"However, this is pure conjecture on my part, so I’m throwing the question open: If you are reading this and you don’t play Classic, why is that? Is it because of the cost or because there is something about the format you dislike, either along the lines I illustrated or Pete gave in his State of the Program last week? I would particularly be interested from hearing from people who play Legacy but don’t play Classic."
I think I qualify as someone who plays a lot of Legacy, but doesn't play Classic (anymore) so think I am someone who can answer this. For me it mainly comes down to a couple of things.
1. I enjoy the Legacy Metagame a lot more than I do Classic. The main reason is that I play against a much larger variety of decks in Legacy than I ever did playing Classic. There are also the Workshop, Dredge, and Oath decks. Workshop decks make up such a larger portion of the metagame than I hope for in a format. As for Dredge and Oath, legacy has similar but less powerful decks with Legacy Dredge and various Show and Tell decks, and I generally find these matchups fun. However, they are only fun when they happen rarely and these decks are much more common in classic. Even with these things, I still enjoy Classic. When you bring Legacy in with it (which is my favorite constructed format) it doesn't matchup for me personally, and is a few spots down the list (but still much higher than a format like block.)
2. As someone who mainly wants to play sanctioned events, brewing a deck for Classic feels like a waste of time. I don't have the numbers, but what is the average amount of Daily Events that fire a month? Is it around 2? It is hard to get motivated to spend the time to develop something or learn a deck for Classic when if I do in another format I will get 10 or 20 times the amount of opportunities to play a tournament with it. In additon to that, the daily events that do fire are generally at an awful time for me. They are at prime time on the weekend where I will either be out partying, or if I am at home playing Magic I will be playing a more important event than a Daily Event. No matter what the format, when it is Daily Event vs. Premier, PTQ, or MOCS the Daily Event will almost always lose. This isn't really the fault of the format either, WOTC has not given Classic a large tournament to play, but I go by what is available. If something like Winter Celebration came back, I am sure I would be playing a lot of Classic. It just feels like a waste to invest my time into it now.
Yeah, I hear what you say. Essentially Dryad should be a subtype of Nymphs, therefore a sub-subtype (requiring a whole new dash in the type line). There are already other cases where two creature types aren't horizontally organized but each other subsets instead. All the classes work that way, for instance (even if in that case it's more complicated because classes are also transversal: there's only a few Elves that are Warriors, but there are Warriors that aren't Elves, and so on). Or things like Elder, that only refers to a specific characteristic of 5 creatures. I think we should treat the types as not necessarily perfectly juxtaposed; they are things you can say of a creature, either based on what they do (Warrior), how old they are (Elder), or in case of Nymphs, where they live. Nicol Bolas is a Dragon who also happens to be very ancient. Leafcrown Dryad is a Nymph who also happens to dwell in trees.
The greater issue is why the other Dryads but Shanodin aren't Nymphs.
Regarding FoW.... I don't think anyone should ever have to sit through a MED 1 draft again. The set is absolutely horrible for limited. It only fires because it is a huge lottery and people like playing the lottery. But really I think they need to put it to rest. In fact med 3 and 4 are really the only ones that are enjoyable for limited...
As to modern cards.... My idea was to include a few of them... In the old frames. Which would just be awesome. And I think wotc should go for awesome.
I also agree that WOTC probably doesn't want to have to rely on ME1 to get more Force of Will into the system. That set was never made to be drafted on its own, it doesn't play well, and everyone knows it.
Like Danger said, they aren't greedy profit robots. They want to promote a set they believe in and that the players will believe the hype about. In the end, that's better business and a better play experience.
If FoW doesn't show up in VMA (and Danger has reasonable points as to why it wouldn't), they've backed themselves into a corner. It's not like they're going to make another eternal reprint set with FoW but without P9.
Hmmmm... Legacy Masters? :)
Definitely Legacy that skyrocketed the price of Show and Tell. And you know what card made that deck explode? Griselbrand. I played Legacy Sneak and Show in 2010 when Show and Tell was $10 and the deck didn't do so well. It's about the same list as it is today, except now it runs Mr. Draw 7. Perhaps a different meta affected the deck's viability as well.
