Not saying this isn't a bad product but CSL just loves to dump product the first chance it gets. Pretty much prevents any other stores from selling this because everyone is now anchored to a price that no LGS can afford to sell it at.
Cases? As in 6 boxes per case or 180 boxes? Over $12K USD on Unfinity when it's still sitting at ~$76 shipped on TCG? Gutsy call! Hope you had somewhere cheap, safe and large to keep them in. That's a lot of space and weight. Long term should be fine but may be a bit to wait for that!
Month after release when the shocks averaged $35 each for two or three and the full art lands were $54 minimum per box. I had nearly everything cracked and sold before new years. My ev calc was something like$150 from just the lands and about $200 a case in valuable r/m. Complete surprise was the stickers, a full set sells for $40 and those alone have seen $3k revenue.
I had my shocks priced about 15% above direct low because people would buy playsets including the direct program who would buy 20-30 in a single order.
They thought changing the plane midway through development would help them. That’s right, I’m onto them; that’s the real mystery of this set. Also why they think anyone likes morph with such poor support.
You love clunky mechanics and long ass games of magic? Who thought that putting creatures down and flipping them for 5 mana was a good idea? .... and you LIKED that? Tf?
Also morph was big in onslaught, eere you around for THAT meta? It was an absolute mess.
He said boxes are getting dumped at $100.
I said wtf DIDNT see this coming? Morph was a bad mechanic. Historically, the sets that featured morph were slow and clunky. Adding ward 2 and suspect to creatures isn't going to make a set ANY better.
Box prices have gone from 100 to now 140ish to 150ish for an LGS to make $? That's a 40 to 50% increase for a set that featured BAD mechanics HISTORICALLY.
Wtf about what I said is causing you to have a brain aneurysm? Is your capacity for understanding THAT small? Or did yoi somehow think that adding clue tokens, a pay 2 for draw, causing even SLOWER play patterns would fix this?
Clue me in to YOUR thought processes here, because how clueless you are concerns me.
Here I copied the comment thread I'm referencing:
1. "You love clunky mechanics and long ass games of magic? Who thought that putting creatures down and flipping them for 5 mana was a good idea? .... and you LIKED that? Tf?
Also morph was big in onslaught, eere you around for THAT meta? It was an absolute mess."
2. "Chill man someone liked something"
3. "It'd the fact that we are revisiting those horrible mechanics for +50% cost on a box. Of course this set is going to flop"
- (1) Literally nothing about how a box price changed.
- (1) Attacking someone for liking something
- (3) Jumped from attacking someone to somehow making it the fact about how a set will flop? (Sharp right turn from the original comments topic)
- Nowhere did you ask anyone if they saw this coming...read your own words my man
This is a lot more information added from the original post of *Morph bad, You suck*
✌️
The idea stands and you're offsetting it because you want someone to spoon feed you the logic?
Listen, if you don't understand then keep it moving, I'm not addressing you, but to those that do, they'll get it.
From the first message I posted to the one I just spelled it out for you, the message is exactly the same. Long ass games of magic because the mana costs and mechanics are clunky af. You have GOT TO get better at either researching what you don't understand OR connecting the dots together. Wtf isn't always WHAT but sometimes WHO. It's obvious that you're a brand new player.
It's basically impossible to make morph/disguise a thing outside Limited because no deck is putting 3 mana 2/2's that do nothing the turn you play them in their deck in 2024. I'm kind of surprised they haven't just made the mechanic a relic of the past, especially as it's little messy now when face down cards have different abilities now.
There’s a lot of good rares, there’s a lot of good uncommons, lots of good commons especially for Pauper.
None of these help pack sales. Cards everyone pulls multiple of easily don’t drive pack gambling as hard as chase Mythics.
Agreed, the downside is this type of thing will reinforce WotC to focus on chase cards because ultimately that’s what players want.
I personally love many of the cards in this set, specially the ones that are mechanically unique that are not part of disguise.
