I don't understand that "lost value" complaint I keep hearing from people. Last night watching a game with a dude and his foil duals complaining about lost value. Let's be honest here people it is only lost value if you were using them as a constant good, ie buying and reselling them constantly. Honestly you're going to be using them to play with and not resell whether they were reprinted or not. You're talking about lost value when you decide to sell your collection at some mythical point in time in the future if it ever does come and by then the prices could have changed due to any number of other factors.
It's a magical thing that first time you play turn 1 Underground Sea and know you can either Duress your opponent or hold off to cast Mystical Tutor on their end step - and you can still Daze their turn 1 card. If you haven't done it, you just can't understand.
I understand that the dual lands are iconic, prestigious, rare, and much sought after. But how exciting are they when compared to other cards in the game? Instead of tapping for one color of mana, they can tap for two colors. WOW! Color fixing is very important, I understand this. But how much fun can you really have with them compared to other Vintage Staples like Survival of the Fittest, Force of Will, Etc. Or any other cards for that matter. If you spend 100 tickets on a playset of Tropical Islands, does it really feel satisfying to you? Honestly, not to me. But spending 100 dollars on a Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword of Light and Shadow, couple of Aether Vial, Goyf, Mox Diamond, Daze, etc. feels a lot more satisfying, like you're actually getting some good value out of the money spent. Dual lands are a sizable investment for joining into any of the older formats and its one that although may be necessary, isn't an exciting prospect. I bet I'm not alone when I say that the high cost of entry (lands contribute a great deal to this), holds players back from playing in older formats.
lol.. You want to branch out into other formats, but don't want to do so because you'd need to buy dual lands, which allow you to branch out into other formats?
If you don't appreciate the value of dual lands, maybe you need to learn a bit more about mtg before chiming in on debates about the most powerful cards in the games history.
funny thing there is that force is not required for legacy nor is it needed for all decks. whereas its a given fact that all non mono decks function better with dual lands. So the price of force only affects people that want to play those decks. personally i would never play force so legacy for me just got cheaper.
Yeah it's not about keeping new players out. New players are good. But wizards could have given the experienced players power in ME4 and just done more regular ME123 drafts & sealed to get more duals out.
Really I'm just repeating Danger's thoughts in his great new article on Classic Quarter.
Didn't Wizards announce that they weren't going to reprint Force of Will? At least not in a set? I'm pretty sure that leaves the only way to see it again is if it ends up in one of the legacy precons. Can someone verify this?
And thanks for getting my hopes up about the power nine hammy… :p
Well, I went from wanting to buy a lot of this to I will be spending $0 on this set. Was really looking forward to the P9 online. And to reprint the duals and not FoW, thats just retarded
Well here's the thing - if you were packaging at 2 for 1 and selling at that price, you may not be making as much as the bots, but you're still getting 5x your invested price. That's not a bad deal at all.
The liquidity of cards when you play a "long" game (2+ months) is actually not that bad - PROVIDED that you don't get greedy and want to sell at bot prices. I always take into account that I'll be selling at a reasonable discount (esp when it comes to bulk sub-$1 cards). This is why I don't do "flip" cards ("Oh man, let me buy this at 20 because the bots will be selling at 25 next week - what, the player sell is still 22? Oh no!"). Really you just need to worry about % gain, and keep a spreadsheet to see if you're doing alright given the amount of time you put in. By playing the long game I don't need to spend as much time watching the micro swings in the market, and as I wrote in the article, even with fairly little time invested, I've made about $700 in the last 5 months through this method. But I take it as a given that I'm either going to be selling back to bots (sometimes the ones I bought it from a couple months before) or to players, who expect a reasonable discount from bot prices.
And as I said in one of my above comments, once you get above about 40-50x (10-12 playsets) liquidity and market timing can really become an issue. Something like Ad Nauseam that had a flash-in-the-pan price spike becomes hard to jettison when you have 100 copies.
Manacraft uses up the 'special action' a player gets on their turn which allows them to play a land. Basically you are limited to only playing one land on your turn, and playing a manacraft spell 'uses up' the land drop. You can't use manacraft if you can't play a land.
