Rebirth. At best, there is one uncommon in a set that fits this description, and there have been only a handful such cards since the implementation of the M15 card border.
My thoughts exactly. I didn't really want to call that person who asked the question out specifically. But also, I nearly spate flames when I read it
I went to the bloomburrow prerelease last weekend and it was so fun for an intro to magic at my LGS. Sadly it seems like I'll have to just wait for the next set to do anything there that's not commander because I just don't like commander. Draft got too expensive for the people there, and no one plays standard or modern there either. Kinda makes me sad, I loved the limited card availability and wish I could do it more than once a set.
Pre-release is my favourite format / event / gameplay for that exact reason
This is a really well put together video and it actually explained the booster history too, thanks.
You're more than welcome!
Approaching this video from the perspective of "Damn, it sucks how we don't have a cheap option for people who just want to play the game" - I totally agree.
As for the value boosters themselves. I don't think such a booster is inherently evil. There are people who just want to buy a semi-randomized pack of cards that look cool for as cheap a price point as possible. For such individuals a booster at the most absolute dirt cheap price imaginable that no enfranchised player has any interest in is the best option - it costs the least overall if your goal is "to open 2 or 3 packs to enjoy opening random cards". The real question is going to be the same thing we always have to determine - is the estimated value going to be so utterly horrible that anyone buying them is getting fleeced beyond belief? Until we know the rarity rates and the cost of the packs it's difficult to say. Boosters are inherently exploitative products anyway, and even the experience of getting to draft some of them can only make up for that so much, after all. That said, if they cost anything more than about a dollar they'll almost certainly be complete money sinks, and I'm not really expecting them to cost a dollar...
I think you may be right, but I also suspect you're being a bit generous. A value booster may not be inherently evil, but reading the answers given when they were asked about who the product is for... yeah. May not be evil, but it certainly does seem that way
Thanks for putting this so eloquently. Hasbro/Wotc has no more respect for its customers and does not care about the game anymore, it's all about their f-ing bottom line.
Preach!
Lol the thumbnail is ::chef’s kiss::
Ty, ty
I am commenting on this video because it showed up on my recomended list. By engaging I am boosting it in the eyes of the algorithm
And I very much appriciate that!
0:40 hey Red, just throwing myself out there as another positive MtGtuber who loves reviewing the old janky precons and doing super casual kitchen table deckbuilding! 😀
Then I imagine you get accused of being overly negative too haha. But we do exist! There are positive RUclipsrs!
Greatest thumbnail of all time
Haha, thank you. Though I have had to cover it up now
I saw speculation that WotC had contracts with suppliers for a certain amount of small boosters over time, so when Aftermath flopped they pivoted to try different strategies with the remaining production lines they were already committed to doing. That wouldn't make this decision any less worthless and predatory, just maybe more understandable.
Yeah that would be interesting if true. I wonder why they don't just do more cards per pack though. Keep the price low, but make the product playable and people like me will stop moaning as much
Here's what a real value booster could look like: 4 commons, 2 uncommons, 1 rare/mythic, 1 basic land. Costs about half a booster, whatever that even means any more. To play with one, remove the basic land and use the rest as your deck. You can't deck out. You may play your cards upside down as lands with all basic land types. If you have no cards in hand at the start of your turn, you may return all cards you own in all zones to your hand.
I mean honestly double the number of commons and we're basically back to draft boosters though. They could do it, they just don't want too
@@RedBobcatGames Oh, absolutely. I'm not claiming this is a revolutionary idea, I'm just sort of gesturing in the direction of what "value" might look like now that boosters have extra rares and cost more. The lowest realistic cost on both ends for a useable booster. The point isn't that they would or should, just that they still could, even if the only goal is profit.
Yeah, totally. I mean I'd love to see a return to some form of playable product at the low end, even if it isn't exactly draft boosters again
@@RedBobcatGames There's a million other ways they could do it.
15 card set jumpstart boosters with a larger pool of possible themes would have poorer resale value due to some of the cards being land, but they could be a reasonable cross section of the set and they'd represent the minimum viable buy-in to play with the normal rules.
Tiny boosters that just have a basic land, a common, an uncommon, and a rare/mythic, with the commander cards in the pool, would represent the lowest possible cost-per-rare while still including the whole set and maintaining the hierarchy of rarity for individual cards.
