Should core sets come back?

Should core sets come back?

Modern/Eternal Masters are the new de facto core sets. They should call them what they are, print more staples, and give them really long print runs while putting more time between them
>the prices of every staple put into new core sets will plummet
>speculators can lie easy because the frequency of these sets would be more spread out
>wizards can continue to market the set towards more experienced players/drafters instead of marketing it like a normal set like they were trying to with Origins
I don't know, is that a shitty idea?

Go do your fucking market research elsewhere Wizards.

You're losing market share because you've neglected the online game, you've let the secondary market grow to the point you cannot control or disrupt it, and you've done nothing to cultivate a skilled atmosphere because dumb players spend more money, but as a result it has attracted some of the most unpleasant members of society.

The majority of your older players are not middle class professionals, they're useless retards and it's scaring away your new players.

IMO there should always be a 'default' set of cards for new players. I like the idea of having one 'base set' that is in production year round and which acts as a jumping point for the other main sets.

Is there any way Wizards could ever curb those investors or are they now eternally damned to be the secondary market's servants?

They won't do it because secondary market either has them by the balls, or Wizards is afraid and still thinks secondary market has them by the balls. They've made this perfectly clear: as far as competitive Magic goes, they're out to make business, and make the secondary market make business. Why else do you think Commander is the ONLY vaguely consistently good product they churn out?

Core sets are boring. Vanilla mechanics. No Lore. No flavour. Only last one year so are a bad investment. I'd much rather have a second plane.

It's long been over for WotC to dig themselves out of the grave they've dug, it's simply a matter of when the game will collapse under the decades of horrible decision making not if. I know people have been doomsaying as long as the game has been around, but you can feel the pressure rising monthly at a rate that's never really been seen before.

I just started playing in bfz. I don't understand the pressure? How have they dug themselves into a hole?

>you've let the secondary market grow to the point you cannot control or disrupt it

That's just fucking stupid. You're actually retarded. They could easily disrupt it or even destroy it completely if they wanted. But that's the problem, they don't want to.

Thought Experiment: Tomorrow wizard releases their secret set with all the reprinted reserve cards, nuking them down to 4$ per card. All the judges are bribed so no law suit is going to succeed and Wizards knows this.

What happens to the Magic scene?

I can finally play more than one modern deck.

You're just going to be another one of the players who plays for 2-3 years then quits. You'll get frustrated at losing or not having cheap/better cards. Wizards only wants players like you; not players to stick around.

And if you stick around, you'll more than likely be one of the useless pieces of elitist cancer that is responsible for scaring away the short-term players.

I say that because I'm elitist cancer.

Well, why can't they disrupt or destroy it? Because if they did, sales would shit the bed as the singles market collapses and pushes small-time online players out - small-time players who also buy lots of boxes. Less boxes sold is going to trigger some sort of review by Hasbro and it means you fucking lose your job. At the end of the day you're going to attempt to innovate and grow because that's how fucking business works, even though it is not going to save the same; when what is going to actually going to work means short-term shrinking followed by a return to a more sustainable environment.

How is it a problem to NOT want to destroy the secondary market? Arent LGSs important for us, members of the mtg community?

>I say that because I'm elitist cancer.
One of us, one of us.

No, no they are not necessary.

Then where should I buy my singles if there are no LGS in business anymore? online only? And which place should the community use to find easily other players to play?

The lgs have a role. What should fill that role if they disapear? I dont follow your logic at all.

I hope we do, if only so we might get some mono-walkers outside of the goat watches established niche
Like a white walker who doesn't turn into a X/X indestructible.

>Then where should I buy my singles if there are no LGS in business anymore?
online

>And which place should the community use to find easily other players to play?
Yu Gi Oh actively works against the singles-market and LGS still stock and host it.
Alternatively, find players on your local social media.

An LGS doesn't have to be the only place that hosts a venue to easily find play you know.

Wont that hinder the visibility and growth of the game? LGS are a convenient way of finding players without planning beforehand. If the only way to come in contact with magic becomes online, I fear this very nerdy niche hobby will stop growing.

It's certainly a decent idea. There's probably not a LOT of cards that need to be in standard all the time, and possibly not enough for a full set. But I do agree that there are a number of cards that need to always be legal just to establish a baseline for the format.

