The dirty secret is that Standard decks don't last 3 years, they last 2-3 months a lot of the time. The meta shifts drastically each set release, so the idea that I can just buy my expensive deck and then have it for 2-3 years doesn't even really work because in a couple of months I'm going to need a different deck if I want to be playing the best meta deck. Even if you don't get a new deck, and just keep upgrading the same deck, you still need to buy new, potentially expensive, cards each set release to keep your deck relevant. This is because a Standard deck which only has cards from the first four sets of Standard is not going to be as good as a Standard set which has cards from 2.5 years worth of sets.
I have a standard deck at about 600 right now. Half of that cost is my side board, and half of that is shelly. A fourth of my deck price is shelly. I can't in good consciousness recomend my deck because shelly is so much. Mix in serveil lands becoming eternal staples, and suddenly standard is not accessible. Shelly should have rotated already
3 year rotation is a disastrous decision Foundations being legal for 5 years is a disastrous decision 6 sets a year is a disastrous decision They're pushing standard so hard rn that they've shoved it off a cliff and eventually it's gonna hit the dirt
For reference, in Pokémon, by my count, there are 14 cards (not counting fancy arts) over $5 in the current standard format. The most expensive is $12.71. 5 of them (including the most expensive) you can only run 1 of as a rule, and another 4 people rarely run more than 1 of anyway. The most expensive deck is about $100, and the top 10 decks average about $60. The cheapest is about $40. There are budget-friendly variants for less than that too.
@shelby142 Because the economic dynamics that drive the secondary market are completely different. For Magic the value is derived from its usefulness as a game piece for Pokemon the biggest driver is collecting. $85 Magic cards are desirable game pieces $85 Pokemon cards are desirable collectibles. Only a small fraction of the people purchasing Pokemon cards actually play the TGC and the secondary market gets flooded with the non-chase alt art cards that collectors don't want. Magic doesn't have this dynamic currently at all, it is slightly the desired side effect of the UB sets is that they might create this dynamic in Magic with a larger number of collectors chasing alts of Spiderman or Blackcat will cause the price for base versions to deflate when they dump their excess on the secondary market
@@TheEvolver311except for the whole MTG serialized/alt art/collectors edition/speculators market that's been solidly in place for the last 10 years. See also: the One Ring
@@TheEvolver311except, you know... stuff like the reserved list exists. All Hallows Eve commands a $500 market price not because it's even remotely playable, it's because it's an old card that was printed once, and has some cool art. MtG is complicit in their speculators boosting cards prices by having their super powerful game pieces *also* be their chase cards with no other options. Pokemon chooses to have their powerful cards be easily accessible at lower rarities.
What you guys are missing is that magic the gathering cards have also become a speculative market for investor. With money pouring into buying the meta defining specific cards it pushes their price upward - more money buying the same amount of cards mean higher prices. This have kind of screwed up the player but is making a killing for WotC as higher card prices means selling more booster.
There's also the whole "One new set every two to four weeks" part. They can't even be bothered to stick them into Blocks. The lazy shits. All my cards are from pre 2020 and it's going to stay that way
mtg You csn get a commander deck for as little as 20 bucks if you find a good deal, warhammer 20 bucks won't even buy you the painting supplies for an army
Used to be about $500 minimum for a good army when you took into account paint, supplies, etc. been a minute since I checked though but Warhammer has always been an empty pit to throw your money into.
Cards shouldn’t be exclusively mythic. Cards like Sheoldred should be normal rare, but all it’s many alt-arts should be mythic. That’s how Pokémon keeps its standard so cheap. It wouldn’t get magic deck down to Pokémon levels, but it would help. Also maybe don’t make every land rare. ALSO, as for your sidebar about warhammer, there’s a lot of drama in the WH world right now as minis are getting removed and rules rotation is so fast now people are quitting. GW has started hyper focusing on the competitive crowd and essentially started rotation
Another issue isn’t hard rotation, it’s soft rotation. Sheoldred hasn’t rotated, but any reanimator deck is going to run Valgavoth from Duskmourn instead, and that won’t rotate until the end of 2027, and we’re stuck with Zombify until ‘at least 2029’. So it’s a nine mana spell that functionally reads “you can cast this for four mana if you discard a card named zombify” 6 sets a year and 3 year rotation is only going to make that worse, the ultra pushed sets are going to happen more often and stick around longer. It means standard becomes very swingy and very fast, and other formats do that better.
I noticed my local game stores increase the price of draft from 18 to 25. im guessing it's due to play boosters having less cards the the price increasing.
@@OmegaDarkBlade it’s not card count, it’s just booster price. Play boosters were introduced at the set booster price point, the cheaper draft booster price point was just eliminated. Them having one fewer card is an unrelated downside.
Standard has no identity anymore. Back during the block era, you named two sets, and you understood that format. Ex: Mirage / Tempest standard, Odyssey / Onslaught standard, Ravnica / Time Spiral standard, etc. Now there are so many unrelated sets in the mix at a time, there is no cohesion nor identity to the format.
The problem with blocks is that they require way too much commitment and dont sell as well as one off sets do. If a block is really bad, it can be absolutely devistating for sales and the general view of the game. Mirrodin block for example was absurdly broken and was devistating for the game, followed by the even more devistating and very underpreforming Kamigawa block. A block not only become the center of the game's marketting for half a year but took up most of standard, meaning that if players werent interested in the block's theme or design they wont be buying anything for a long period of time. I love blocks as much as the next hardcore fan of the game but they were cut for a very understandable reason.
Nothing is perfect, but as a fan and consumer, I still prefer the block system. You're also neglecting the upside. When a block was awesome, like Tempest or Invasion, the game was killer for that whole year. Again, my main point is cohesion. Three sets with related themes and mechanics is much better for deck building than a bunch of random, unrelated sets. Draft was infinitely better under the block system. I can't even imagine what Limited is like now. Plus I miss Block as another viable format. Even a weaker set like Kamigawa made for solid Draft and Block Constructed. Also, note that during the Block era, Type II was the dominant format of the game, by an extremely wide margin. The death of standard happened after the Block system was dropped. I may have a different perspective because I played from Ice Age, up through Shards of Alara, basically the entirety of the Block era. I, and all the players I knew, were quite happy with it. I feel deeply sorry for the players, living through the era of Wizards churning out half baked sets faster than the presses can print them. Do players who waste their money on collectors boosters, Secret Lairs, and grossly overpriced specialty reprint sets even realize how bad Hasbro is milking them like cattle? The game did NOT use to be like this! The core sets were the home of reprints, and sold for normal price. When they released Chronicles, it sold for $2.49 a pack. Now you get reprint sets selling for $15 a pack????? Do you all even understand how badly Hasbro is bending you all over and sticking it to you? When I started playing, a good Standard deck could be built for around $50. Now some of your singles cost that much or more. Yeah, maybe I'm an old stick in the mud, who wishes the game could be like it was in the "good old days". But it was fun and we were happy back then. I wouldn't give a penny I picked up in the parking lot for a pack of Magic now.
@@Hexxecutioner What I described is what maro has publicly stated as the reason why blocks were canned. I love blocks and understand how amazing tjeu can be, but when they do poorly its REALLY bad for Wizards and it is understandable that theyd want to play it safe. Wizards also looks more towards the mass market in terms of certain choices (as maro goes on about CONSTANTLY), and the mass market is a lot more numerous than fans on the internet. Isnt to say that only do this, not at all really, but Maro has made is very very apparent repeatedly for years now that their major target is casual players who may have never attended event before. Regarding pack prices, blame game stores and the outside market values. The recomended retail price for play boosters right now is $5.50, which is close to 1995's $2.49 chronicles boosters when adjusted for inflation. Game stores sell booster packs for higher or lower prices based on demand, or rather how much profit they can make off of the boosters from people. Collector boostsrs are also not the standard and if you dont like em dont buy em. Regarding Secret lairs, this is entirely just my opinion but I think they were fine up until relatively recently. They were like just, a little special event thing dont cause they were fun even if pricey. But theyve gotten real bad lately, particularly with the limited stock bullshit. It went from what was really just a fun little thing to a cash cow milking scalpers.
@@Hexxecutioner Oh also... Limited has honestly been awesome lately. Every set is always designed mostly for limited specifically now, and as a result you get very flavorful and fun draft envirenments. Regarding standard, wizards is pushing HARD to bring it back now. Blocks going away hurt standard sure, but what really really nailed it was covid. Theyre pushing hard to bring backs standard in ways that are both great and wel...questionable. Three year long rotation, Universes Beyond sets being standard legal, them canning all pioneer events entirely for the next year in place of additional standard onnes, and bringing back core sets in the form of 5 year long foundations sets instead. Standard sets are also now typically designed with future or past sets in mind. Easiest and more blunt example would be them printing a lot of bat cards in LCI which were black and white, and then in their Redwall themed tribal set they have orzhov bats as a draft archetype. Lastly, regarding market value. Its a whole discussion in of itself (as with the video lol). Theres factors they didnt even bring up here like the introduction of the mythic rarity, lack of reprints, and how increasingly obsessively "magic financiers" have become. Theres a lot of factors at play. Frankly Im just happy this game isnt Yugioh levels of bad. Where they will literally spike meta relevant cards seen as such in japan (asian territories get sets before us) to a rarity ABOVE the Mythic equivilant for western releases. Making meta decks potentially cost over a thousand dollars depending on the weather of the market.
that format was called block constructed, and they killed it back in 2014 (along with blocks altogether in 2018). it was the best way to get into competitive constructed as you only had 1-3 sets at a time to deal with, was a great way to showcase and evolve the new mechanics of the block, and wasn't quite as sweaty as standard
MTG is the original loot box game - every set that gets released is loaded up with filler cards that will never see any play in standard. The Standard format gets solved so quickly now, that it gets decided really quickly which cards are in, and which cards are out. If you're a Standard player, there's maybe 5% of the total card pool that is actually usable at any given time.
Your point about min-i-a-tures being playable longer than cards in standard is exactly why I stopped playing Magic in favor of 40k as a teen 20 years ago. Anecdotally you're spot-on :)
Sadly in recent years GW has been removing fan-favorite units from the game (most of Forgeworld's models) but I agree it is better than MTG in terms of how long they last
I think that it’s a little surprising that WotC hasn’t capitalized on the market of people that have limited funds to spend on Magic. If you are a teen or living paycheck to paycheck (meaning if you lost your job today can you continue to live without getting evicted, closing or opening new cards, or having your car repossessed) you CANNOT reasonably afford Magic outside of draft. This alone spooks a lot of people who would otherwise be interested and building a community. It gets worse if you have multiple hobbies. Now as a conscious consumer, I have to be incredibly selective with the vast oversaturation of expensive products. I still want to go disc golf, play a board game, and sew an outfit. As a consumer, the more I have to evaluate my relationship with my hobby instead of just enjoying what it has to offer, the more I feel pushed out of being an active member in a reasonable way.
That was a huge breaking point for me, when I had to sit down and assess my income vs expenses. And I realized I could, on a monthly basis, eat out with my friends, buy a video game, and go to a movie with friends... Or I could Play Magic The Gathering.
