5 Reasons why I think Magic will die in 2017:

Counterarguments

>1: The CEO of WotC has been hyping up a complete overhaul of MTGO, which has its own problems but a modern client would do wonders

>2: I can't comment on Pokemon TCG but YGO meta is full of niggers nigging up shops and stealing literally anything that isn't nailed down. I've seen stores forced to close because some dindu broke in one night and stole entire inventories.

>3: Frontier is a solved format that will fall the way of tiny leaders before year's end. It'll also keep WotC from doing it, which is good, the format was terrible from conception. I will concede the community being divided though

>4: Literally who?

>5: The bubble has deflated a LOT compared to where it was this time last year. Yes the reserved list sucks, but we're no longer on the brink of the game falling into complete bankrun mode where every card suffers massive buyouts for no reason.

I've neither heard nor seen evidence of an overall decline in attendance from any of the local stores at FNM or other weekly events beyond unconfirmed anecdotal tales. AEG killed L5R not because they fucked with the storyline, but because they made a big to-do about the players being able to write the story and decided to kill that because AEG's favorite waifu clan was unpopular (mostly because of the blatant favoritism they'd shown.)

Will MTG die? Of course. Will it die within the next decade? probably. Will it die this year? I doubt it. There's too much money to lose.

Nicol Bolas will Make Magic Great Again. All will remember 2017 as the year magic was saved.

eh, magic never really dies though. at this point people have sunk so much money into the game that their egos wont let them get out. new players will decline for a few year but eventually it will go back up like it has every other time

>The bubble has deflated a LOT
I dunno, man. The summer buyouts did nothing to help

Conspriacy 2 was MASSIVE in deflating the bubble. There's a ton of reprints that were very needed, and EMA did a LOT more than I ever could have expected it to as far as dropping the prices of the cards it reprinted.

I will concede that the reserved list is a huge pain, and no one of any real importance would suffer TOO terribly from its abolishment. But at this point it's a matter of law, not what we want.

magic will die because WotC refuses to reprint things and the casual players (which make up a vast majority of the player/customer base) cant play the game because they cant afford spending 500+ bucks on a deck every few months. the entire market depends on casual players, if they cant afford to play because wizards refuses to reprint cards the game will go under. that is the sad true fact of magic, if you disagree you are just plain wrong

casual players don't NEED those reprints. They will buy packs at walmart and play at vaunted events like GP: High School Cafeteria or PT: Kitchen Table.

You're correct in saying they are the vast majority of the player/customer base. But saying that they are demanding reprints of old cards and have to shell out the money every few months to keep up with standard is patently false. If they did they wouldn't be the casaul market.

>1 You yourself stated you believe MTG will die within the decade. Knowing this, do you really expect the new CEO to stick around? Unlike Greg Leeds, the new guy actually understands how to run a successful business. He will leave the company very soon once he realizes it's a sinking ship.

>2 TPC and Konami also have WAY more money than WoTC

>3 I doubt it. Frontier's popularity is only rising.

>4 A major MTGtuber, also a highly successful and well-known card shop.

>5 EMA was also a MASSIVE fuck up, due to the fact that WoTC flat-out LIED about the second wave for SIX WHOLE MONTHS. And L5R, like MTG, was a product of a different time, back before the Internet was even a thing.

>casual players don't NEED those reprints
they kinda do when wizards enforced and support formats have them legal. if you want to play modern and you dont have the lands for it you are at a disadvantage and your deck is objectively worse than someone else who has the mana base, same with basically every other format aside from commander kinda. thats just the lands, not even going into things like side board staples and core cards of decks. if you want to play modern for less than 300 dollars while having a chance to actually win your stuck playing like 1 deck, if you want to play standard and have a chance to win you need to be forking out 200-300 dollars ever month or so at the least or spend about 500 on the best deck out there. want to get into legacy? hope you can afford a second mortgage. wizards knows there is a problem and i guarantee you they track the price of cards. they are litearlly killing their game because the price of admission is higher than its ever been but their players can just plain not afford it

Standards problem is with rarity rather than reprints.