Value is a very nebulous concept, but I think if you pick a definition you can design a booster that could make money by delivering that version of it. It's a shame they didn't.
Yeah, I agree actually. Maybe a name rebrand would help. Call these Pauper Boosters or something instead?
I reaaly like your videos. Keep up the good work!
Why thank you very much!
Yeah, value boosters are exactly that : to trick people in big stores. And likely only in north america, since in Europe you have to disclose the % of chances of getting each type of cards and they don't want to tell how little you can get a rare.
Oh is that not a thing in America? That's interesting. I bet that's why they've not revealed the odds then
@@RedBobcatGames yeah, if not forced, they'll not reveal how bad those are.
@@mathieubrebouillet714 That's gross. Really makes it feel even more like gambling
Alas poor thumbnail, I knew thee well. A cheery "fuck off" to all the guilty parties.
Haha, yup. It will live on in our hearts
if you have people in your life that may buy you a cheap gift to be nice, tell them not to buy this. they will see it where they go
Yup, pretty much
Please don’t recommend Alpha Investments. Dude is friends with and used to constantly defend The Quartering aka the Worst Nerd
I don't know who The Quartering aka the Worst Nerd is, do I wanna? Is this gonna make me sad if I look it up?
Oh, and I added Alpha Investments to try and represent the spectrum of Magic content creators. More of a "this affects everyone on all sides" thing. I don't know him, so am not like, affiliated with him or whatever
Oh hey, I think it was you that asked about the "Okay Hand" gesture and if I'm... one of those guys. I can't find you're comment so sorry if you deleted it. Just wanted to confirm I'm not, and for a laugh you should check out the 13.26 minute mark of my video "MtG Trivia! Can you beat this Quiz! Magic the Questioning! (Ep - Farseek)" (the last quiz I did)
@@RedBobcatGames It might. Someone who got banned from WotC events for life because of their actions. Easier to google The Quartering and find out the stuff that they did then the Worst Nerd.
I think I'll probably just take your word for it on this one. I don't know what it is, but I get the feeling I'm happier not knowing, you know?
I proxy everything at all times.
I even proxy cards i own and basics. I want everyone i play with to see that all my cards are fake. Doing your part to normalize proxies is the best thing you can do to cut into these loathsome vampire's profits
This is a plan worth supporting
Typical rage baiting mtg “content” creator. Manufactures drama about things 99% of customers don’t care about.
Yeah, but that's the point though, because you're right. Most players won't care. It's everyone else I'm worried about this time
When I first heard the term value booster I said "what the hell is that?" Once I read up on it my reaction was pretty much the same..."Fuck off."
If these packs were 1-2$ maybe I'd but one once in a blue moon. Odds are they'll be 3.50-4 and never worth it. If they sold a box of 48 you could do a low power draft for exactly eight people. For 100$ you could just pick up an older box rn like Markov and at least have more people, better cards (arguable), or prize support if it's exactly 8.
Yeah, completely right. This is gross
I don't see any issues with kids buying cheap packs of commons and uncommons at Walmart with their allowances. Mark Rosewaters points all make sense to me.
Fair enough
Original title. Just finished watching this and absolutely agree with everything. I have stopped buying boxes and only go for singles.
Whoop! Still going strong. Though I've started to have people tell me the vids not been recommended to them so I may already be getting buried
@@RedBobcatGames I found you because of a recommendation from RUclips so not getting buried as of yet.
Okay, okay. That's good! I'm hoping it's still going strong over night. If I see a noticable dip in views I may make a change though
As a new player draft and set boosters didn't confuse me at all.
No, I didn't think it would. It felt like a lie when he said it
I like how the msrp for the Bloomburrow commanderd are around $35, like they used to be.
I don’t like how there has been so much flack about MtG reselling at big box stores and now Wizards is just pulling the middle man. Worse is I know these won’t be just a dollar. Alliances packs were $2.
Issue is, without Arena doing 4 player commander, people can just print their own cards to play at home.
As an adult with a full time job I should be able to afford to buy as much as when I had a part time job and full time school, but I can afford less now when I’m making so much more. Make it make sense.