Daddy Hasbro wants you to abandon all other hobbies, eat ramen noodles and spend your entire income on Magic the Gathering. I joke, but it's kinda for real tho. The way the game is marketed, the never ending set release schedule with constant card spoilers; it's all engineered to maintain engagement, not enjoyment.
@@marzgamingmaster I really do believe for people like you and me WotC has a HUGE untapped market of people that would be subject to “the lipstick effect.” The idea is basically during times of recession, buyers slow down on big luxury items and splurge on small goods. Mtg currently has packs which you can open and have nothing when you walk away, or those fun buy two packs and make a fourty card deck. I’d love a set of premade pauper decks running at like $25-$30 for us poor folk lol
I'm surprised WotC hasn't jumped on pauper for new player on-boarding. $30 for a full power pre-constructed tier deck instead of trying to print Modern/Pioneer decks without full copies of needed cards and bad mana bases sounds reasonable. There are some pauper staples that would lose value that way but I'm sure stores wouldn't care too much if they got a product to sell that could be used to run tournaments straight from the box to get new customers in the store and playing.
@@seangoldman6833 That's the trick though, they don't *want* you playing the format called "Pauper". They want you playing "Rich Guy". They want you playing the "Buy as many packs as humanly possible" format. Actually giving support to Pauper is literally the last and most distant thought on their mind.
Yeah, 40k models don't really go away, they just change stats (so buy the new codex). Tho there are some models that have gone away long ago, mostly small factions/subfactions. I think part of it, on top of the money and time investment to paint, is how attached players are to specific factions. MtG and card games, generally, have "favored color/archtype" but players are more flexible and fluid to play any and all pieces. I am a green/blue player (lol) but I play all the colors here and there. But in 40k, I am a Nids player. That's my faction, even if it's weak or strong in the edition. And you see that kind of devotion to 1 or 2 factions. The flavour and lore do a LOT of lifting to keep players attached to factions, which mitigates meta min maxing. Imo.
@@JhonScarzo ? Nothing serious happend to nids between 9 and 10. The old models are still usable/fine/no one cares. And the tyranids are literally a species about evolution so changes over time is in flavor. That is a really minor nothing compared Tyranids being more lizard like prior to Starcraft 1 releasing with zerg.
I think there are two larger goals from the three year rotation 1. To give enough runway to get universes beyond players to get hooked and stick around after their IP of choice rotates. If someone picks up standard because of Final Fantasy, maybe 3 years is enough time to convert them from just a FF fan to and FF fan and a Magic player. By the time FF rotates, maybe they're engaged enough to not be bothered by it. 2. To try to "kill" modern. For a while, it seemed like modern was the default mode for 1v1 Magic. Expanding the card pool and raising the power floor might help convert modern players. Keeping up in small bursts every set or every other set feels more managable than "Here's the new MH, you need to drop a band now". The large card pool gives more headroom to balance new cards and seems to be succeeding in having a variety of fun and viable archetypes. This contrasts to many standard formats of the last decade where there's less than 5 top decks and the gameplay is not as flashy.
This is a little conspiratorial, but it could be true. And if true, this would explain one thing that's been baffling me: Wizards claims to want to save Standard, but all their changes are hurting it.
@ben_clifford I'll take that I'm being a bit conspiritorial, but why do you think recent decisions are hurting standard? When I came into magic, it seemed like most players viewed standard as the lesser format or only for ptq grinding. Now standard is fun and exciting. I'm actively playing for the first time since GRN and it doesn't feel like magic with training wheels
Standard used to be 5-7 sets now they are going to have 6 standard sets a year that’s making the price go up and the time your deck is viable goes down
Not printing exceptional Standard power level cards as mythic would help a lot. They keep printing standard target cards as mythic and the cards that merge into eternal formats keep geting printed as uncommon/rares. Just look at any domain deck, its a mythic pile 😅
I wish the standard rotation was shorter and cheaper like Pokemon. That’s the best thing about Pokemon all the meta decks are cheap as long as you don’t bling out your deck. I just wish I enjoyed playing Pokemon. SWU has been fun. Been playing flesh and blood and one piece too.
The first time I really got into standard & played at a few events was during the time Theros was released. I was fairly new but had enough of a collection & got lucky with some packs of Theros with Thoughtseize pulls, I decided to build Mono Black. I didnt understand rotation & once i found out that Return to Ravnica cards were about to be useless I got extremely bummed out. I ended up learning about EDH and still only play it.
Back when I was playing Xth edition had just come out and original Ravnica was out of standard. There was only Legacy and Vintage so most of my friends just quit playing.
@christianjonker8181 I honestly only enjoy draft (only with certain sets) & Commander now. Honestly, I really like coming up with different ideas on how I would play with certain commanders & do that more than I actually get chances to play. I usually try to go to my LGS at least twice in a month on Commander nights but sometimes I can't even get around to doing that. I have maybe 3 friends that have stayed with the hobby out of the original 7-8 that I met in college. I have heard that WotC has done studies that have shown that most people will leave a hobby in seven years of doing it; sometimes they will return to it within three years or not at all.
The better way to resolve this is to fix your dogshit card economy to be more like Pokémon’s. When you can buy an ENTIRE “cutting edge of the meta” standard Pokemon deck for the same price as an MTG meta *single* card, you know your game is massively flawed and pay to win. If wizards doesn’t change their model, MTG is going to continue to lose money and bleed players to better TCGs like Pokemon, Star Wars, and Lorcana.
Hasbro is evil in their intent to milk their fans for their life savings. I never realized Pokemon perfected the affordability with their value distribution. My biggest mistake was any MTG investment. Pokemon has perfected the fan experience. MTG is evil torture
95% of MTG players won't care about alt arts and will just buy the cheap stuff. Meanwhile, people are buying entire cases of Pokemon cards with absolutely no intention of ever playing the cards. Magic simply doesn't have the collectors base to subsidize the competitive aspect of the game like pokemon does.
I think one thing overlooked about a longer rotation and more sets in standard is that every set will generally have its card values roughly the cost of a box. (When adjusted for rarity etc.) With more sets fewer cards will find themselves in the *meta" from each sets leading to a bugger gap between the expensive cards Ina set and amount of *bulk" cards that no one really wants
Financially, the actual problem with Standard is: Wizards shut down all Standard play for almost 2 years. When people came back after the quarantine ended, no one had a Standard deck. Not one person.
So Wizards has a cold start problem that they haven't faced since 1995. The only way out is what they did the first time: entice people with a dream of playing competitively.
@@ben_clifford Theyre doing a variety of things to get people back into standard though. Stuff including bringing back core sets in the form of foundations and putting UB sets into standard.
@@ben_clifford I havent really been attending events lately so I cant really say. Also UB will be entering standard rotation with the final fantasy set in june, and we will have to see how hard they push things publicly in regards to competitive stuff.
Something to say about Warhammer, there is occasionally model “rotation” so to speak. I’m Warhammer 40k this is called a model being moved to Legends, typically done to really old models that GW isn’t making anymore and don’t want to have to constantly update rules for. This has recently happened to a large number of old resin and metal models that at this point are decades old in favor of plastic model refreshes.
Pokémon also reprints cards, reprints alt promo versions in sealed products, and puts out competitive precons based on meta decks currently being played. They're not exact lists, but pretty close to it and makes the core cards being used more affordable. I just switched to Pokémon and have been enjoying the culture around playing the game a lot more 😊 (Just avoiding the investors, etc).
@@Rabid_Wombat is this a reference to the silver border cards being standard only at the moment, or the fact they're silver and not magic's black? 😅 I'm so incredibly happy they finally moved away from yellow borders for english cards
I only invest. Hasbro has screwed me forever as they do all their fans. I used to play MTG it was the most fun complex game ever. Hasbro does everything to exploit & torture their customers. Pokemon does everything right prints to demand makes everything affordable & is still the best investment not just in collectables but ever.
I quit standard and magic overall in 2019. Firstly rotation gutted my deck, and then Throne of Eldarine sucked all the passion i had left with Oko and Veil of Summer(i played dimir control). Recently came back to magic, but i play pauper now. I proxy everything and don't pay enterence fees in tournaments, so i basicely spend nothing on magic. I like it way more and i never plan to return to standard
I remember when I came to magic at 2013 $10 card was jackpot and $200 deck was 3color control deck with shocklands (each for $10). Now I see standard decks priced in range of 2013's moder jund. And one of the big difference is how much power are in rare and mythic cards. even RDW is constracted from rare creature, and some decks have 10+ mythics. Playing 8 overlords and atraxas is no even close to 3 sphynxe's revelations, elspeth and jace/ashiok
100%. I played about 20 years ago, came back recently, and simply cannot meaningfully play standard FNM without dropping $$$. Stopped playing again immediately, which is sad because the game is so much fun.
I got into magic briefly as a college student cuz some guys on my floor in the dorms were wayyy into it. And once I learned that my cards would be useless in a year, I was out. Couldn’t keep up with that crap
I agree with your general point. However, I'd like to push back against your 300-500$ deck price. Some very competitive decks (ie, decks who have won or placed in the top 8 of large tournaments in recent weeks) can be had for around 100-150$. Ofc, the Sheoldred decks are expensive af, but Jeskai Convoke is about 120$ and it can hold it's own against the meta very well. Sheoldred is quite the outlier in recent standard, mostly because of how much it sees plays outside standard (Commander, pioneer, etc)
I think part of the issue is play pattern. There are usually a few competitive decks that are budget, red deck wins being the usual example. These decks almost always have a narrow proactive strategy so are limited in their longevity. Where something like Dimir midrange is more robust.
A player will NEVER have fun playing RDW compared to a midrange or control strat. Because RDW is mostly a solitaire game whereas midrange and control have reactive proactive plays against the opponent.
This makes me think of the buddy I have that I play with that is very collector oriented. Every time they reprint an expensive card he owns he gets mad. He says"thanks WOTC you just made my $50 card a $20 card". But I think to myself" maybe I can get one of those to play with now".
I play mono green as my standard with low budget. My friends usually told me that I should add some red or even a 3rd color to my deck. Thing is, I can't afford another color with how I find some of the red cards that people often use costs about 20-30$ above (each not playset). This and the competitive players in my lgs rly discourage me to go back to standard.
I just added up the cost of the top 15 decks of the past 30 days on mtggoldfish. A total of 4002 dollars, and an average of 266.8 per deck. That's the price for a deck right now, what I can't quantify very easily is the rate of change, how often do you need new cards. Rotation alone does not control your need for new cards, adjusting to the meta requires getting new cards. A deck archetype (like UW control) will have a 60 card deck, 75 card side board, and a growing list of optional cards as the meta changes and new sets come out. 2025 will have 6 standard sets, 2024 had 5. The price of standard is looking very unappealing to me.
Commander drives the cost of cards at this point. If its standard legal and good in commander the price will go up. I am sure modern has a lesser affect.
