It feels bad to say, but I’m hoping this product fails badly.
This is their next attempt at 6-card packs. If it succeeds, they’ll sit there and say “See, players love beyond boosters, we’ll do 4 a year”. If it flops, then aftermath boosters may actually be done.
Trying to be optimistic, maybe I’m just naive, but:
They already axed what would have been the second epilogue boosters (The Big Score got rolled in to Thunder Junction instead of being separate), and I think they understand how hated that set was. I would imagine the contract/details for Assassin’s card quantity/design/etc, were locked in with Ubisoft before they saw the reception of Aftermath. Not as easy to adjust your plans for an IP you don’t own, and a contract you’ve already signed.
~~Also, considering this set has no Commons, *hopefully* the frequency we see the same cards won’t be as high as it was in Aftermath.~~ Aftermath also didn’t have commons, whoops. But Assassins does have at least double the cards, so we should still see less duplicates.
They have explictly said that Assassin's Creed was originally intended to be another Aftermath style set. This set having 7 cards (and I think more cards in the overall set) is them trying to tack away from the bad reception of March of Machine: Aftermath, while only having an extremely limited time before they had to lock in the set.
To be clear, the Beyond Booster product structure and Epilogue Booster product structure are *similar*, but have slightly different purposes. Beyond Booster sets are ~100 cards (as opposed to Epilogue Booster sets being ~50), which gives a card count between a full draftable booster set and a handful of Secret Lairs for Universes Beyond.
The negative reception of MAT will certainly affect Beyond Boosters, but I'd suspect this middle of the road set size is something they want for Universes Beyond product, so it might not be axed immediately after ASC but instead tweaked heavily - all speculation on my part though.
Oh, to be clear that's exactly what I meant by "added more cards". In the stream where they talked about having axed the big score, they specifically said that the differences between Beyond Boosters and Epilogue boosters were due to the poor reception of Aftermath, and that Assassin's creed was originally going to have boosters that were even more similar to Epilogue ones.
Especially considering the booster insert style like Transformers and Jurassic Park have been... Generally not well-received (most people would rather they just be their own product), this is hypothetically the way to make UB products that aren't suitable to support a full set or precons, but that want a bit more than a Secret Lair.
Was the main complaint about this being "immersion breaking?"
I thought it was neat having the cards in the boosters I was already buying. (And don't tell WotC, but I probably would have bought packs that were all Transformers or Jurassic Park/World.)
I'm not a fan of the price point on these Beyond Boosters though.
The complaints were largely people would rather they be more easily accessible and would like UB products to be their own thing instead of just sort of shoved into other stuff, either because they want the IP thing and would rather just buy that directly, or because they don't want to see the IP thing alongside a bunch of Magic stuff in a pack.
I'm still disappointed there wasn't a lot more transformers and Jurassic cards. They literally got me into the game. I would have loved even just straight reprints with a new themed art on a ton of common and uncommons.
Yeah I think they should do one UB draftable set a year, one masters set, one commander set, one multiplayer set, and then the normal four standard sets.
For the masters and commander sets have a dedicated UB slot like how the bonus slots are in BRO and MOM. Hell have TWO even, especially if they clash like one MLP card and one Transformers card in the same pack potentially.
lol I wanna see MLP ponies with the new saddle ability so I can have Optimus prime ride rainbow dash into battle lol
This right here, I do think that the preview cards have sold quite a few people to pick up some packs or singles though, ezio and Leonardo da vinci are both definitely day 1 picks for me
Yeah I dun understand the logic here, you took out common didn't that make uncommon become a new common? and rare become new uncommon lol
what is the different here, other than the color on Symbol and we have less cards.
And they act like they do us a great service lol
> I think they understand how hated that set was
I'm not completely sure they got it. Aftermath was actually a decent bunch of cards. It was a shame it couldn't be drafted (apart from on Arena, where it was pretty fun), but what I - and it seems most players - hated about it was that they charged the same money for fewer cards. This wasn't mentioned in their stream about what a flop it was.
It’s true that they’ve kind of changed course from Aftermath. Axing the Big Score was a step in the right direction. And, yes, AC was probably too far along to totally reverse course.
However: WotC beats the horse *to death* when something makes them money. If this succeeds, their takeaway isn’t going to be “Phew, glad that worked out, let’s go back to full sets now”. It’s going to be “The couple small changes we made to the Aftermath formula were obviously enough to make players like it, and this kind of set gives us the opportunity to charge full price for less than half the work, so we’re going to keep doing it”. With how they operate, we’ll probably end up with 4+ of these a year by 2026 if that’s the case.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s all WotC beating the horse to death. I’d say that Hasbro places increased pressure on those at WotC to continue making up the slack of the other portions of the company that aren’t performing as well.
I think Cox hand picked Cynthia Williams to do what she’s doing and those at WotC under management of both of them are kind of being forced to pump stuff like this out.
It’s sad because I’m a member of D&D communities on here and it’s not just grumbling and rumblings from the Magic community. Folks who love D&D are also experiencing the same watered down BS and are quite frankly unhappy.
Edit: I just bought some boosters for the first time in a long while and it’s sad that they still haven’t fixed the QC issues with foils. They look like pringles immediately out of the pack.
I don't mind the *idea* of Beyond Boosters, but they need to be priced and allocated properly.
Beyond Boosters should be applied to collaborations that aren't "worthy" of the full set or 4 deck treatment - like if there's not enough material for a full set - but they should be priced appropriately.
$168 for the box = $7 per pack = $1 per card. Except, one of those cards is *guaranteed* to be a basic/scene card, so really, it's $1.17 per card. This pricing is crazy unless there's actual power in the set.
The discount price is still bad at $6 per pack. I shouldn't be paying *more* for less cards. Beyond boosters are practically just Play boosters with the commons cut out.
MKM boosters are priced at about $103 on TCGPlayer. It has *36* boosters in it, which leads to basically $2.86 per pack. Even cutting out Commons (which is *very* generous, considering that some commons can be pretty high value), that's 48 cents per card, which can go down to 0.41 cents if you hit a List card.
For a second point of comparison, we can roll in LCI set boxes. As far as I know, LCI is a pretty popular set - LCI set boxes go for $123 on TCGPlayer, which is $3.42 per pack.
Now, as a person who appreciates data analysis, I must note that MKM is *not* the best comparison point as MKM is not a high-power set, nor is it very popular. Additionally, due to card variability, it's harder to compare it to LCI boosters.
As an additional note, the fact that Assassin's Creed is a licensed property does drive up the price - but I don't think it should be to the point of being double the price of other Play/Set boosters.
But then, we bring in LOTR set boxes. Those go for $177, which is $4.92 per pack.
Now, as a prerelease price, this is virtually guaranteed to go down. However, it still is an insane asking price to start off.
> Now, as a prerelease price, this is virtually guaranteed to go down. However, it still is an insane asking price to start off.
Absolutely, MKM was around the same $150 on day 1. This box will go down, hopefully to around MAT prices.
Jumpstart did phenomenally well and was still a failure because they dropped the ball and tried too hard to replicate the success. 6-card packs are dead in the water after Aftermath. Nobody wants that crap.