Hey guys, great podcast! I enjoy listening in each week and appreciate the time and effort? (....) spent putting it all together. :)
I didn't get a chance to cast Sadistic Sacrament in the Oath match. However, I can't complain because I luck sacked my way into a second turn win both games, once due to storming out and once due to a first turn tinker into Blightsteel. I got to play Oath again in round 3 and attempted to cast it but it was countered. So as of yet, no luck. Card is the nutz though against Oath, as I have gotten to experience in the tournament practice room. Luckily for me there are 7 Oath decks in the league, and I always feel I've got an excellent shot against these decks.
Got to give credit for the deck to whiffy penguin. On classicquarter he pointed me to some of his old youtube videos of classic matches and I got to see this deck in action. Thought it might play out okay in the league as I hadn't seen many storm decks recently and as a result there is limited storm hate. Its a ton of fun to play and has numerous ways to win (Maybe as many as "Wet Bread"?) Obviously very weak though against Shops and has some issues with consistency. Recommend it though to anyone who enjoys combo!
I mostly agree with what you said, although I feel like Legacy Sneak and Show probably had a lot more to do with the price increase on Show and Tell than Grafdigger's Cage did. I do think that Wizards should focus on non-Master's Edition, pre-Modern cards for the format. However, I don't think it should be set in stone. They really need to get more Force of Wills into the system if they want Vintage to succeed online and I don't really see MED1 drafts happening very regularly and/or being a rousing success. (What else is worth drafting in that set besides Force of Will?) I also think if they need to pull a bit from newer sets to make for a better limited format, they should do it (the creatures from the early sets are mostly pretty terrible). Personally, I'd like to see them lead up to Vintage Masters with some MED 2/3/4 drafts that could help get some more duals, Bazaars, Drains, Shops, etc. into the system and then use Vintage Masters to get in Force of Wills and some of the staples from the pre-Lorwyn expansions in the system.
I have played against Andy in the 2-mans before while he was playing Oath, so I can also vouch. :) Too bad you guys didn't do the segment on what you would bring to Vintage Champs because I'm sure Zach would have said Merfolk, right?
As for Spy Combo against Dredge, facing a deck with 4 Leylines and 4 Serum Powders seems bad when you have no main deck answers to grave hate, although I have no idea how the match actually played out.
The Commander cards that are playable all seem a bit more playable in Vintage than Classic, just because they tend towards the higher ends of the curve. One exception might be Bane of Progress as an SB card in Oath against Affinity, since that deck sees a lot more play in Classic than Vintage. I kind of like Unexpectedly Absent and will try to give it a whirl, although I don't know if it will stick. Toxic Deluge has the advantage of being a last-ditch Hail Mary play against a Blightsteel, but I feel like against most creature decks, it is an overcosted Balance or Pyroclasm.
Wow, most of the Urza rares cost more online than in paper. It's changed so fast. Back in 2011, I drafted that set a ton because it had so many money commons, you could draft for free. But the rares didn't go for as much as you have listed in the article - some have doubled or tripled in price. And that was a block that was draftable for 18 months and fired regularly.
I think we are entering a new era of the MTGO economy, especially if the beta client turns out to be really attractive and stable when it's done and the online playerbase keeps growing. The days of cheap digital cards and plentiful drafts for reprints may be ending or over. Nix Tix are long gone and they now slow roll the Classic drafts compared to what they used to do.
It may be that they see that people completely accept $50 and $100 cards as the norm in paper, and are becoming OK with keeping prices edging up online.
Memorial Day is the day we celebrate and commemorate the bravery of the people who sacrificed their lives for us. We are grateful to have such heroes in our midst. - KSA Kosher
...that you are still cannibalizing online sales.
Thus, making a VMA product with limited online sales potential and trying to increase it by potentially biting into the same online limited sales potential of the next MMA incurs the same risk.
There's one absolutely crucial difference between Modern Masters and Vintage Masters: Modern Masters is printed offline and on, Vintage Masters is Online only. They are relatively free to tread on toes in that regard, as it cannot impact offline sales.
Excellent article, Mike. You have a good sense for seeing things from the player side and the WotC side to come up with a coherent article with logical conclusions. Kudos to you, sir.
My initial guess for power distribution was to have a normal piece of power appear at a rate similar to a foil mythic rare in a current set. if nothing else, they already have the code ready for it :)
Not sure what they would consider for foil power distribution, but that is irrelevant since foil pieces will be roughly eleventy billion dollars no matter what they do.