That's a comically simplistic way to put it, what determines prices is supply and demand, what is the supply of a card? How many times it's been printed and opened. There's only so many of the 1 ring, even if the 1 of 1 one ring was made illegal in every format, demand is still high and supply is 1 so the price stays low, however if a common card is really cool and everyone wants it, it can still be expensive, like with hare apparent. 5 dollars per common, yes the most popular format is going to affect card prices, but despite being much larger, commander has way less influence, because critically, commander decks have 100 cards, and zero repeats outside of exceptions like basic lands, and hare apparents. So 1 copy of sol ring is one deck's worth. While if sol ring was in any kther format, each deck needs 4 copies, so unless commander has 4 times as many decks being made with a single card, that card will have more of it's price decided by the other deck, but it's actually even better for commander when it comes to prices, your big expensive card that is a 1 of 1? Well, you can't play both decks at once most games, so just buy 1, and trade it out between the two. While to do the same with a 4 card format you nay only need to sort through 60 cards, but your looking for 4 cards.
@@calebbarnhouse496 a lot of commander staples are useless in every other format... they have constant reprint at rare and still cost 20+ people delude themselves into thinking it's cheaper, but most of them run more than 4 decks.. mostly a lot more
@kaalesrex2933 yea and most people have .ore then 1 modern deck, the reason commander staples are expensive is most of them get maybe 500 new copies a decade, because they are reprinted in a way desighned to make them broken, there's a reason why the one ring, a card broken in every format it was in, got it'd value cut in half from getting banned in modern, not commander, a format where it's even more powerful because of longer games, less removal, doubly the HP and card draw is more important.
I stopped playing paper magic after khans block rotated out and my set of stormbreath dragons in my mardu dragons deck went from like £100 to £2 overnight lol
"it's part of their secret plan to bring people to Arena" Where they just added the option to buy decks in the store. Without a sideboard. Usually as an outdated version. Without duplicate protection. That i can't resell when i wanna get out of the format. For between 50 and 120€ EACH. it's not as much as a paper deck, but the fact that they are not physical cards and there is no dusting system in case you want to change decks makes the price outrageous.
I tend to look at it like a subscription service, and there aren't that many people willing to pay hundreds of dollars every couple months for a single Netflix show.
When you sell a collectable disguised as a card game and then rotate what is collectable several times a year, it becomes pretty hard to play the underlying game.
If 4+ in the general cmc they go to for signifying commander cards then ig that explains why all of the dice cards are at 4, but I think that even in commander you should have some kinda mid cards that are
@ during edition changes, they’ve totally stamped out particular units when they get a new army book. There have been armies that just never received an army book ever again as well, or just get lumped into another faction.
@@distractionmakersthey stop releasing army books, early days in particular, no close to modern examples, but the last army book the brettonian faction got was 6th edition before they killed the game, they were still legal, but they were basically unplayable without house rules or a massive skill difference. Alternatively you have the space marine range, which was so popular they made hundreds of units, to the point 90% of it is redundant and being put to legends, models do have a time where the model will be illegal, except for key parts of the army, which will be updated with new sculpts but not made illegal necessarily, for ecample the tau have a unit of stealthsuits orginally they had a metal model that model is still legal for a tournament, because it's replacement was a plastic alternative, but if they made stealth suits mk 392 and it's a different unit, then it would be illegal, though ignored anywhere except GW stores and tournaments
I only started playing Standard in 2022 so I've never heard of Bolt vs Shock formats before, that's a very useful way to describe magic sets. I'm scared of UB sets being introduced to standard because, from the perspective of Modern, MH3 and LotR could both be considered "bolt" sets. Will UB sets be redefining the power level of Standard with each release in order to promote sales? And like you guys mentioned regarding cards seeming out of place in draft or Standard, will UB sets now be crafted with the intention of slotting into Draft, Standard, Pioneer, Modern and Commander? That seems so difficult to balance, especially when the Nadu ban article expressed that the development team at WotC is already struggling to playtest the cards given the pace at which product is being released. It's hard to imagine a universe where I don't love Magic, but it's getting increasingly easy to envision a world where I can't afford it. I don't want to be priced out of the Gathering, and they don't allow proxies at RCQs.
The increasingly obscene cost of Magic is just a symptom. The actual problem with magic is extremely simple. They are printing too way many cards. The block rotations of the 90's and 00's did, and very obviously still would, produce a healthier and cheaper format. Having so many new cards come out every year is just extremely stupid. It makes it literally impossible to avoid power creep because at some point you just run out of designs and have to go higher. Going back to each year only having 3 new sets (two of which were actually 1/2 sets), and a Core set that was almost exclusively reprints would massively decrease the cost, slow down the power creep, and remove any need to change the rotation speed for Standard. And while it is currently making Hasbro a lot of money, the game is in a death spiral, choking out more players every year. And, as every pay-to-win game eventually finds out, as soon as there are no casual players for the whales beat up on, there's no longer any incentive for them to keep throwing cash at the game.
In advanced yugioh a deck comparably costs a similar amount to a standard deck. In some cases, much more. After a year of banlists that deck is often unplayable by the end. In someways advanced yugioh rotates faster at increased cost. Players aren’t happy.
@ in my time it’s always been this way. I’ll use an example. Shaddoll archetype comes out at the end of 2014. In February of 2015 I pick up the deck for around $400 at the time. The end of year banlist that year killed off Shaddoll as well as the other Meta decks so that people had to move on to the new stuff. This is most often the case for Yugioh. You’ll usually have a few deck strategies slip through the cracks and be playable for longer but rarely were they top meta decks. In yugioh though the mindset is if a deck does actually last for a year the players get really tired of it and want it gone. Via power creed or soft rotation via banlist.
So as a yugioh player primarily, Standard looks like a cheaper game with a generous window of being able to play with the cards. Something has to be wrong here lol
It's insane seeing how bad it's gotten over there. $1200 decks that get banned out in six months should probably signal to players that they're being swindled.
"Stop That" should be legal in every format, start outside the game and first time you resolve "Gotcha" it would be placed in your hand but also cost phyrexian mana to keep the flicking demons at bay. Some say an old dog can't learn new tricks but let's put that to the test, shall we?
This literally happened to me this week I bought all the enduring cats and sheoldreds and etc for the donor midrange deck and then 2 days later there’s a broken instacycle of health and damage between the new black flying barbarian and any card that heals you my deck instantly fell out of the meta
Yugioh despite having a banlist that could somewhat function as rotation, you still have many cards from the early days of yugioh that are still meta relevant and you can play a rogue deck that was released a decade ago and still top an event. Powercreep in yugioh is weird because its so volatile in the sense that even the best decks of the format rely on many of these older cards and you can still get blown the fuck out by the guy playing his pet deck that was released a decade ago.
Power creep rotation is another problem. In the same vein of how a modern horizons set completely upends the modern format, each new standard set provides a huge influence on the format since it has a very limited card pool. It's almost at a point where a deck can be bullied out of standard before your TCGplayer order can actually arrive at your doorstep. And just because certain archetypes still 'exist', it doesn't mean it's not being forced to rotate. 'Golgari midrange' pre duskmourn was almost obligated to run the vraska/inkeeper combo, which would cost you I think 120-140 to get a playset of. Then suddenly duskmourn comes out, and the combo is basically dead, and you are obligated to run annex/archfiend lines instead to remain competitive. I feel terrible for anyone who spent 120 bucks for 8 cards that don't really have competitive homes in any other format besides commander, just to play a deck for one month.
Flesh and Blood has solved this problem - for now - in its Living Legend system. Whenever a hero wins an official tournament, it gains "living legend points" - and once it earns enough, it stops being legal in Classic Constructed (or 'CC', the 'Standard' of FaB) and remains legal only in the 'Living Legend Format' (the Legacy/Vintage of FaB). Through this system, (A) CC remains fresh since powerful decks rotate themselves out at a speed based on their power level, (B) your cards never quite lose their value entirely as you can play the LL format once a hero you really love rotates out, and (C) every hero is guaranteed their 'time in the spotlight' because anything that's weak will eventually get enough support to shine, win, and rotate itself out. It also helps that when a hero rotates, only the hero and their 'signature weapon' rotate out, which are 2 cards out of a 81 card pile. Everything else is still legal, so you can likely pick up a new hero of the same class and re-use anywhere from 50-95% of your old deck. It also has the added bonus of being way more lenient on people who put the game down for a long time and then return. Even if you don't play for a year, unless your hero has rotated out, you can probably just make some small adjustments to your deck to fit the current meta and play it again. Of course, part of the reason this works is because FaB has a way wider meta than Magic. With upwards of 30 heroes available, there's a really complex 'rock/paper/scissors' style balance going on where a hero that is really good into the current top meta decks might suck against a different hero that otherwise sucks and isn't being played right now. Which in turn means that the meta evolves often and in different ways, and we have seen dark horse decks win major competitive events out of nowhere as a result. Because the meta is so wide, it's a lot easier for LSS to print new cards that don't have a huge power level increase but instead add different ways of engaging with the game's mechanics, which is how they've generally done a good job in the last 2 years of printing new product that isn't ridiculously power crept yet still excites people. Virtually all of the game's most powerful cards are still from the first couple of sets. It remains to be seen if LSS can keep coming up with more 'out there' ideas to keep this going for another 3 years, 6 years, 10 years - but right now, it's working a lot better than Magic's rotation system. Sadly I doubt WotC will ever want to copy something like this - it's hard to implement in Magic and such a system would have to be something along the lines of "all the Mythic rares from any deck that wins a Standard event get automatically banned"... which I doubt WotC will ever do as that's how they make their money, these days. For non-commander focused products, anyway.
I was getting on board with standard knowing foundations was going to be around and that the rotation was longer but then they dropped UB on standard and I'm out. Hard out. Can't play a format where I have to play meta cards that I don't want to play with. I can play against it and be ok but I don't want to have to play some Marvel card to be able to win. Hard pass. Nice work WoTC.
Exactly. Same. Foundations got me extremely excited that things would be better but the UB announcement killed any interest I have in playing standard. Going to have to make my own format at this rate.
@@KyleTremblayTitularKtrey I have committed to what I'm calling "classic" EDH. Limiting my decks to no more than 5 UB cards. And trying to cut those whenever possible
Pokemon has solved the playable vs collectible price problem. Not only do they save the highest rarity for collectible cards, if a playable card gets too expensive, they find a way to print the card in a product where its guaranteed (i.e. teal ogerpon ex or prime catcher). If magic wants to solve their issue, they need make changes to how they print
Would collector versions be worth much if they weren't being purchased in "competition" against people who want them to play with? Because the limit of printed amounts would be higher and play pieces would be more available.
Standard has a long history of being expensive. Mythic Bant during ALA/ZEN was a $1000 deck. The biggest problem with Standard right now is just that the gameplay sucks, WotC keeps printing obvious designs mistakes like Unholy Annex, Enduring Curiosity, and Screaming Nemesis, and the people who play Standard are so fractured between different social media channels that there's no real consensus mechanism for getting WotC to even acknowledge that there's a problem.