I almost see it as an LCG core set, even if it stays a TCG - a set of cards that you buy and then just have.

Not if MaRo is involved.
Core Sets were producing new cards that fit new gameplay roles until he forced his way as "consultant" in Origins and what happened? Jace the set.

Does he like Jace a lot or something?

No, they're boring.
However, they were very useful in establishing a sort of baseline of "these are the kinds of cards you can always expect to see, even if they change a little here and there." They started mixing things up a little in M11 by recycling old mechanics that didn't get enough love, which was cool, but the sets were still boring to play.

> No Lore. No flavour.
I liked the 'genericness' of core sets. Felt simple and nostalgic, much better than whatever shitty story WotC is trying to push.

Realistically, the only place that a player should get the majority of cards from is the store they play at.

Not Walmart; not online.

Because without a store, the game can't grow. The game needs flesh and blood players and store owners to push the crack.

The problem is that the stores can't keep singles in stock - because it's not economical to crack boxes ever, players need to go online, and thus money leaves the community, and makes it difficult for the store to operate and host events, and so your game dies. If the store has an online store, any cards they buy will leave the community through that store instead of encouraging play locally.

It's hard to imagine a town with no store but only a Walmart that sells Magic having any number of people playing Magic with sustainability produces more players.

My store only hosts FNM and prereleases because it treats the product like milk at a grocery store - they only sell it to get people through the door to sell other better products. You can't make a living off stupid $5 event fees.

What should happen is some crafty Hasbro executive putting MaRo on a bus to hollywood to sell the movie with his people.
Two years of Ken "New Phyrexia" Nagle as the lead designer would fix Magic for the upcoming decade.

I want it to stop growing personally though not the loss of any of our FLGS. Always support local business when possible. The MtG community has too many people, and some need to go. Look at NWO design. Everything is so dumbed down now. SJW's prey on the community to push their agenda. Look at poor Garruk.

Plus there is the classic example of the fact that the more diverse the crowd, the lower the quality. I don't want everybody playing this game. I want people who actually care about the game to play

Magic is for nerds. We like figuring shit out and breaking it, in each our own way. But the game recently took a dive towards simplicity and holding.

He likes walkers a fuckton, particularily the Jacetice League. Part because he wishes he was still a Hollywood writer instead of a game designer, part because when the best card in a set is a mythic and needed as a 4x to win in Standard, people have to open aprox. 110 boosters to get a single copy of that specific mythic.

I always felt that unless specified, cards from core sets, etc., took place on dominaria

You may not care, but others do

>SJW's prey on the community to push their agenda. Look at poor Garruk.
Weren't you pushing this yesterday? Or was it the day before?

I agree with this wholeheartedly. If the game were to essentially go the route of TTRPGs where you have personalized scheduled game nights at someone's house and the majority of buying is done via online retailers the community would be healthier for it. A certain group of players (I know who they are, you know who they are, everyone knows who they are) leaving the game would be nothing short of fantastic.

As someone who is somewhat new, isn't standard designed to keep things fresh and have everything be somewhat balanced between new players and older players?

While players leave the game all the time, one group I've noticed reliably leave are the people with careers or an education.

Skilled tradesmen, people with families, people with college educations, middle class jobs, or people who have a combination of the above. People who have their life together with expendable income.

I always found myself wishing those people would stay. They were always mentally well adjusted and balanced individuals and always pleasant to talk to. And while I never knew why they left I felt it was because they were smart enough to see how retarded this game and its players were.

No, Standard is designed to be a money pit with two good decks because that's the way the "pros" like it and casuals don't complain enough. Enfranchised older players can go fuck themselves as far as WotC is concerned.

Not me, and this is a very widely known subject. Some SJWs, who didn't play the game, saw the art and cried rape. It's why there was no violence on women in the game for a couple of years then elspeth died

Oh my sweet summer child

There's one player at my store who is without a doubt the worst person in the store - no scratch that, within a 75km radius. However, they probably spend the most money on the game (not necessarily at the store) and are constantly bringing people into the game, who are often just a lesser malignant cancerous version themselves.

They are also responsible for all the good people leaving the game locally.