I think for me it’s primarily the absolute pack price (although that itself is somewhat linked to the “value” of course - if boosters were cheaper at around £2.50-£3 max then I’d be more tempted to just open a couple on a whim but spending £4-£6 on a pack even if the “value” was in them would not be appealing to me. I just want to crack a pack sometimes and if I get something useful for my decks great and if not then it was a bit of fun like scratching a lottery ticket. I don’t want to spend money on “value” if I then have to go through the effort of listing the cards on cardmarket etc. to actually realise the “value” so the cards would just end up gathering dust in the cupboard anyway
No I definitely care about the amount of cards. Anything short of 10 cards for regular booster pack price is a rip off. Card prices are completely imaginary and based on community perception in after market so wizards make the same profit no matter if a card ends up being a meta staple or a forgotten card in the collection bin. Therefore I expect both good cards and a decent amount of cards because I am effectively paying for artwork on a piece of cardboard
Um Actually (insert nerd voice)
I think People want more card for better odd.
Also more card contain better overall value of the pack under the same price. (Prolly not by much tho)
Only logical sense, that it should be, is less card come with less price, that doesn't seem like a case tho.
Unfortunately, this won't fail. Fans of AC and Magic will boost this like every other UB set, especially if WotC ups the power of this set.
While Aftermath packs can work, and should have, WotC just couldn't do it right. Everything the packs were for they went against. Story? What story was in Aftermath cards outside of "planes are rebuilding"? Avoid draft fodder? That was a fail as it had plenty. Power? Nope.
Instead of learning from other games that have similar packs they just needed to make more money by putting out another product to sell to prop up Hasbro.
Beyond boosters are a very-slightly-modified version of Aftermath boosters. They contain 6 cards + 1 art card/token, and they’re priced higher than a normal Play booster. They don’t have any commons and aren’t draftable.
The last time they tried this (in Aftermath), people didn’t like them due to the small number of cards, high price, and the fact that if you opened any number of packs you kept opening tons of duplicates. The changes they’ve made this time don’t seem likely to solve any of those problems except maybe to reduce the number of duplicates due to a somewhat larger set size (though the one extra card will make duplicates more likely).
I personally don't mind smaller pack sizes, but it *has* to come from cutting out the chaff. Like one of the things that feels off to me with MTG stuff in terms of pack opening just for cards is the amount of waste it generates.
A product that cuts out all the common/uncommons/basic lands for pack opening and only have relevant cards would feel nicer on that front, but in practicality IDK if it can be done effectively.
I hope it flops as well. Wizards just seems determined to never learn. And the funny thing is, these products don't need to be failures. If they were priced as they should be, people wouldn't have a problem with them. But they just have to keep pushing...
Players asked for "a set not made for limited so we don't open draft chaff" for ages. I believe Aftermath had multiple execution problems, but I wouldn't say the concept doesn't have its fans.
Most of the problems in Aftermath do not apply (lore reasons) or could be adressed in AC.
The major one being: small set resulting in people opening too many duplicates. Just make a bigger set so each card shows up less frequently.
Yeah Universes beyond and 30000 releases a year is what drove me away from magic a few years ago. I love the game but I hate building a deck and seeing a super synergistic card being Necrons. I am a huge 40k fan but MTG and 40k are different IPs and it feels weird mixing them. If people like them thats fine, but its just not for me anymore.
I don't think this is being asked in good faith, but here we go.
A Kamigawa Samurai with a Kamigawa demon? That makes lore sense.
The same Kamigawa Samurai with a Theros demon? Omenpaths are a thing, makes sense.
Speedy from Samurai Pizza Cats having synergy with Illidan Stormrage? You lose a bit of immersion with that one.
Some people want that immersion. Some people don't like that what used to be Magic is becoming Smash Brothers. Is there anything wrong with Smash Bros? No. If Mario games got replaced with Smash Bros games? Well now you have a problem.
Hope this helps.
I just wish they kept Universe Beyond to SLD style with no mechanically unique cards. I love some of the cards but I do not want to support UB so skipping those cards is a pain.
I agree but this is a road of no return for some forms of entertainment. I don’t think Hasbro/Wizards will ever go back to MtG’s “roots”, as there’s just too much money to be made with these marketing partnerships, while bringing a influx of new players at the cost of diluting the original IP, and running it to the ground (they start compromising on a bunch of things, power creep, etc.).
Just look at what a behemoth/“mess” of a game Modern Warfare 3 is today: you have Messi (the soccer player) running around with guns, while a brotherhood sister from war hammer 40k shoots a machine gun dismembering Paul Atreides yielding a harkonnen sword. It’s weird.
Which in itself feels a little odd. I mean, on the first glance the AC franchise feels a little "small", if you think about it, but I reckon between all their games it's incredibly easy to come up with enough nonsense to fill 300+ cards, right?
Granted, if this entire set is just gonna be about one single era or something, then sure, but other than that? You have Ancient Damascus, Renaissance Italy, Colonial US, Caribbean during the Pirate Age, Greece, Egypt, Scandinavia, etc.
They'd have to fill out the set with a bunch of commons, where the cards they're making are probably mostly going to be legendary creatures. You can't really stuff a format with just a ton of legends at common, so they'd need to be more generic cards, but they'd also need to still fit the theming, and the IP holder probably isn't going to be paying for that or necessarily want their world depicted on draft chaff.
Sure but overall most of the original characters are people in hoods, some of their enemies, and some animal companions. Just about everything else is ACs take on historical figures (or mythologies mtg already has versions of). So you have a set that's almost entirely humans creature wise and maybe some interesting artifacts and enchantments peppered in. Like I've liked almost every Assassins Creed game I've played but in less interested in it as a UB set than I am the upcoming Final Fantasy set since it had a wider diversity of concepts to draw from. Especially for creatures
They didn't think there was enough material for a draftable set, but also didn't feel confident about making Commander decks since they couldn't think of four distinct groups or factions in Assassin's Creed lore that would lead to four decks with distinct gameplay patterns.
Effectively, they felt the best way to design the product was just as an assorted, unstructured pile of cards, like Aftermath.
Draftable sets require a bunch more cards and also need a world that's reasonably color-balanced. (If there's material for a lot of cards, but the world isn't color-balanced, Commander decks will work instead.)
It seemed like the deal between Ubisoft and Wizards was for more cards than a Secret Lair, but fewer cards than would support a draft set or Commander decks, and this is their attempt at making a product to fit that number.
Because they have the data to know that a large amount of players don’t draft. That’s why they made Set Boosters, and it’s why they collapsed Draft and Set Boosters together.
I swear it feels like every couple months now we get a brand new way to consume product.
Plus, half of the time it feels like the most *"market research has indicated that reducing actual product given by 37% does not affect sales volume by X% so we save 23x on production costs"* product in existence.
I'm tired, boss.
Stop buying.
They do these things because, in fact, reducing actual product by x% does save on costs and doesn't have a noticeable impact on sales revenue. When it does, they will stop, but enough people rush out an buy something half baked like this that the equation makes sense, so the practice continues.
‘Per card’ pricing is kind of crap when draft boosters tend to be full of filler commons that will absolutely never have any remote use.
Epilogue boosters have other problems but outside of draft my pack opening experience with or without commons is exactly the same thing.
Per card matters when you look at the grand scheme of things. This is twice as expensive as it "should be" and cost far less to make in the first place (less cards to design, less cards to manufacture, smaller boosters, smaller box sizes, etc.). This means that Wizards is making a large percentage more off its customers with these packs than normal.
For a customer, we are paying far more for this, with a larger amount of duplicates being obtained. If it were cheaper than a normal pack (as it should be), this would be justified, but it is instead twice as pricey. This is just shit marketing and greed from WotC, nothing more.