>tfw all the card games I've enjoyed have died

pls not Magic too ;__;

I'm still sore over the AGOT reboot. Both of them.

ok? that is even more reason why wizards should be reprinting things to hell. if standard is going to be expensive due to rarity wizards should be keeping the cost of eternal formats to a point where people can afford to play those.

invest in a new printing facility, reprint the shit out of old sets, and sell those boosters again. fuck investors, fuck collectors, fuck hoarders

People would be pissed but in reality what are they going to do? Have a bitch about it then keep playing anyway, that's what.

Casuals aren't going to be playing modern and legacy due to the higher skill cap.

MM17 and the New Digital Platform will be the tests that determine MTG's fate.

>People would be pissed but in reality
the amount of people who would be pissed about it is so much smaller than the amount that would be happy it is actually ridiculous

>legacy
>high skill cap

lul

Not him but combos do not really require skill which is what 80% if not more of is what legacy and modern are made up of.

legacy has a higher skill cap than standard does and players that have been playing for much longer. Not a great environment to drop new and casual players into.

MM17 is going to blow, I feel it in my bones after MM15.

>People would be pissed but in reality what are they going to do?
The "collectors" would throw a shitfit and take legal action over the RL being a (possible) promissory estoppel

Then why promote a braindead format if it requires no skill?

because people will play it, there is a huge demand for it

>4 A major MTGtuber, also a highly successful and well-known card shop.
ahahahaha

>Yugioh

You do realize that game is in a MUCH worse spot than MTG right now, right?

1. They have a new state-of-the-art digital platform scheduled for this year.

2. Yugioh will die off way before MTG

3. EMA and Conspiracy 2 did alot to help. If WoTC continues down that road, they're golden.

4. Once he realizes TPC doesn't give a fuck about "investors", he'll abandon Pokémon too. AlphaInvestments already caught on, Derium will soon follow.

5. How the hell do you even compare MTG to L5R? L5R was always a mom and pop shop compared to Magic, never anywhere near as popular.

>5

A more accurate comparison would be "MTG is McDonald's and L5R was the family-owned burger joint next door.

Nah, MTG is going to release their Brand New Amazing Super Special Format that's just Standard when standard was good.

Or, More interestingly, they're going to re-release every block, but rotate which blocks are available, and call it Chaos, so they can synthesize new and interesting metas by combining new sets with older ones that never saw each other inside of competitive.

>Standard back when Standard was good.

To be honest, from the looks of it, AEther Revolt is that set.

It's funny how they banned twin and then brought it back in standard.

Your problem is assuming that casuals even know or care that formats exist. By in large, they don't. They put their deck together with cards they like and rarely if ever even consider buying singles. MAYBE they'll trade but often it's just "grab new packs, new on-color cards go into deck."

Casuals don't play modern and don't care about mana efficiency that much.

Also way to grossly exaggerate legacy prices. 3k will get you any deck in the format, and unless you have some minimum wage slave job that's maybe 2 months of saving?

>Yugioh communities are known to have more socially adept people

Well, duh. 12 year olds are significantly more socially adept than fa/tg/uys.

Now I'm not going to pretend magic isn't in a tough spot, it's really having some issues right now, but yu gi oh is doing far worse. I'd at least wait until wotc reveals their new online thing and whether or not they do qr cards in boosters like pokemon does before I call anything.

12 year olds don't play YGO though. The primary demographic for yugioh players in america are blacks age 16-25.

I can see pokémon getting bigger since they are being pushed hard by the games and pokego recently, but if anything, it's YUGIOH that will die.

My brother gave me old booster packs for Christmas. One Ice Age, one Fourth Edition and one Fifth Edition. It was really nice and I probably won't ever open them. I've decided to quit the game.

I definitely think AEther Revolt is positioned to be a huge step in the right direction.

>Yugioh communities are known to have more socially adept people

Seriously?

>the same path that AEG took L5R down, which eventually lead to that game's death...

L5R didn't really "die." It got sold off because AEG was making more profit from other stuff than L5R.

>AEG killed L5R not because they fucked with the storyline, but because they made a big to-do about the players being able to write the story and decided to kill that because AEG's favorite waifu clan was unpopular (mostly because of the blatant favoritism they'd shown.)