Good read, I agree with you that it would be better if WOTC limits it to older sets. I look forward to WOTC releases a few more details about the set, but that probably has a long time to come still.
I mean, why not include Blightsteel Colossus in VIntage Masters, right? Totally mythic and is pretty much a card used exclusively with Tinker - a Vintage only card (I'm sure there are other examples, but it's pretty much a pair bond with Tinker).
I'd imagine the people making this set (probably Mr. Lauer again) are quite capable of using every card ever made, but boy if it were me I'd love a leash on this. For one thing, restriction breeds creativity. But apart from that, there are two problems with use everything - the first is simply that I'd guess there are more Modern Masters coming our way, and putting everything in here would step on their toes. You simply are cannibalizing sales of future product - what if the next Modern Masters is trying to drive sales by something that was already included in Vintage Masters? I'm betting they don't go there.
Secondly, and this point is more minor than the first: I would be very afraid of customer backlash, which is always problem when releasing these sets. Remember Time Spiral? Remember your disappointment when the cool stuff YOU wanted in there wasn't in there? Well, opening up VMA to every card ever worsens the disappointment due to expectation.
I really think cutting it off at 8th helps more than it hurts. I trust the WoTC guys have gotten pretty good at putting together these conglomerate limited formats with 4 MEDs and MMA under their belts. I think they can do it without reaching past 8th edition, no matter how much I wish Mox Opal was in there so it would go down in price.
As the Greek mythology buff I am, I've always said Dryads should actually be Creature - Nymph. Sadly they went out of their way to make Leafcrown Dryad a Nymph Dryad (weirdest creature type ever), so that's probably not gonna happen. Frown.
"However, this is pure conjecture on my part, so I’m throwing the question open: If you are reading this and you don’t play Classic, why is that? Is it because of the cost or because there is something about the format you dislike, either along the lines I illustrated or Pete gave in his State of the Program last week? I would particularly be interested from hearing from people who play Legacy but don’t play Classic."
I think I qualify as someone who plays a lot of Legacy, but doesn't play Classic (anymore) so think I am someone who can answer this. For me it mainly comes down to a couple of things.
1. I enjoy the Legacy Metagame a lot more than I do Classic. The main reason is that I play against a much larger variety of decks in Legacy than I ever did playing Classic. There are also the Workshop, Dredge, and Oath decks. Workshop decks make up such a larger portion of the metagame than I hope for in a format. As for Dredge and Oath, legacy has similar but less powerful decks with Legacy Dredge and various Show and Tell decks, and I generally find these matchups fun. However, they are only fun when they happen rarely and these decks are much more common in classic. Even with these things, I still enjoy Classic. When you bring Legacy in with it (which is my favorite constructed format) it doesn't matchup for me personally, and is a few spots down the list (but still much higher than a format like block.)
2. As someone who mainly wants to play sanctioned events, brewing a deck for Classic feels like a waste of time. I don't have the numbers, but what is the average amount of Daily Events that fire a month? Is it around 2? It is hard to get motivated to spend the time to develop something or learn a deck for Classic when if I do in another format I will get 10 or 20 times the amount of opportunities to play a tournament with it. In additon to that, the daily events that do fire are generally at an awful time for me. They are at prime time on the weekend where I will either be out partying, or if I am at home playing Magic I will be playing a more important event than a Daily Event. No matter what the format, when it is Daily Event vs. Premier, PTQ, or MOCS the Daily Event will almost always lose. This isn't really the fault of the format either, WOTC has not given Classic a large tournament to play, but I go by what is available. If something like Winter Celebration came back, I am sure I would be playing a lot of Classic. It just feels like a waste to invest my time into it now.
Yeah, I hear what you say. Essentially Dryad should be a subtype of Nymphs, therefore a sub-subtype (requiring a whole new dash in the type line). There are already other cases where two creature types aren't horizontally organized but each other subsets instead. All the classes work that way, for instance (even if in that case it's more complicated because classes are also transversal: there's only a few Elves that are Warriors, but there are Warriors that aren't Elves, and so on). Or things like Elder, that only refers to a specific characteristic of 5 creatures. I think we should treat the types as not necessarily perfectly juxtaposed; they are things you can say of a creature, either based on what they do (Warrior), how old they are (Elder), or in case of Nymphs, where they live. Nicol Bolas is a Dragon who also happens to be very ancient. Leafcrown Dryad is a Nymph who also happens to dwell in trees.