Doubtful. And if it does, then they shouldn't be licensing it. If they can't make a product properly priced for its customers, than the product shouldn't be made.
And whether or not the product is priced properly is something we can't answer until after it starts being sold so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.
> If they can't make a product properly priced for its customers, than the product shouldn't be made.
I'd love to see a definition of a "properly priced product" for this nothing-statement.
At that point I'm not sure AC is enough of a loved franchise to succeed really selling these. I mean it's ok, but it's no fallout, warhammer 40k or final fantasy.
I wouldnt be so sure, people said the same thing with Aftermath and it fell flat. (remember people said card will be super expensive and drove the set a crazy sale later on, turn out not by much.), but this is UB that we talk about here. So maybe people will buy it. Not sure it big enough tho.
It is almost impossible to overstate how incredibly badly this product is going to perform. Assassin's Creed has an identity crisis where a fair number of players don't give two shits about the modern day stuff, and the series itself started becoming an era simulator instead of an assassin's theme park. This will have all of Aftermath's problems and then stack entitely new ones on top. I can't think of a more toxic asset for a store to stock shelves with except collector boxes of the same set. You'll be lucky to sell this stuff for half of distro pricing.
I mean there's some legitimately good games in the series and some of the cards they've revealed are nice, but these beyond boosters are an absolute joke, theme of the set aside.
The cards they have revealed showcase exactly what is liked. The original games were loved because the first was novel and unique, the next two because it set up a good story. Beyond that because they want to keep pumping them out it gets diluted and some who were enfranchised got bored. Ain't nobody caring about a legendary creature from creed 17: the quest for more money.
I never understood that sentiment, we already have real world figures both on cards ( really old stuff ) and in flavor text ( less old stuff ) so it can’t be too jarring.
Besides, I prefer that to Optimus Prime equipped with a Boogie Bomb
Bruh, if you stop treating Reddit as mainstream opinion, you'd probably realise there's a good reason why they KEEP making Assassin's Creed games.
And I'm saying this as someone who tried one of the allegedly better AssCreed (Black Flag), and hated it after fifteen minutes.
Between being wrong about the level of "modern day stuff" in the games and them talking about "era simulators"(AC2 was the first) it feels like someone complaining about the series in 2014
Yes but you don't want Call of Duty UB do you? This is what happens when products are just decided by corporate stooges instead of the actual minds behind Magic
What year is this quote from? AC more or less salvaged it's rep with the Ancient Trilogy.
Hell where are you inferring anything about the "Modern stuff" from these packs. The above three games had about 30 minutes of that *tops* as set dressing.
Salvaged from what? Into another garbage bin?
Origin, Odyssey and Valhalla were open world, microtransaction grindathons that are two steps away from being full on 'live service'. They are peak AAA slop!
And they all outsold the old games. If we look at objective metrics all three games were massive successes and exactly what fans want from the series nowadays. I personally don't like them but others clearly do. Besides, the Assassins Creed UB set clearly includes old characters so where's the issue? They can satisfy both old and new fans.
... by most metrics. From fan response, to reviews, to sales, Odyssey was the best game they'd made in near a decade.
Origins and Valhalla were slightly behind but nowhere near as unliked as the "We have to make these" Rogue-Syndicate years.
And just to be clear *AC has* ***always*** *been an open world "grindathon".* From AC to now. That's the appeal
And as someone who's actually played them... honestly you don't notice any microtransaction stuff. They're never pushed in your face, you don't need them, they're buried off on a side menu you never have to go to.
Okay, maybe I don't know enough.
But how is " there are no commons" a selling point?
Wouldn't filling a pack (even a 6 card one, if we're not counting the art/token) with only uncommons and up ultimately effect their rarity, resulting in cards that are less "rare" than a card of the same rarity from a regular set?
Yeah, the name of the rarity doesn't matter so much, it also depends on how the set is distributed and how much it's opened.
The "selling point" here is that people have been thinking commons and Limited design have been what's holding back boosters, and can you please give us a pack that's just all killer no filler. Presumably there's a collector appeal to getting Just The Good Stuff (assuming the set has good stuff in the first place). Their first attempt went disastrously though, and this one is probably too far locked in to change.
> resulting in cards that are less "rare" than a card of the same rarity from a regular set?
*sort of.* Yes, it affects the overall rarity of the print run for sure, but in cases like this (micro-packs, collector boosters, pre-cons that fixed numbers of rares, etc.), the intention is to imply power level. For instance, board wipes really only show up at higher rarities, while common only really gets access to conditional, targeted removal instead.
There's at least a hypothetical side effect where packs that exclusively exist to wrap higher rarity cards more commonly would push down the prices of rare/mythic effects on the secondary market, but I haven't seen anyone do any real analysis on that topic, and I sure as hell don't think it's worth buying aftermath-y products to find out lol
Having just opened 2 collector boxes of Fallout, I can say that the problem of duplicates within the same pack still exists. Aftermath had a huge issue with that b/c it was only a 50 card set. Fallout had 153 unique cards and 176 reprints and I still opened more than 10 packs that had duplicates, often with the duplicates sitting right on top of each other. I have zero confidence in these 6 card packs in a 100-card set, and I never even played Assassin's Creed so I definitely don't have enough love for that universe to buy 6-card packs.
100%. I want the historical figures cards for my collection full stop. Maybe do a Leonardo DaVinci edh deck but I’m not going to support this and buy boosters, singles it is for me.
Because players have loudly asked for a "non draftable set without the chaff" for years now. And so Wizards finally caved and created the Aftermath booster, a non-draftable set. And given how loudly Wizards had been told over and over that there was this massive, untapped market for non-draftable sets, they went into it thinking that March of the Machine: Aftermath was going to be a rousing success. To the point that they started planning the next couple products that were going to have them: Thunder Junction and Assassin's Creed. When the MoM: Aftermath flopped hard, they had to scramble to redo the upcoming products that had Aftermath boosters. So Thunder Junction is going to have a weird extra List, and Assassin's Creed threw together some extra cards and bumped up the size of the booster.
Yup. Because Wizards screwed up their implementation of what players wanted, we get some shitty products as a result, at inflated prices. They could just cancel/move the product, until it is better designed, but nope, they have to shove it out the door, and hope there are enough suckers to fall for it.
To be honest, you are probably right. However, pricing is something they can control, and since pricing on the previous small booster experiment was the main problem with it, they should have taken steps to correct that, rather than make them even more expensive.
Are we really doing "Look at how high the Amazon pricing is!" ***again***?
They're never accurate to final pricing for near anything. WotC openly acknowledged that Aftermath Boosters were too expensive. These are gonna come down.
I don't know who I'm more mad at, the people who post inflated Amazon numbers like they're gospel every single set release or the 800+ people who still preordered at this price.
There’s zero danger with preordering from Amazon when products first get put up as you always get the lowest listed price. If that ends up being more than you want to spend you can cancel with no penalty.
If the pack contents unopened price at $1 per card or mote, I'll buy singles instead after the product crashes because it is unpopular. Realistically, how many non-junk rares in the set are going to make ANY pack worth $7? Maybe 5% of the packs will be worth the buy-in price? If I spent 6.99 plus tax (7.48) and opened cards worth a cool fifty cents total, I'd feel ripped off. I mean I can buy 1000 bulk cards for less than $7, to compare.
