I wanted to talk today about something that has been bothering me for some time now about my favorite game of all time, Magic: the Gathering. The impetus for this complaint dates back some time now, and I'll be exploring it from the initial rise of the issue to modernity, where I feel it's simply become unrealistic for both Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro to simply continue ignoring it. At the very least, I feel players should be more aggressively asking questions and demanding change with regards to these issues. I believe Magic: the Gathering has been horribly mismanaged since 2015, and this has manifested itself in numerous ways.
The Age of Uncertainty
The popularity of Magic: the Gathering is said to always be on a gradual upswing by individuals in the know like Mark Rosewater, current head designer of the game. That being said, there are distinct points where the game clearly gets a sudden surge of energy that increases awareness, sales, and general interest. The last big boom was when Theros was released in late September of 2013. Theros was a Greek mythology inspired set that captured the imagination of players, despite whatever flaws we see in the set now, and brought in lapsed players and new players in supposedly great numbers.
Theros and it's two subsequent expansions, Born of the Gods and Journey into Nyx, where followed by Magic 2015 in the summer of 2014. Magic 2015, a Core Set, brought with it a minor change to the overall card frame of the game, but would also be the beginning of a great many changes to the game that, I feel, were to the game's detriment. The first was the announcement of the Clash Packs. Prior to this point, there was a product called Event Decks, released with each new expansion, that were essentially a rough skeleton for a Standard playable deck. Clash Packs, on the other hand, were a two-player product featuring Standard legal decks intended less for competitive play and more for play against one another. The announcement of the Clash Packs came with word that these products would alternate with Event Decks. Clash Packs would release in Summer and Winter, and Event Decks would release in Fall and Spring.
Fall of 2014 featured Khans of Tarkir, which I consider the final successful Magic "block" (a block is a cycle of sets connected by world and theme) before things went off the rails. Summer of 2015 featured Magic Origins, the final Core Set for a good while. With it also came the final Clash Pack. After three of them released and failed, the line was cancelled outright.
In Fall of 2015, Battle for Zendikar released, and brought with it the controversial Expedition cards. Expeditions were initially billed as a one time treat for fans that would appear in Battle for Zendikar and it's lone expansion, Oath of the Gatewatch, to call back to the original Zendikar block many years prior, which had "Hidden Treasures" in the form of incredibly old and valuable cards inserted into a small number of booster packs. While the Expeditions were widely considered a success in terms of popularity, there were already players suggesting these cards were essentially hurting the value of Standard prices, and some believed they existed simply to compensate for the incredibly underwhelming nature of both sets. Event decks, after having been hurt by Clash Packs, were discontinued after Battle for Zendikar.
Shadows Over Innistrad, released in Spring of 2016, saw a few new changes. With Core Sets gone, blocks would now go down from three expansions to two, and thus there would be two blocks per year. Battle for Zendikar was the first smaller block, but Shadows Over Innistrad, the first block to launch in the Spring, also included the first ever (and only) Gift Box not released in the Holiday / Fall season. Gift Boxes were an item which included a large storage box for your collection, an assortment of booster packs, and an alternate art promo card.
Fall of 2016. Kaladesh. Now things begin to unravel quickly. Wizards of the Coast introduces the Planeswalker Decks to replace Intro Packs. Planeswalkers are the main characters of Magic: the Gathering, powerful spellcasters with the unique ability to travel through the void between worlds to visit different planes of existence. Typically, they have been represented via powerful cards that can dominate the battlefield and quickly turn the tide of battle. Planeswalker Decks, however, would see brand new Planeswalker cards printed with beginners in mind. These cards were designed to be bad on purpose, so as to avoid having them see play in Standard or other formats, and the decks themselves were basically still glorified Intro Packs. The key difference, of course, is that there is now a core belief emerging from Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro that they should design clearly inferior products with less value / worth for beginners. Also, Kaladesh saw the return of Expeditions (now renamed Masterpieces) just one year after they were first unveiled for Battle for Zendikar. The new mission statement is that Masterpieces are here to stay, and will now feature in every single expansion moving forward. On a side note, just six months after going twice-a-year, Gift Boxes are discontinued, replaced with Gift Packs, which eliminate both the storage box and the alternate art promo in favor of packaging more reminiscent of Pokemon card game gift packs, but without the value.
Kaladesh ends up becoming the straw that breaks the camel's back, with Standard becoming a mess, and we see the first Standard bans in many years in 2017. Three cards are banned in January, one more is emergency banned in April,and another in June. A whopping four more are banned the following January, primarily due to how Kaladesh block warped Standard.