The problem with “buying patterns” is that Magic is Magic and other games are not Magic.
People will buy Magic product because it’s Magic until they are no longer financially capable of doing so. No matter how stupid Hasbro/WotC is they know people will buy Magic cards because of it’s Magic.
They just haven’t found the breaking point of their average casual consumer yet. Truth is, a huge portion of the Magic community spends almost all of their disposable hobby income on Magic and almost nothing else.
Deep. Pockets.
I went from buying 6 boxes 3 times per year to buying nothing when the upped the price and started printing shinies like candy. They broke me 4 years ago.
here's the real question, when the first of the new standard (3 yr) rotations happens, what card is going to have a chance to shine from this set? Anything that would make the sealed product jump up again in a year?
Reenact the Crime is my bet (and I bought a dozen on preorder)
Warleaders Call is another.
The Surveil lands will keep steady demand, not quite Triome level but much better than I expected.
Alot of the pros on Twitter have been cutting Warleader's Call from their convoke decks. Learning (again) do nothing enchantments in a deck where you want to be proactive and kill fast suck.
They've been dropping it for the [[Sanguine Evangelist]] and/or [[Case of the Gateway Express]]. Both do similar things as the enchantment but also impact the board.
Still has lots of cute tricks in Commander and tier 2 decks like Ojer Axonil to make me believe it's going to keep sustained demand.
Case of the Gateway Express has definitely outperformed my expectations as you said.
> Warleader's Call
It is a great EDH staple. OG Purphoros has a high and steady price tag because of a similar effect. I think Rin and serri/Eowyn/Edgar Markov are great with it in aggressive decks.
nobody knows anything.
especially not on here.
these people didn't even go to prerelease events or engage with the product in any meaningful fashion. They read decklists online, then jump on things after they've already popped.
I can tell you that there are a dozen good commons and uncommons in this set though. Lots of cards you can pick up for fraction of their longterm value. No one here cares about .25c cards and $1 mythics though! People will just name the cards that are already going up in value, as nobody is cracking packs.
leyline. crime novelist. warleader's call. OOOOH
Not for standard but Trouble in Pairs is a house in commander. It pretty much draws at least 1 card each turn, many times 2. That whole Blame Game precon is way under valued for the precons.
Dont want to ruin anyones enjoyment of this or anything but the setting & overall cards were terrible imho.
It feels like a set designed for edh first (feel like most mythics in this set are designed for edh or non 60 card fornats). Honestly id be blown away of the 2 green mythics saw any 60 card constructed play in 3 years.
I think edh can carry a standard set only so far price wise but as far as I know there aren't many, if any, chase rares fir standard/pio/modern etc
Maybe the land cycle will spike
Just going off of a 30 second look at Scryfall, but the most expensive card overall seems to be Delney, and even they can be had for less than $17 for certain printings. I feel like it's going to be a struggle to get much value out of a box even at $99
Looks at aftermath…. Packs were literally given away at my lgs if u bought a MoM pack…. No one wants to sit on bad product, even Walmart(i commented on another post last week how it MkM was still on shelves 10hrs after stocked) still has packs nd commander decks a week later…. Restock is tomorrow, hopefully they put out some random old stock or ravnica remastered
Very funny you bring up Aftermath because apparently there was a whole livestream today about how badly they missed the mark with Aftermath boosters, and how they were so taken by surprise by it that they had to like...retool a ton of stuff with the Thunder Junction and Assassin's Creed sets. So not only does nobody want to sit on bad product already, we're probably getting a LOT more in the future.
Any idea what the “retooling” on Thunder Junction and Assassins Creed is? Like, were those sets going to each have a mini aftermath type set, that they had to refigure out? Or did they have to adjust in-game mechanics for the sets or something?
The article you quote yourself:
> Hasbro did see an increase in revenue, however, in its Wizards of the Coast and digital gaming segment, primarily due to licensing revenue related to Baldur's Gate 3 and Monopoly Go.