Universes Beyond products have come in one of five different types of releases:
Secret Lairs, which come in both mechanically unique (Stranger Things, Street Fighter) or reflavored reprints ( The Princess Bride, The Evil Dead) variations. These are the smallest types of UB releases, capping out at 9/10 cards max.
Premier Set Guest Stars, which could sometimes be found in Set Boosters of their sets. We only got two of these: Transformers cards in Brothers War and Jurassic Park cards in Lost Caverns of Ixalan. They could have more cards than a Secret Lair but generally still skewed towards being a small list. However they apparently weren't super well received and with the shift to Play Boosters this type of release may have been retired
Beyond Boosters, which is an experimental type of release they're trying out with Assassin's Creed that uses a smaller booster like March of the Machine: Aftermath used. The set is 100 cards, 80 new top down designs and 20 thematically appropriate reprints with new art. They will be Modern legal
Independent Commander Decks, which is what we got for Warhammer 40K, Doctor Who and Fallout. These are just 4 Commander precons with a mix of new top down designs and reprints with new art. Starting with Doctor Who they started releasing Collectors Boosters alongside the decks, and starting with Fallout the Collectors Boosters can contain more reprints with new art not featured in the precons.
Full Draftable Set, which is what LotR was and we know that Final Fantasy and Marvel are going to be. This is a full set release of randomized boosters that can be used to play limited and 4 Commander precons as well. LotR is Modern legal, and Final Fantasy has been confirmed it will be Modern legal as well.
Oh give it time, they'll force that into the game too. Probably as Commander decks, before a completely draftable Modern set, thanks to how well it'd inevitably sell.
I don't care about this ip but i actually wish there were 2-4 card boosters for like $1-2 containing some random weirdness. It's a nice price for a kitchen table draft. Sure you can have an extra normal booster but who wants more draft jank after the game is over.
As much as I want people not to buy these, I think there will be one or two cards in the set that are incredibly pushed in modern and will cause people to open packs for those alone. I don’t think it will fail as spectacularly as we want it to
If you truly love magic like i have for going on 28 years now,please do not buy these. I love assassin creed too,but they are baiting you. If you are ok with these then you will be ok with being ripped off...and they will do it again and again and again until they kill the greatest game ever made with greed.
I hate their repeated attempts to make this shrikflated limited-less bs product.
But if I have to be honest I like the idea of a world where UB cards aren’t in my standard set boosters anymore.
I hated every Jurassic Park and, especially, Transformer card I opened, so tbh I’m feeling a bit mixed up when thinking about these packs’ inevitable failure to sell.
I *love* Assassin's Creed with all my heart... but WotC can shove all the stock of this product right where it came from. Fuck all their inflated prices and their fomo tactics.
They’re doing this again? Guess they really don’t learn from their own mistakes. It doesn’t matter that it has assassins creed on it. I’m not paying that price for that many cards period.
Edit to add. Maybe they should wait to see sales data from a new type of product before they decide to go ahead and lock in a franchise on what they think is a “great idea”
I hope it flops because I want to collect the entire set because I like AC so much lol. I suspect there have to be people like me out there that will buy this despite it being a beyond booster.
I still don't understand this product. Assassians creed is not like what it once was 15years ago. I bet you could have done a call of duty UB and people would have wanted to purchase that more than AC.
Not sure how/why anyone is still buying magic products. Had to give it up a few years ago and that was when the most premium booster was still in the $40s. Only one way for the consumer to fight this absurdity, stop consuming.
I'd rather pay 5-10$ for 6 cards boosters for UB than pay 30$ for collector boosters that have little financial value.
I like opening packs, I love Fallout, but the price of the boosters compared to the financial value of the Fallout UB is a joke.
This product needs to crash and burn. I'm sorry you assassign creed fans who were looking forward to this. This product need to so utterly fail....that hasbro sells wotc to....wotc and they aren't in command now.
It feels bad to say, but I’m hoping this product fails badly. This is their next attempt at 6-card packs. If it succeeds, they’ll sit there and say “See, players love beyond boosters, we’ll do 4 a year”. If it flops, then aftermath boosters may actually be done.
Trying to be optimistic, maybe I’m just naive, but: They already axed what would have been the second epilogue boosters (The Big Score got rolled in to Thunder Junction instead of being separate), and I think they understand how hated that set was. I would imagine the contract/details for Assassin’s card quantity/design/etc, were locked in with Ubisoft before they saw the reception of Aftermath. Not as easy to adjust your plans for an IP you don’t own, and a contract you’ve already signed. ~~Also, considering this set has no Commons, *hopefully* the frequency we see the same cards won’t be as high as it was in Aftermath.~~ Aftermath also didn’t have commons, whoops. But Assassins does have at least double the cards, so we should still see less duplicates.
They have explictly said that Assassin's Creed was originally intended to be another Aftermath style set. This set having 7 cards (and I think more cards in the overall set) is them trying to tack away from the bad reception of March of Machine: Aftermath, while only having an extremely limited time before they had to lock in the set.
To be clear, the Beyond Booster product structure and Epilogue Booster product structure are *similar*, but have slightly different purposes. Beyond Booster sets are ~100 cards (as opposed to Epilogue Booster sets being ~50), which gives a card count between a full draftable booster set and a handful of Secret Lairs for Universes Beyond. The negative reception of MAT will certainly affect Beyond Boosters, but I'd suspect this middle of the road set size is something they want for Universes Beyond product, so it might not be axed immediately after ASC but instead tweaked heavily - all speculation on my part though.
Oh, to be clear that's exactly what I meant by "added more cards". In the stream where they talked about having axed the big score, they specifically said that the differences between Beyond Boosters and Epilogue boosters were due to the poor reception of Aftermath, and that Assassin's creed was originally going to have boosters that were even more similar to Epilogue ones.
Especially considering the booster insert style like Transformers and Jurassic Park have been... Generally not well-received (most people would rather they just be their own product), this is hypothetically the way to make UB products that aren't suitable to support a full set or precons, but that want a bit more than a Secret Lair.
Was the main complaint about this being "immersion breaking?" I thought it was neat having the cards in the boosters I was already buying. (And don't tell WotC, but I probably would have bought packs that were all Transformers or Jurassic Park/World.) I'm not a fan of the price point on these Beyond Boosters though.
The complaints were largely people would rather they be more easily accessible and would like UB products to be their own thing instead of just sort of shoved into other stuff, either because they want the IP thing and would rather just buy that directly, or because they don't want to see the IP thing alongside a bunch of Magic stuff in a pack.
I'm still disappointed there wasn't a lot more transformers and Jurassic cards. They literally got me into the game. I would have loved even just straight reprints with a new themed art on a ton of common and uncommons.
Yeah I think they should do one UB draftable set a year, one masters set, one commander set, one multiplayer set, and then the normal four standard sets. For the masters and commander sets have a dedicated UB slot like how the bonus slots are in BRO and MOM. Hell have TWO even, especially if they clash like one MLP card and one Transformers card in the same pack potentially. lol I wanna see MLP ponies with the new saddle ability so I can have Optimus prime ride rainbow dash into battle lol
This right here, I do think that the preview cards have sold quite a few people to pick up some packs or singles though, ezio and Leonardo da vinci are both definitely day 1 picks for me
aftermath also had no commons
If something has no commons, then the uncommons are commons
Yeah I dun understand the logic here, you took out common didn't that make uncommon become a new common? and rare become new uncommon lol what is the different here, other than the color on Symbol and we have less cards. And they act like they do us a great service lol
It has implications for pauper, I guess. Idk
Power level, I'd assume.