Spring 2017: Amonkhet. Egyptian-themed world and block. Masterpieces here are given a radical new look to resemble ancient hieroglyphs. The resulting cards featured smaller card art and are much harder to read than the average Magic card. The community essentially revolts over these new lottery cards. By Summer, Wizards of the Coast announces that Masterpieces will be discontinued, and won't appear in the following block.
Fall of 2017 features Ixalan block, which Wizards of the Coast announces will be the final block for the game, as they've decided to transition towards sets being wholly standalone.
Spring 2018, the end of our journey with regards to Standard. Dominaria is released to a lot of acclaim after the disappointments that were the two Ixalan sets. Despite being the first set with the new paradigm of single sets as opposed to blocks, Wizards announces both the return of Core Sets and a full three-set block to follow it. On top of this, this coincides with the cancellation of Duel Decks, a two-player casual product that had traditionally featured some powerful / valuable reprints and interesting themes. Duel Decks go out with a whimper with the lackluster Elves vs Inventors.
The Reprint Conundrum and Corporate Greed
While all of this is going on, Wizards is also mismanaging their supplemental products, which I touched upon just above with Duel Decks. The primary culprit? Masters sets.
Modern Masters was a set released in 2013. It was a compilation set comprised entirely of reprints with the express goal of getting much needed reprints of expensive cards out into players' hands. The price of entry was raised, with boosters costing $6.99, at the time roughly double the price of a Standard booster pack, and the number of boosters included in a box were decreased from a Standard set as well, down from 36 packs to the exact 24 needed for a draft. Each booster comes with a guaranteed foil card to add value.
Flash forward to 2015: Modern Masters 2015 is announced and released. We begin to see two notable changes here:
1.) The set features a greater number of whiffs at the rare slot, with Wizards hand-waving this away as the set being designed with Limited (drafts) in mind.
2.) The price of a Masters booster increases to $9.99 per pack, despite the reduced EV of the boxes from the previous Masters set.
Still, people are generally happy with the set, as it still had several much-needed reprints within.
2016 has Eternal Masters, which is made to provide reprints for Legacy, Vintage, and Commander, without violating the Reserve List. I'll have a follow up on the Reserve List at some point in this thread, but to boil it down for those unfamiliar with it, it's a promise Wizards made decades ago to not reprint a lengthy list of cards ever no matter what. Eternal Masters initially seems like a bit of a let-down, but it eventually ends up being a hit.
2017 features Modern Masters 2017, a slam dunk. Players love the set, the value within, and praise Wizards for their efforts to deliver a product that the market desperately needed. Wizards returns the favor in kind by announcing it will be the final Modern Masters set, and Masters sets moving forward will be more common and be "themed" as opposed to focusing solely on needed reprints for non-Standard formats. A second Masters set, Iconic Masters, is announced, with a December 2017 release date.
Iconic Masters releases, and despite some early hype, proves to be a flop. Box prices tank, as the decreased value within cannot sustain the $9.99 price point per pack that Wizards suggested. Wizards claims they've learned their lesson, and the next Masters set, Masters 25 (which they announce will release roughly four months later), will be a celebration of the 25th anniversary and the history of the game. To quote Gavin Verhey, senior designer at Wizards of the Coast:
... Masters 25 releases, proves to be an even bigger disappointment than Iconic Masters, and the box prices tank again.
Now, the final impetus for this thread: Ultimate Masters. Ultimate Masters was announced a short while ago, and is already releasing in just ten days. Billed as the final Masters set for the foreseeable future, it boasts a whole load of necessary reprints for Modern and Legacy and Commander, and seems like a fantastic set. The set also features the return of Masterpieces, this time as Box Toppers, with a random one included with each box. And how much is this costing you, the consumer?
Wizards of the Coast has raised the MSRP of a box of Ultimate Masters to $334.99, almost a full hundred dollars above the previous Masters sets.
TL;DR:
1.) Wizards of the Coast has spent the past three years or so mismanaging their product lines across the board, with a smattering of successes here and there, but a whole lot of failures that are quickly swept under the rug.
2.) Wizards of the Coast has gone back and forth with all sorts of changes and announcements to change up their release schedule, and cannot maintain any sense of consistency or stability in their schedule.
3.) New products aimed at beginners feature cards that Wizards designs to be outright bad and of poor value. There are no longer decks designed for competitive play of any real form.
4.) Packaging for boxed products has evolved to mimic Pokemon design, but with far less value than one typically sees in a Pokemon product, which typically features much needed reprints of highly sought after cards.
5.) The Masters line, designed with the aim of providing reprints to competitive players, has been run into the ground, with ludicrous price gouging efforts. Lottery cards, previously an experiment that looked promising but eventually failed, are now used to justify the current outrageous pricing model.
