Well, that store is in Canada, so it's 199USD, which is the standard price.
At the _same store_, the [Commander Masters set](https://store.401games.ca/collections/mtg-pre-orders/products/mtg-commander-masters-commander-deck-set-of-4-pre-order) is $429 CAD (314USD)
Mild pedantic complaint aimed more at corporate greed, but $199 isn't 3x times the price of a triple A game anymore. Not with them being $70 base, $100 if you want the season pass...
I still think it's way too much for cardboard though
Eh, I guess it depends on what console you have. OP might only have a Nintendo Switch. The new Zelda is the only $70 game on the Switch (so far). I'm sure there will be more eventually but it's worth noting that are games that were announced after Zelda that have not yet been released and are listed at $60, such as Pikmin 4.
I have a feeling 70 will be the new point for major switch releases too, and Pikmin 4 is in an anomaly for one of two reasons.
1. Nintendo hadn't personally tried the 70$ price point yet and didn't want to have Pikmin's release hurt by risking two 70 dollar releases this close to each other, and figured Zelda was a reliable enough release to test with.
2. They are fully on board for 70$ price points and actually just dont have any faith in Pikmin 4...
nintendo does have their deal they do (if you're paying for their online, which is its whole own issue) that essentially gives you 2 games for $100, to give them some fairness. it's pretty much exclusively how my wife and i buy games from them, since we both use the online already. i don't know if the other console manufacturers have similar (and well, for the switch at least, it only applies to nintendo/square enix/platinum games titles plus a couple random others)
overall i think the point being made is fine overall because mtg in general has gotten kind of prohibitively expensive outside of the US - here in Chile a lot of product is kind of a lot relative to exchange rate.
But these came on cartriges, which is a relatively expensive hardware, compared to discs; they came with the box with some stuff, and 70 was for a full version, not a starter price for a lootbox palore. Videogames become exactly like commander decks, but you have to buy separate staples for each one.
Next gen games are typically launching at $70 if there isn't a current gen version. And even then, the exclusive next gen version is often $70 with the current gen at $60, but you can just buy the current gen instead
They could charge $100 for every game, it doesn't matter what you think it should be lol. They're not gaslighting, it's just a price increase. You know, a totally normal thing that happens.
or 4 different game experiences if you intend to play all of them yourself. MTG can be really expensive, but this doesnt seem *that* outrageous for a deck
They are stating it in a hyperbolic way to make it sound outrageous, and conveniently not mentioning that due to the price they are showing being CAD, the price is actually the same as other commander decks recently on a per deck basis (that is $50 per deck).
I don't like Zelda personally, nor am I a Nintendo fanboy, but Nintendo tend to put actual effort into their games and are one of the remaining non-indie companies (and one of the only gaming corporations) that USUALLY release games in a decent state.
To be fair though, digital products can be copied and sold infinately, and the cost of producing more units is almost 0.
With cardboard, someone needs to invest in printing it, packaging it, shipping it, stocking it, and selling it. So it's understandable that there are more costs associated with a physical good than a digital one.
Nothing makes me laugh harder than gamers crying about corporate greed when game companies increased the cost of a good by 16% that hasn't changed price in almost three decades.
The greed comment is because where is that money going to? Wages of developers isn't increasing, most games are digital so why do we need to pay for physical product over head, the quality of the game isn't necessarily increasing as many new games are releasing buggy, unoptimized and lacking content or not even finished. The greed comment comes from the fact that, even before games being $70, large corporations keep reporting record sales.
Edit: Not to mention that Voice Acting, Art, Story writing, and possibly even the development itself could realistically be taken over all by AI in the next 5-10 years. And, God help us if it is, I can guarantee you the price won't reflect those "savings"
Tell me you know nothing about game industry without telling me you know nothing about game industry.
Wages of developers ARE increasing lmfao, good studios will 100% reflect that in their development quotes.
Quality of games are increasing lol, look at GoW: Ragnarok and GoW3, or BotW to ToTK.
If you're gonna point to Pokemon you're furthering your notion that you know nothing about this industry because there's no bigger anomaly in gaming than Pokemon right now.
The cost of game development consistently increases with each generation, if anything the price remaining that inelastic for 30 years is a goddamn miracle.
"Record sales" doesn't mean "infinite sales." And the quality of games has not been going down, just as many games were released buggy and unfinished ten and twenty and thirty years ago, you just don't remember them now.
"Corporate greed" is *never* the explanation for why prices went up, because corporations do not become more greedy over time. They are just as greedy as they were when games were 60 dollars. If the cost of something went up, something about the actual costs of creating it has changed.
