Masters 25

Can't let people have another Goyf, gotta keep it expensive.

Well now everything is expensive, every modern staple jumped $20 because WOTC won't reprint anything

They reprinted Jace, my friend. A perfect opportunity too since he was just unbanned so new players can use that powerful card for a very small price.

magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/how-play-limited/how-draft-masters-25-2018-03-06
Kenji couldn't even hype this set's Limited format up; he presented for your consideration "BW Okay Stuff", "5C Do Nothing in a Set with No Guildgates" and "UG Jank".

mtg.gamepedia.com/Masters_25
mtg.gamepedia.com/Iconic_Masters
Half of A25's team is imported from the IMA team; Sam Stoddard and MaRo didn't even work on this 25th Aniversary set. We should have known it was a failure from the beginning. I feel bad for Melissa DeTora, this'll show up bad on her resume.

I always thought GW treated their players the worst but WOTC has gone far and beyond what I thought was possible

There was a gossip about IMA and A25 being the same set, but at some point upper management ordered a Masters set for HASCON.

Somewhat it makes sense, with the rushed theme of IMA being Iconic Creature cards, but not being very well represented.

We already have the full spoilers, and the answer is clearly no, they haven't learned a god damn thing. It's just a repeat of Iconic Masters, after they explicitly said they would not repeat the Iconic Masters mistake.

It's GARBAGE

>They can continue to design sets like this if they drop the MSRP back to 7 bucks like they originally intended.

Yeah, the 10 dollar MSRP thing should go away. It only ever existed because the earliest Masters sets were bursting with value. This shit is basically Conspiracy 2, they could sell this set at regular set's MSRP and not have anything weird happen.

Other than MaRo's hands not nearly being as cold

Considering how many iconic cards made it into this one, it makes sense.
It's definitely higher value than Conspiracy but there's no chance in hell it will hold.
Recruiter is already $65 before release, and Jace is the only thing that will hold much value long term.
At this point they should have axed Recruiter and Jace and made the packs $4, I'd draft it plenty if that was the case but there's no way I'm pitching in for a $40 draft to pull a mythic 0/13 tree

he can just rub them together more when dominara comes up.

Recruiter is going to crash hard. Most of that card's price tag comes from the fact that it has never been reprinted and the original printing was in that weird-ass Hong Kong -only set that nobody bought.

Jace is likely to stay high because he's just really good in multiple formats, but one mythic can't carry a Masters set.

What I really want to know is, did they put this shit and Triskaidekaphoia in the set because the team was so incompetent they thought they were a combo?

He should really buy some mittens

I mean, it is a combo. I wouldn't say it's very good but it combos

It kills you, the combo that wins uses tree of perdition. It's a rare and a mythic anyway, you'd never see both cards in a draft.

I didn't say it was a good combo

As the community are mistaking both Trees, I wouldn't be surprised they did the same. Its the usual way R&D works. They are driven by mistake.

My thoughts are they wanted to include Tree of Perdition but something went south and without thinking the retards decided to put the other memetree instead, which doesnt make much sense.

>Best thing you can do in the set is hang yourself from a tree for spending $40 on a draft
It's amazing, another huge flavor win from WOTC

I feel like them reprinting that card might be someone's cry for help

>Will WOTC learn their lesson this time?
It doesn't matter, the painted themselves into a corner. They cannot reprint the same Modern staples time and time again as it would affect the price in the secondary market because they took too much time to do something about those prices and now they have to be careful not to crash them too much. They cannot reprint the Legacy staples people want because Reserved list. So the only thing they have left is stuff that is expensive because is scarce. And the moment you reprint those the price crash and not so many people want them.

Wizards is far from finished because they still make money and Hasbro has deep pockets. But they have overmilked waay too much and have done nothing to solve stuff like Modern staples till the point that fixing it now would piss off people.

They could also put those Masters' boosters back to 6.99 but good luck telling Hasbro that.

>WOTC
>learn their lesson

Yes, their only moves right now are wait stuff get so expensive because of demand and print it at mythic, so prices don't crash.

At each Masters set on future, it will have a few selling points at Rare/Mythic that will drive EVs up by themselves, at a lot of junk. They can't print too much because they constraint themselves on MSRP; they will flop on draft aspect because high MSRP and; they will flop on themes because when they said masterpieces would be on themes, on the next set they pulled it back and said they couldn't do it with themes.

They haven't put themselves in any corner prices are out of control and still growing, they've done next to nothing to alleviate the supply problem

Because they can't. Every time they half ass attempt to fix prices it only gets worse because of the secondary market. The only way they could fix prices would be to eat the secondary market alive by doing something like, Land Masters where every common is a pauper dual, every uncommon is a shock, every rare is a fetch and then add some utility ones like Karakas, Wasteland, Eldrazi temple and so on. Something that'd be so good you'd rather buy packs than singles of it. Of course they won't do that because nobody with actual money in the game wants it, only some poorfags like us.

Or they could just take every modern staple above $50, put it all in one set and print it until enough are brought down to $50.