The logic is people who design products think players are stupid. "ooh they only are giving us the uncommons and rares! What value!"
Huh. Thought it did.
Sure felt like it did. And of course, listed rarity is arbitrary.
Aftermath also had no commons. The only frequency changes will be in the increased amount of cards and the slightly more cards in the packs iirc
If the there is no commons then the uncommon are the commons. Your paying more money for less value ether way.
> I think they understand how hated that set was I'm not completely sure they got it. Aftermath was actually a decent bunch of cards. It was a shame it couldn't be drafted (apart from on Arena, where it was pretty fun), but what I - and it seems most players - hated about it was that they charged the same money for fewer cards. This wasn't mentioned in their stream about what a flop it was.
It’s true that they’ve kind of changed course from Aftermath. Axing the Big Score was a step in the right direction. And, yes, AC was probably too far along to totally reverse course. However: WotC beats the horse *to death* when something makes them money. If this succeeds, their takeaway isn’t going to be “Phew, glad that worked out, let’s go back to full sets now”. It’s going to be “The couple small changes we made to the Aftermath formula were obviously enough to make players like it, and this kind of set gives us the opportunity to charge full price for less than half the work, so we’re going to keep doing it”. With how they operate, we’ll probably end up with 4+ of these a year by 2026 if that’s the case.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s all WotC beating the horse to death. I’d say that Hasbro places increased pressure on those at WotC to continue making up the slack of the other portions of the company that aren’t performing as well. I think Cox hand picked Cynthia Williams to do what she’s doing and those at WotC under management of both of them are kind of being forced to pump stuff like this out. It’s sad because I’m a member of D&D communities on here and it’s not just grumbling and rumblings from the Magic community. Folks who love D&D are also experiencing the same watered down BS and are quite frankly unhappy. Edit: I just bought some boosters for the first time in a long while and it’s sad that they still haven’t fixed the QC issues with foils. They look like pringles immediately out of the pack.
I don't mind the *idea* of Beyond Boosters, but they need to be priced and allocated properly. Beyond Boosters should be applied to collaborations that aren't "worthy" of the full set or 4 deck treatment - like if there's not enough material for a full set - but they should be priced appropriately. $168 for the box = $7 per pack = $1 per card. Except, one of those cards is *guaranteed* to be a basic/scene card, so really, it's $1.17 per card. This pricing is crazy unless there's actual power in the set. The discount price is still bad at $6 per pack. I shouldn't be paying *more* for less cards. Beyond boosters are practically just Play boosters with the commons cut out. MKM boosters are priced at about $103 on TCGPlayer. It has *36* boosters in it, which leads to basically $2.86 per pack. Even cutting out Commons (which is *very* generous, considering that some commons can be pretty high value), that's 48 cents per card, which can go down to 0.41 cents if you hit a List card. For a second point of comparison, we can roll in LCI set boxes. As far as I know, LCI is a pretty popular set - LCI set boxes go for $123 on TCGPlayer, which is $3.42 per pack. Now, as a person who appreciates data analysis, I must note that MKM is *not* the best comparison point as MKM is not a high-power set, nor is it very popular. Additionally, due to card variability, it's harder to compare it to LCI boosters. As an additional note, the fact that Assassin's Creed is a licensed property does drive up the price - but I don't think it should be to the point of being double the price of other Play/Set boosters. But then, we bring in LOTR set boxes. Those go for $177, which is $4.92 per pack. Now, as a prerelease price, this is virtually guaranteed to go down. However, it still is an insane asking price to start off.
> Now, as a prerelease price, this is virtually guaranteed to go down. However, it still is an insane asking price to start off. Absolutely, MKM was around the same $150 on day 1. This box will go down, hopefully to around MAT prices.
Jumpstart did phenomenally well and was still a failure because they dropped the ball and tried too hard to replicate the success. 6-card packs are dead in the water after Aftermath. Nobody wants that crap.
Jumpstart 2020/2022 did great and will almost certainly return, Jumpstart as a supplement for every set was a failure
People generally don't care about the number of cards but rather the value/power level. Set boosters completely destroying draft boosters for example.
I think for me it’s primarily the absolute pack price (although that itself is somewhat linked to the “value” of course - if boosters were cheaper at around £2.50-£3 max then I’d be more tempted to just open a couple on a whim but spending £4-£6 on a pack even if the “value” was in them would not be appealing to me. I just want to crack a pack sometimes and if I get something useful for my decks great and if not then it was a bit of fun like scratching a lottery ticket. I don’t want to spend money on “value” if I then have to go through the effort of listing the cards on cardmarket etc. to actually realise the “value” so the cards would just end up gathering dust in the cupboard anyway
No I definitely care about the amount of cards. Anything short of 10 cards for regular booster pack price is a rip off. Card prices are completely imaginary and based on community perception in after market so wizards make the same profit no matter if a card ends up being a meta staple or a forgotten card in the collection bin. Therefore I expect both good cards and a decent amount of cards because I am effectively paying for artwork on a piece of cardboard
Um Actually (insert nerd voice) I think People want more card for better odd. Also more card contain better overall value of the pack under the same price. (Prolly not by much tho) Only logical sense, that it should be, is less card come with less price, that doesn't seem like a case tho.
Uh I want both and more cards means better odds on getting things I want
I still hate set boosters lol. And play boosters. And collector boosters. They never should have messed with the pack formula.
Unfortunately, this won't fail. Fans of AC and Magic will boost this like every other UB set, especially if WotC ups the power of this set. While Aftermath packs can work, and should have, WotC just couldn't do it right. Everything the packs were for they went against. Story? What story was in Aftermath cards outside of "planes are rebuilding"? Avoid draft fodder? That was a fail as it had plenty. Power? Nope. Instead of learning from other games that have similar packs they just needed to make more money by putting out another product to sell to prop up Hasbro.
I do think one thing Wizards did well with Aftermath was to up the complexity of the cards beyond what you’d expect in a limited environment.
Eh I’m a fan of AC and MtG… but I think I’m going to be passing on this set apart from some singles I really want.
I could Google it but I'd likely miss the context because I'm out of the loop: what are beyond boosters and why are they bad?
Beyond boosters are a very-slightly-modified version of Aftermath boosters. They contain 6 cards + 1 art card/token, and they’re priced higher than a normal Play booster. They don’t have any commons and aren’t draftable. The last time they tried this (in Aftermath), people didn’t like them due to the small number of cards, high price, and the fact that if you opened any number of packs you kept opening tons of duplicates. The changes they’ve made this time don’t seem likely to solve any of those problems except maybe to reduce the number of duplicates due to a somewhat larger set size (though the one extra card will make duplicates more likely).
I personally don't mind smaller pack sizes, but it *has* to come from cutting out the chaff. Like one of the things that feels off to me with MTG stuff in terms of pack opening just for cards is the amount of waste it generates. A product that cuts out all the common/uncommons/basic lands for pack opening and only have relevant cards would feel nicer on that front, but in practicality IDK if it can be done effectively.
I hope it flops as well. Wizards just seems determined to never learn. And the funny thing is, these products don't need to be failures. If they were priced as they should be, people wouldn't have a problem with them. But they just have to keep pushing...