I do not show up because this person exists. If there were 30 regulars at the store I know of at least another 30 who don't show up because of this guy. The store owner knows this, the regulars know this, but what can you do?

You can't do anything. And don't feed me that line of standing up to people, that's now how the world works. People like this when their their perceived love and charity generously donated when rebuked leave scorched earth when told to leave. And the store or community cannot survive that. My store probably isn't the only example of this.

How are they cancerous? Give some examples.

It is actually designed beautifully that way.

The problem is money problems accessing product. Another problem is outside inputs like pros or players telling you something is shit without explaining yourselves.

What any player desires is learning of some sorts. When you are told everything bluntly without explanation, you're not learning anything for the future and it takes away a lot of the value in Standard.

Like much of the world, people spend more time talking about news or new things than learning. What is better, some guy talking announcing a barbecue recipe they tried or some guy talking step by step about why that recipe was good? Obviously the second right? Then imagine that partially why that new recipe was so good was because they needed to cook the meat on a gold brick.

Let's not turn this into a That Guy thread

Loud, rules lawyer, babysits kid at store, complains about petty shit bringing everyone down for no reason like unbalanced prize payout (it isn't; it's actually ridiculously generous), lack of time extensions because we don't have a local judge, always butts into every discussion of trades and always offers to trade away cards (because they have them) - just wants to be the go to guy for cards, complains about lack of support for niche useless events, makes off-color statements that would make Veeky Forums cringe.

You know that guy that has to announce a foil Planeswalker in a draft to everyone in the room? Or that guy who has to tell everyone he's mulliganing to 5; that "I-need-attention I'm-a-special-snowflake" guy; that guy.

Sorry.

I just wonder how someone can be so awful other people let it ruin their fun. You're there to play a game and that's it.

>You know that guy that has to announce a foil Planeswalker in a draft to everyone in the room?
Oh crap, I know this guy.
>Kaladesh prerelease
>open our packs
>promo Dovin Baan
>sitting at a table with a handful of friends, throw that on the table
>one of them immediately calls it out to the rest of the store, "Promo Planeswalker!"
I wanted to die.

11th edition when?

I don't mind if a child does that - you smile, make a witty remark about being a lucky bastard, pat their ass a bit, and go back to what you're doing. This is a man.

This is how bad its gotten. I go to a large event like a GP and my opponent casually asks me where I come from. And the moment I mention my city they ask if I know this dipshit, who obviously has developed a reputation in a region the twice the size of Texas, and this person isn't even a pro. I don't know if they're just spewing their in-store behavior all over Facebook or Twitter or what, but people know this person.

This happened TWICE. Two randoms whom I've never met just knew this guy as if he was LSV or Chapin.

This isn't mental weakness on my part. I'm not being terribly excessive, just being a bitch. I'm glad that I don't have to deal with motherfuckers to do the things I love like previous desperate generations that depended on community like church or local clubs. I'm just leaving Magic even though I love the game - and guess what this fucker offered to buy my collection, obviously sharking the opportunity.

All I can say is this, if you encounter people like this, you tell them to tone it the fuck down. Because I wasn't brave enough to.

Why not make Masters sets come out more often? Shit, what about Standard Masters?

Volunteer at any major political party campaign office for an election. This will take at least a 2-3 month commitment.

Federal, state, provincial, local, it doesn't matter.

Bring your knowledge to sound like a supporter. Also bring knowledge about the positive and negative aspects of the opponents. Ignorantly propose positive ideas of the opponent's to whomever you are supporting; then reveal you're glad that both your candidate and the opponent thankfully agree on the same thing.

You will see the nature of some people. How tribal they are. How ignorant they are of their conduct when they think they are safe.

Or when you have a kid, and for some reason being a parent means you can immediately be friends with other parents. And you have so much in common just because you both have kids. How some people can be such fucking assholes just because you both play Magic, you must be alike right? Wrong.

Nobody actually liked them, they were a solution in search of a problem

Fuck you. I looked forward to them every year

Did you really user?

Be honest.

Dude, you're a massive bitch.
At my store we've had to tell known gangsters to go play somewhere else and you're quitting your hobby because of an autist.

Yeah. Ever since 8th editon when I started. tenth edition was MtG kino like TSP

Holy shit, user. You're so cool!