No... AEG was talking to FFG about turning L5R into an LCG at Gencon 2015 when a few weeks later FFG offered to buy L5R from AEG and AEG's owner accepted.

The Spider conquest and Mantis dissolution stories were caused by one brand manager who completely changed the games direction after he got the position in fall 2014 to try and get back to the "Clan Wars" for the 30th anniversary. The Clan path choices were an attempt by the brand manager who replaced him in early 2015 to give the player base a greater ability to control the story after being given the mess. Nothing really came of these choices due to the sale.

>30th anniversary

Woops. Meant 20th.

>I think Magic will die in 2017:
one of the dumbest things i've ever heard in my entire life
theres no way a card game as massive as MTG will die within a year

>Favorite Waifu Clan was unpopular

But that IS EXACTLY what WoTC is doing. Except instead of the waifu clan, it's a cheap Justice League ripoff.

I think more and more people will start moving to boardgames and LCGs especially.

LCGs can have a much larger design space than magic without the cost which is great. I personally stopped playing magic because I only like drafting and sealed which costs too much upkeep, I'd rather just play seasons where I can draft for free and it's one of the main parts of the game

It's not at all the same. The best analog would be wizards coming out and saying "we have counted all your votes, and are removing the color Red from magic. All red characters are dead, all red cards are banned in all formats, and we're making a new color yellow to fill the void but it won't do anything red did."
And then people find out that the popular vote was overwhelmingly to kill Blue, but because of a technicality they threw in last minute votes to kill blue counted half and votes to kill red counted double.

The jacetice league is just shitty market research after seeing Avenger Guy making all the money. That shitty SMTxFE game was the same - trying to chase a fad that ended 2 years before launch.

Board games are forever plagued by the Monopoly Curse: people assume they're either kiddy games or take 6 hours of torture. Without a huge overhaul in the public eye that won't change.

LCGs are great, but as it turns out people REALLY like limited, and they're just not properly equipped to allow that. Netrunner tried and it was okay-ish, but it's still mostly constructed that rules, and the game's been in a bit of a funk recently.

>standard when standard was good
So Alara Zendikar?

Thing is I wouldn't think it's a bad thing to follow that fad if they of course did it right, even marvel knows how successful avengers movies are and they still give us different movies focusing on different characters, id dare say guardians was marvel cashing in on its own fad but knowing they could use the obscure characters and get away with it due to avenger success.

Point being, everyone loves the avengers. They would love them much less so if every movie marvel put out after it was just the avengers because "hey! You like these characters, have them in overdose!"

Shit amonket would be 10/10 if the jacestice league actually listened to ajani and hung out on dominaria while we take a break from them and watch something else relevant for once.

I'd say the tide of the monopoly curse is very very slowly changing, with games like pandemic and codenames becoming more and more popular. I think it also helps that most boardgames enthusiasts are usually quite well adjusted people (except for sucking the dick of designers like hipsters) compared to the stereotype of TCG players

I think we will eventually see and LCG that does draft properly. I think the problem is is that it'll have to end up being exclusivley designed around drafting/sealed and be able to play a group of people out the box. WOTC could do it with a cube product but they seem to have no interest

ZendiScars was beautiful too.

>let's face it
>let's face it

let's face it, you really need to delet this

I don't necessarily disagree. Someone in a different thread said it (forget which) but it seems like the story quality is inversely proportional to the number of gatewatchers they have involved.

What would be really interesting, if they could swing it (doubt it but possible) would be to split up the gatewatch and have half in one plane doing investigative work on how to not die to bolas, while the other half works on getting Nicky B to actually show up.

I wouldn't mind Bolas losing (would mind him dying, but not losing) if it's due to superior tactics, counter-planning and actually working as a team to just come in from enough different angles to make him fuck off.

That said I wouldn't be shocked if it's just Jace mind raping bolas because he's good at 4d underwater chess.

I agree but only after MBS came out, NPH killed standard

>WotC paper powered cube with non white/black borders to get around reserved list.

Why had I never thought of this before? Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?

Invasion Odyssey, my man

>bored
>hey let's make some FUN modern deck
>oh i know let's make WOLVES theme deck
>nothing but wolves fuck yeah
>now let's play with someone
>reanimator everywhere
>billion $ cards everywhere
>people being asshats not enjoying the game at all
welp, guess playing for fun is dead

Honestly, I think we'll be getting our 1st Standard ban since Zen-Scars soon. Saheeli and Emrakul are very likely to get the axe, imo.