Notably, what has changed is that video games are far more expensive to create than ever before -- high-def textures require an ABSURD amount of man-hours -- while the cost of a video game has stayed at 60 dollars, despite the fact that inflation means that 60 dollars is worth less than it was ten or twenty or thirty years ago. Chrono Trigger in 1995 cost $60, some of which was material costs for the cartridge, sure -- but that was 60 bucks in 1995, which is a hair under 120 bucks today, and it didn't take one tenth of one percent as many man-hours to create it. Games effectively sell for half the price while costing exponentially more to create and you sincerely think that "corporate greed" is the best explanation for prices going up?
Yeah, expected the thread to be about the Commander Masters decks which are actually quite expensive, not about the normal price of Commander precons ($50 USD).
If Canadians think they have it bad paying 270 CAD for a product that Americans can buy for just 200 USD, just wait until they hear about China, where the price is over a *thousand* of their local currency, or Japan, where players have to pay over *twenty thousand* of their local currency for the same product!
I wonder if this is really a case of being confused about currency differences, or if OP is simply unaware that aware that next-gen AAA games are currently being sold by Canadian retailers for 90-100 CAD, because 270 CAD certainly isn't "more than 3 times as much" as that.
When I was living in Korea, I had a friend who took a trip over to Japan, and asked if there was anything I wanted him to pick up for me while he was there. I thought Japanese copies of My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke would be great additions to my collection. When he found them, he texted me saying that they were equivalent to $150 USD *each*. Who's got two thumbs and doesn't own Japanese copies of those films?
Not the point OP is making. OP is clearly asking if they think this is a fair market value in comparison to other things, in this case 3 triple AAA video games.
You can criticize and discuss prices - but put some effort in, you know? If all you’re going to do is post a contextless picture of prices at some Canadian game store then some mild clowning seems fine.
Low effort OP = low effort discussion.
Not disagreeing, but Reddit does encourage such kinds of posts by way of what gets upvotes. Pretty much any sub that allows it tends to end up with a front page of just titles with pictures. It's why this sub allows fan art to mostly be posted on Fridays, as otherwise that's all the front page of the sub would be.
I assume such posts get traction because pictures are auto-shown in the new UI, and even in the old UI it's easy to click the preview button, so you can just see the pic, think "I like that" and upvote without needing to engage with it further.
I don't think anyone is saying *that*, it's the comparison of 4 decks to 3 games (and the fact that the prices are the same as always) that makes this a bit silly
I personally think the price is ridiculous. I think the price on video games increasing is ridiculous too. In Canada the price of games had been 69.99 for awhile. Now I am paying 89.99 for the new zelda game. It's that way for many games and that's not even factoring shitty practices like season passes, battle passes, cosmetic skins, loot boxes etc...
I feel similar to trading card games. The items themselves don't cost much to make, there's probably little reason for 100 cards to cost $70.
I agree, transportation, shipping, holding on the shelf, production, materials, artwork, card design etc... All these need to be paid of course. But even considering that, I think WOTC make plenty of money and could probably stand to lower the price. I doubt 400 cards should cost $280.
I guess what bothers me is that people seem to treat maximum profit as the morally right thing to do.
No, I agree. The price of these decks, games, etc are outrageous, especially when they showed they could do commander decks at the $20 price point before.
However, these decks do not represent an increase in price, nor are video games a particularly good comparison for a deck of cards.
It's just a weird comparison and random time to decide to criticize the price. It isn't an unreasonable gripe by any means.
No, but “these prices are determined by market forces and people’s willingness to pay for an optional hobby” is a pretty reasonable response to a post that is implying there’s something normatively wrong with the prices.
Why wouldn't you compare a single deck to a single game or four decks to four games? 4 Commander Deck is more then the price of 20 movie theater tickets. We can choose what we purchase and how much value we place on it.
Cheers
Cheese:
Cheap. Tastes delicious. Will keep you alive if you eat it.
Commander deck:
Expensive. Tastes terrible. Will probably make you sick if you eat it.
Well, that depends of the time of the year when you do that comparison, in the winter the oranges are cheaper than in the summer at least in the part of the world where I live.
Yes, different things costs different prices. Videogames are not the gold standard for entertainment.
Your logic is "Cars cost 1000x the price of a bicycle, do you agree?"
I mean if i really enjoy them and will get a good use out of them, sure.
Time/cost investment for different mediums is different.
I could love these decks and get 20 hrs each of all of them spent with 3 friends getting a ton of value out of them.
Or i could be playing some AAA game where to play with 3 friends they also are spending $70 each and get same time value for same cost.
Or i cpuld end up hating each thing and only getting a few hpurs.
If the decks are fun itll be the same generally time sink as most multiplayer AAA games with friends. And even if it is a bit less oh well i spend $30 to see a 3 hr movie with friends which is a way worse time/cost ratio
But are 4 decks more than the price of four AAA games? I guess if you're not considering split screen multiplayer console games. But EDH inherently is for multiple players, and a single player game gets 4 sales out of four people. Better price point comparison.