>Enjoying Jace, $100 Merfolk Looter

I put in my 8 years. I tried but didn't put in enough effort to prevent the cancer from taking hold. I was a nice person when I should have briefly been a shit person.

Combine that with Wizards progressively taking the financial situation in the game to a shittier and shittier place preventing reasonable people from joining the game, I think I have more than enough reason to abandon this ship. And even if the ship doesn't sink, it won't be a ship I enjoy being on anymore.

Don't forget the fact that other great games are creeping into the market at a lower price point.

You've got Hearthstone as the primary threat facing it right now this minute, but also Netrunner (and the LCG business model in general) slowly creeping up from the rear.

Magic is to card games what WoW is to MMOs. The same way that free-to-play has become the dominant MMO business model, LCGs and digital games like Hearthstone will become the dominant card game model. Only the top examples of the old model are going to be able to compete and survive.

People participate in hobbies less the less free time they have. That's not exclusive to magic.

Because they have jobs and families.
The only reason I get to play FNM nowadays is because I haven't had a gf in a while. If I had a wife or kids I wouldn't have a single free second for hobbies.

>baaaah deck building is hard
Just build RB aggro, or Grixis maddness, or UB robots, hell build RDW. Just because you don't have a creative thought in your head doesn't mean there aren't decks to build.

Sure, that's true.

But the way I look at it is that everyone has at least one third home. The first two being work and actual home.

That third home can be anything but if they're balanced individuals they have one or two. It could be the gym, bar, golf course, wilderness, restaurants, theater or stage, roleplay or tabletop at a friend's place, the room with a gaming computer, or can actually be a kid with their school, other parents' homes, etc.

Magic, i.e. the store, can be that third home.

When Magic in communities falls out of the running as a third home for balanced individuals it becomes a shit place. Whenever the other above places becomes a place where generally good people frequent, then they fall apart.

I went to a gym that for some reason became the go-to gay gym. It became fucking weird because there'd be guys just coming up to me while I'm benching and sticking their dicks in my face asking if I needed a lift. This is how women feel when they go to a shit environment where the men are allowed to run rampant. This is what happens when your political party gets overrun by SJW or your favorite restaurants let people bring in their shrieking children.

So, maybe your Magic place is doing fine. There are obviously some gyms and restaurants doing fine as well. But in some places, they are just unpleasant places to be, and in the past couple years I've felt more and more annoyed at the sort of shit I see at Magic.

There is literally nothing wrong with announcing your nice draft pull other than it telling everyone else what they're likely to be up against when playing against you. Nothing wrong with wanting to trade either, this is a fucking trading card game you mongs.

Did you respond to the wrong post? What does pointing out how most elected leaders share similar ideas, or how people tend to get along easier when they have similar interests, have to do with random LGS assholes ruining things?

They're doing their best to fuck with speculators. Flooding the market with high EV boosters and delayed reprints are targeted maneuvers. Lame WPN collector's products are released solely as speculator bait that will never pay off.
>MODO has been incrementally improved to the point that it's now a mostly-stable, fully-featured product. There's no question it will be better than Digital Next whenever that comes

Why would Standard need a Masters set when Standard is basically, "all the sets currently sold in stores?"

Accidental greentext

It's called shitposting.

Don't forget Magic's rule bloat scaring off new players as well. Not as bad as some other games have, but I have personally watched 3 players give up because they couldn't make out what a third of their deck was asking them to do.

>I say that because I'm elitist cancer.
This man speaks the truth.

>I have personally watched 3 players give up because they couldn't make out what a third of their deck was asking them to do.
What were they trying to play? Why would a new player be playing anything other then turn creatures sideways and throw lightning bolts at things.dck?

One had borrowed another deck from somebody. I believe the deck was a Madness deck, which probably wasn't the best choice, but that was the only spare deck anyone had.
Another was another borrowed deck, Green I believe, and by coincidence, almost none of the cards had the descriptions of basic keywords, and he kept forgetting them and got a bit frustrated.
I don't recall much of the last one, unfortunately. I believe he had purchased a deck, and I remember it being Blue, possibly Blue/Black, but I might be mixing two events there.