If you play Mox Mirror turn one, it won't tap for mana (reflecting pool ability) because you can't play land. You can only play one Mox Mirror per turn, barring Exploration or another spell which gives more land drops (and even then... legacy card pool). You could skip turns one and two for five mana on turn three with double Mox... is that broken when standard red decks get turn four kills? You won't be able to effectively tap Mox Mirror for mana until turn three (on turn two, if you played it turn one, you have access to three mana). I think you are also underestimating the reflecting pool drawback. *Manacraft* is why mox mirror is strong, but not 'broken'. But it's not like I playtested either. I could be wrong.
Skipping upkeep is an extreme disadvantage if you want to use suspend OR put counters on an Aether Vial. Where is merfolk competitive? Vial legacy.
Issuli Shell -- this card is an answer for planeswalkers. The game has very few of these. New players also don't like being blown out by planeswalkers they can't afford. Also note that is a legendary artifact, meaning you can strategically legend rule it.
Corrupt costing B doesn't matter at all when you can't play it more than once a turn, and also can't play it on a turn when you also play a swamp. At least that's my take on it. Manacraft bring tension between land drop and land based effect.
Thanks very much for the feedback, even if you didn't like the cards.
I have been involved in various forms of investing for a long time. And invariably two of things that often get overlooked by investors are "transaction costs" and "liquidity".
Transaction Costs - cost incurred in buying or selling an investment
Liquidity - ability to convert investment into cash quickly and without any price discount
If you are not a bot, then while it may be easy to find a seller and BUY a card, it is often very difficult or costly to sell a card. Especially if that card is priced under 1 tix.
Non-bots have to rely on Classified message posts or selling to bots.
* Bots pay less than the going rate and sometimes they are not buying certain cards or prices on cards are WAY below the going rate.
* Non-bots can't realistically sell cards for fractions of a ticket, so inevitably players have to round down on sales prices in Classifieds and suck up the cost/loss.
* Non-Bots can only sell cheaper than 1 tix cards to bots OR they have to bundle these cards together (ex. "2-for-1 tix") which means you will likely only find buyers looking for multiples in the specific volume you are offering.
* Non-bots have a very hard time finding buyers for non-hot cards, even when they price their sell ads well below bot prices.
* Non-bots relying on Classified message posts can only post a handful of cards and have a very hard time listing both buy and sell information in the same post.
I bought 100 Ad Nauseam a while back for around 0.10 tix each. Then an article for a budget deck using the card was posted on the Magic website and the "sell price" for bots soared to around 1 tix. But the bots were not buying at anything more than 0.12 tix, and my bundling 2-for-1 tix as a sell ad on the classifieds meant I was already missing out on 0.50 tix that bots could get and also I was stuck hoping players needed more than 1 and that players would even bother looking on the Classifieds. I barely sold any of my Ad Nauseam and the price dropped over time until they were penny cards again.
So while it looks really cool to see the price go up and down and think about the money you could make off of getting in on the action, don't get fooled into missing the extra costs you'll face and the problems you will have with finding buyers.
Unless a card is priced at a non-fraction and is very hot, most traders I know invariably have to rely on either selling to bots or selling their cards at a discount. And buying very cheap cards in massive bulk numbers (40+) often cannot find a buyer at all unless it is a super hot card and at least can be bundled as a 4-for-1 tix.
I'd be very curious if any non-bot traders have found reliable and cost effective ways to sell their (non-hot, non-high price) cards.
I didn't really add any other sac outlets beyond the moaning well and the phyrexian tower. Didn't have it in mind when I built it, but might add in the bloodthrone vampire and nantuko husk to keep with the aggro/high creature count theme.
Some additional food for thought that just occurred to me: any Jund/Grixis build is likely to run Thought Hemorrhage in SB (40 cents, tons in stock). Memoricide is in Standard and clocking in at 1.30. So there's room for at least a solid doubling.
Dark Tutelage seems solid in this build.
I don't understand that "lost value" complaint I keep hearing from people. Last night watching a game with a dude and his foil duals complaining about lost value. Let's be honest here people it is only lost value if you were using them as a constant good, ie buying and reselling them constantly. Honestly you're going to be using them to play with and not resell whether they were reprinted or not. You're talking about lost value when you decide to sell your collection at some mythical point in time in the future if it ever does come and by then the prices could have changed due to any number of other factors.
Well, it is a sexy burning wish target at a FFA table, it's bound to get some smiles.
I'm with Eman and ShardFenix on this one. I almost exclusively play multiplayer formats.