You too had excellent points and gave some interesting ideas, however, why does any of this matter? History has shown that there is not a single thing wizards of the Coast / Hasbro can do to keep magic players from buying the next sets. Not a single form of disrespect, not any form of abusive over monetization, not a single thing will stop magic players from coming back for more. Magic players are even worse than Warhammer players in this regard. And at least D&D players, if they get fed up enough, will simply go back to playing their older editions not giving wizards of the Coast another penny. In the end, unless you change the community, wizards of the Coast will never give a c. This has been proven for decades now with players whining, but never stopping supporting the abuse by closing their wallets
Paper magic is simply just too expensive now. While I miss the good old times of going to the local game store and playing FNM and small eternal format tourneys... who the hell wants to spend bare minimum $400 and more likely $600-1000(eternal formats) on a deck of 75 pieces of cardboard that will lose their value due to Hasbro and their reprints and standard set rotations. Not to mention that MTG Arena now exists and is much cheaper to play and you can play it all the time whenever you want in the comfort of your home. You can even play it free to play if you wish or simply spend $100 or less making a single good deck and grinding out the rest of your decks with in-game currencies and events for free.
You think that, but competitive tournament players will often buy whole new armies based on the current meta. I know the shop I used to go to would have a monthly tournament for 40k, but had the stipulation that models needed at least 3 different colors on it. Because these guys would NEVER paint their stuff, just a grey tide of whatever netlist was the best at the moment. 7th was a terrible time for this. I bet it hasn't changed much now that GW seemingly wants to be invested in competitive play when their rules have never been good enough for that sort of thing.
The longer rotations came from magic arena, they had a sharp, and I mean sharp like cliff. Edge Drop off after the first rotation in magic arena. So they weren't making as much money. They're not really worried about the paper money aspect, because they make so much more money on arena than they do with actual cards. So you have people playing arena, and it's really affecting the entire game
I like Magic as a game, but hate the card acquisition through booster packs. I recently started playing it on Arena and bought the bundles offered to new players, which was like 100$ or something to build some competitive decks. Right now I have enough wild cards left to build any standard deck and I assume that I will be able to craft decks with new releases without having to pay money or at least not that much. I appreciate that every rare or mythic card costs the same amount of ingame currency to get. For physical card games I am only willing to buy games that follow the LCG model and I have purchased all expansions of Warhammer Invasion and a lot for Arkham Horror and Android Netrunner. I'd wish there were more LCG-type games with higher popularity, but financially the TCG model appears to be more attractive for the companies.
I remember the days back before Commander really took off there would be a massive selloff of the rotating standard cards. I think that's part of why Commander took off in the first place. It gave new life to cards which were otherwise "unplayable." I don't see anything wrong with having a healthy Standard and Commander format because the two can be so symbiotic. On the other hand, Pokemon's answer is players playing old standard environments (which is in no way sanctioned or official). So old card value trends with pure collectability not playability.
To be fair, Nadu was entirely an accident. Card also got banned within a couple months of existing and had barely any market value because people fully expected it to be banned.
MTG has completely priced me out at this point, and is one of many reasons I'm taking another break from the game. Arena is cheaper, but I still find it to be too expensive to keep up with new sets.
Making the serialized cards super rare in a normal booster should happen too. Otherwise budget players have 0% chance to get value from a pack. Currently it feels OK to pull normal boosters since card value is potentially high. I agree normal art cards should be less rare, and less expensive. But then value per pack drops, so a chance at value needs to be added to keep packs "worthwhile"
I want shorter rotation and cheaper decks. Rotation was always when I came BACK to Standard! I don't want to play ONE deck for 5 years, I want to build new decks every set!
@Rabid_Wombat if a new set comes out, if I'm playing I want to play with it. If a new set comes out and I dont want to play it I'm just not playing Magic that quarter
@@Rabid_Wombat honestly that's too much for me but i wonder if that isn't Wizard's angle, trying to get younger folks with time to burn super invested. i guess kids don't have as much money as working adults so it's a long term investment.
Crazy stupid idea but why don't they just make standard cards that you can only play in the tournament and they are set-priced. So you build the deck and the cards are supplied in the tournament. You can charge the cost of cards in the tournament and just return the cards to the event.
Even if Commander didn't exist if the demand simply transferred to Standard then card prices could go up. I'd almost argue that if Standard Sets had a period of "exclusivity" before they became Commander legal it might help control card prices. Either that or Commander needed to be a format where only "commander" cards were legal. Being a 1-of Format could have kept prices lower than needing 4 of a card for Standard and another copy for Commander. But in terms of volume it probably comes down less to Standard players wanting more copies than Commander players and more-so there being too many Commander players. A supplemental product of the "good" cards in inferior/boring printings could help keep prices low but you'd need to convince people that cards are not an investment. Flesh and Blood took this approach somewhat with their white border sets.
Idk what it is about gamers but yall are so ridiculous when it comes to spending on a hobby. Stop worrying about the value of your item going down OR UP. You got value out of the playing of the card. Its so annoying listening to card game players discourse about value of thier hobby. RC cars, arts &crafts, cooking, sports are all hobbies that cost money and have consumables- just like magic cards are essentially consumables in respect to standard play.
money is not the issue at all you are making a strawman that doesn’t exist you dont need more then 20 bucks to play standard money is only an issue if you want to compete in tournaments then yes ull have to buy the best to compete with the best 😅 but no casual player needs or has to do that 😂
Sadly warhammer models also get rotated they go to whats called legends, My 40k orks lost several units in 10th edition and my Stormcast army is losing a huge chunk next year.
@@distractionmakers for 40k its often for old out of production models, the upcoming stormcast hits are not old though and the reasoning is said to be for roster bloat but more likely to push new units.
40K miniatures absolutely do “go away.” A large percentage of my firstborn Space Marine army has now been removed from current rules, despite having been entirely playable for 30+ years before I bought it. I get the comparison you’re making, but GW doesn’t get a pass here lmao
Standard was fun for a week or two, this cycle. But now feels like a soft modern. Most games are over by turn 2 or 3 . Just losing the enjoyment of playing magic
i dropped the card games because i was tired of the armament race that are trying to win a game, and now i trying warhammer because i knew that the minis was a long live span ... but not now.
Packs should be super cheap, like, 2.5 usd per pack tops. As is, it is too expensive to get into the game from zero, and going straight to singles is way too high.
The most expensive card in Standard is Sheoldred at $80; after that it's Screaming Nemesis at $30 and Faerie Mastermind/Kaito both at $25. But outside of those, the most expensive rares are anywhere between $5 and $8, which is totally reasonable imo, relative to the last 10 or so years of Magic.
Something I wish we would have touched on in the video is how it used to be that once you were bought into standard you could keep half your cards on rotation. But there was a big barrier to buying in from zero. Now that barrier is much higher and less people are on the treadmill.
Sheoldred is so annoying because It was already a power level anomaly causing it to be valuable to players outside of Standard but also a victim of the first extended rotation. She's been around way longer than she should have been.
@@geek593honestly at this point Sheoldred is not a problem. Black, blue, and white can reliably remove Sheoldred easily. And red wins faster than Sheoldred coming down.
@@aaroncalloway2898 Her problem has always been sticker shock. The card itself isn't broken but being in the format makes the format look worse from the outside.
Yep too expensive. Having to have 4 of everything good is what made me quit back in 08. Commander brought me back. I’m probably not gonna get into standard
I’m mega casual player in 40k and I see the influx of magic players into the game and the effect it has had, and I really do not like it. GW has gone hyperactive with their tweaking in relation to how long it takes to acquire an army and play their game. I’m not kidding you when I say that the rules have changed multiple times in between my casual games and it has gotten so out of hand that it’s run me off of 10th edition
Average person isnt really expected to be tournament grinding at fnm standard events at least. -Also honestly I find it more miserable farming wildcards for my under a dollar rares.-
Its exceptionally bad here in Canada where everything is priced relative to USD when the loonie is in free-fall right now. (Currently under 69 cents USD at the time of posting) A pack of cards costs 7-8 bucks. If you want to draft it costs like 20 bucks a person.
I think people will still hold onto the cards and speculate if they're good enough for the eternal formats, particularly commander. For cards that are relevant for Standard, nothing much will change imo. Most of them were already super cheap even when dominant standard decks were built around them (i.e. Worldsoul Rage)
It's a famous bible story I believe where one of the kings offers to cut a baby in half to resolve an argument about which woman was the real mom, because the fake mom didn't care about the baby being cut in half or something like that. I don't think it was the correct analogy for what they wanted though lol
The dirty secret is that Standard decks don't last 3 years, they last 2-3 months a lot of the time. The meta shifts drastically each set release, so the idea that I can just buy my expensive deck and then have it for 2-3 years doesn't even really work because in a couple of months I'm going to need a different deck if I want to be playing the best meta deck.
Even if you don't get a new deck, and just keep upgrading the same deck, you still need to buy new, potentially expensive, cards each set release to keep your deck relevant. This is because a Standard deck which only has cards from the first four sets of Standard is not going to be as good as a Standard set which has cards from 2.5 years worth of sets.
This seems to support their thesis. A shorter rotation would actually be better to attract players.
I have a standard deck at about 600 right now. Half of that cost is my side board, and half of that is shelly. A fourth of my deck price is shelly. I can't in good consciousness recomend my deck because shelly is so much. Mix in serveil lands becoming eternal staples, and suddenly standard is not accessible. Shelly should have rotated already
3 year rotation is a disastrous decision
Foundations being legal for 5 years is a disastrous decision
6 sets a year is a disastrous decision
They're pushing standard so hard rn that they've shoved it off a cliff and eventually it's gonna hit the dirt
For reference, in Pokémon, by my count, there are 14 cards (not counting fancy arts) over $5 in the current standard format. The most expensive is $12.71. 5 of them (including the most expensive) you can only run 1 of as a rule, and another 4 people rarely run more than 1 of anyway.
The most expensive deck is about $100, and the top 10 decks average about $60. The cheapest is about $40. There are budget-friendly variants for less than that too.
It's silly to compare the Magic secondary market to the Pokemon secondary market.
@TheEvolver311 Why? It reflects the cost of playing one game versus the other.
@shelby142 Because the economic dynamics that drive the secondary market are completely different. For Magic the value is derived from its usefulness as a game piece for Pokemon the biggest driver is collecting. $85 Magic cards are desirable game pieces $85 Pokemon cards are desirable collectibles. Only a small fraction of the people purchasing Pokemon cards actually play the TGC and the secondary market gets flooded with the non-chase alt art cards that collectors don't want. Magic doesn't have this dynamic currently at all, it is slightly the desired side effect of the UB sets is that they might create this dynamic in Magic with a larger number of collectors chasing alts of Spiderman or Blackcat will cause the price for base versions to deflate when they dump their excess on the secondary market
@@TheEvolver311except for the whole MTG serialized/alt art/collectors edition/speculators market that's been solidly in place for the last 10 years.
See also: the One Ring
@@TheEvolver311except, you know... stuff like the reserved list exists.
All Hallows Eve commands a $500 market price not because it's even remotely playable, it's because it's an old card that was printed once, and has some cool art.
MtG is complicit in their speculators boosting cards prices by having their super powerful game pieces *also* be their chase cards with no other options.
Pokemon chooses to have their powerful cards be easily accessible at lower rarities.
What you guys are missing is that magic the gathering cards have also become a speculative market for investor.