Pretty much my thoughts as well. These price increases have been insane
Unfortunately the price I've seen for the Squirreled Away deck is twice that of the others (at least at LGSs and online stores I shop at).
Oh excellent! I love not having an MSRP! It's so good for the consumer!
Looks like they are not even real. No Vendor got them. Not even Cardmarket. Nobody made an Opening. So i guess they realized how stupid these Packs are and pulled them before they hit shelf.
Well, I suspect they'll be in big box stores that wouldn't normally sell Magic stuff. Also, they're not officially out till the 2nd anyway so we have to wait and see for now
One of the best youtube videos I have seen all year
The worst part is if they really wanted to sell commons they could've created a pauper draft format and sold them as pauper draft boosters. But these can't even be used as that since they include uncommons and *sometimes* rares.
Yeah, these are very specifically unplayable and not even meant to be played with. He went to pains to explain that people who play aren't meant to buy these. Very strange
Remember when we used to have only one type of booster? Those were the days.
Oh but it's so simple now. That's why they had to get rid of draft... remember?
It’s stuff like this that has pushed me to boycott anything made by Wizards of the Coast
I'm starting to feel that way. I think if I do have to change the thumb nail it may just be to the word "Boycott"
If these were priced at literally $1, they might actually be a nice way to give the pack cracking hit without breaking bank. However these will easily cost like 2 or 3 bucks which is a rip off.
Oh yeah, I think they'll be closer to 4-5 if I'm being honest
I saw the first thumbnail.
Still? Wow, I changed that some time ago! Though it seems that this videos gone as far as it will so I may change it back now because why not? You know?
Given the set has no financial value in the NON VALUE set, this is even worse. If MH3 did this with their really good uncommons and commons, that would still bomb but would be fun to play with.
This idea that people are supposed to be happy with only opening an uncommon and think that's worth the cost is crazy to me
I'm sure the "erm let people enjoy things" crowd is gonna have a field day. "erm how does it affect you." My response to those people is always, where do you draw the line? What if each set had 50 different booster packs at 50 different price points? What if each set, they removed 10 of those packs, and introduced another 10 at a higher price point? Where does it end? Why does this game require so much excess
Yeah pretty much. Though to be fair I've always been happy to plant myself in the ground and ignore those types of criticisms
I came looking for concrete information on Value Boosters but I’m sticking around for turning Fallout Cards into a single player RPG.
That sounds like my jam!
Yeah, solo RPG maybe isn't the best description in hidesight. But I still think the video is fun
Great video, really
I just came back to magic after almost 10 years away from it and seeing all these awful things happening really makes me skeptical about spending any of my money on it, the prices are through the roof and here in Brazil for now on there is no more Magic products in portuguese, everything feels a message for me to not come back at all
I can't blame you for thinking that either. It does very much seem to be the message they're sending
Thankfully, i live in a country where major stores don't sell mtg product.
I think there's probably a "Walmart told us if we don't give them a product at a lower price point to sell we will stop stocking your product."
Plus the need to protect LGSs must contribute a factor into it all, after all if value boosters were just like draft boosters and cheaper than play boosters, there an incentive there to shop at walmart over your LGS.
But the truth of the fact is that value boosters could be much better at a lower price point after all all MTG cards are worth cents.
That's pretty much my theory too. Big box stores thought these were too expensive to sell, and I agree these packs could be worth buying IF they were playable
I mostly just proxy anything I've needed for several yrs now cuz buying cards got too expensive n I have bills to pay
It's the best way to go seemingly
As someone incharge of ording for a LGS play and draft were never a problem we had draft buyers and set buyers. Now we just have play boosters sitting there.
You're not the only person I've heard say something similar. Play Boosters always felt like they were more for the shareholders of Hasbro than they were the players to me
Thanks. I played 12 years ago and have quite the collection. I was going to go buy a few packs for fun but went down this rabbit hole.
I'm not even sure what to recommend to returning players any more. Ravnica Remastered was good, but it's hardly one of the new sets
Wotc: It’s value!
Us: No it’s not!
Wotc: It is for us!
Yeah, exactly
☆Under valued channel.