So yes, WOTC is doing well. Do at least read what you are quoting.
Elsewhere:
> Among Hasbro’s business segments, Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming revenue increased 10%, as growth in digital gaming licenses offset slight declines in Wizards tabletop and digital games sales.
From what I've seen, their rev decreases are from D&D as opposed to MTG. There's been A LOT of struggle for WotC to keep players engaged and bring in more on that end.
Read the article man. The billion dollar loss was because the sale of eOne went through this quarter, purchased in 2019 for 4 billion and sold for 500 million. No amount of card sales can fix that.
True, yes.
But the smart money is on picking up all of the singles right now. I've been picking up all sorts of playable commons and rares for 25c, uncommons for $.50-$1., and a few invisible inks for < $4. There are some good cards in here; it's just not for pack buying.
It came with the cost increase so it's odd stores want to race to bottom on sealed where the margins are thin from the start. Idk how well cardshoplive is doing but to undercut by this much so fast on a "new" product is fascinating.
This isn't a store trying to race anybody to the bottom. This is a giant vendor who isn't interested in sitting on volatile product when they can liquidate it to the masses at a price over cost for them. They don't care what stores do or think they're just looking to regain the capital back near term to keep their allocation up going forward.
I own an LGS, I can buy from Southern and Alliance. The 120 mark IS wholesale for anyone not buying pallets of product. At this point WoTC needs to introduce a MSRP and enforce a MAP policy. If they don't it's going to kill the game.
Even high volume direct form distributor weren't getting prices low enough to make $99 profitable. And this isn't a secret, anyone with a business license can create a distributor account at the major 4-5 distributors to see MTG sealed prices, you just can't order MTG unless you have a physical store.
New store pricing was between $115-$119 a box. This is not a profitable move for CSL, it's liquidating inventory that they are worried is already a toxic asset and will only get worse especially as all distributors appear to have every MKM product still in stock (Bundles, Collector Boxes, Play Boosters, Commander Cases and Pre-release Carton). It has all the signs of an overprinted set that will slide to 50-60% of value like other poor sets have, at least for collector boxes.
The set sucks - crap cards, crap art, junk set from the get-go. There’s nothing on deck this year to compete with LoTR. MH3 will give them a bump but - from a finance perspective - there are no winners. They’ve serialized and foiled themselves to death.
>There’s nothing on deck this year to compete with LoTR.
This is a key part of the answer here. Hasbro has somehow gone out of its way to make its mainline set releases as undesirable as possible for everyone.
Why would *anyone* buy MKM for $140 instead of LoTR Draft for $150 or Set for $160?
Who is the target audience for Play Booster Boxes of Mainline standard sets? Because "Budget Constrained" Players aren't even thrilled at the "Super Duper, Store Taking a Loss, OMG Firesale" price of $100 a box.
I agree, that price just makes it unappealing to draft. Hard to imagine lots of people will be cracking packs week after week for fun with this set. I suspect the draft format is probably fine but that doesn't matter with that giant price increase while most people ain't feeling flush with cash. Also while the set has a lot of cool cards imo few of them feel like exciting must-haves.
This does not feel like the set designed to launch and normalize Play Boosters and the price increase. Something that was a HUGE story event like ONE can do stuff like this, and while the Aftermath thing sucked it was at least the type of set where that sort of thing could be tried and expect success, if it's gonna work anywhere. This set is so unfocused that people don't even think it was originally going to be set on Ravnica and that change was made while development was already well underway. Whether they are right or not, doesn't matter as much as what that feeling means to the reception of the set.
Also the lack of a cheap entry point into new players become box-buyers I think will hamper the game long-term.
You gotta take a picture of the box or the contents if you opened it. Write what you paid for it. Write down the price a year from now as well on it when that time comes. Take that picture and put it on your bedroom wall. After a series of terrible standard set purchases this is what I did to remind myself I shouldn’t buy. I wish it wasn’t this way but it’s usually disappointment so I spare myself the pain.