With money pouring into buying the meta defining specific cards it pushes their price upward - more money buying the same amount of cards mean higher prices.
This have kind of screwed up the player but is making a killing for WotC as higher card prices means selling more booster.
There's also the whole "One new set every two to four weeks" part.
They can't even be bothered to stick them into Blocks. The lazy shits. All my cards are from pre 2020 and it's going to stay that way
Realizing Warhammer is somehow cheaper than MTG was weird.
I know people often use this as a joke but believe me... Drugs are also cheaper.
why are you lying
Its not tho
mtg You csn get a commander deck for as little as 20 bucks if you find a good deal, warhammer 20 bucks won't even buy you the painting supplies for an army
Used to be about $500 minimum for a good army when you took into account paint, supplies, etc. been a minute since I checked though but Warhammer has always been an empty pit to throw your money into.
Cards shouldn’t be exclusively mythic. Cards like Sheoldred should be normal rare, but all it’s many alt-arts should be mythic. That’s how Pokémon keeps its standard so cheap. It wouldn’t get magic deck down to Pokémon levels, but it would help. Also maybe don’t make every land rare.
ALSO, as for your sidebar about warhammer, there’s a lot of drama in the WH world right now as minis are getting removed and rules rotation is so fast now people are quitting. GW has started hyper focusing on the competitive crowd and essentially started rotation
Mythic rares are definitely a part of the problem.
It wouldn't matter, mythic rares didn't always exist and we still had $100 rares
@@TheEvolver311 i cant think of a single non-reserve list $100 rare that predates shards of alara
@thebigsquig rares were on average more expensive than rares today
Goyfs were over 100 at the birth of Modern
@@TheEvolver311But goyf was not $100 when it was in Standard. And that's because it was still in print during its Standard run.
Another issue isn’t hard rotation, it’s soft rotation. Sheoldred hasn’t rotated, but any reanimator deck is going to run Valgavoth from Duskmourn instead, and that won’t rotate until the end of 2027, and we’re stuck with Zombify until ‘at least 2029’. So it’s a nine mana spell that functionally reads “you can cast this for four mana if you discard a card named zombify”
6 sets a year and 3 year rotation is only going to make that worse, the ultra pushed sets are going to happen more often and stick around longer. It means standard becomes very swingy and very fast, and other formats do that better.
I do wonder if WOTC is trying to push players to arena.
@@distractionmakers You may have a point, after all, Alchemy is still on a two year cycle! No Sheoldred and Swiftspear!
Oh that is weird haha I had no idea
I noticed my local game stores increase the price of draft from 18 to 25. im guessing it's due to play boosters having less cards the the price increasing.
@@OmegaDarkBlade it’s not card count, it’s just booster price.
Play boosters were introduced at the set booster price point, the cheaper draft booster price point was just eliminated.
Them having one fewer card is an unrelated downside.
Standard has no identity anymore. Back during the block era, you named two sets, and you understood that format. Ex: Mirage / Tempest standard, Odyssey / Onslaught standard, Ravnica / Time Spiral standard, etc. Now there are so many unrelated sets in the mix at a time, there is no cohesion nor identity to the format.
The problem with blocks is that they require way too much commitment and dont sell as well as one off sets do.
If a block is really bad, it can be absolutely devistating for sales and the general view of the game. Mirrodin block for example was absurdly broken and was devistating for the game, followed by the even more devistating and very underpreforming Kamigawa block. A block not only become the center of the game's marketting for half a year but took up most of standard, meaning that if players werent interested in the block's theme or design they wont be buying anything for a long period of time.
I love blocks as much as the next hardcore fan of the game but they were cut for a very understandable reason.
Nothing is perfect, but as a fan and consumer, I still prefer the block system. You're also neglecting the upside. When a block was awesome, like Tempest or Invasion, the game was killer for that whole year.
Again, my main point is cohesion. Three sets with related themes and mechanics is much better for deck building than a bunch of random, unrelated sets. Draft was infinitely better under the block system. I can't even imagine what Limited is like now.
Plus I miss Block as another viable format. Even a weaker set like Kamigawa made for solid Draft and Block Constructed.
Also, note that during the Block era, Type II was the dominant format of the game, by an extremely wide margin. The death of standard happened after the Block system was dropped.
I may have a different perspective because I played from Ice Age, up through Shards of Alara, basically the entirety of the Block era. I, and all the players I knew, were quite happy with it.
I feel deeply sorry for the players, living through the era of Wizards churning out half baked sets faster than the presses can print them. Do players who waste their money on collectors boosters, Secret Lairs, and grossly overpriced specialty reprint sets even realize how bad Hasbro is milking them like cattle?
The game did NOT use to be like this! The core sets were the home of reprints, and sold for normal price. When they released Chronicles, it sold for $2.49 a pack. Now you get reprint sets selling for $15 a pack?????
Do you all even understand how badly Hasbro is bending you all over and sticking it to you? When I started playing, a good Standard deck could be built for around $50. Now some of your singles cost that much or more.
Yeah, maybe I'm an old stick in the mud, who wishes the game could be like it was in the "good old days". But it was fun and we were happy back then. I wouldn't give a penny I picked up in the parking lot for a pack of Magic now.
@@Hexxecutioner What I described is what maro has publicly stated as the reason why blocks were canned. I love blocks and understand how amazing tjeu can be, but when they do poorly its REALLY bad for Wizards and it is understandable that theyd want to play it safe. Wizards also looks more towards the mass market in terms of certain choices (as maro goes on about CONSTANTLY), and the mass market is a lot more numerous than fans on the internet. Isnt to say that only do this, not at all really, but Maro has made is very very apparent repeatedly for years now that their major target is casual players who may have never attended event before.
Regarding pack prices, blame game stores and the outside market values. The recomended retail price for play boosters right now is $5.50, which is close to 1995's $2.49 chronicles boosters when adjusted for inflation. Game stores sell booster packs for higher or lower prices based on demand, or rather how much profit they can make off of the boosters from people. Collector boostsrs are also not the standard and if you dont like em dont buy em.
Regarding Secret lairs, this is entirely just my opinion but I think they were fine up until relatively recently. They were like just, a little special event thing dont cause they were fun even if pricey. But theyve gotten real bad lately, particularly with the limited stock bullshit. It went from what was really just a fun little thing to a cash cow milking scalpers.
@@Hexxecutioner Oh also...
Limited has honestly been awesome lately. Every set is always designed mostly for limited specifically now, and as a result you get very flavorful and fun draft envirenments.
Regarding standard, wizards is pushing HARD to bring it back now. Blocks going away hurt standard sure, but what really really nailed it was covid. Theyre pushing hard to bring backs standard in ways that are both great and wel...questionable. Three year long rotation, Universes Beyond sets being standard legal, them canning all pioneer events entirely for the next year in place of additional standard onnes, and bringing back core sets in the form of 5 year long foundations sets instead. Standard sets are also now typically designed with future or past sets in mind. Easiest and more blunt example would be them printing a lot of bat cards in LCI which were black and white, and then in their Redwall themed tribal set they have orzhov bats as a draft archetype.
Lastly, regarding market value. Its a whole discussion in of itself (as with the video lol). Theres factors they didnt even bring up here like the introduction of the mythic rarity, lack of reprints, and how increasingly obsessively "magic financiers" have become. Theres a lot of factors at play. Frankly Im just happy this game isnt Yugioh levels of bad. Where they will literally spike meta relevant cards seen as such in japan (asian territories get sets before us) to a rarity ABOVE the Mythic equivilant for western releases. Making meta decks potentially cost over a thousand dollars depending on the weather of the market.
Making the mythic rarity only alternate art cards would be a cool change. Then we go back to rares as the highest unique rarity.
This is a great idea
The solution to Gavin's problem with arena is to have a pile of cards he can grab and flick while he's playing.
Mulligans and the decks you match against will still be fake
that format was called block constructed, and they killed it back in 2014 (along with blocks altogether in 2018). it was the best way to get into competitive constructed as you only had 1-3 sets at a time to deal with, was a great way to showcase and evolve the new mechanics of the block, and wasn't quite as sweaty as standard
MTG is the original loot box game - every set that gets released is loaded up with filler cards that will never see any play in standard. The Standard format gets solved so quickly now, that it gets decided really quickly which cards are in, and which cards are out. If you're a Standard player, there's maybe 5% of the total card pool that is actually usable at any given time.
Honestly I think booster packs/boxes are basically lootboxes. Another reason why it is usually always most efficient to buy singles.
Your point about min-i-a-tures being playable longer than cards in standard is exactly why I stopped playing Magic in favor of 40k as a teen 20 years ago. Anecdotally you're spot-on :)
Sadly in recent years GW has been removing fan-favorite units from the game (most of Forgeworld's models) but I agree it is better than MTG in terms of how long they last
I think that it’s a little surprising that WotC hasn’t capitalized on the market of people that have limited funds to spend on Magic. If you are a teen or living paycheck to paycheck (meaning if you lost your job today can you continue to live without getting evicted, closing or opening new cards, or having your car repossessed) you CANNOT reasonably afford Magic outside of draft. This alone spooks a lot of people who would otherwise be interested and building a community.
It gets worse if you have multiple hobbies. Now as a conscious consumer, I have to be incredibly selective with the vast oversaturation of expensive products. I still want to go disc golf, play a board game, and sew an outfit. As a consumer, the more I have to evaluate my relationship with my hobby instead of just enjoying what it has to offer, the more I feel pushed out of being an active member in a reasonable way.
That was a huge breaking point for me, when I had to sit down and assess my income vs expenses. And I realized I could, on a monthly basis, eat out with my friends, buy a video game, and go to a movie with friends... Or I could Play Magic The Gathering.
Daddy Hasbro wants you to abandon all other hobbies, eat ramen noodles and spend your entire income on Magic the Gathering.
I joke, but it's kinda for real tho. The way the game is marketed, the never ending set release schedule with constant card spoilers; it's all engineered to maintain engagement, not enjoyment.
@@marzgamingmaster I really do believe for people like you and me WotC has a HUGE untapped market of people that would be subject to “the lipstick effect.” The idea is basically during times of recession, buyers slow down on big luxury items and splurge on small goods. Mtg currently has packs which you can open and have nothing when you walk away, or those fun buy two packs and make a fourty card deck. I’d love a set of premade pauper decks running at like $25-$30 for us poor folk lol
I'm surprised WotC hasn't jumped on pauper for new player on-boarding. $30 for a full power pre-constructed tier deck instead of trying to print Modern/Pioneer decks without full copies of needed cards and bad mana bases sounds reasonable. There are some pauper staples that would lose value that way but I'm sure stores wouldn't care too much if they got a product to sell that could be used to run tournaments straight from the box to get new customers in the store and playing.
@@seangoldman6833 That's the trick though, they don't *want* you playing the format called "Pauper". They want you playing "Rich Guy". They want you playing the "Buy as many packs as humanly possible" format. Actually giving support to Pauper is literally the last and most distant thought on their mind.
Yeah, 40k models don't really go away, they just change stats (so buy the new codex). Tho there are some models that have gone away long ago, mostly small factions/subfactions.
I think part of it, on top of the money and time investment to paint, is how attached players are to specific factions.