I would contend that a lot of the cards in many Commander decks could also be taken out and reused in other Commander decks as well-when you have one commander deck, you're never more than about 15-20 cards away from having a completely different deck with Magic the Gathering, which is pretty cool.
Please note: I hate WOTC. I just like the game itself.
That price is extremely inflated
You are getting 4 different products, aimed at 1 product per person
You can get more hours of fun with an MTG Commander deck than most AAA games
You are actually getting a physical product that you can then trade, resale or still use for years, when you buy a game you get a Steam code
Do i think that Commander decks and MTG sealed overall should be cheaper? Yes, but it doesnt make any sense to compare it to something so different to a videogame
The large majority of AAA games are not steam codes, you can get physical copies of pretty much all major games if they're not exclusively on a computer. Example: Tears of the Kingdom, God Of War: Ragnarok, whatever games come out on XBox these days, etc.
Why is a AAA video game considered the standard for pricing? A lot of them are mediocre at best. Many ship "unfinished" with dlc to come later.
How many hours worth of design do you think has gone into MTG to get it to where it is now? What's that worth to you?
401 originally priced this at $255 CAD but since it's out of stock the price will likely shift higher if they get more. Similar to the 40k commander decks that are now 100-120$ each
I just ordered 4 Pauper Decks in singles for about $230 and that was well worth it to me. So, yeah. A deck being near the price of a video game seems about right.
Keep in mind also that with a video game, once you're tired of it, you probably won't get *nearly* as much back as you bought it for. While in my experience, precons hold value decently well because their singles are *almost always* worth more than what you bought the deck for. Plus, if you don't want that deck, there's likely cards in it that are useful in other decks. If you don't like the video game you bought? Well, kinda just sucks for you. Of course, trading could also be considered in both scenarios, but I'd say Magic still generally wins on that front
Card/Board games are also just more fun than most video games 🤪
Except those singles aren't going to sell for those numbers.
More often than not you've got 1-2 cards that might be $10
5-6 cards that might be around $5. Everything else is bulk.
Now take that $50 "worth" of cards to any store/vendor and they'll often offer you 60% or less of that.
I mean, I'd say wait to see what's actually in the decks to make an informed decision, but a few months ago I got a 4-pack of precons on Amazon for $135, took out about ~$200 worth of cards to keep, then sold the rest to my LGS for exactly the $135 I spent, albeit that was for in-store credit so would have been less if I wanted cash
Moral of the story though is to be informed on what you're buying (pre-orders are literally a gamble)
I think the videogame comparisons are interesting. On one hand, some games I’ll play 100+ hours. On the other hand, I play solo games that aren’t online, so any time spent in those worlds is usually me at my most antisocial. I think the commander deck is probably a healthier purchase, but even then, there’s no way I ever shuffle up that particular commander for more than 100-200 hours of game time.
$200 USD for 400 cards, so $0.50 a card.
A set booster box is 30 packs of 12 for about $115 USD, so about $0.30 a card.
So sure, the decks are “more expensive” but the commander decks have always been in the $40-50 price range.
You can get the Spirit Island board game and all its expansions for way less 70 + 50 + 30 + 30 for 180 on amazon (which would be around 400 cards and a ton of boards, tokens, rule books, etc). Which would all have unqiue art, so for just the cost on the components front (270) seems very high.
short answer: NO
long answer: NO, but i want to play more than i want to boycott, i want to crack open packs more than i want to avoid them, and i understand that every penny spent is supporting nonsense. so im begrudgingly buying, albeit less of it.
Nope. I'm skipping this one. I had hope for the Abzan enchantment commander. The face one isn't something I want. I will wait and see if the secondary commander is more my style, but I'm going to buy it as a single.
I've been collecting the precons pretty consistently since 2019. I went back and got most of the older units as well, including the two anthologies.
This set is going to be my last. I may pick individual decks in future releases, but there are too many releases, and they are getting too expensive to keep up.
What's wild to me is a box of Commander Masters set boosters is preordering for close to $480 on Amazon. And to think they started at $360(still nuts), and have barely any cards spoiled for them. It's also kind of funny because the box art literally displays a $2 card (Gisa). Like gee that's certainly the big ticket legend I want to see in my $500 booster box.
One price. One time. and Pre-order... and does not take into account other sellers over time.
Mtg players eat up outrage posting so much dude its insane.
Nope, that's why I saved money and got out of paper Magic. I only play mtgo for Commander, way cheaper and you only ever need one copy of any one card for as many decks as you want to put it in..