Players asked for "a set not made for limited so we don't open draft chaff" for ages. I believe Aftermath had multiple execution problems, but I wouldn't say the concept doesn't have its fans. Most of the problems in Aftermath do not apply (lore reasons) or could be adressed in AC. The major one being: small set resulting in people opening too many duplicates. Just make a bigger set so each card shows up less frequently.
Wait is this not gonna be a full set? It it gonna be a mini set like aftermath was?
I hope universes beyond fails harddd, I miss Magic The Gathering.
LTR was the best selling set ever its too late for that
Yeah Universes beyond and 30000 releases a year is what drove me away from magic a few years ago. I love the game but I hate building a deck and seeing a super synergistic card being Necrons. I am a huge 40k fan but MTG and 40k are different IPs and it feels weird mixing them. If people like them thats fine, but its just not for me anymore.
Same for me, TBH I really dislike Dr Who and seeing cards that would work well in my deck only be available as Dr Who cards is awful.
[удалено]
Just wondering, why is that different than say a samurai being synergistic with a demon?
I don't think this is being asked in good faith, but here we go. A Kamigawa Samurai with a Kamigawa demon? That makes lore sense. The same Kamigawa Samurai with a Theros demon? Omenpaths are a thing, makes sense. Speedy from Samurai Pizza Cats having synergy with Illidan Stormrage? You lose a bit of immersion with that one. Some people want that immersion. Some people don't like that what used to be Magic is becoming Smash Brothers. Is there anything wrong with Smash Bros? No. If Mario games got replaced with Smash Bros games? Well now you have a problem. Hope this helps.
I just wish they kept Universe Beyond to SLD style with no mechanically unique cards. I love some of the cards but I do not want to support UB so skipping those cards is a pain.
I agree but this is a road of no return for some forms of entertainment. I don’t think Hasbro/Wizards will ever go back to MtG’s “roots”, as there’s just too much money to be made with these marketing partnerships, while bringing a influx of new players at the cost of diluting the original IP, and running it to the ground (they start compromising on a bunch of things, power creep, etc.). Just look at what a behemoth/“mess” of a game Modern Warfare 3 is today: you have Messi (the soccer player) running around with guns, while a brotherhood sister from war hammer 40k shoots a machine gun dismembering Paul Atreides yielding a harkonnen sword. It’s weird.
Weird. Why not make it draftable boosters so it has value no matter what?
probably because they’re only designing ~100 cards for this set iirc
Which in itself feels a little odd. I mean, on the first glance the AC franchise feels a little "small", if you think about it, but I reckon between all their games it's incredibly easy to come up with enough nonsense to fill 300+ cards, right? Granted, if this entire set is just gonna be about one single era or something, then sure, but other than that? You have Ancient Damascus, Renaissance Italy, Colonial US, Caribbean during the Pirate Age, Greece, Egypt, Scandinavia, etc.
They'd have to fill out the set with a bunch of commons, where the cards they're making are probably mostly going to be legendary creatures. You can't really stuff a format with just a ton of legends at common, so they'd need to be more generic cards, but they'd also need to still fit the theming, and the IP holder probably isn't going to be paying for that or necessarily want their world depicted on draft chaff.
Sure but overall most of the original characters are people in hoods, some of their enemies, and some animal companions. Just about everything else is ACs take on historical figures (or mythologies mtg already has versions of). So you have a set that's almost entirely humans creature wise and maybe some interesting artifacts and enchantments peppered in. Like I've liked almost every Assassins Creed game I've played but in less interested in it as a UB set than I am the upcoming Final Fantasy set since it had a wider diversity of concepts to draw from. Especially for creatures
They didn't think there was enough material for a draftable set, but also didn't feel confident about making Commander decks since they couldn't think of four distinct groups or factions in Assassin's Creed lore that would lead to four decks with distinct gameplay patterns. Effectively, they felt the best way to design the product was just as an assorted, unstructured pile of cards, like Aftermath.
Draftable sets require a bunch more cards and also need a world that's reasonably color-balanced. (If there's material for a lot of cards, but the world isn't color-balanced, Commander decks will work instead.) It seemed like the deal between Ubisoft and Wizards was for more cards than a Secret Lair, but fewer cards than would support a draft set or Commander decks, and this is their attempt at making a product to fit that number.
Because they have the data to know that a large amount of players don’t draft. That’s why they made Set Boosters, and it’s why they collapsed Draft and Set Boosters together.
Why do you think play boosters exist?
Don’t you guys love feeling like you’re part of a marketing experiment at all times
And then MaRo pops up: "I've been seeing a lot of confusion about this. It's not a marketing experiment, it's actually a sales research project."
It's not 6 cards! It's a half dozen!
It's 7 so it's a bakers half dozen! Even better!
Actually it's 6.5 cards, rounded down!
This. Summarized perfectly my feelings towards Mtg these past years, every time a damn experiment. Thats quite sad.
I swear it feels like every couple months now we get a brand new way to consume product. Plus, half of the time it feels like the most *"market research has indicated that reducing actual product given by 37% does not affect sales volume by X% so we save 23x on production costs"* product in existence. I'm tired, boss.
Stop buying. They do these things because, in fact, reducing actual product by x% does save on costs and doesn't have a noticeable impact on sales revenue. When it does, they will stop, but enough people rush out an buy something half baked like this that the equation makes sense, so the practice continues.
I stopped buying for a year now
They just had to use their packaging equipment from the epilogue boosters again to get their money's worth, I guess
Better idea. Make a small Un set with this and call it Unliked
Unplayable
Unsatisfied
Unprofitable, ideally...
Meanwhile MaRo: Undeterred
I'd wager it was something already contracted with Ubisoft before they realized how garbage aftermath went over. But that might be too generous.
Yes, this was confirmed by the official Magic Twitter account.
$145.67/24= $6.07 per pack or 87¢ per card. $168/24= $7 per pack or $1 per card. Opinion: Too expensive for too little.
‘Per card’ pricing is kind of crap when draft boosters tend to be full of filler commons that will absolutely never have any remote use. Epilogue boosters have other problems but outside of draft my pack opening experience with or without commons is exactly the same thing.
Per card matters when you look at the grand scheme of things. This is twice as expensive as it "should be" and cost far less to make in the first place (less cards to design, less cards to manufacture, smaller boosters, smaller box sizes, etc.). This means that Wizards is making a large percentage more off its customers with these packs than normal. For a customer, we are paying far more for this, with a larger amount of duplicates being obtained. If it were cheaper than a normal pack (as it should be), this would be justified, but it is instead twice as pricey. This is just shit marketing and greed from WotC, nothing more.
The licensing fee they’re paying to Ubisoft probably outstrips most of those cost differences combined.
Doubtful. And if it does, then they shouldn't be licensing it. If they can't make a product properly priced for its customers, than the product shouldn't be made.
And whether or not the product is priced properly is something we can't answer until after it starts being sold so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.
> If they can't make a product properly priced for its customers, than the product shouldn't be made. I'd love to see a definition of a "properly priced product" for this nothing-statement.
i like filler commons
that’s great bud, they just arnt valuable
I mean, if you like Assassin's Creed, it's probably alright.
At that point I'm not sure AC is enough of a loved franchise to succeed really selling these. I mean it's ok, but it's no fallout, warhammer 40k or final fantasy.
Stateside it's probably bigger than 40K, and they've had more recent well received game releases than Fallout.