Watching thru the entirety of the channel,
●don't always agree
●Highly appreciate well thought out and expressed opinions & observations
● savage! 😂
This makes me sound far more sane than I feel I come across. I really appriciate it, thank you
@@RedBobcatGames You think you come across as sane? You're the guy thinks he can make pancakes from a deck of cards, remember?
Totally agree. This product is intentionally misleading directed towards people buying them as gifts for others
Seems to be the target market, which is wild honestly
I was there for the OG tumbnail!
In my line of work they call this sort of thing an "economy" product, although for us it's the quality they skimp on, and they're absolutely targeted towards people who are either cheap and want the fix, can't afford the "premium" stuff, or don't know what to get but see it's cheap. I had a pretty similar reaction when I first saw value boosters, so I don't have too much to say on the matter that you haven't already said. Now I'm seriously debating dipping into Bloomburrow because it's the first set I've been interested in since Wilds, but this is a bad move I don't know if they even deserve sales of non-value booster product.
I'd also like to know whether Arena had a direct hand in the declining sales of draft boosters. Like, did they push themselves out of their own market, go "woops", and decide that it wasn't worth trying to regain that group with paper Magic? Because that seems extremely shortsighted at best, and really stupid way to transition draft players to digital at worst.
I avoid arena like the plague so I'm not the best one to answer. Though the rest of your comment reminds me of what Terry Pratchett used to say about a poor man's shoes
I love all of your videos and really appreciate hearing your thoughts.
I absolutely adored your Star Trek episode!
Oh why thank you very much. I'm working on something similar again but this time for the X-Men! No idea when it's coming out though. WotC keep dropping clangers like these Value Boosters and I feel the need to react haha
@@RedBobcatGames You are very welcome! And I'm looking forward to that! I can only imagine how creative and fun your thoughts on X-Men will be :3
Thank you. Spoilers, I'm working with an artist this time to make original card art too!
Ok, a lot of your points are accurate (selling cards for a game that are never meant to be seen by the people that play/resell just stinks of exploiting those who don't know better), but there is something to be said for the cost of the cards vs. the cost of the boosters having to match - it costs the same amount to print any denomination of bank note, but you'd be crazy to claim that they should be worth the same - that said, given that MTG cards don't come with an explicit value available to the customer, that's something that we have to figure out for ourselves and balance based on the numbers that we find in the packs that WotC sell us. That isn't quite saying that they can just print as many as they want of whatever cards to fill out smaller boosters with though, as they've effectively got their own internal pricing scheme for the cards - there isn't going to be any point calling cards rares or mythics if they're pumped out willy-nilly, and when a play booster averages about 1.25 rare or higher cards (because that's what I've got to check the probabilities, and it probably somewhat reflects the wider distribution), there's not enough rare or higher cards to guarantee one in a 7-card booster without making that booster disproportionately valuable - everyone who wants those cards and isn't forced into buying other packs (by, say, drafting) would be buying them out and forcing the ratio of rares and higher to be closer to one in seven, as apposed to the current ~1 in 10.2.
It's not something they have to stick to, but they have decided to make the rares and mythics a specific portion of the available cards, and they cannot maintain that and give Value Boosters and 100% chance of getting even one of them.
So, two points. First, if we were to follow your argument to it's logical conclusions as to what WotC's aims are, then they'd never have made Play Boosters but instead kept Draft Boosters because there were fewer rares per pack. If more Rares in the environment is bad in their eyes, why would they standardise a pack that contains more rares in it? And secondly, the bank notes example is bad. The note itself is a denomination of a currency, not a reflection of cost to produce. If WotC are treating their cards this way, and printing currency in packs with randomized odds then that's literally gambling and they need to be regulated
Lets create our own magic sets, play with proxies, and be done with wotc.
Hasbro needs magic, but magic doesnt need hasbro to exist
If someone wants to pay me, I'd happily do that
The real value booster is called TCGplayer.
Haha, yeah. Or an ink cartridge
I've been someone who enjoys cracking packs for the "playing with what I'm given" aspect of draft and kitchen table, but with the price hikes and card cutting, its been harder and harder to justify buying packs that I got into buying singles. I used to never care to buy singles.
We know they can afford to make cheaper packs that aren't a rip off, they're just being greedy honestly
lol i got the censored thumbnail
Yeah, sorry