Is it wrong that I want to build a 5 color white based deck using tithe and knight of the white orchid?
what about people wanting to play prismatic, singleton or commander?
Not everyone wants the duals for competitive play, and even then, not everyone wants to play control strategies.
ups. I was so sure that the muse said upkeep.
But my point still stands, why oh why did they have to unleash that card onto the casual hordes?
It's a magical thing that first time you play turn 1 Underground Sea and know you can either Duress your opponent or hold off to cast Mystical Tutor on their end step - and you can still Daze their turn 1 card. If you haven't done it, you just can't understand.
I understand that the dual lands are iconic, prestigious, rare, and much sought after. But how exciting are they when compared to other cards in the game? Instead of tapping for one color of mana, they can tap for two colors. WOW! Color fixing is very important, I understand this. But how much fun can you really have with them compared to other Vintage Staples like Survival of the Fittest, Force of Will, Etc. Or any other cards for that matter. If you spend 100 tickets on a playset of Tropical Islands, does it really feel satisfying to you? Honestly, not to me. But spending 100 dollars on a Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword of Light and Shadow, couple of Aether Vial, Goyf, Mox Diamond, Daze, etc. feels a lot more satisfying, like you're actually getting some good value out of the money spent. Dual lands are a sizable investment for joining into any of the older formats and its one that although may be necessary, isn't an exciting prospect. I bet I'm not alone when I say that the high cost of entry (lands contribute a great deal to this), holds players back from playing in older formats.
lol.. You want to branch out into other formats, but don't want to do so because you'd need to buy dual lands, which allow you to branch out into other formats?
If you don't appreciate the value of dual lands, maybe you need to learn a bit more about mtg before chiming in on debates about the most powerful cards in the games history.
funny thing there is that force is not required for legacy nor is it needed for all decks. whereas its a given fact that all non mono decks function better with dual lands. So the price of force only affects people that want to play those decks. personally i would never play force so legacy for me just got cheaper.
Yeah it's not about keeping new players out. New players are good. But wizards could have given the experienced players power in ME4 and just done more regular ME123 drafts & sealed to get more duals out.
Really I'm just repeating Danger's thoughts in his great new article on Classic Quarter.
My wish is Equinox.....
Yes thats right about FoW or it could be released as a promo. Worth made a comment stating this on the Wizards forum along time ago.
Didn't Wizards announce that they weren't going to reprint Force of Will? At least not in a set? I'm pretty sure that leaves the only way to see it again is if it ends up in one of the legacy precons. Can someone verify this?
And thanks for getting my hopes up about the power nine hammy… :p
Well, I went from wanting to buy a lot of this to I will be spending $0 on this set. Was really looking forward to the P9 online. And to reprint the duals and not FoW, thats just retarded
Contract From Below!
Seems like manacraft cards should just be lands.
MED5: Reprint FoW, release P9 and some remaining crap to be released for the first time!
Well here's the thing - if you were packaging at 2 for 1 and selling at that price, you may not be making as much as the bots, but you're still getting 5x your invested price. That's not a bad deal at all.
The liquidity of cards when you play a "long" game (2+ months) is actually not that bad - PROVIDED that you don't get greedy and want to sell at bot prices. I always take into account that I'll be selling at a reasonable discount (esp when it comes to bulk sub-$1 cards). This is why I don't do "flip" cards ("Oh man, let me buy this at 20 because the bots will be selling at 25 next week - what, the player sell is still 22? Oh no!"). Really you just need to worry about % gain, and keep a spreadsheet to see if you're doing alright given the amount of time you put in. By playing the long game I don't need to spend as much time watching the micro swings in the market, and as I wrote in the article, even with fairly little time invested, I've made about $700 in the last 5 months through this method. But I take it as a given that I'm either going to be selling back to bots (sometimes the ones I bought it from a couple months before) or to players, who expect a reasonable discount from bot prices.
And as I said in one of my above comments, once you get above about 40-50x (10-12 playsets) liquidity and market timing can really become an issue. Something like Ad Nauseam that had a flash-in-the-pan price spike becomes hard to jettison when you have 100 copies.
Manacraft uses up the 'special action' a player gets on their turn which allows them to play a land. Basically you are limited to only playing one land on your turn, and playing a manacraft spell 'uses up' the land drop. You can't use manacraft if you can't play a land.