This is also only the tip of the iceberg. I'll likely further expand more on things in future posts in this thread, especially with regards to specific product releases, but I figure this is a good jumping off point for now.
The Age of Uncertainty
The popularity of Magic: the Gathering is said to always be on a gradual upswing by individuals in the know like Mark Rosewater, current head designer of the game. That being said, there are distinct points where the game clearly gets a sudden surge of energy that increases awareness, sales, and general interest. The last big boom was when Theros was released in late September of 2013. Theros was a Greek mythology inspired set that captured the imagination of players, despite whatever flaws we see in the set now, and brought in lapsed players and new players in supposedly great numbers.
Theros and it's two subsequent expansions, Born of the Gods and Journey into Nyx, where followed by Magic 2015 in the summer of 2014. Magic 2015, a Core Set, brought with it a minor change to the overall card frame of the game, but would also be the beginning of a great many changes to the game that, I feel, were to the game's detriment. The first was the announcement of the Clash Packs. Prior to this point, there was a product called Event Decks, released with each new expansion, that were essentially a rough skeleton for a Standard playable deck. Clash Packs, on the other hand, were a two-player product featuring Standard legal decks intended less for competitive play and more for play against one another. The announcement of the Clash Packs came with word that these products would alternate with Event Decks. Clash Packs would release in Summer and Winter, and Event Decks would release in Fall and Spring.
Fall of 2014 featured Khans of Tarkir, which I consider the final successful Magic "block" (a block is a cycle of sets connected by world and theme) before things went off the rails. Summer of 2015 featured Magic Origins, the final Core Set for a good while. With it also came the final Clash Pack. After three of them released and failed, the line was cancelled outright.
In Fall of 2015, Battle for Zendikar released, and brought with it the controversial Expedition cards. Expeditions were initially billed as a one time treat for fans that would appear in Battle for Zendikar and it's lone expansion, Oath of the Gatewatch, to call back to the original Zendikar block many years prior, which had "Hidden Treasures" in the form of incredibly old and valuable cards inserted into a small number of booster packs. While the Expeditions were widely considered a success in terms of popularity, there were already players suggesting these cards were essentially hurting the value of Standard prices, and some believed they existed simply to compensate for the incredibly underwhelming nature of both sets. Event decks, after having been hurt by Clash Packs, were discontinued after Battle for Zendikar.
Shadows Over Innistrad, released in Spring of 2016, saw a few new changes. With Core Sets gone, blocks would now go down from three expansions to two, and thus there would be two blocks per year. Battle for Zendikar was the first smaller block, but Shadows Over Innistrad, the first block to launch in the Spring, also included the first ever (and only) Gift Box not released in the Holiday / Fall season. Gift Boxes were an item which included a large storage box for your collection, an assortment of booster packs, and an alternate art promo card.
Fall of 2016. Kaladesh. Now things begin to unravel quickly. Wizards of the Coast introduces the Planeswalker Decks to replace Intro Packs. Planeswalkers are the main characters of Magic: the Gathering, powerful spellcasters with the unique ability to travel through the void between worlds to visit different planes of existence. Typically, they have been represented via powerful cards that can dominate the battlefield and quickly turn the tide of battle. Planeswalker Decks, however, would see brand new Planeswalker cards printed with beginners in mind. These cards were designed to be bad on purpose, so as to avoid having them see play in Standard or other formats, and the decks themselves were basically still glorified Intro Packs. The key difference, of course, is that there is now a core belief emerging from Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro that they should design clearly inferior products with less value / worth for beginners. Also, Kaladesh saw the return of Expeditions (now renamed Masterpieces) just one year after they were first unveiled for Battle for Zendikar. The new mission statement is that Masterpieces are here to stay, and will now feature in every single expansion moving forward. On a side note, just six months after going twice-a-year, Gift Boxes are discontinued, replaced with Gift Packs, which eliminate both the storage box and the alternate art promo in favor of packaging more reminiscent of Pokemon card game gift packs, but without the value.
Kaladesh ends up becoming the straw that breaks the camel's back, with Standard becoming a mess, and we see the first Standard bans in many years in 2017. Three cards are banned in January, one more is emergency banned in April,and another in June. A whopping four more are banned the following January, primarily due to how Kaladesh block warped Standard.
Spring 2017: Amonkhet. Egyptian-themed world and block. Masterpieces here are given a radical new look to resemble ancient hieroglyphs. The resulting cards featured smaller card art and are much harder to read than the average Magic card. The community essentially revolts over these new lottery cards. By Summer, Wizards of the Coast announces that Masterpieces will be discontinued, and won't appear in the following block.