Ive got your idea, but I think this approach isn't the best. Fixing prices is never a good thing, market should dictate them like now.

What WotC should do is print cards. Let use as example basic lands before Urza's Saga (?), and others cards being reprinted in lots of Core Sets through Magic history.

Core Sets at first were meant to be reprint of... core cards to the game. At some point, they thought about Standard and like some cards were oppressive to it, like Lightning Bolt. This card is a staple of Magic history, but somehow it left standard for years.

Basic Lands at first were scarce, and somewhat expensive. The only way lands had their price to almost worthless was a constant influx of printing. Since they changed it from the common slot to the newly land slot, it price plummeted.

If they want to 'fix the prices' (or make them manageable), they should do what they did on Modern Masters 1-3 and reprint same cards over and over again on a constant schedule AND on the correct rarity, no bullshits like Snapcaster Mage.

Modern Masters should be what Core Sets were to standard: a constant influx of reprints of the core of the format. Take the best cards of the format, force them into the file and make a limited format around it. If you have competent game designers, you could do variants of limited formats with constant cards in the file, changing flex slots. If you have lightning bolt, you can have lots of creatures above 4 power and make it almost useless as removal. Or you could have it below 4 and make it a beast.

Limited formats are good to control and maintenance, but for achieve it, is important to be greed.

best way to lose all the players who really buy their products. they couldn't give two shit about poorfags, you know why ? because poorfags won't buy it anyway.
It's a collectible game, never forget that.

>Not wanting a piece of cardboard to be worth more than $50 would DESTROY THE game.
Nice try WOTC shill, I'll keep my business with the Chinamen where it belongs, getting the same product for a fraction of the cost

>Me not being able to make a profit would DESTROY the game
Dear lord the entitlement. Can you imagine if people from other hobbies acted like that?
>What the fuck Nintendo! I bought your console for 399$ and now you are selling them for 349$? This is gonna destoy the secondary market!!!

Considering how they do things, there wouldn't be enough time for them to change anything about Masters 25 when they learned people hated Iconic Masters - the set would've been at the printers at that point.
Any lessons learned will be for the next one. If they actually learn anything.

>The age of technology and information, the year of our Lord 2018
>Companies like WOTC are unable to make changes from anything less than 2 years in the works

To be fair it takes a while to design and print a set

Did I say two years?
No.
It's been four months since Iconic released. Four months is not enough time to completely revamp a set AND get it printed and shipped worldwide.

He has a point that MTG is a collectible card game, but by the same measure people buying up hordes of boxes/singles and sitting on them to artificially inflate prices is even worse.
People should expect their cards to retain their value, and newer players should be able to afford to play the game, that's it.

>spread everywhere that this set is 'stupid set'
>no one buys set
>buy up boxes
>hold on to cards
>people will want the relevant cards just for background graphic
>low supply high demand
>retire a brazillionair

Oh, jesus, you're right - it's only been four months. Never mind the design issues, is it even smart to have two sets like this release so close together?

No

Not at all. Nor was it a brilliant move to have Iconic be so damn close to Unstable.

>speak about entitlement
>"whawhawha why can't i have for free everything i want???"
then why do you fucking complain in the first place? stick with your fake cards who cost a fraction of the price and everyone is happy

Because I'd rather give my money to WOTC but they don't want it

they are a bunch of greedy jews pushing a satanic agenda, they don't deserve a dime user.

What a world we live in where I can't tell if you're serious

>Modern Masters should be what Core Sets were to standard
I thought anyone with half a brain in their skull understood that. Apparently Wizards doesn't have half a brain to be found even if the whole company pooled what they've got.

I wouldn't be remotely shocked if there was some collusion between the secondary market and WOTC at this point.

Hopefully once Challenger Decks make all the fucking money in the universe WotC will realize that the secondary market can eat a dick and just start openly defying them with reprints.

>They cannot reprint the same Modern staples time and time again as it would affect the price in the secondary market
They shouldn't even care about this shit. Paying more than 100$ for a piece of cardboard that doesn't has any legal restrictions to being reprinted is fucking retarded both for players and for Wizards.

They're priving themselves of money because any set that has a 2of combination of Jace, Snappy, Lili, Karn, Goyf and Bob in the mythic slot along with decent rare value will sell like hot pancakes. Just fucking look at MM3.
They're also priving the players of being able to play Modern. I know they want people to play standard but Modern players are like starving africans that want to be fed decent cards once a year and are more than willing to pay 9.99 per booster IF IT'S GOOD ENOUGH, yet they aren't fucking tapping that market.

It's like they don't want my fucking money

Why would they? MJHoldings already bought a couple hundred thousands pallets months before the spoiler and that's all they needed to tell the stockholders "Magic keeps growing".

It probably is the point, but not the way people usually think. Expensive cards are good to Wizards, because it means boosters have a much greater value. It is even better if it shows up in higher rarities. That's the point of the upshift on Snapcaster Mage. Every time Wizards talk about 'excitement', they mean monetary value.