MtG and card games, generally, have "favored color/archtype" but players are more flexible and fluid to play any and all pieces. I am a green/blue player (lol) but I play all the colors here and there.
But in 40k, I am a Nids player. That's my faction, even if it's weak or strong in the edition. And you see that kind of devotion to 1 or 2 factions. The flavour and lore do a LOT of lifting to keep players attached to factions, which mitigates meta min maxing.
Imo.
It is a really interesting contrast, thanks for the insight!
Tell that to large collecion of first-born space marines or the bae change of nids from 9th to 10th, tho i generally agree
@@JhonScarzo ? Nothing serious happend to nids between 9 and 10. The old models are still usable/fine/no one cares.
And the tyranids are literally a species about evolution so changes over time is in flavor.
That is a really minor nothing compared Tyranids being more lizard like prior to Starcraft 1 releasing with zerg.
I think there are two larger goals from the three year rotation
1. To give enough runway to get universes beyond players to get hooked and stick around after their IP of choice rotates. If someone picks up standard because of Final Fantasy, maybe 3 years is enough time to convert them from just a FF fan to and FF fan and a Magic player. By the time FF rotates, maybe they're engaged enough to not be bothered by it.
2. To try to "kill" modern. For a while, it seemed like modern was the default mode for 1v1 Magic. Expanding the card pool and raising the power floor might help convert modern players. Keeping up in small bursts every set or every other set feels more managable than "Here's the new MH, you need to drop a band now". The large card pool gives more headroom to balance new cards and seems to be succeeding in having a variety of fun and viable archetypes. This contrasts to many standard formats of the last decade where there's less than 5 top decks and the gameplay is not as flashy.
This is a little conspiratorial, but it could be true. And if true, this would explain one thing that's been baffling me: Wizards claims to want to save Standard, but all their changes are hurting it.
@ben_clifford I'll take that I'm being a bit conspiritorial, but why do you think recent decisions are hurting standard? When I came into magic, it seemed like most players viewed standard as the lesser format or only for ptq grinding. Now standard is fun and exciting. I'm actively playing for the first time since GRN and it doesn't feel like magic with training wheels
Standard used to be 5-7 sets now they are going to have 6 standard sets a year that’s making the price go up and the time your deck is viable goes down
Not printing exceptional Standard power level cards as mythic would help a lot. They keep printing standard target cards as mythic and the cards that merge into eternal formats keep geting printed as uncommon/rares. Just look at any domain deck, its a mythic pile 😅
The issue isn’t rotation, it’s the secondary market that we as players drive and have created.
We are our own worst enemies
I wish the standard rotation was shorter and cheaper like Pokemon.
That’s the best thing about Pokemon all the meta decks are cheap as long as you don’t bling out your deck.
I just wish I enjoyed playing Pokemon. SWU has been fun. Been playing flesh and blood and one piece too.
The first time I really got into standard & played at a few events was during the time Theros was released. I was fairly new but had enough of a collection & got lucky with some packs of Theros with Thoughtseize pulls, I decided to build Mono Black. I didnt understand rotation & once i found out that Return to Ravnica cards were about to be useless I got extremely bummed out. I ended up learning about EDH and still only play it.
Back when I was playing Xth edition had just come out and original Ravnica was out of standard. There was only Legacy and Vintage so most of my friends just quit playing.
@christianjonker8181 I honestly only enjoy draft (only with certain sets) & Commander now. Honestly, I really like coming up with different ideas on how I would play with certain commanders & do that more than I actually get chances to play. I usually try to go to my LGS at least twice in a month on Commander nights but sometimes I can't even get around to doing that. I have maybe 3 friends that have stayed with the hobby out of the original 7-8 that I met in college. I have heard that WotC has done studies that have shown that most people will leave a hobby in seven years of doing it; sometimes they will return to it within three years or not at all.
The better way to resolve this is to fix your dogshit card economy to be more like Pokémon’s. When you can buy an ENTIRE “cutting edge of the meta” standard Pokemon deck for the same price as an MTG meta *single* card, you know your game is massively flawed and pay to win. If wizards doesn’t change their model, MTG is going to continue to lose money and bleed players to better TCGs like Pokemon, Star Wars, and Lorcana.
Hasbro is evil in their intent to milk their fans for their life savings. I never realized Pokemon perfected the affordability with their value distribution. My biggest mistake was any MTG investment. Pokemon has perfected the fan experience. MTG is evil torture
95% of MTG players won't care about alt arts and will just buy the cheap stuff. Meanwhile, people are buying entire cases of Pokemon cards with absolutely no intention of ever playing the cards.
Magic simply doesn't have the collectors base to subsidize the competitive aspect of the game like pokemon does.
@@TheKitsuneBlue That’s fair. 20 packs of Pokemon are opened for every pack of MTG cards
I think one thing overlooked about a longer rotation and more sets in standard is that every set will generally have its card values roughly the cost of a box. (When adjusted for rarity etc.)
With more sets fewer cards will find themselves in the *meta" from each sets leading to a bugger gap between the expensive cards Ina set and amount of *bulk" cards that no one really wants
Financially, the actual problem with Standard is: Wizards shut down all Standard play for almost 2 years. When people came back after the quarantine ended, no one had a Standard deck. Not one person.
So Wizards has a cold start problem that they haven't faced since 1995. The only way out is what they did the first time: entice people with a dream of playing competitively.
@@ben_clifford Theyre doing a variety of things to get people back into standard though. Stuff including bringing back core sets in the form of foundations and putting UB sets into standard.
@@CatManThree Is any of it working? My LGS still hasn't fired a standard event in years.
@@ben_clifford I havent really been attending events lately so I cant really say. Also UB will be entering standard rotation with the final fantasy set in june, and we will have to see how hard they push things publicly in regards to competitive stuff.
Something to say about Warhammer, there is occasionally model “rotation” so to speak. I’m Warhammer 40k this is called a model being moved to Legends, typically done to really old models that GW isn’t making anymore and don’t want to have to constantly update rules for. This has recently happened to a large number of old resin and metal models that at this point are decades old in favor of plastic model refreshes.
Pokémon also reprints cards, reprints alt promo versions in sealed products, and puts out competitive precons based on meta decks currently being played. They're not exact lists, but pretty close to it and makes the core cards being used more affordable.
I just switched to Pokémon and have been enjoying the culture around playing the game a lot more 😊
(Just avoiding the investors, etc).
That’s awesome actually. That could be a good solution for MTG.
The fact that all the Pokemon players at my LGS play with those silver border cards makes me look upon them with envy 😢
@@Rabid_Wombat is this a reference to the silver border cards being standard only at the moment, or the fact they're silver and not magic's black? 😅 I'm so incredibly happy they finally moved away from yellow borders for english cards
@@nerdmango9819 yeah, the silver border cards are all from the Pokemon World Championship decks 🙌
I only invest. Hasbro has screwed me forever as they do all their fans. I used to play MTG it was the most fun complex game ever. Hasbro does everything to exploit & torture their customers. Pokemon does everything right prints to demand makes everything affordable & is still the best investment not just in collectables but ever.
I quit standard and magic overall in 2019. Firstly rotation gutted my deck, and then Throne of Eldarine sucked all the passion i had left with Oko and Veil of Summer(i played dimir control). Recently came back to magic, but i play pauper now. I proxy everything and don't pay enterence fees in tournaments, so i basicely spend nothing on magic. I like it way more and i never plan to return to standard
Wizards putting all the playable fixing at rare for money has always been extremely scummy. Large part of why I don't want to support them.
I remember when I came to magic at 2013 $10 card was jackpot and $200 deck was 3color control deck with shocklands (each for $10). Now I see standard decks priced in range of 2013's moder jund. And one of the big difference is how much power are in rare and mythic cards. even RDW is constracted from rare creature, and some decks have 10+ mythics. Playing 8 overlords and atraxas is no even close to 3 sphynxe's revelations, elspeth and jace/ashiok
100%. I played about 20 years ago, came back recently, and simply cannot meaningfully play standard FNM without dropping $$$.
Stopped playing again immediately, which is sad because the game is so much fun.
I got into magic briefly as a college student cuz some guys on my floor in the dorms were wayyy into it. And once I learned that my cards would be useless in a year, I was out. Couldn’t keep up with that crap
I agree with your general point. However, I'd like to push back against your 300-500$ deck price. Some very competitive decks (ie, decks who have won or placed in the top 8 of large tournaments in recent weeks) can be had for around 100-150$. Ofc, the Sheoldred decks are expensive af, but Jeskai Convoke is about 120$ and it can hold it's own against the meta very well. Sheoldred is quite the outlier in recent standard, mostly because of how much it sees plays outside standard (Commander, pioneer, etc)
I think part of the issue is play pattern. There are usually a few competitive decks that are budget, red deck wins being the usual example. These decks almost always have a narrow proactive strategy so are limited in their longevity. Where something like Dimir midrange is more robust.
@@distractionmakerssuperb points 💯
A player will NEVER have fun playing RDW compared to a midrange or control strat. Because RDW is mostly a solitaire game whereas midrange and control have reactive proactive plays against the opponent.
Theres also stuff like various tribal decks spawned by Bloomburrow which were very competitively viable prior to foundations, and were quite cheap.
This makes me think of the buddy I have that I play with that is very collector oriented. Every time they reprint an expensive card he owns he gets mad. He says"thanks WOTC you just made my $50 card a $20 card". But I think to myself" maybe I can get one of those to play with now".
I play mono green as my standard with low budget. My friends usually told me that I should add some red or even a 3rd color to my deck.
Thing is, I can't afford another color with how I find some of the red cards that people often use costs about 20-30$ above (each not playset).
This and the competitive players in my lgs rly discourage me to go back to standard.
I just added up the cost of the top 15 decks of the past 30 days on mtggoldfish. A total of 4002 dollars, and an average of 266.8 per deck. That's the price for a deck right now, what I can't quantify very easily is the rate of change, how often do you need new cards. Rotation alone does not control your need for new cards, adjusting to the meta requires getting new cards. A deck archetype (like UW control) will have a 60 card deck, 75 card side board, and a growing list of optional cards as the meta changes and new sets come out. 2025 will have 6 standard sets, 2024 had 5. The price of standard is looking very unappealing to me.
Commander drives the cost of cards at this point. If its standard legal and good in commander the price will go up. I am sure modern has a lesser affect.
Yep, although I think even modern has more of an impact on price than standard
See the price graphs on recent modern bans.
Though I'll happily sell some Green Sun's Zeniths and Splinter Twin and scoop up a discount frog.
That's a comically simplistic way to put it, what determines prices is supply and demand, what is the supply of a card? How many times it's been printed and opened. There's only so many of the 1 ring, even if the 1 of 1 one ring was made illegal in every format, demand is still high and supply is 1 so the price stays low, however if a common card is really cool and everyone wants it, it can still be expensive, like with hare apparent. 5 dollars per common, yes the most popular format is going to affect card prices, but despite being much larger, commander has way less influence, because critically, commander decks have 100 cards, and zero repeats outside of exceptions like basic lands, and hare apparents. So 1 copy of sol ring is one deck's worth. While if sol ring was in any kther format, each deck needs 4 copies, so unless commander has 4 times as many decks being made with a single card, that card will have more of it's price decided by the other deck, but it's actually even better for commander when it comes to prices, your big expensive card that is a 1 of 1? Well, you can't play both decks at once most games, so just buy 1, and trade it out between the two. While to do the same with a 4 card format you nay only need to sort through 60 cards, but your looking for 4 cards.