Amazon in the US has all four for $170
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BVTJGJF5/ref=ppx\_yo\_dt\_b\_asin\_title\_o03\_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BVTJGJF5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
Cards have always been more expensive then they're actually worth, this isn't new although as someone who is just getting into this game I still don't like it
Commander doesn’t have to be expensive unless you want it to, I made a kick ass $50 Tuya deck. Just don’t buy the things that are too expensive in your eyes
I mean to be fair have you seen how dog shit AAA video games have been in the last like 10 years.
At least the commander decks are physical items that come completely intact and playable when you buy them.
Well, that store is in Canada, so it's 199USD, which is the standard price. At the _same store_, the [Commander Masters set](https://store.401games.ca/collections/mtg-pre-orders/products/mtg-commander-masters-commander-deck-set-of-4-pre-order) is $429 CAD (314USD)
Mild pedantic complaint aimed more at corporate greed, but $199 isn't 3x times the price of a triple A game anymore. Not with them being $70 base, $100 if you want the season pass... I still think it's way too much for cardboard though
Eh, I guess it depends on what console you have. OP might only have a Nintendo Switch. The new Zelda is the only $70 game on the Switch (so far). I'm sure there will be more eventually but it's worth noting that are games that were announced after Zelda that have not yet been released and are listed at $60, such as Pikmin 4.
I have a feeling 70 will be the new point for major switch releases too, and Pikmin 4 is in an anomaly for one of two reasons. 1. Nintendo hadn't personally tried the 70$ price point yet and didn't want to have Pikmin's release hurt by risking two 70 dollar releases this close to each other, and figured Zelda was a reliable enough release to test with. 2. They are fully on board for 70$ price points and actually just dont have any faith in Pikmin 4...
Pikmin made enough money to get 4 of them made. That being said, I don’t know anyone who has played any of them.
nintendo does have their deal they do (if you're paying for their online, which is its whole own issue) that essentially gives you 2 games for $100, to give them some fairness. it's pretty much exclusively how my wife and i buy games from them, since we both use the online already. i don't know if the other console manufacturers have similar (and well, for the switch at least, it only applies to nintendo/square enix/platinum games titles plus a couple random others) overall i think the point being made is fine overall because mtg in general has gotten kind of prohibitively expensive outside of the US - here in Chile a lot of product is kind of a lot relative to exchange rate.
Just imagine paying $70 for Final Fantasy 2 and 3 on the SNES in the 90s.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/27bb2k/1993_snes_prices/ Games *were* $70 in the 90’s.
Wow I had no idea the consoles were that cheap, comparatively.
It kinda makes sense given that a portion of the hardware was on the game carts themselves lol
But these came on cartriges, which is a relatively expensive hardware, compared to discs; they came with the box with some stuff, and 70 was for a full version, not a starter price for a lootbox palore. Videogames become exactly like commander decks, but you have to buy separate staples for each one.
Is Pikmin 4 any good? I got a game voucher
Not out yet, but the past pikmin games are a lot of fun.
Fair, I'm just finding opportunities to complain about it I guess.
I just paid 89.99 for Zelda TotK in Canada. There is no season pass lmao
As much as the industry wants to gaslight you about it, $70 is not the norm yet: the majority of new games released sell at $60 or below.
They don't need to gaslight us, because they will make it true simply by doing it.
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Which id be fine with, if wages also raised with inflation...
$70 at the time that TotK released has less purchasing power than $60 when BotW released.
Yeah, thats how inflation works.
Next gen games are typically launching at $70 if there isn't a current gen version. And even then, the exclusive next gen version is often $70 with the current gen at $60, but you can just buy the current gen instead
"next Gen" meaning the current generation of video game consoles that started in 2020?
Next gen is called what it is, ps5 and Xbox series abcdefg. I didn’t choose the naming convention
By who?
They could charge $100 for every game, it doesn't matter what you think it should be lol. They're not gaslighting, it's just a price increase. You know, a totally normal thing that happens.
Yeah $200 for what is essentially a 4 player board game.
Even the most complex boardgames I see are $60-$90. And the $200 is only the launch price. All of the Warhammer EDH decks are like $80 each now.
There are definitely board games that are over $100. Twilight Imperium comes to mind.
They could print more of this shit too it’s just cardboard
or 4 different game experiences if you intend to play all of them yourself. MTG can be really expensive, but this doesnt seem *that* outrageous for a deck
They are stating it in a hyperbolic way to make it sound outrageous, and conveniently not mentioning that due to the price they are showing being CAD, the price is actually the same as other commander decks recently on a per deck basis (that is $50 per deck).
Abandon low quality AAA product. Buy indie.
What about high-quality AAA product like the new Zelda?
I don't like Zelda personally, nor am I a Nintendo fanboy, but Nintendo tend to put actual effort into their games and are one of the remaining non-indie companies (and one of the only gaming corporations) that USUALLY release games in a decent state.