The greater issue is why the other Dryads but Shanodin aren't Nymphs.
Regarding FoW.... I don't think anyone should ever have to sit through a MED 1 draft again. The set is absolutely horrible for limited. It only fires because it is a huge lottery and people like playing the lottery. But really I think they need to put it to rest. In fact med 3 and 4 are really the only ones that are enjoyable for limited...
As to modern cards.... My idea was to include a few of them... In the old frames. Which would just be awesome. And I think wotc should go for awesome.
These days I think the storm hate comes in the form of Sphere of Resistance, Lodestone Golem, Trinisphere, Chalice of the Void, and Thorn of Amethyst.
I also agree that WOTC probably doesn't want to have to rely on ME1 to get more Force of Will into the system. That set was never made to be drafted on its own, it doesn't play well, and everyone knows it.
Like Danger said, they aren't greedy profit robots. They want to promote a set they believe in and that the players will believe the hype about. In the end, that's better business and a better play experience.
If FoW doesn't show up in VMA (and Danger has reasonable points as to why it wouldn't), they've backed themselves into a corner. It's not like they're going to make another eternal reprint set with FoW but without P9.
Hmmmm... Legacy Masters? :)
Definitely Legacy that skyrocketed the price of Show and Tell. And you know what card made that deck explode? Griselbrand. I played Legacy Sneak and Show in 2010 when Show and Tell was $10 and the deck didn't do so well. It's about the same list as it is today, except now it runs Mr. Draw 7. Perhaps a different meta affected the deck's viability as well.
Hey guys, great podcast! I enjoy listening in each week and appreciate the time and effort? (....) spent putting it all together. :)
I didn't get a chance to cast Sadistic Sacrament in the Oath match. However, I can't complain because I luck sacked my way into a second turn win both games, once due to storming out and once due to a first turn tinker into Blightsteel. I got to play Oath again in round 3 and attempted to cast it but it was countered. So as of yet, no luck. Card is the nutz though against Oath, as I have gotten to experience in the tournament practice room. Luckily for me there are 7 Oath decks in the league, and I always feel I've got an excellent shot against these decks.
Got to give credit for the deck to whiffy penguin. On classicquarter he pointed me to some of his old youtube videos of classic matches and I got to see this deck in action. Thought it might play out okay in the league as I hadn't seen many storm decks recently and as a result there is limited storm hate. Its a ton of fun to play and has numerous ways to win (Maybe as many as "Wet Bread"?) Obviously very weak though against Shops and has some issues with consistency. Recommend it though to anyone who enjoys combo!
I mostly agree with what you said, although I feel like Legacy Sneak and Show probably had a lot more to do with the price increase on Show and Tell than Grafdigger's Cage did. I do think that Wizards should focus on non-Master's Edition, pre-Modern cards for the format. However, I don't think it should be set in stone. They really need to get more Force of Wills into the system if they want Vintage to succeed online and I don't really see MED1 drafts happening very regularly and/or being a rousing success. (What else is worth drafting in that set besides Force of Will?) I also think if they need to pull a bit from newer sets to make for a better limited format, they should do it (the creatures from the early sets are mostly pretty terrible). Personally, I'd like to see them lead up to Vintage Masters with some MED 2/3/4 drafts that could help get some more duals, Bazaars, Drains, Shops, etc. into the system and then use Vintage Masters to get in Force of Wills and some of the staples from the pre-Lorwyn expansions in the system.
I have played against Andy in the 2-mans before while he was playing Oath, so I can also vouch. :) Too bad you guys didn't do the segment on what you would bring to Vintage Champs because I'm sure Zach would have said Merfolk, right?
As for Spy Combo against Dredge, facing a deck with 4 Leylines and 4 Serum Powders seems bad when you have no main deck answers to grave hate, although I have no idea how the match actually played out.
The Commander cards that are playable all seem a bit more playable in Vintage than Classic, just because they tend towards the higher ends of the curve. One exception might be Bane of Progress as an SB card in Oath against Affinity, since that deck sees a lot more play in Classic than Vintage. I kind of like Unexpectedly Absent and will try to give it a whirl, although I don't know if it will stick. Toxic Deluge has the advantage of being a last-ditch Hail Mary play against a Blightsteel, but I feel like against most creature decks, it is an overcosted Balance or Pyroclasm.