>extreme singles prices support my LGS!
My LGS flat-out refuses to buy any single that is more than $150 because it will spend like 2 years sitting in the case. Do you know how hard it is to flip a piece of cardboard that costs several thousand dollars, even on ebay?

Hearthstone is perhaps the big existential threat. Because it takes what MtG has been trying to do since the financial disappointments of Time Spiral and Lorwyn, find the and push the stuff new comers love well minimizing what new comers doesn't love (So yes on creature combat and back away from really out there mechanics, strong answers and such) and built a game designed to deliver that streamlined creature combat focused experience from he ground up and doesn't have to dance around worrying upsetting older fans who like things like LD.

Which puts MtG between a rock and hard place: go easy accessibility and face off with a game made to do that in a way Magic just can't without a massive overhaul, or try and be the "thinking man's CCG" but risk losing out on revenue form decreased new comers and face the wrath of a displeased Hasbro.

Fucking Yugioh, mang.

We all know Magic is the high-end product, there's no doubting that.

The question is, does Hasbro want to sell the high-end product? Is there anybody in that company or Wizards who would be opposed to losing money in order to invest in the audience and platform necessary to position Magic as the high-end product for eternity?

Because right now, we are defining high-end. Because Magic decided to shit the bed and let Hearthstone win market share, there is the potential for high-end to no longer be defined by quality - like clothing has been defined by brand moreso than construction and materials.

I seriously don't think the people in charge are interested in positioning Magic to be where we all would want it to be. I think they see the success of Hearthstone and only want Magic to emulate that instead of carving out a sustainable and impenetrable chunk of the market.

MaRo/Stoddard wouldn't have admitted that they've gone too far with the threat/anser ration and that basically NWO was a mistake, if they hadn't been yelled at by someone at Hasbro.

Someone at Hasbro understands the grognard doesn't want creatures the tappening and the grognard is the only one who's gonna want to still spend money on this shit when the bubble pops in the very near future. Trump hastened the death of the "chic neet" and made the product harder to sell overseas, they cannot continue ignoring the real fanbase in pursuit of fairweather hipster nerds.

Do none of your friends own a smartphone and look the keywords online?

I don't read official design notes from these people. Because it's just announcements from the mount, there's no critical feedback or blowback. Admitting you fucked up is one thing, but they never EVER tell you how they're going to fix it. They've acknowledged the supply problems in Modern five years ago and done nothing beyond symbolic to address them. Eternal Masters was a slap to the face to anybody who love Legacy. And they've let the golden goose of Standard fall into disrepair. So I don't care if they've admitted to anything. Everyone who has ever done real work knows you don't announce fucking up without an immediate announcement of a time frame when you'll have a solution.

I don't see any change coming. It's been poison for about five years and the new-grognard will not last long enough for them to repair their fuck-ups not when the new-grognard has way more options than the old-grognard.

Old-grognards will take longer to leave but as has been discussed ad nauseum those are not the people you want welcoming young people into the game.

A tragic number of people are incapable of Googling anything. Some players don't even know how to use Gatherer or magiccards.info.

The trouble is retreating to just the the high end is basically the play a disrupting new comer wants you to do. Magic need to get out on the net and set up shop with that as their main focus, and damn what ever happens to the paper side, before Hearthstone came along and took that market from them.

not to defend the bullshit they pull with the masters sets, but eternal masters wasn't just for legacy it had reprints for commander and pauper as well hence the name eternal masters.

This. I stopped playing Magic because of the shit they've been pulling. It's just not the same anymore.

EMA was fantastic for anyone who wanted to get into Legacy and wasn't
>a poorfag that didn't really want to enter Legacy
>b a Burn, Big Red, Infect or S&T player

The first weren't gonna be happy with the set even if it had every good card not in the RL because demand would keep the prices "too high" anyway. The later need to wait for MM17 or got their Show/Berserk in Conspiracy 2.

I Already played Legacy (Pox, Burn) but EMA let me build Manaless Dredge, Esper Stoneblade and Death & Taxes for the same ammount of money I would have spent on Stoneblade alone before EMA neutered some prices.