Fall of 2017 features Ixalan block, which Wizards of the Coast announces will be the final block for the game, as they've decided to transition towards sets being wholly standalone.
Spring 2018, the end of our journey with regards to Standard. Dominaria is released to a lot of acclaim after the disappointments that were the two Ixalan sets. Despite being the first set with the new paradigm of single sets as opposed to blocks, Wizards announces both the return of Core Sets and a full three-set block to follow it. On top of this, this coincides with the cancellation of Duel Decks, a two-player casual product that had traditionally featured some powerful / valuable reprints and interesting themes. Duel Decks go out with a whimper with the lackluster Elves vs Inventors.
The Reprint Conundrum and Corporate Greed
While all of this is going on, Wizards is also mismanaging their supplemental products, which I touched upon just above with Duel Decks. The primary culprit? Masters sets.
Modern Masters was a set released in 2013. It was a compilation set comprised entirely of reprints with the express goal of getting much needed reprints of expensive cards out into players' hands. The price of entry was raised, with boosters costing $6.99, at the time roughly double the price of a Standard booster pack, and the number of boosters included in a box were decreased from a Standard set as well, down from 36 packs to the exact 24 needed for a draft. Each booster comes with a guaranteed foil card to add value.
Flash forward to 2015: Modern Masters 2015 is announced and released. We begin to see two notable changes here:
1.) The set features a greater number of whiffs at the rare slot, with Wizards hand-waving this away as the set being designed with Limited (drafts) in mind.
2.) The price of a Masters booster increases to $9.99 per pack, despite the reduced EV of the boxes from the previous Masters set.
Still, people are generally happy with the set, as it still had several much-needed reprints within.
2016 has Eternal Masters, which is made to provide reprints for Legacy, Vintage, and Commander, without violating the Reserve List. I'll have a follow up on the Reserve List at some point in this thread, but to boil it down for those unfamiliar with it, it's a promise Wizards made decades ago to not reprint a lengthy list of cards ever no matter what. Eternal Masters initially seems like a bit of a let-down, but it eventually ends up being a hit.
2017 features Modern Masters 2017, a slam dunk. Players love the set, the value within, and praise Wizards for their efforts to deliver a product that the market desperately needed. Wizards returns the favor in kind by announcing it will be the final Modern Masters set, and Masters sets moving forward will be more common and be "themed" as opposed to focusing solely on needed reprints for non-Standard formats. A second Masters set, Iconic Masters, is announced, with a December 2017 release date.
Iconic Masters releases, and despite some early hype, proves to be a flop. Box prices tank, as the decreased value within cannot sustain the $9.99 price point per pack that Wizards suggested. Wizards claims they've learned their lesson, and the next Masters set, Masters 25 (which they announce will release roughly four months later), will be a celebration of the 25th anniversary and the history of the game. To quote Gavin Verhey, senior designer at Wizards of the Coast:
Gavin Verhey said:
... Masters 25 releases, proves to be an even bigger disappointment than Iconic Masters, and the box prices tank again.
Now, the final impetus for this thread: Ultimate Masters. Ultimate Masters was announced a short while ago, and is already releasing in just ten days. Billed as the final Masters set for the foreseeable future, it boasts a whole load of necessary reprints for Modern and Legacy and Commander, and seems like a fantastic set. The set also features the return of Masterpieces, this time as Box Toppers, with a random one included with each box. And how much is this costing you, the consumer?
Wizards of the Coast has raised the MSRP of a box of Ultimate Masters to $334.99, almost a full hundred dollars above the previous Masters sets.
TL;DR:
1.) Wizards of the Coast has spent the past three years or so mismanaging their product lines across the board, with a smattering of successes here and there, but a whole lot of failures that are quickly swept under the rug.
2.) Wizards of the Coast has gone back and forth with all sorts of changes and announcements to change up their release schedule, and cannot maintain any sense of consistency or stability in their schedule.
3.) New products aimed at beginners feature cards that Wizards designs to be outright bad and of poor value. There are no longer decks designed for competitive play of any real form.
4.) Packaging for boxed products has evolved to mimic Pokemon design, but with far less value than one typically sees in a Pokemon product, which typically features much needed reprints of highly sought after cards.
5.) The Masters line, designed with the aim of providing reprints to competitive players, has been run into the ground, with ludicrous price gouging efforts. Lottery cards, previously an experiment that looked promising but eventually failed, are now used to justify the current outrageous pricing model.
This is also only the tip of the iceberg. I'll likely further expand more on things in future posts in this thread, especially with regards to specific product releases, but I figure this is a good jumping off point for now.