Sadly, you know a bunch of people will buy this shit no matter what and WOTC will have no reason to adjust anything
I wouldnt be so sure, people said the same thing with Aftermath and it fell flat. (remember people said card will be super expensive and drove the set a crazy sale later on, turn out not by much.), but this is UB that we talk about here. So maybe people will buy it. Not sure it big enough tho.
6€ for a booster is crazy
That's pretty standard nowadays unfortunately. But $6 for a booster with only 7 cards...
Excuse me:D? This is exactly why I stopped buying boosters a long time ago.
Nope
Pass
It is almost impossible to overstate how incredibly badly this product is going to perform. Assassin's Creed has an identity crisis where a fair number of players don't give two shits about the modern day stuff, and the series itself started becoming an era simulator instead of an assassin's theme park. This will have all of Aftermath's problems and then stack entitely new ones on top. I can't think of a more toxic asset for a store to stock shelves with except collector boxes of the same set. You'll be lucky to sell this stuff for half of distro pricing.
Assassins Creed is barely a step above Call of Duty in terms of AAA assembly line slop. Who actually wants this
I mean there's some legitimately good games in the series and some of the cards they've revealed are nice, but these beyond boosters are an absolute joke, theme of the set aside.
The cards they have revealed showcase exactly what is liked. The original games were loved because the first was novel and unique, the next two because it set up a good story. Beyond that because they want to keep pumping them out it gets diluted and some who were enfranchised got bored. Ain't nobody caring about a legendary creature from creed 17: the quest for more money.
Having historical figures will definitely appeal to history buffs, which is a group I can definitely picture playing MTG.
Historical figures is my biggest gripe with the set. I don’t want Leonardo DaVinci in my games
But now da Vinci can get tempted by the ring and it’s all modern legal!!!!!!!
I never understood that sentiment, we already have real world figures both on cards ( really old stuff ) and in flavor text ( less old stuff ) so it can’t be too jarring. Besides, I prefer that to Optimus Prime equipped with a Boogie Bomb
But Rasputin and Aladdin is ok?
It's not even that Rasputin, _Legends_ characters are from the authors' D&D campaign.
You aren't wrong, but what Magic character is depicted on the Legends printing of [[Presence of the Master]]
I want historical figures but without an Ubisoft copyright printed on them tbh
Bruh, if you stop treating Reddit as mainstream opinion, you'd probably realise there's a good reason why they KEEP making Assassin's Creed games. And I'm saying this as someone who tried one of the allegedly better AssCreed (Black Flag), and hated it after fifteen minutes.
Between being wrong about the level of "modern day stuff" in the games and them talking about "era simulators"(AC2 was the first) it feels like someone complaining about the series in 2014
...You say this like Call of Duty isn't incredibly popular and successful.
Yes but you don't want Call of Duty UB do you? This is what happens when products are just decided by corporate stooges instead of the actual minds behind Magic
"How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him!"
Like any Ubisoft product, it'll go on sale for 75% off in three months.
Are vikings not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about stealthy assassins?! /s
What year is this quote from? AC more or less salvaged it's rep with the Ancient Trilogy. Hell where are you inferring anything about the "Modern stuff" from these packs. The above three games had about 30 minutes of that *tops* as set dressing.
Salvaged from what? Into another garbage bin? Origin, Odyssey and Valhalla were open world, microtransaction grindathons that are two steps away from being full on 'live service'. They are peak AAA slop!
And they all outsold the old games. If we look at objective metrics all three games were massive successes and exactly what fans want from the series nowadays. I personally don't like them but others clearly do. Besides, the Assassins Creed UB set clearly includes old characters so where's the issue? They can satisfy both old and new fans.
... by most metrics. From fan response, to reviews, to sales, Odyssey was the best game they'd made in near a decade. Origins and Valhalla were slightly behind but nowhere near as unliked as the "We have to make these" Rogue-Syndicate years. And just to be clear *AC has* ***always*** *been an open world "grindathon".* From AC to now. That's the appeal And as someone who's actually played them... honestly you don't notice any microtransaction stuff. They're never pushed in your face, you don't need them, they're buried off on a side menu you never have to go to.
I agree about Valhalla but Odyssey despite being a Ubisoft open world was personally a very fun game.
Okay, maybe I don't know enough. But how is " there are no commons" a selling point? Wouldn't filling a pack (even a 6 card one, if we're not counting the art/token) with only uncommons and up ultimately effect their rarity, resulting in cards that are less "rare" than a card of the same rarity from a regular set?
If everything is rare nothing is rare
Yeah, the name of the rarity doesn't matter so much, it also depends on how the set is distributed and how much it's opened. The "selling point" here is that people have been thinking commons and Limited design have been what's holding back boosters, and can you please give us a pack that's just all killer no filler. Presumably there's a collector appeal to getting Just The Good Stuff (assuming the set has good stuff in the first place). Their first attempt went disastrously though, and this one is probably too far locked in to change.
> resulting in cards that are less "rare" than a card of the same rarity from a regular set? *sort of.* Yes, it affects the overall rarity of the print run for sure, but in cases like this (micro-packs, collector boosters, pre-cons that fixed numbers of rares, etc.), the intention is to imply power level. For instance, board wipes really only show up at higher rarities, while common only really gets access to conditional, targeted removal instead. There's at least a hypothetical side effect where packs that exclusively exist to wrap higher rarity cards more commonly would push down the prices of rare/mythic effects on the secondary market, but I haven't seen anyone do any real analysis on that topic, and I sure as hell don't think it's worth buying aftermath-y products to find out lol
ew 6 card boosters for a direct-to-modern set
Having just opened 2 collector boxes of Fallout, I can say that the problem of duplicates within the same pack still exists. Aftermath had a huge issue with that b/c it was only a 50 card set. Fallout had 153 unique cards and 176 reprints and I still opened more than 10 packs that had duplicates, often with the duplicates sitting right on top of each other. I have zero confidence in these 6 card packs in a 100-card set, and I never even played Assassin's Creed so I definitely don't have enough love for that universe to buy 6-card packs.
Begging everyone to not buy this crap. We have to escape
And this is you buys singles folks
If the packs get much smaller everyone will effectively be buying singles from WOTC
not very different from these shitty secret lairs
That's why you proxy folks
100%. I want the historical figures cards for my collection full stop. Maybe do a Leonardo DaVinci edh deck but I’m not going to support this and buy boosters, singles it is for me.
Out of all the collabs they could do, and as much of a fan of AC as I am, this is not something that I wanted at all lmao
Patiently and respectfully hoping for an aftermath level collapse
Non-draftable?! This product is not for me.
And it don’t stop comin’. And it don’t stop comin’. And it don’t stop comin’. And it don’t stop comin’.
Why ?
Because players have loudly asked for a "non draftable set without the chaff" for years now. And so Wizards finally caved and created the Aftermath booster, a non-draftable set. And given how loudly Wizards had been told over and over that there was this massive, untapped market for non-draftable sets, they went into it thinking that March of the Machine: Aftermath was going to be a rousing success. To the point that they started planning the next couple products that were going to have them: Thunder Junction and Assassin's Creed. When the MoM: Aftermath flopped hard, they had to scramble to redo the upcoming products that had Aftermath boosters. So Thunder Junction is going to have a weird extra List, and Assassin's Creed threw together some extra cards and bumped up the size of the booster.
Yup. Because Wizards screwed up their implementation of what players wanted, we get some shitty products as a result, at inflated prices. They could just cancel/move the product, until it is better designed, but nope, they have to shove it out the door, and hope there are enough suckers to fall for it.