People in Japan play it, but that's only because its far too expensive with shipping and currency conversion for Japs to buy expensive modern singles like Goyf and Fetches.

The Saheeli combo is just a hype meme, reminds me of the Drana hype back when Olivia 2.0 was revealed. The combo is way too easy to disrupt, and neither of the pieces are instant speed. If anything, the planeswalker you should be scared of is Nahiri, as Mardu now has access to TWELVE hyper-efficient 1-drop removal spells in Modern (4 Bolt 4 Path 4 Push)

I think Saheeli blink combo will be good, but people seem to think turn 4 kills will happen with the same frequency of Splinter Twin. What's more likely to happen is control deck controls until turn 7 where you do the combo all in one go.

12 1-drop kill spells? So it's a loaded gun? Texas Control sounds like a great name for the deck :)

Magic at its core works perfectly fine as a computer game: online or offline. It suffers from the fact that most of the attempts to do this have been messes. Plus adopting the Hearthstone method of getting digital cards does not pan out that well when it can be cheaper and/or easier to get the physical version. And the thing about the differences in community is nothing but opinions backed by anecdotal evidence.

The multiple formats could divide the community or increase participation. I know people who can't afford the Modern fetches but could make some amazing Frontier decks with little cost. We'll have to see.

Magic has had a few poorly received sets so things are on the down swing at the moment. Aether Revolt has a lot of exciting cards for Standard, Modern and Legacy so we'll see what happens.

What the fuck is this post?

Holy shit, this.

Also, why has MtG not sold a Cube Product yet? I just want to play MtG for a one time cost, and no format lets me do that for a reasonable cost.

Buying a set of Commons/Uncommons from Origins and just fucking around with my friends, building decks and playing THG, was fun as hell. Best $20 I've spent in a long time.

mysterious force

Sounds like you would enjoy pauper

I have a friend with a commander cube. It's an absolute treat.

I do, and if my card shop would support it instead of trying to push FNM, I might be able to get other people to show up.

FNM means Friday Night Magic. Pauper can be the event for FNM. You want your store owner to push FNM, because that is when magic is played.

Okay, that's my bad. I want them to stop pushing Standard. None of my friends can get behind spending that much money.

The problem is that stores often need to push singles to make a profit. Standard, Modern, Frontier and Commander can do that. Pauper... not so much.

What brought down l5r?

Well even if it DOES die, I'll shill it till the very end, bucko!

AEG selling the game to another company.

Scars/Innistrad was also a pretty good time. Zombies and Infect on the aggro front, Esper in control, Jund and Pod in Midrange, Frites in combo, meme decks like Phantasmal Titan. Free spells and miracles always giving the game an edge of danger, you never felt completely safe, but your own free spells kept you from feeling like you're out of options.

It was a wild and lawless time.

Constantly for the last 23 years :^)

>successful and well-known card shop

o i am laffin m8

>1. It doesn't translate well in the digital/e-sports world.
Why does Magic have to be an e-sport to not die?

>2. The MTG community mostly consists of stereotypical "nerds".
Are you trolling? You're not wrong, but if you think having nerds as a fanbase means you can't be successful, you need to get out from under that rock you've been living under.

>3. The community is becoming more divided.
Huh?
>The growing influence of MTGFinance and the rise of Frontier shows just that.
What and what?

>4. Deriums left the MTG community.
Who?

>5. All signs point to 2017 being the final year of MTG.
This isn't how you make a list.
>The reserve list bubble has reached heights so absurd that it's all but guaranteed to crash
I doubt it, but even if it does, so what? All that money goes in the secondary market anyway.
>attendance for both Standard and Modern tournaments are rapidly declining, FNM is dying
From what I've heard, the only legit complaints on this entire list. Though I've also heard Wizards is attempting to fix that problem now, so who knows what the future holds. (Answer: nobody.)
>players are experiencing all-time high barriers to entry
To which formats? The ones people actually play, or the ones that make up a minority of the community?
>stores are experiencing massive losses
Haven't heard about this one.
>morale is declining on all sides of the community
Oh, because a lot of people say the newest set is garbage? People always say that about every set.
>WoTC seems to be taking MTG down the same path that AEG took L5R down, which eventually lead to that game's death...
No idea what these things are or why they died.