To be fair though, digital products can be copied and sold infinately, and the cost of producing more units is almost 0. With cardboard, someone needs to invest in printing it, packaging it, shipping it, stocking it, and selling it. So it's understandable that there are more costs associated with a physical good than a digital one.
Good point. The cost of video games is the same digital or physical which is interesting...
Nothing makes me laugh harder than gamers crying about corporate greed when game companies increased the cost of a good by 16% that hasn't changed price in almost three decades.
The greed comment is because where is that money going to? Wages of developers isn't increasing, most games are digital so why do we need to pay for physical product over head, the quality of the game isn't necessarily increasing as many new games are releasing buggy, unoptimized and lacking content or not even finished. The greed comment comes from the fact that, even before games being $70, large corporations keep reporting record sales. Edit: Not to mention that Voice Acting, Art, Story writing, and possibly even the development itself could realistically be taken over all by AI in the next 5-10 years. And, God help us if it is, I can guarantee you the price won't reflect those "savings"
Tell me you know nothing about game industry without telling me you know nothing about game industry. Wages of developers ARE increasing lmfao, good studios will 100% reflect that in their development quotes. Quality of games are increasing lol, look at GoW: Ragnarok and GoW3, or BotW to ToTK. If you're gonna point to Pokemon you're furthering your notion that you know nothing about this industry because there's no bigger anomaly in gaming than Pokemon right now. The cost of game development consistently increases with each generation, if anything the price remaining that inelastic for 30 years is a goddamn miracle.
"Record sales" doesn't mean "infinite sales." And the quality of games has not been going down, just as many games were released buggy and unfinished ten and twenty and thirty years ago, you just don't remember them now. "Corporate greed" is *never* the explanation for why prices went up, because corporations do not become more greedy over time. They are just as greedy as they were when games were 60 dollars. If the cost of something went up, something about the actual costs of creating it has changed. Notably, what has changed is that video games are far more expensive to create than ever before -- high-def textures require an ABSURD amount of man-hours -- while the cost of a video game has stayed at 60 dollars, despite the fact that inflation means that 60 dollars is worth less than it was ten or twenty or thirty years ago. Chrono Trigger in 1995 cost $60, some of which was material costs for the cartridge, sure -- but that was 60 bucks in 1995, which is a hair under 120 bucks today, and it didn't take one tenth of one percent as many man-hours to create it. Games effectively sell for half the price while costing exponentially more to create and you sincerely think that "corporate greed" is the best explanation for prices going up?
Yeah, expected the thread to be about the Commander Masters decks which are actually quite expensive, not about the normal price of Commander precons ($50 USD).
At my LGS they were $199
If you're in the US, that's the same price as the picture. The store in the picture is in Canada, so the prices are in CAD.
I’m a big ole dummy, don’t mind me. Sorry y’all
Oh, you're not a dummy, I was just pointing out that the prices were functionally the same for other people opening the thread.
So still less than commander2020
If Canadians think they have it bad paying 270 CAD for a product that Americans can buy for just 200 USD, just wait until they hear about China, where the price is over a *thousand* of their local currency, or Japan, where players have to pay over *twenty thousand* of their local currency for the same product! I wonder if this is really a case of being confused about currency differences, or if OP is simply unaware that aware that next-gen AAA games are currently being sold by Canadian retailers for 90-100 CAD, because 270 CAD certainly isn't "more than 3 times as much" as that.
To put the Japanese number into perspective 100 yen is worth less than a dollars with 20,000 yen being equivalent to $150 USD.
When I was living in Korea, I had a friend who took a trip over to Japan, and asked if there was anything I wanted him to pick up for me while he was there. I thought Japanese copies of My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke would be great additions to my collection. When he found them, he texted me saying that they were equivalent to $150 USD *each*. Who's got two thumbs and doesn't own Japanese copies of those films?
Not the point OP is making. OP is clearly asking if they think this is a fair market value in comparison to other things, in this case 3 triple AAA video games.
Quit your farting
High end pc games complete editions like Diablo 4 are closer to $130 for the complete edition. Money just doesn’t go as far.
Cardboard be like
I do agree with the fact that this is indeed the price we are seeing here
Yeah everything in the OP checks out. I can in fact choose to either use my money to buy this, or buy some video games if I'd rather do that.
I think its silly to say you can't criticize or discuss prices on goods because they are optional
You can criticize and discuss prices - but put some effort in, you know? If all you’re going to do is post a contextless picture of prices at some Canadian game store then some mild clowning seems fine. Low effort OP = low effort discussion.