Wow, most of the Urza rares cost more online than in paper. It's changed so fast. Back in 2011, I drafted that set a ton because it had so many money commons, you could draft for free. But the rares didn't go for as much as you have listed in the article - some have doubled or tripled in price. And that was a block that was draftable for 18 months and fired regularly.
I think we are entering a new era of the MTGO economy, especially if the beta client turns out to be really attractive and stable when it's done and the online playerbase keeps growing. The days of cheap digital cards and plentiful drafts for reprints may be ending or over. Nix Tix are long gone and they now slow roll the Classic drafts compared to what they used to do.
It may be that they see that people completely accept $50 and $100 cards as the norm in paper, and are becoming OK with keeping prices edging up online.
The event was just a blast. It was first time participating and I really had a fun with it. I hope to do so this year too. - Charles Brennan
These are really cool. Your deck has some really scary cards as well. The combos are just amazing. - Charles Brennan
Hmm…Ian has a valid point there. Good job Ian. - Kelley D. Hamilton Bonaventure
The effect is not that everlasting. The hype is there, yes, but it is only hype. - Kelley D. Hamilton Bonaventure
That is one way to explain what spam means. I don't even why they call the computer stuff spam. - Travis Jones Rush Properties
When you opened your stuff and saw this, you must be pretty shocked eh? Those cards are very impressive. - Travis Jones Rush Properties
Finkel will eventually fall. I am longing for that to happen. - KSA Kosher
Memorial Day is the day we celebrate and commemorate the bravery of the people who sacrificed their lives for us. We are grateful to have such heroes in our midst. - KSA Kosher
...that you are still cannibalizing online sales.
Thus, making a VMA product with limited online sales potential and trying to increase it by potentially biting into the same online limited sales potential of the next MMA incurs the same risk.
There's one absolutely crucial difference between Modern Masters and Vintage Masters: Modern Masters is printed offline and on, Vintage Masters is Online only. They are relatively free to tread on toes in that regard, as it cannot impact offline sales.
Excellent article.
Excellent article, Mike. You have a good sense for seeing things from the player side and the WotC side to come up with a coherent article with logical conclusions. Kudos to you, sir.
My initial guess for power distribution was to have a normal piece of power appear at a rate similar to a foil mythic rare in a current set. if nothing else, they already have the code ready for it :)
Not sure what they would consider for foil power distribution, but that is irrelevant since foil pieces will be roughly eleventy billion dollars no matter what they do.
Good read, I agree with you that it would be better if WOTC limits it to older sets. I look forward to WOTC releases a few more details about the set, but that probably has a long time to come still.
I mean, why not include Blightsteel Colossus in VIntage Masters, right? Totally mythic and is pretty much a card used exclusively with Tinker - a Vintage only card (I'm sure there are other examples, but it's pretty much a pair bond with Tinker).
I'd imagine the people making this set (probably Mr. Lauer again) are quite capable of using every card ever made, but boy if it were me I'd love a leash on this. For one thing, restriction breeds creativity. But apart from that, there are two problems with use everything - the first is simply that I'd guess there are more Modern Masters coming our way, and putting everything in here would step on their toes. You simply are cannibalizing sales of future product - what if the next Modern Masters is trying to drive sales by something that was already included in Vintage Masters? I'm betting they don't go there.
Secondly, and this point is more minor than the first: I would be very afraid of customer backlash, which is always problem when releasing these sets. Remember Time Spiral? Remember your disappointment when the cool stuff YOU wanted in there wasn't in there? Well, opening up VMA to every card ever worsens the disappointment due to expectation.
I really think cutting it off at 8th helps more than it hurts. I trust the WoTC guys have gotten pretty good at putting together these conglomerate limited formats with 4 MEDs and MMA under their belts. I think they can do it without reaching past 8th edition, no matter how much I wish Mox Opal was in there so it would go down in price.
As the Greek mythology buff I am, I've always said Dryads should actually be Creature - Nymph. Sadly they went out of their way to make Leafcrown Dryad a Nymph Dryad (weirdest creature type ever), so that's probably not gonna happen. Frown.