The fact that standard doesn't have a competitive budget option is pretty annoying for new players.

when wizards took over EDH and added a bunch of generals that had command zone effects, and then planeswalkers as generals, that's when MtG died as something playable for me. the last time I had fun in the game was rtr/theros standard because of an amusing combo deck. I've already considered it dead for a while, look at how shit and uninspired khans block was, look at 2 drop $100+ jace the 4-of-in-every-competitive-deck shitshow, the increasingly predictable and static card interactions. yawn.

wizards needs to digitize fast, even dnd is at risk.

>People always say that about every set.
I thought Shadows block was great.

>hey let's make some FUN modern deck

i.e. a weak casual deck

keep it to the kitchen table while the adults play real magic, kiddo

1. "esports" are never going to get mainstream attention. They're gonna stay niche to their playerbase. No person that doesn't play video games is ever gonna care.
2. Objectively false, and stereotyping.
3. Frontier is gonna fall off if Wizards don't pay it any attention, and they more than likely won't.
4. Who the fuck cares?
5. Yea, Wizards is killing Magic here. They just need to get over their bullshit "collectors > players" philosophy and things would be fine, but noo can't let people that barely or don't play MtG feelbad about buying $120+ Goyfs for "investments".

Rather than being an attempt to appease collectors, I think this is simply a business move to sell more packs of EMA.

And, by marketing it as a limited print product, they can justify charging $10 per pack. The margins on the masters reprint sets must be fucking massive.

I suspect they don't want to reprint old cards as much because while it generates revenue for them from modern players, it's still not nearly as much as they make selling new sets for standard and products like commander. It's just very convenient for them to fall back on the 'collector' excuse to avoid having to allocate resources to a low-margin product.

As much as I want to see magic online really take off, I don't think it'll happen.
They need to include some sort of pack code on every physical pack to encourage people to pick up the online version as well. Kind of hard to do retroactively.
Magic itself also doesn't lend itself well to online play with all the stops, phases, and priority system owing to instants and the like. Compare to the slick and fast system of Hearthstone and its clones.
It might work out if they incentivize the online version, but we all know WotC hates giving anything away for free.

The problem with LCGs is that FFG have no idea what they're doing. A few of us were talking about it the other week and it's cheaper to buy everything announced for Imperial Assault (by itself a really expensive game) than it is to get up to date on current Netrunner releases. Coupled with FFGs inconsistent release schedule and they're being focused more on new games rather than expansions it means recruitment really drops after the first year and a half.

The other main problem with their collector-focused philosophy is that they don't reprint super-expensive staples of many formats at all outside as mythics in limited run sets.
If Wizards would just reprint, say, Tarmogoyf as a normal rare (not a mythic) in a normal set (ie a block set, not a supplemental product) and just tank the price, then more people would be able to afford it and more people would be able to get into Modern. Same with expensive lands and such.
But because Wizards caters exclusively to collectors and says "fuck trying to get new player, and fuck trying to get current players into more formats" they're shooting themselves in the foot.

X-wing was doing pretty well, although some creep has started to rear its ugly head nowadays.

No, you're not thinking about it quite right.

They reprint Goyf at mythic because it means people will buy more packs in an attempt to pull a Goyf. If it was a rare, the price may fall enough where a person who was considered buying packs may no longer do so. They want to sell to people who bust packs solely to resell singles as well, be it dealers or whoever.

Standard Pauper? I would play the hell out of that if each FNM was that.

New set has a ton of playable uncommons and no chase mythics WOTC is at least starting to rectify their stupidity.

I don't think magic can die.

If it did "die" (wizards discontinues support), prices will absolutely plummet, and boom, everyone can own expensive cards and play expensive formats, then everyone likes it so much wizards brings it back.

Maybe magic needs to die to kill off all the investors and collectors.

Magic just has to be about players first, collectors second.

Collecting cards for a game no one plays is pointless.