You can only abandon the paper if you completely overhaul the online marketplace. You basically have to adopt the Hearthstone model for online to have any chance of competing which means that you have to take a hard stance against your current online players and tell them they can keep their collections BUT that shit is going to be almost utterly decimated in monetary value as they rework the economy to make Magic as accommodating as Hearthstone to players who are going to start their card-cocaine with Magic.

If they decide to preserve the online economy (good fucking luck convincing new players to pay legitimate $4 per pack to draft) then you must have the paper. The paper feeds into the online; the online will not feed itself not with the pricing being the way it is. The addict from paper goes online to feed their addiction on an off day.

>reprints for commander
Fucking gross
>pauper
Nope. If they knew anything about Pauper they would have carpet banned Peregrine Drake the moment that fucker hit or never printed it at common. Zero fucks given on both ends.

No, Eternal Masters was utterly useless to everyone who doesn't have duals, which includes 99% of the player base right now. When you failed to throw the wannabe Legacy players a real bone and celebrate only the secondary winners (i.e. Pauper and Commander players) you made a failure of a product - it's like saying the DLC of a game made it playable.

>Is there any way Wizards could ever curb those investors or are they now eternally damned to be the secondary market's servants?

And the funny thing is, the Rudys of the world are doomsaying in the other direction, that the game is now useless to invest in because Wizards are reprinting eeeeeeverything. They're standing in the exact shit-spot where the people playing cardboard stocks aren't happy, but the game is still ludicrously expensive in every format for the people who merely want to play.

The problem with the whole concept of EMA is that it CANNOT be useful to the people looking to get into eternal formats. They put in what little they could, you got your Wasteland and your FoW, and the price for both of those took a modest dip. And it doesn't fucking matter at all. Because the cost of eternal formats is all in the manabase. The real duals, the workshop, the moxen, the mandatory cards that cost the price of an entire deck each are what's keeping eternal formats eternally inaccessible, and they're all on the "sorry about Chronicles" list that the dumb fucks came up with a generation ago.

If Rudy is right (and he is only right about new product) then he is just pushing his followers to exit the investment game, which preserves his business himself as he continues playing and winning due to the exit of competitors; his job gets easier when there's less people selling.

I respect Rudy for doing what's best for him in a calculated and educated manner. Bottom line though is to not take anything he says or his dramatics as anything but benefiting himself, which can include lying to his followers.

>The problem with the whole concept of EMA is that it CANNOT be useful to the people looking to get into eternal formats
I know this is the wrong political environment to call someone out as misleading or lying, but everyone in the public Magic space should have called out Wizards for their bullshit.

Do you actually believe that he thinks he has enough sway to affect his competition in any significant way?

He's pretty much the only guy talking about investing in Magic on youtube. That has to count for something.

Yes.

He has a good thing going making money off:
- his Magic thing
- makes videos of it
- Patreon

He's doing one thing and making money off it in three ways. If people follow his advice, they win, but he wins even bigger by taking the action that benefits the most from their action. And people will do what Rudy says. He has 1260 Patreon followers; if even 1%, 12 people are doing the same thing he is albeit at smaller scale that's 12 stores he influences. And that's not including the people who don't use his Patreon and just stealthily watch his videos on YouTube.

I know for absolute certain he does what he does to manipulate some number of people - even if he can't know the magnitude of his impact it doesn't matter, it still benefits him. I worked in financial investment circles, I see these "underground" investment people or nobody-funds doing the exact same shit - create a mailing list to send out bulletins out to your followers that something is happening. When they move how you tell them you are one trade ahead and you reap the wave as everyone jumps on the gravy train, they win but you win BIG and everyone's happy. Then when it comes time to dump it you do the same, you go first knowing when to peak out and everyone else follows, still winning, but now you've won twice.

Rudy is just doing it with Magic. And instead of financial tools he is probably using recent eBay sales.

inb4 If I'm so smart why am I telling you? Maybe I want to help you. Maybe I am legitimizing Rudy's business so you can go help him. Maybe I'm Rudy. But whichever way you think, I'm not wrong.

>You can only abandon the paper if you completely overhaul the online marketplace

Right which is why its talked about as something they should have done. It's too late now. it's a classic case of "Our current market is doing well, and the new market isn't there yet so let's not bother." Then someone else comes along and sets up shop in the new market and the old are left int he losing game of catch up.