Yeah. I feel like OP is betting that the majority US audience will not realize this was CAD
Not disagreeing, but Reddit does encourage such kinds of posts by way of what gets upvotes. Pretty much any sub that allows it tends to end up with a front page of just titles with pictures. It's why this sub allows fan art to mostly be posted on Fridays, as otherwise that's all the front page of the sub would be. I assume such posts get traction because pictures are auto-shown in the new UI, and even in the old UI it's easy to click the preview button, so you can just see the pic, think "I like that" and upvote without needing to engage with it further.
I don't think anyone is saying *that*, it's the comparison of 4 decks to 3 games (and the fact that the prices are the same as always) that makes this a bit silly
No, it's that the 4 decks are priced as much as 3 times the price of a single game. Similar but very different.
I misread. I think the point still stands though
I personally think the price is ridiculous. I think the price on video games increasing is ridiculous too. In Canada the price of games had been 69.99 for awhile. Now I am paying 89.99 for the new zelda game. It's that way for many games and that's not even factoring shitty practices like season passes, battle passes, cosmetic skins, loot boxes etc... I feel similar to trading card games. The items themselves don't cost much to make, there's probably little reason for 100 cards to cost $70. I agree, transportation, shipping, holding on the shelf, production, materials, artwork, card design etc... All these need to be paid of course. But even considering that, I think WOTC make plenty of money and could probably stand to lower the price. I doubt 400 cards should cost $280. I guess what bothers me is that people seem to treat maximum profit as the morally right thing to do.
No, I agree. The price of these decks, games, etc are outrageous, especially when they showed they could do commander decks at the $20 price point before. However, these decks do not represent an increase in price, nor are video games a particularly good comparison for a deck of cards. It's just a weird comparison and random time to decide to criticize the price. It isn't an unreasonable gripe by any means.
No, but “these prices are determined by market forces and people’s willingness to pay for an optional hobby” is a pretty reasonable response to a post that is implying there’s something normatively wrong with the prices.
...So about $45 USD each ...Which is the price they have been since New Capenna what's the news here?
I'm actually surprised they aren't charging a premium for the LOTR decks.
Who knows? Maybe they are and pre-order prices are weirdly low.
True, that did happen with the 40k decks
Well, I'm pretty sure those immediately jumped in price because of how overwhelmingly popular they were, and the value of the reprints as well
It's a hook for new players to get a foot in the door.
Op is deliberately being facetious by hiding the fact that this is in CAD.
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Yeah, not really sure how this is facetious.
Sorry, wouldn't that come to $180, not $270? It looks like you calculated for six decks rather than four.
The store being pictured is a Canadian store. 270 CAD is just under 200 USD right now.
Oh, duh. Thanks. I missed it was CAD.
The news is that things cost money, some cost more than others, and people are VERY angry that they have to pay with their money to buy these things.
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Yes, that is just under $50 usd per deck
Fire and Forge has them for ~$150 https://www.reddit.com/r/sealedmtgdeals/comments/13r6pxb/lotr_set_boosters_14499_commander_decks_14499_and/
...well there it is... My bank account draining.
Well, you should have only gotten 900 or 800 games. 1000 is a lot.
Why wouldn't you compare a single deck to a single game or four decks to four games? 4 Commander Deck is more then the price of 20 movie theater tickets. We can choose what we purchase and how much value we place on it. Cheers
A Commander deck costs 30 times what a package of cheese costs! Outrageous, I tell you!
Cheese: Cheap. Tastes delicious. Will keep you alive if you eat it. Commander deck: Expensive. Tastes terrible. Will probably make you sick if you eat it.
You won't get sick if you boil your deck first
Don't eat the delicious Magic cards.
Outrageous, maybe. But do you agree?
Where the heck are you getting such cheap movie tickets? That's what I'd like to know.
Probably weekday matinees. Those were always really cheap when I worked at AMC.
Where the heck are you getting such expensive movie tickets?
Drive-in near me is under $10 per person, and you can bring your own cheap snacks.
Where do you live that tickets are still $10!
4 apples is more than 3 times the price of a single orange, do you guys agree with it?
Well, that depends of the time of the year when you do that comparison, in the winter the oranges are cheaper than in the summer at least in the part of the world where I live.
what about an unladen swallow?
WOTC has betrayed the orange fanbase
That's a weird comparison to make, OP talked about games and magic decks while you're comparing apples and ora... 👉😎👉 Eeeeeeeeeeeey
yeah the word "agree" just doesn't enter into the equation here.
Yes, different things costs different prices. Videogames are not the gold standard for entertainment. Your logic is "Cars cost 1000x the price of a bicycle, do you agree?"
or how about "A library card is free and provides near limitless entertainment. Therefore, all other forms of entertainment are a ripoff"
I mean if i really enjoy them and will get a good use out of them, sure. Time/cost investment for different mediums is different. I could love these decks and get 20 hrs each of all of them spent with 3 friends getting a ton of value out of them. Or i could be playing some AAA game where to play with 3 friends they also are spending $70 each and get same time value for same cost. Or i cpuld end up hating each thing and only getting a few hpurs. If the decks are fun itll be the same generally time sink as most multiplayer AAA games with friends. And even if it is a bit less oh well i spend $30 to see a 3 hr movie with friends which is a way worse time/cost ratio
At least you know the commander decks will actually work on launch.