Ben Bleiweiss from SCG talks about how he would like Reserved List abolished, but this is public talk. We don't know what impact will these Magic's birthday Flashback Drafts on Limited Edition will have. But, think about it. There was shortage of product on 93 and somehow 'old printing in warehouse' shows up again after Zendikar. How strange can it be?

The people who do care about this are ones like SCG and similar. They buy far more product to keep the game afloat than we do. They don't want your money because even if every mythic in the set was a reprint of a 50$ card, they'd rather have SCG buy something like 320 packs for a jace playset, something a poorfag like you would never do even if the rest of the set was worth a lot.

So who is going to get sacked after all the complains?

If it was a R&D poor job, someone from R&D. Look on the teams from both IMA and Masters 25. Almost the same.

If it is an upper management decision, that I hope it is, Magic will continue in this path. I think it will be good for finance, but bad for the game itself.

Yea what could go wrong?

>That is not drafted which can eternal lie
>And with strange aeons even Magic may die

>secretly has masterpieces within the set
>its every card in magic history
>only one copy of each ever printed

Unlikely as it is I do hope they're holding some sort of secret gimmick close to the chest.

Even if it was something as tepid as "TWO foils in every pack!"

ded sjw infested game

>fucking pancakefags

Someone would have spoiled that by now if it was the case.

>g-guys, we had to to it this way because of limited

I've come to hate that excuse.

"MUH LIMITED" has been their go-to excuse for the past 20 years and it has never been anything but total horseshit.

the commons and uncommons are actually ok this time around.
Like, they're not good, but better than what I expected

Lightning bolt should have been at common
>muh draft

Maybe not. Only 'leaked' card was obliterator. Its been pretty air tight so far.

it's up for sale in a week or so, they would have been sent out to many distributors by now.

Except it isn't, its a TCG not a CCG.

>the secondary market
We need to differentiate between:

Stores who open boxes when a new set releases and sell most of the cards in the first two weeks, then just try to hold enough stock so a random player who wants a card for his deck can buy from them.

Players who are actually buying and trading staples amongst themselves.

And speculators who just grab a mountain of the same card and sit on it.

Shit like Challenger Decks doesn't hurt the first two groups and mainly just pisses off the third. And they're the group that gives the least amount of money directly to WotC.

We should just make our own masters set.

with blackjack and no reserved list

>best way to lose all the "Collectors" who treat the game like babies first stock market.

Has anyone mentioned how stupid the challenger deck names are?

>Hazoret Aggro
>Vehicle Rush
>Counter Surge

Good fucking job accommodating new players WotC, they'll fit right in using those fucking names.

What's wrong with the names? They are pretty uninspired, but it describes what the deck does.

MTG is in it's death throes.

Is now a bad time to buy Karn? Should I wait until the next set? It's at the highest price ever right now.

>Hazoret Aggro
Yes, what could this deck be?
>Vehicle Rush
I cannot possibly imagine what would be contained herein.
>Counter Surge
Yeah this one actually isn't great.

if you need to use one for a deck right now, then buying now is probably best since it will only keep going up until the next masters set comes out.

>release Super Ultra Masters editions
>spoil 2 or 3 great cards immediately
>lazily drip the Tree of Redemption reprints out for the next several months

Why are WotC so fucking bad at everything?

Its done.

markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/171610481148/hi-maro-im-confused-about-whats-mythic-rare#notes

Why not use the lingo established players will use? "Mono Red Aggro", "Mardu Vehicles (Vehicle Aggro if they want to erase the Khan's lingo for some reason)", and "GB Energy (Snek is of course better but they would never meme on an official product)".

>reddit.mtg.finance actually believes this

Loving every laugh

It has nothing to do with understanding and everything to do with teaching them incorrect lingo. Imagine if they printed a single product that called Cantrips "drawsies" and then advertised that as a good product for new players to jump into competitive play. It simply teaches them wrong information to join their local community.

>Counter Surge

Before looking the deck up, my first immediate thought was oh counter as in "counterspells" and wasn't Surge like a recent-ish keyword? Why the fuck would you name the actual deck Counter Surge?

>Its we made it rare because its rare in real life!
Thats a pretty meta answer.

What a great conundrum the jew must compete with.

>We wish for this card to be in a set, but it is rare and we must not alleviate that issue!

Masterful work at navigating it, MaRo, I must say.

So if I understand the narrative here, people aren't going to buy masters 25 and it'll be a failure and wizard won't make money and magic will be one step closer to it's inevitable death
do I got it right cause that's the impression I got from this thread

The worst thing is that it looks like an utter blast to draft, so the restrictive booster pricing is a fucking kick in the nuts in more than just one way.

WotC already made money. But MJHoldings and local game stores won't.

It's just your average american corporativism cutting the three down to take the apples NOW even if it means no more apples in the futue.

>this'll show up bad on her resume
Maro was lead on Urza block and Mirrodin block and he's still around. I think she'll be fine.