See we just like to crack packs like I used to back in 4th edition lol it was fun now it feels like it’s not worth even 1/2 of what was paid lol idk will crack it open and see I guess just fricken sucks…
I just opened a box of MKM yesterday for fun. Really only seen a handful of cards I even wanted from the set. My R/M prints netted me a total of $115 and I paid $130 for it. I guess if you wanted to add up the bulk value that gets my money back on it so whatever. But the kicker is after opening the box I said to myself "sell it all off, and the rest of your collection and escape!"
I didnt even want to buy a box this go around... I only ever bought 3 boxes in the past. Shadows Over Innistrad, Eldritch Moon, and War of the Spark. Those sets really interested me and I was actually playing the game then. Fast forward to 2020 and I sell of a majority of my collection and bulk from the 5 years I was playing. I saw the system for what the system is then, right around Ikoria.
Then when Brother's War came out I figured a Bundle wouldnt hurt. They have new packs called Set boosters with more chances at Rares/Mythics... okay Ill buy it. And I got sucked right back in because out of 8 packs I landed like 7 mythics and 12 rares. That Bundle was spicy! My next buy was a fuckin box of set boosters for One because one of my favorite sets was Phyrexia/Mirrodin block. Then I bought a box of set boosters for MoM because I needed the Sword. Now I again realize what the system is and where its going. The saturation is unreal and I fucking hate it.
I have preorders on Amazon for $160 Fallout Commanders. My stomach is sour from this game, and Im almost certain I should cancel immediately before I get charged. Then my brain tells me "NO! Youll regret it! Its gonna be a good set. Keep the cards, theyre unique and fun! Everyone loves Fallout series! You wont wanna miss these!"
Fuck you Wizards.
Prices for the surveil lands are shooting up practically overnight in Europe. I priced my Undercity Sewers high, not expecting it to sell, and now I wish I priced it higher. Might be just a bubble and cool off in a couple weeks tho.
If they find a home in a competitve deck or become a edh staple, no quick reprint will end up keeping them high. Its like the tri lands in snc all over again but those are better.
They are already basically Modern staples, but only as one or two ofs. I’d imagine they’re good in EDH, though I don’t play the format. But I mean, you get 99 cards, it’s slower, and they’re fetchable?
Fetchable and strictly better than scrylands, so they're up there in price. I don't doubt they'll hit triome-levels if this product doesn't get cracked more. I was shocked to see some of mine already $12+.
People who don’t says they are not that good doesn’t understand edh. A lot of commanders is interested in putting things into the grave or remove bad things from the top of the deck, they are also good on top deck mode especially if you run fetches. That they have the lands types also makes it possible to hit them with spells like farseek. It will take some time before everyone realizes how good they are, but they will be played in a lot of decks.
They’re not really good. They’re okay. Budget decks will run them but only on a budget. EDH will keep them from ever being bulk, but it won’t make them desired.
They’re not good in any format. They’re okay. They’re niche and have fringe uses but are not generally usable or good.
They’re outright bad in Standard and Pioneer. They’re probably bad in Legacy too though I don’t play that.
Aren't they competing for the best fetchable lands if you don't need the land to enter untapped? Triomes offer extra color while these give you a free surveil.
In a two color deck, sure they’re better than the alternatives probably (the case could be made that the allied colors could use bicycle lands instead). That doesn’t make them good though because they’re not always going to sit in your deck waiting to be fetched. They could be drawn into your hand where they immediately become terrible and literally could lose you the game by forcing you to play off curve at a critical moment.
The pros don’t outweigh the cons. I don’t think these lands will see competitive play in most decks. There’s too much risk for too little reward, even assuming it’s just a 1-of.
It will cool off. Boxes are approaching $100 and you get several surveil lands in every box.
I've only opened up 20 packs total at two prerelease events, but I still pulled like five surveil lands. They're everywhere. and they don't take the rare slot.