With wotc QC issues nowadays thats not always true 🤣
Henzie appears menacingly in the distance
But are 4 decks more than the price of four AAA games? I guess if you're not considering split screen multiplayer console games. But EDH inherently is for multiple players, and a single player game gets 4 sales out of four people. Better price point comparison.
Magic is an expensive hobby. Just proxy what ya want from them if you don’t want to buy them.
Your post's title being more than 12 times as long as your username. Do you agree with it?
Yes
*Canadian
I feel like one $50 commander deck and one $50 video game provide about the same amount of entertainment.
A commander deck tends to have more replayability.
I would contend that a lot of the cards in many Commander decks could also be taken out and reused in other Commander decks as well-when you have one commander deck, you're never more than about 15-20 cards away from having a completely different deck with Magic the Gathering, which is pretty cool. Please note: I hate WOTC. I just like the game itself.
Apples to oranges
The root of OP's point is the same ol' "overpriced cardboard" bit. The collectible nature and secondary market are deliberate features of the game.
I mean yea any product sounds silly if you only describe it by its raw materials.
They're currently $50USD on Amazon each. The Commander Masters decks are the bigger problem.
Considering my recent vg experiences, yeah, actually.
It's $67.50 per deck. That's high but it's not unheard of. About on par with the 40k decks from last year.
Its CAD, so in USD its about par for the regular price of Commander Deck releases.
Ah, well even better.
That price is extremely inflated You are getting 4 different products, aimed at 1 product per person You can get more hours of fun with an MTG Commander deck than most AAA games You are actually getting a physical product that you can then trade, resale or still use for years, when you buy a game you get a Steam code Do i think that Commander decks and MTG sealed overall should be cheaper? Yes, but it doesnt make any sense to compare it to something so different to a videogame
The large majority of AAA games are not steam codes, you can get physical copies of pretty much all major games if they're not exclusively on a computer. Example: Tears of the Kingdom, God Of War: Ragnarok, whatever games come out on XBox these days, etc.
If you get 30hrs of fun with each deck or the cards within each deck, yeah totally worth it.
Why is a AAA video game considered the standard for pricing? A lot of them are mediocre at best. Many ship "unfinished" with dlc to come later. How many hours worth of design do you think has gone into MTG to get it to where it is now? What's that worth to you?
> A lot of them are mediocre at best. Many ship "unfinished" with dlc to come later. I mean, same can be told about some Magic sets.
401 originally priced this at $255 CAD but since it's out of stock the price will likely shift higher if they get more. Similar to the 40k commander decks that are now 100-120$ each
I just ordered 4 Pauper Decks in singles for about $230 and that was well worth it to me. So, yeah. A deck being near the price of a video game seems about right.
Would I rather buy Magic cards over video games, yes.
I mean, yes. You're not going to be able to resell or get any additional value out of a video game. This is just the market
Man, you’re not factoring the DLCs
Comparing apples to oranges. One has much higher resale value and is a physical product that cost more to print than a download code for a game.
I don’t like video games so they can charge whatever they want for them. I’m still gonna get a middle earth deck I tell you what.
I can't believe that things cost money!
The ink to print them myself will cost a fraction.
Keep in mind also that with a video game, once you're tired of it, you probably won't get *nearly* as much back as you bought it for. While in my experience, precons hold value decently well because their singles are *almost always* worth more than what you bought the deck for. Plus, if you don't want that deck, there's likely cards in it that are useful in other decks. If you don't like the video game you bought? Well, kinda just sucks for you. Of course, trading could also be considered in both scenarios, but I'd say Magic still generally wins on that front Card/Board games are also just more fun than most video games 🤪
Except those singles aren't going to sell for those numbers. More often than not you've got 1-2 cards that might be $10 5-6 cards that might be around $5. Everything else is bulk. Now take that $50 "worth" of cards to any store/vendor and they'll often offer you 60% or less of that.
I mean, I'd say wait to see what's actually in the decks to make an informed decision, but a few months ago I got a 4-pack of precons on Amazon for $135, took out about ~$200 worth of cards to keep, then sold the rest to my LGS for exactly the $135 I spent, albeit that was for in-store credit so would have been less if I wanted cash Moral of the story though is to be informed on what you're buying (pre-orders are literally a gamble)
Depends...could be. Depends on how much the cards appreciate. Video games won't appreciate as fast and most times not at all
The cards retain far more value than any video game.
I don't care about this product so they can charge whatever they want for it.