@@calebbarnhouse496 a lot of commander staples are useless in every other format... they have constant reprint at rare and still cost 20+ people delude themselves into thinking it's cheaper, but most of them run more than 4 decks.. mostly a lot more
@kaalesrex2933 yea and most people have .ore then 1 modern deck, the reason commander staples are expensive is most of them get maybe 500 new copies a decade, because they are reprinted in a way desighned to make them broken, there's a reason why the one ring, a card broken in every format it was in, got it'd value cut in half from getting banned in modern, not commander, a format where it's even more powerful because of longer games, less removal, doubly the HP and card draw is more important.
I stopped playing paper magic after khans block rotated out and my set of stormbreath dragons in my mardu dragons deck went from like £100 to £2 overnight lol
"it's part of their secret plan to bring people to Arena"
Where they just added the option to buy decks in the store. Without a sideboard. Usually as an outdated version. Without duplicate protection. That i can't resell when i wanna get out of the format.
For between 50 and 120€ EACH.
it's not as much as a paper deck, but the fact that they are not physical cards and there is no dusting system in case you want to change decks makes the price outrageous.
19:10 the worst part about magic arena is I can’t play mismatched white boarder basics to trigger my opponent
I tend to look at it like a subscription service, and there aren't that many people willing to pay hundreds of dollars every couple months for a single Netflix show.
When you sell a collectable disguised as a card game and then rotate what is collectable several times a year, it becomes pretty hard to play the underlying game.
If 4+ in the general cmc they go to for signifying commander cards then ig that explains why all of the dice cards are at 4, but I think that even in commander you should have some kinda mid cards that are
I’d like to make a point that Games Workshop has stopped releasing rules for units and armies in the past.
Like only released army books or just stopped supporting an army all together?
@ during edition changes, they’ve totally stamped out particular units when they get a new army book. There have been armies that just never received an army book ever again as well, or just get lumped into another faction.
Stormcasts just lost a ton of units. Space marines are slowly losing all their first born units. And beast of chaos just got dropped entirely
@@distractionmakersthey stop releasing army books, early days in particular, no close to modern examples, but the last army book the brettonian faction got was 6th edition before they killed the game, they were still legal, but they were basically unplayable without house rules or a massive skill difference. Alternatively you have the space marine range, which was so popular they made hundreds of units, to the point 90% of it is redundant and being put to legends, models do have a time where the model will be illegal, except for key parts of the army, which will be updated with new sculpts but not made illegal necessarily, for ecample the tau have a unit of stealthsuits orginally they had a metal model that model is still legal for a tournament, because it's replacement was a plastic alternative, but if they made stealth suits mk 392 and it's a different unit, then it would be illegal, though ignored anywhere except GW stores and tournaments
I only started playing Standard in 2022 so I've never heard of Bolt vs Shock formats before, that's a very useful way to describe magic sets. I'm scared of UB sets being introduced to standard because, from the perspective of Modern, MH3 and LotR could both be considered "bolt" sets. Will UB sets be redefining the power level of Standard with each release in order to promote sales? And like you guys mentioned regarding cards seeming out of place in draft or Standard, will UB sets now be crafted with the intention of slotting into Draft, Standard, Pioneer, Modern and Commander? That seems so difficult to balance, especially when the Nadu ban article expressed that the development team at WotC is already struggling to playtest the cards given the pace at which product is being released. It's hard to imagine a universe where I don't love Magic, but it's getting increasingly easy to envision a world where I can't afford it. I don't want to be priced out of the Gathering, and they don't allow proxies at RCQs.
It seems a lot of players are starting to feel this way.
The increasingly obscene cost of Magic is just a symptom. The actual problem with magic is extremely simple. They are printing too way many cards.
The block rotations of the 90's and 00's did, and very obviously still would, produce a healthier and cheaper format. Having so many new cards come out every year is just extremely stupid. It makes it literally impossible to avoid power creep because at some point you just run out of designs and have to go higher. Going back to each year only having 3 new sets (two of which were actually 1/2 sets), and a Core set that was almost exclusively reprints would massively decrease the cost, slow down the power creep, and remove any need to change the rotation speed for Standard.
And while it is currently making Hasbro a lot of money, the game is in a death spiral, choking out more players every year. And, as every pay-to-win game eventually finds out, as soon as there are no casual players for the whales beat up on, there's no longer any incentive for them to keep throwing cash at the game.
In advanced yugioh a deck comparably costs a similar amount to a standard deck. In some cases, much more. After a year of banlists that deck is often unplayable by the end. In someways advanced yugioh rotates faster at increased cost. Players aren’t happy.
Was it always this way or have things gotten worse recently?
@ in my time it’s always been this way. I’ll use an example. Shaddoll archetype comes out at the end of 2014. In February of 2015 I pick up the deck for around $400 at the time. The end of year banlist that year killed off Shaddoll as well as the other Meta decks so that people had to move on to the new stuff. This is most often the case for Yugioh. You’ll usually have a few deck strategies slip through the cracks and be playable for longer but rarely were they top meta decks.
In yugioh though the mindset is if a deck does actually last for a year the players get really tired of it and want it gone. Via power creed or soft rotation via banlist.
So as a yugioh player primarily, Standard looks like a cheaper game with a generous window of being able to play with the cards. Something has to be wrong here lol
It's insane seeing how bad it's gotten over there. $1200 decks that get banned out in six months should probably signal to players that they're being swindled.
@@geek593 confusingly, any LGS’s in my area are losing YGO players but the bigger events seems to be going strong. Not sure what that’s about.
"Stop That" should be legal in every format, start outside the game and first time you resolve "Gotcha" it would be placed in your hand but also cost phyrexian mana to keep the flicking demons at bay. Some say an old dog can't learn new tricks but let's put that to the test, shall we?
This literally happened to me this week I bought all the enduring cats and sheoldreds and etc for the donor midrange deck and then 2 days later there’s a broken instacycle of health and damage between the new black flying barbarian and any card that heals you my deck instantly fell out of the meta
Yugioh despite having a banlist that could somewhat function as rotation, you still have many cards from the early days of yugioh that are still meta relevant and you can play a rogue deck that was released a decade ago and still top an event. Powercreep in yugioh is weird because its so volatile in the sense that even the best decks of the format rely on many of these older cards and you can still get blown the fuck out by the guy playing his pet deck that was released a decade ago.
Power creep rotation is another problem. In the same vein of how a modern horizons set completely upends the modern format, each new standard set provides a huge influence on the format since it has a very limited card pool. It's almost at a point where a deck can be bullied out of standard before your TCGplayer order can actually arrive at your doorstep. And just because certain archetypes still 'exist', it doesn't mean it's not being forced to rotate. 'Golgari midrange' pre duskmourn was almost obligated to run the vraska/inkeeper combo, which would cost you I think 120-140 to get a playset of. Then suddenly duskmourn comes out, and the combo is basically dead, and you are obligated to run annex/archfiend lines instead to remain competitive. I feel terrible for anyone who spent 120 bucks for 8 cards that don't really have competitive homes in any other format besides commander, just to play a deck for one month.
Flesh and Blood has solved this problem - for now - in its Living Legend system. Whenever a hero wins an official tournament, it gains "living legend points" - and once it earns enough, it stops being legal in Classic Constructed (or 'CC', the 'Standard' of FaB) and remains legal only in the 'Living Legend Format' (the Legacy/Vintage of FaB).
Through this system, (A) CC remains fresh since powerful decks rotate themselves out at a speed based on their power level, (B) your cards never quite lose their value entirely as you can play the LL format once a hero you really love rotates out, and (C) every hero is guaranteed their 'time in the spotlight' because anything that's weak will eventually get enough support to shine, win, and rotate itself out. It also helps that when a hero rotates, only the hero and their 'signature weapon' rotate out, which are 2 cards out of a 81 card pile. Everything else is still legal, so you can likely pick up a new hero of the same class and re-use anywhere from 50-95% of your old deck. It also has the added bonus of being way more lenient on people who put the game down for a long time and then return. Even if you don't play for a year, unless your hero has rotated out, you can probably just make some small adjustments to your deck to fit the current meta and play it again.
Of course, part of the reason this works is because FaB has a way wider meta than Magic. With upwards of 30 heroes available, there's a really complex 'rock/paper/scissors' style balance going on where a hero that is really good into the current top meta decks might suck against a different hero that otherwise sucks and isn't being played right now. Which in turn means that the meta evolves often and in different ways, and we have seen dark horse decks win major competitive events out of nowhere as a result. Because the meta is so wide, it's a lot easier for LSS to print new cards that don't have a huge power level increase but instead add different ways of engaging with the game's mechanics, which is how they've generally done a good job in the last 2 years of printing new product that isn't ridiculously power crept yet still excites people. Virtually all of the game's most powerful cards are still from the first couple of sets.
It remains to be seen if LSS can keep coming up with more 'out there' ideas to keep this going for another 3 years, 6 years, 10 years - but right now, it's working a lot better than Magic's rotation system.
Sadly I doubt WotC will ever want to copy something like this - it's hard to implement in Magic and such a system would have to be something along the lines of "all the Mythic rares from any deck that wins a Standard event get automatically banned"... which I doubt WotC will ever do as that's how they make their money, these days. For non-commander focused products, anyway.
I was getting on board with standard knowing foundations was going to be around and that the rotation was longer but then they dropped UB on standard and I'm out. Hard out. Can't play a format where I have to play meta cards that I don't want to play with. I can play against it and be ok but I don't want to have to play some Marvel card to be able to win. Hard pass. Nice work WoTC.
Exactly. Same. Foundations got me extremely excited that things would be better but the UB announcement killed any interest I have in playing standard.
Going to have to make my own format at this rate.
Also having 6 sets a year makes standard almost impossible to keep up with
@@KyleTremblayTitularKtrey I have committed to what I'm calling "classic" EDH. Limiting my decks to no more than 5 UB cards. And trying to cut those whenever possible
Pokemon has solved the playable vs collectible price problem. Not only do they save the highest rarity for collectible cards, if a playable card gets too expensive, they find a way to print the card in a product where its guaranteed (i.e. teal ogerpon ex or prime catcher). If magic wants to solve their issue, they need make changes to how they print
12:55 was so funny! Loved the smash cut to composure.
Would collector versions be worth much if they weren't being purchased in "competition" against people who want them to play with? Because the limit of printed amounts would be higher and play pieces would be more available.
Standard has a long history of being expensive. Mythic Bant during ALA/ZEN was a $1000 deck. The biggest problem with Standard right now is just that the gameplay sucks, WotC keeps printing obvious designs mistakes like Unholy Annex, Enduring Curiosity, and Screaming Nemesis, and the people who play Standard are so fractured between different social media channels that there's no real consensus mechanism for getting WotC to even acknowledge that there's a problem.