“If you aren’t disrupting yourself, someone else is.”

I don't hear any talk about abandoning paper other than when I bring it up. Reddit doesn't talk about shit and MTGSalvation is dead. Obviously CFB and SCG don't dare publish something like that. Real life is just parroting whatever is fresh on Reddit or the Mothership.

The only other time I heard about it being elaborated from someone else is you right now.

Watch Alpha Investments on YouTube, the owner of that channel Rudy says the majority of transactions between ABU cards take place IRL, meaning there's little to no hard data on how much these transactions are taking place. It's impossible to track and record because there's no paper trail, they're called "dark pool" assets precisely because they're untraceable.

In essence, reserved list cards are the big dog Wall Street stocks of Magic.

Yes, Rudy has a good support system and some say-so in minor secondary market manipulations, but if he were to dump all of his reserved list cards, it would be with people like him, literally exchanging hands, because there's a good chance of getting a chinaman when ordering online. Therefore, the online market prices change little or not at all.

MTG has been chronically mismanaged sinced the beginning and the only reason people still play it is because 30-year-olds aren't dying fast enough.

As you yourself said. It's not EMA that failed, it's WotC and the RL.
EMA did an excellent job for anyone who had duals, the intention to buy duals, or the mind to buy chinaman duals. If it wasn't for the reactionary RL buyouts that happened around it because people are shit and the RL is the most retarded business move in gaming, Shardless' price would have been cut by more than half by EMA. It is in fact almost the same it was before EMA was announced despite Underground Sea, Bayou and Tropical Island nearly doubling in price since then.

>tfw bought 12 more diamonds before the RL buyouts because I hate swapping cards between decks.
God bless autism.

No, that's not what I mean. I mean Rudy's influence on OTHER people's behavior.

It's his advice, not his personal action that affects places. And all it takes is one person from his fanbase spreading the news to the store, then people at the store spreading it to the people they know. His output of influence compounds as people share that information. It doesn't matter if he says Commander 2016 is out of print and MaRo says the printing has been consistent with previous releases. It doesn't matter who is RIGHT only who acts on that information.

I heard people fucking quoting Rudy word for word on Friday but not attributing the statements to him. We are thousands of kilometers from Rudy and his shit is being spread in my own community, people are buying up shit on that sort of advice.

Before people went blind, just knowing to buy out shit from stores before they can adjust prices. But Rudy escalates it to where information is the driver as opposed to seeing what placed Top 8 in the recent GP or PT. Everyone knows that by the time people are buying shit out it's too late. But Rudy gives them the "inside", which is not the inside but they think they're being sneaky.

Again, it's not about his personal sales impacting the market, it's his advice impacting the market.

It's not his fault people are retarded sheep.
Last time I specced was during Theros spoiler season, bought 50 Nightveil Specters at $.25-.49 each and people were making fun of me at the stores I bought from despite the Devotion mechanic having been revealed already with things like Thassa and Gray Merchant.

People don't want to think for themselves, no matter how much you try to incite them to. Eventually you realize the better course of action is crafting your social circle with like-minded people and letting everyone else drown.

I say this as someone who has attended a total of 2 FNMs in my year long career, both within the last month. I've played for a year, but in that time I've gotten a friend and three students of mine into the game. I've invested well over a grand in that time building grixis delver and a few other decks from recents sets and modern shit brews.

The design decisions of recent sets are interesting, and as a newer player it is a very healthy game coming from the outside. Hearthstone isn't what magic should try to be. I bought the Zendikar vs Eldrazi and Blessed vs Cursed (two, one to get my friend into the game) duel decks. These were amazing introductory products as you could get two people into the game at once. Plus it allowed players a greater selection of cards to get into the game. But no, they want to push shitty standard cards intro decks. Wizards shifting focus to revamping the online system is fine, but what incentive do I have to play that when I have a physical deck and would rather support a store? The ultimate system would to support the online environment, while having an innovative standard format that can feed into modern. If they want to let SCG handle tournaments then that's their own loss. I do think recent printings like Nahiri, Push, and a few others show they are interested in creating cards that can affect Modern.

Disagree, as you will, but this is from someone coming from the outside.