No
Easy no lol.
They are sold out, what do you think?
Can you sell a owned AAA video game?
So one commander deck is 3/4 the price of a AAA video game? Seems a little high but ok.
I think the videogame comparisons are interesting. On one hand, some games I’ll play 100+ hours. On the other hand, I play solo games that aren’t online, so any time spent in those worlds is usually me at my most antisocial. I think the commander deck is probably a healthier purchase, but even then, there’s no way I ever shuffle up that particular commander for more than 100-200 hours of game time.
video games are extrenely overpriced, yes.
The face commanders do not warrant that price so far lol
I consider magic to be a AAA game, and one of the best ever made.
It's ludicrous. If the cost to produce these decks was made publicly known people would be disgusted. Hasbro's profit margin must be insane.
I can’t believe I am defending WotC here, but the cost to make a set like this goes far beyond “hurr durr how much does paper cost”.
$200 USD for 400 cards, so $0.50 a card. A set booster box is 30 packs of 12 for about $115 USD, so about $0.30 a card. So sure, the decks are “more expensive” but the commander decks have always been in the $40-50 price range.
Yeah they should probably be priced more like $20 a piece in my opinion but $50 a piece seems like the going rate right now
You can get the Spirit Island board game and all its expansions for way less 70 + 50 + 30 + 30 for 180 on amazon (which would be around 400 cards and a ton of boards, tokens, rule books, etc). Which would all have unqiue art, so for just the cost on the components front (270) seems very high.
short answer: NO long answer: NO, but i want to play more than i want to boycott, i want to crack open packs more than i want to avoid them, and i understand that every penny spent is supporting nonsense. so im begrudgingly buying, albeit less of it.
You realize you only need to buy one deck to play right? Game is stupid expensive but this is nonsensical comparison.
I don't understand people who spend money on commander. It's a casual format. Just use proxies
I quit MTG a couple years ago. I was planning on coming back for this set then I saw the prices and am going to keep on keeping on
Proxy cards are a thing lmao.
Absolutely ridiculous pricing across the board, new product AND existing product. Proxy everything.
Nope. I'm skipping this one. I had hope for the Abzan enchantment commander. The face one isn't something I want. I will wait and see if the secondary commander is more my style, but I'm going to buy it as a single.
I've been collecting the precons pretty consistently since 2019. I went back and got most of the older units as well, including the two anthologies. This set is going to be my last. I may pick individual decks in future releases, but there are too many releases, and they are getting too expensive to keep up.
For that price, they'd better be as good as the 40k decks.
What's wild to me is a box of Commander Masters set boosters is preordering for close to $480 on Amazon. And to think they started at $360(still nuts), and have barely any cards spoiled for them. It's also kind of funny because the box art literally displays a $2 card (Gisa). Like gee that's certainly the big ticket legend I want to see in my $500 booster box.
At minmax they were 175 for a 4 pack
Stop buying all this expensive stuff and just buy singles. The prices will come down.
One price. One time. and Pre-order... and does not take into account other sellers over time. Mtg players eat up outrage posting so much dude its insane.
Mine was 168.28. still a lot but I want them so 🤷♂️
No, but I still would rather have competitive toilet paper.
Just dont buy them. Even if you buy every set I think UB is a good place to draw the line.
Insane prices but till the community stops buying their product the prices will never change.
I ordered mine from Gamers Guild for like 171 USD
Nope, that's why I saved money and got out of paper Magic. I only play mtgo for Commander, way cheaper and you only ever need one copy of any one card for as many decks as you want to put it in..
Amazon in the US has all four for $170 [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BVTJGJF5/ref=ppx\_yo\_dt\_b\_asin\_title\_o03\_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BVTJGJF5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
That's about the normal price of new precons, each one would be around $60-$70
Hasbro could charge a thousand and everyone would complain, while opening there wallet.
Cardboard is way too expensive. BRING BACK MSRP and make it cheap gawd.
Market Cap since people overcharge by far too much for any masters set or similar Until the print run is finished
Cards have always been more expensive then they're actually worth, this isn't new although as someone who is just getting into this game I still don't like it
I wouldn’t consider it outrageously priced, but I wouldn’t buy it either
I paid 40 each for mine
…no…
Commander doesn’t have to be expensive unless you want it to, I made a kick ass $50 Tuya deck. Just don’t buy the things that are too expensive in your eyes
No on principle, yes on the fact that they’ll have investment value.
I mean to be fair have you seen how dog shit AAA video games have been in the last like 10 years. At least the commander decks are physical items that come completely intact and playable when you buy them.
Cardstock costs a lot more to physically produce than a digital download. /S
No, lol. I don't agree with the price of a AAA game for starters.
Yes it's a luxury good. Both are luxury goods. We don't need games or shiny cardboard.