If you play Mox Mirror turn one, it won't tap for mana (reflecting pool ability) because you can't play land. You can only play one Mox Mirror per turn, barring Exploration or another spell which gives more land drops (and even then... legacy card pool). You could skip turns one and two for five mana on turn three with double Mox... is that broken when standard red decks get turn four kills? You won't be able to effectively tap Mox Mirror for mana until turn three (on turn two, if you played it turn one, you have access to three mana). I think you are also underestimating the reflecting pool drawback. *Manacraft* is why mox mirror is strong, but not 'broken'. But it's not like I playtested either. I could be wrong.
Skipping upkeep is an extreme disadvantage if you want to use suspend OR put counters on an Aether Vial. Where is merfolk competitive? Vial legacy.
Issuli Shell -- this card is an answer for planeswalkers. The game has very few of these. New players also don't like being blown out by planeswalkers they can't afford. Also note that is a legendary artifact, meaning you can strategically legend rule it.
Corrupt costing B doesn't matter at all when you can't play it more than once a turn, and also can't play it on a turn when you also play a swamp. At least that's my take on it. Manacraft bring tension between land drop and land based effect.
Thanks very much for the feedback, even if you didn't like the cards.
I have been involved in various forms of investing for a long time. And invariably two of things that often get overlooked by investors are "transaction costs" and "liquidity".
Transaction Costs - cost incurred in buying or selling an investment
Liquidity - ability to convert investment into cash quickly and without any price discount
If you are not a bot, then while it may be easy to find a seller and BUY a card, it is often very difficult or costly to sell a card. Especially if that card is priced under 1 tix.
Non-bots have to rely on Classified message posts or selling to bots.
* Bots pay less than the going rate and sometimes they are not buying certain cards or prices on cards are WAY below the going rate.
* Non-bots can't realistically sell cards for fractions of a ticket, so inevitably players have to round down on sales prices in Classifieds and suck up the cost/loss.
* Non-Bots can only sell cheaper than 1 tix cards to bots OR they have to bundle these cards together (ex. "2-for-1 tix") which means you will likely only find buyers looking for multiples in the specific volume you are offering.
* Non-bots have a very hard time finding buyers for non-hot cards, even when they price their sell ads well below bot prices.
* Non-bots relying on Classified message posts can only post a handful of cards and have a very hard time listing both buy and sell information in the same post.
I bought 100 Ad Nauseam a while back for around 0.10 tix each. Then an article for a budget deck using the card was posted on the Magic website and the "sell price" for bots soared to around 1 tix. But the bots were not buying at anything more than 0.12 tix, and my bundling 2-for-1 tix as a sell ad on the classifieds meant I was already missing out on 0.50 tix that bots could get and also I was stuck hoping players needed more than 1 and that players would even bother looking on the Classifieds. I barely sold any of my Ad Nauseam and the price dropped over time until they were penny cards again.
So while it looks really cool to see the price go up and down and think about the money you could make off of getting in on the action, don't get fooled into missing the extra costs you'll face and the problems you will have with finding buyers.
Unless a card is priced at a non-fraction and is very hot, most traders I know invariably have to rely on either selling to bots or selling their cards at a discount. And buying very cheap cards in massive bulk numbers (40+) often cannot find a buyer at all unless it is a super hot card and at least can be bundled as a 4-for-1 tix.
I'd be very curious if any non-bot traders have found reliable and cost effective ways to sell their (non-hot, non-high price) cards.
I didn't really add any other sac outlets beyond the moaning well and the phyrexian tower. Didn't have it in mind when I built it, but might add in the bloodthrone vampire and nantuko husk to keep with the aggro/high creature count theme.
It is afternoon now....still dont understand why FOW was not reprinted
Some additional food for thought that just occurred to me: any Jund/Grixis build is likely to run Thought Hemorrhage in SB (40 cents, tons in stock). Memoricide is in Standard and clocking in at 1.30. So there's room for at least a solid doubling.
I can't believe I forgot the Witness. That card definitely warrants inclusion.
Deathmantle is a cool card, I like that idea. What other sac outlets did you include in your version?
Edit: tou have to go to display settings to change it. I use compact mode. I think the default is big card, which takes up a lot of the play area.
Its the promo that this refers to.