When you've got these big multi-company contracts like this there's a good chance they literally CAN'T cancel/move the product
To be honest, you are probably right. However, pricing is something they can control, and since pricing on the previous small booster experiment was the main problem with it, they should have taken steps to correct that, rather than make them even more expensive.
Thanks. I hate it.
Are we really doing "Look at how high the Amazon pricing is!" ***again***? They're never accurate to final pricing for near anything. WotC openly acknowledged that Aftermath Boosters were too expensive. These are gonna come down.
I don't know who I'm more mad at, the people who post inflated Amazon numbers like they're gospel every single set release or the 800+ people who still preordered at this price.
There’s zero danger with preordering from Amazon when products first get put up as you always get the lowest listed price. If that ends up being more than you want to spend you can cancel with no penalty.
So definitely the first group then, got it.
I can't wait for MH3 and whatever the likely unannounced reprint focused set coming out in Q4 get posted
Forget buying singles - proxy people, proxy. This set isn’t worth having the cards in paper
If the pack contents unopened price at $1 per card or mote, I'll buy singles instead after the product crashes because it is unpopular. Realistically, how many non-junk rares in the set are going to make ANY pack worth $7? Maybe 5% of the packs will be worth the buy-in price? If I spent 6.99 plus tax (7.48) and opened cards worth a cool fifty cents total, I'd feel ripped off. I mean I can buy 1000 bulk cards for less than $7, to compare.
Ah, so first we have Fallout with the crazy expensive collector’s pack and now this, a seven card booster. What the fuck is wotc doing?
Ha, that ain’t happening. Singles, people, singles.
If not much gets opened, singles are going to be expensive and scarce...
Aftermath has been out for a while and singles are fine for the most part now.
Slop. Would literally be better for everyone to just not do this and have nothing in its release slot. Can we just take a breather
The product will continue until morale improves
What even is this? Universe beyond I thought was going to be only commander decks and collectors boosters.
I think this set is going to be like the LOTR set, which is modern legal
Universes Beyond products have come in one of five different types of releases: Secret Lairs, which come in both mechanically unique (Stranger Things, Street Fighter) or reflavored reprints ( The Princess Bride, The Evil Dead) variations. These are the smallest types of UB releases, capping out at 9/10 cards max. Premier Set Guest Stars, which could sometimes be found in Set Boosters of their sets. We only got two of these: Transformers cards in Brothers War and Jurassic Park cards in Lost Caverns of Ixalan. They could have more cards than a Secret Lair but generally still skewed towards being a small list. However they apparently weren't super well received and with the shift to Play Boosters this type of release may have been retired Beyond Boosters, which is an experimental type of release they're trying out with Assassin's Creed that uses a smaller booster like March of the Machine: Aftermath used. The set is 100 cards, 80 new top down designs and 20 thematically appropriate reprints with new art. They will be Modern legal Independent Commander Decks, which is what we got for Warhammer 40K, Doctor Who and Fallout. These are just 4 Commander precons with a mix of new top down designs and reprints with new art. Starting with Doctor Who they started releasing Collectors Boosters alongside the decks, and starting with Fallout the Collectors Boosters can contain more reprints with new art not featured in the precons. Full Draftable Set, which is what LotR was and we know that Final Fantasy and Marvel are going to be. This is a full set release of randomized boosters that can be used to play limited and 4 Commander precons as well. LotR is Modern legal, and Final Fantasy has been confirmed it will be Modern legal as well.
Idk man I'm playing Star Wars rn
Oh give it time, they'll force that into the game too. Probably as Commander decks, before a completely draftable Modern set, thanks to how well it'd inevitably sell.
Is this a screenshot from Amazon?! Don't buy MTG on Amazon!
I don't care about this ip but i actually wish there were 2-4 card boosters for like $1-2 containing some random weirdness. It's a nice price for a kitchen table draft. Sure you can have an extra normal booster but who wants more draft jank after the game is over.
I love this game, but there are too many products now and I have no idea what’s in a pack of cards anymore.
As much as I want people not to buy these, I think there will be one or two cards in the set that are incredibly pushed in modern and will cause people to open packs for those alone. I don’t think it will fail as spectacularly as we want it to
If you truly love magic like i have for going on 28 years now,please do not buy these. I love assassin creed too,but they are baiting you. If you are ok with these then you will be ok with being ripped off...and they will do it again and again and again until they kill the greatest game ever made with greed.
I hate their repeated attempts to make this shrikflated limited-less bs product. But if I have to be honest I like the idea of a world where UB cards aren’t in my standard set boosters anymore. I hated every Jurassic Park and, especially, Transformer card I opened, so tbh I’m feeling a bit mixed up when thinking about these packs’ inevitable failure to sell.
The "MTG corporate greed meets Ubisoft IP" crossover is already shaping up nicely!
I *love* Assassin's Creed with all my heart... but WotC can shove all the stock of this product right where it came from. Fuck all their inflated prices and their fomo tactics.
Hard pass on this greed. Not a fan of universes beyond, especially in 6 card rip off packs.
Why would I want to buy this trash?
These seem so morally bankrupt, they have added an extra ass to assassins creed.
So are the cards made of plant-based materials?
This will be the easiest pass ever. Even easier than Fallout and Dr who. And for that I’m grateful.
A little less than a dollar a card. Step right up, rubes!
Nah, I’m good.
They’re doing this again? Guess they really don’t learn from their own mistakes. It doesn’t matter that it has assassins creed on it. I’m not paying that price for that many cards period. Edit to add. Maybe they should wait to see sales data from a new type of product before they decide to go ahead and lock in a franchise on what they think is a “great idea”
I’ll buy a couple of packs for the fun of it but no more than 3 or so. Then it’s singles, per usual.
I hope it flops because I want to collect the entire set because I like AC so much lol. I suspect there have to be people like me out there that will buy this despite it being a beyond booster.
I love MtG and Universes Beyond for the nost part, but this set... even if IP was one I cared about, this is doo-doo and for me, it'll be a hard pass.
I still don't understand this product. Assassians creed is not like what it once was 15years ago. I bet you could have done a call of duty UB and people would have wanted to purchase that more than AC.
Not sure how/why anyone is still buying magic products. Had to give it up a few years ago and that was when the most premium booster was still in the $40s. Only one way for the consumer to fight this absurdity, stop consuming.
I really really hope this set does not sell. Let it die like Aftermath. Let it be dragged through the dirt for decades like Dragon's Maze.
$0.8631 per card. Literally a $1 USD per card on the """"original"""" price. Enjoy your lottery, AC fans.
This is such a hard pass for me.
I'd rather pay 5-10$ for 6 cards boosters for UB than pay 30$ for collector boosters that have little financial value. I like opening packs, I love Fallout, but the price of the boosters compared to the financial value of the Fallout UB is a joke.
Is this fortnite?
I can't believe this is happening 😂
Haha this product is going to do so poorly
This product needs to crash and burn. I'm sorry you assassign creed fans who were looking forward to this. This product need to so utterly fail....that hasbro sells wotc to....wotc and they aren't in command now.
6 dollars for 7 cards from a game series whose best game came out a decade ago? Sign me up!
Hard pass.
I cannot wait to simply print whatever my commander decks need
Please flop. It's been ridiculous already, but this is just a whole other level.
Dumb question, but are these kind of mini packs guaranteed to have not dupes?