You too had excellent points and gave some interesting ideas, however, why does any of this matter?
History has shown that there is not a single thing wizards of the Coast / Hasbro can do to keep magic players from buying the next sets. Not a single form of disrespect, not any form of abusive over monetization, not a single thing will stop magic players from coming back for more.
Magic players are even worse than Warhammer players in this regard.
And at least D&D players, if they get fed up enough, will simply go back to playing their older editions not giving wizards of the Coast another penny.
In the end, unless you change the community, wizards of the Coast will never give a c. This has been proven for decades now with players whining, but never stopping supporting the abuse by closing their wallets
Paper magic is simply just too expensive now. While I miss the good old times of going to the local game store and playing FNM and small eternal format tourneys... who the hell wants to spend bare minimum $400 and more likely $600-1000(eternal formats) on a deck of 75 pieces of cardboard that will lose their value due to Hasbro and their reprints and standard set rotations. Not to mention that MTG Arena now exists and is much cheaper to play and you can play it all the time whenever you want in the comfort of your home. You can even play it free to play if you wish or simply spend $100 or less making a single good deck and grinding out the rest of your decks with in-game currencies and events for free.
You think that, but competitive tournament players will often buy whole new armies based on the current meta. I know the shop I used to go to would have a monthly tournament for 40k, but had the stipulation that models needed at least 3 different colors on it. Because these guys would NEVER paint their stuff, just a grey tide of whatever netlist was the best at the moment.
7th was a terrible time for this. I bet it hasn't changed much now that GW seemingly wants to be invested in competitive play when their rules have never been good enough for that sort of thing.
The longer rotations came from magic arena, they had a sharp, and I mean sharp like cliff. Edge Drop off after the first rotation in magic arena. So they weren't making as much money. They're not really worried about the paper money aspect, because they make so much more money on arena than they do with actual cards. So you have people playing arena, and it's really affecting the entire game
I like Magic as a game, but hate the card acquisition through booster packs. I recently started playing it on Arena and bought the bundles offered to new players, which was like 100$ or something to build some competitive decks.
Right now I have enough wild cards left to build any standard deck and I assume that I will be able to craft decks with new releases without having to pay money or at least not that much.
I appreciate that every rare or mythic card costs the same amount of ingame currency to get.
For physical card games I am only willing to buy games that follow the LCG model and I have purchased all expansions of Warhammer Invasion and a lot for Arkham Horror and Android Netrunner.
I'd wish there were more LCG-type games with higher popularity, but financially the TCG model appears to be more attractive for the companies.
I remember the days back before Commander really took off there would be a massive selloff of the rotating standard cards. I think that's part of why Commander took off in the first place. It gave new life to cards which were otherwise "unplayable."
I don't see anything wrong with having a healthy Standard and Commander format because the two can be so symbiotic. On the other hand, Pokemon's answer is players playing old standard environments (which is in no way sanctioned or official). So old card value trends with pure collectability not playability.
Nadu wasn't in standard, but Nadu of the past were. What fresh one-card-simic-value-engine are we gonna get next year?
To be fair, Nadu was entirely an accident. Card also got banned within a couple months of existing and had barely any market value because people fully expected it to be banned.
MTG has completely priced me out at this point, and is one of many reasons I'm taking another break from the game. Arena is cheaper, but I still find it to be too expensive to keep up with new sets.
Making the serialized cards super rare in a normal booster should happen too. Otherwise budget players have 0% chance to get value from a pack.
Currently it feels OK to pull normal boosters since card value is potentially high.
I agree normal art cards should be less rare, and less expensive. But then value per pack drops, so a chance at value needs to be added to keep packs "worthwhile"
Good point
I want shorter rotation and cheaper decks. Rotation was always when I came BACK to Standard! I don't want to play ONE deck for 5 years, I want to build new decks every set!
You will be. That's the only way you can keep up with the meta. Unless you enjoy getting your a$$ beat 😅
@Rabid_Wombat if a new set comes out, if I'm playing I want to play with it. If a new set comes out and I dont want to play it I'm just not playing Magic that quarter
@@KimoKeine six sets a year 😉
@@Rabid_Wombat honestly that's too much for me but i wonder if that isn't Wizard's angle, trying to get younger folks with time to burn super invested. i guess kids don't have as much money as working adults so it's a long term investment.
This is why it is even more important than ever for WotC to manage these formats, especially EDH where decks are easily $1000+
Crazy stupid idea but why don't they just make standard cards that you can only play in the tournament and they are set-priced. So you build the deck and the cards are supplied in the tournament. You can charge the cost of cards in the tournament and just return the cards to the event.
Even if Commander didn't exist if the demand simply transferred to Standard then card prices could go up. I'd almost argue that if Standard Sets had a period of "exclusivity" before they became Commander legal it might help control card prices. Either that or Commander needed to be a format where only "commander" cards were legal. Being a 1-of Format could have kept prices lower than needing 4 of a card for Standard and another copy for Commander. But in terms of volume it probably comes down less to Standard players wanting more copies than Commander players and more-so there being too many Commander players. A supplemental product of the "good" cards in inferior/boring printings could help keep prices low but you'd need to convince people that cards are not an investment. Flesh and Blood took this approach somewhat with their white border sets.
Idk what it is about gamers but yall are so ridiculous when it comes to spending on a hobby. Stop worrying about the value of your item going down OR UP. You got value out of the playing of the card. Its so annoying listening to card game players discourse about value of thier hobby. RC cars, arts &crafts, cooking, sports are all hobbies that cost money and have consumables- just like magic cards are essentially consumables in respect to standard play.
money is not the issue at all you are making a strawman that doesn’t exist you dont need more then 20 bucks to play standard money is only an issue if you want to compete in tournaments then yes ull have to buy the best to compete with the best 😅 but no casual player needs or has to do that 😂
Sadly warhammer models also get rotated they go to whats called legends, My 40k orks lost several units in 10th edition and my Stormcast army is losing a huge chunk next year.
Yiiikes. I assume it is not nearly as often?
@@distractionmakers for 40k its often for old out of production models, the upcoming stormcast hits are not old though and the reasoning is said to be for roster bloat but more likely to push new units.
40K miniatures absolutely do “go away.” A large percentage of my firstborn Space Marine army has now been removed from current rules, despite having been entirely playable for 30+ years before I bought it. I get the comparison you’re making, but GW doesn’t get a pass here lmao
The crazy thing with "Non rotating formats" is they rotate every time they release a Modern Masters set... So they are rotating formats.
According to all magic RUclipsrs, Standard has been in trouble for like 7 years now. This means it’s never been in trouble
I love the "reverse clickbait" where you just plaster the thumbnail with the answer to the title's question.
I like it, it invites people to the conversation.
Regarding the shock/lightning formats, I wonder when they'll print something strictly better than bolt. Would not surprise me if Hasbro did that.
Imagine a MTG tournament 🏟 at a family-reunion, where everybody plays.
This is why I own 8 different Modern decks.
If only there was a way we could spend $3 for an $80 dollar card….😢
A big way to fix it is for WotC to print cards like Pokémon or to, at the very least, push formate like pauper and PDH to the forefront.
And then there's Vanguard, where a staple is between 20-30 and alt arts go for the 50-100 dollar range or even above.
Thanks, Lyrical.
I don't play standard on paper anymore. No GP support yet, so no need to play. Especially no FNM support, even less need to play 😂
I thought them making standard 3 years instead of 2 was a step in the right direction tho especially for the more casual side
I feel like rotation and bans are a bit too different to be called the same thing.
Standard was fun for a week or two, this cycle. But now feels like a soft modern. Most games are over by turn 2 or 3 . Just losing the enjoyment of playing magic
If only miniatures never became unplayable in 40k
i dropped the card games because i was tired of the armament race that are trying to win a game, and now i trying warhammer because i knew that the minis was a long live span ... but not now.
If I can't keep playing my favourite deck, I'm out. That's why I haven't played since Urza's Saga.
Packs should be super cheap, like, 2.5 usd per pack tops.
As is, it is too expensive to get into the game from zero, and going straight to singles is way too high.
The most expensive card in Standard is Sheoldred at $80; after that it's Screaming Nemesis at $30 and Faerie Mastermind/Kaito both at $25. But outside of those, the most expensive rares are anywhere between $5 and $8, which is totally reasonable imo, relative to the last 10 or so years of Magic.
Something I wish we would have touched on in the video is how it used to be that once you were bought into standard you could keep half your cards on rotation. But there was a big barrier to buying in from zero. Now that barrier is much higher and less people are on the treadmill.
Sheoldred is so annoying because It was already a power level anomaly causing it to be valuable to players outside of Standard but also a victim of the first extended rotation. She's been around way longer than she should have been.
@@geek593honestly at this point Sheoldred is not a problem. Black, blue, and white can reliably remove Sheoldred easily. And red wins faster than Sheoldred coming down.
@@aaroncalloway2898 Her problem has always been sticker shock. The card itself isn't broken but being in the format makes the format look worse from the outside.
You’re forgetting the actual costs of everything you listed is multiplied by 4.
Yep too expensive. Having to have 4 of everything good is what made me quit back in 08. Commander brought me back. I’m probably not gonna get into standard
There is a solution wizards will never be allowed to go for. Cards get legal in formats other than standard after they rotate out.
I’m mega casual player in 40k and I see the influx of magic players into the game and the effect it has had, and I really do not like it.
GW has gone hyperactive with their tweaking in relation to how long it takes to acquire an army and play their game. I’m not kidding you when I say that the rules have changed multiple times in between my casual games and it has gotten so out of hand that it’s run me off of 10th edition
It’s a much different gaming culture. MTG is very focused on min/maxing.
Mtgs biggest modern problem is that it has become totally aesthetically unappealing to its core demographic.
playing standard on paper sounds absolutely miserable
it already is on Arena
Average person isnt really expected to be tournament grinding at fnm standard events at least.
-Also honestly I find it more miserable farming wildcards for my under a dollar rares.-
The actual pack price needs to come down. It is too big of an influence on the cost of individual cards.
Its exceptionally bad here in Canada where everything is priced relative to USD when the loonie is in free-fall right now. (Currently under 69 cents USD at the time of posting)
A pack of cards costs 7-8 bucks. If you want to draft it costs like 20 bucks a person.
I think the ultimate solution will be to make standard new card avaliable for standard only until it rotate out
I think people will still hold onto the cards and speculate if they're good enough for the eternal formats, particularly commander.
For cards that are relevant for Standard, nothing much will change imo. Most of them were already super cheap even when dominant standard decks were built around them (i.e. Worldsoul Rage)
@hastat7322 you relly think people will buy carrd that they canot play for years you insane
Ew, I didn't know Gavin was a dirty card flicker. UNSUBSCRIBED
12:50 "Magic is kinda splitting the baby" splitting the what now?
It's a famous bible story I believe where one of the kings offers to cut a baby in half to resolve an argument about which woman was the real mom, because the fake mom didn't care about the baby being cut in half or something like that.
I don't think it was the correct analogy for what they wanted though lol
Beware the ire of Rudy and his love of tacos!