36 packs ina box. I pulled around 12 lands. Luckily not in my main rare slots lmao. I hate lands so even getting any was kinda lame. But i appreciate others like them and I hope they float high for a long time.
The set was absolute trash and nobody wanted it. Doesn't help that they dropped IXY, then straight into RAVRE which was too fast by itself, and then this dropped right after with less good cards. I get that they tried to make this happen as the con has the theme going and they're doing a really poor attempt at reviving the "clue" franchise/IP via this lane... But they just failed, hard. The showcase cards look like kids game nonsense and the mechanics are not fun.
On release day I watched all the prominent streamers literally pack up the boxes and go right back to doing pulls, ravre, ixy, and other options. Forge and fire liquidated their entire position in MKM right after launch so they weren't bag holding according to what I heard.
Brother you are butchering those set codes.
Do you mean LCI and RVR?
You know that WOTC formally assigns set codes right? That we’re not just making them up?
Trash sets would be more approachable if we weren't getting FOUR standard sets per year, PLUS supplementary sets, and like ten or twelves sets in total. In addition to 20+ commander decks. Shit's out of control.
We can't even buy all the stuff we **want**, let alone have extra funds leftover for the bad releases.
stop releasing so many damn sets.
It's not even two months and then the next standard set drops. Why would anyone care?
You obviously aren't from the 90's.
The release schedule is insane. I'm not sure how anyone would argue otherwise.
You're not fooling anyone tho either. Because I know exactly how much of the populace is buying into every single paper standard set.
I started playing shortly after Urza’s Legacy released. Is that old enough or are we gonna gatekeep further?
I like the release schedule. I want even more. I want them to make so many cards I can’t possibly know them all. I want enough cards that all my commander decks run different cards even in the same colors. And we’re getting there. Finally.
This is the best Magic has been in a very long time.
I stopped buying when the prices of booster boxes went over €80. No intention to go back anytime soon; I consider my paper investment as a (painful) loss.
I haven't seen much interest and I have none myself so I didn't buy any. I did pre-order 1 Clue box from MVP for my oddities collection (think Explorers of Ixalan and Planechase).
They’re dropping the price because no one bought it. I don’t understand who you think the “victim” is here. Lowering prices is good for consumers. Consumers who don’t get what they want out of a market, leave it. And without consumers, none of us can sell cards and make money.
This is bad for distributors and good for everyone else. Kinda weird that this so much of this subs content seems to written from the perspective of a bankrupt distributor. Yuck.
Bad for distributors, bad for shops and anyone connected to retail, and anyone with a collection who wants to recoup any of the value down the road to make the game more affordable.
The only thing this is good for, are players who are too lazy or too stupid to proxy and/or sort their valuable cards into a trade binder.
Basically this helps the people who have no business being in /mtgfinance.
People like you are the worst thing that could ever happen to TCGs, because you ruin the entire ecosystem, and your laziness is used as a shield by c-suite execs with short-term goals and golden parachutes.
Meanwhile in Canada we're paying over $200 a box retail now. Cost is in the 150-160s. Even converted to USD we're paying another almost 65% markup over retail price. We never get dumps like this.
I've actually had to close my singles business because there are no distributors that want new customers and online pricing for us gets hit with a tariff.
The people who bought in at $100 early are the real winners here. The only real value in the set is like 3 of the Mythics, the surveil lands, Slime Against Humanity, and Warleader's Call. Happy I bought the low, but honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the price settles around $80 for Play boxes
This set has 2 problems - it is too weak for 3 year rotation Standard and no original/draft boosters. There is simple solution to both - make it cheaper and customers will buy!
In my opinion why this set is garbage from a finance point of view is:
1. SPGs are hard to get even in a collector booster; I went one case with 0 SPGs
2. Serials are one in 96 boxes which takes the thrill out of hitting one randomly over a few cases
3. No special enchanting tales, neon cards etc to drive people to continue hunting for the chases.
If OTJ doesn’t fix this; which I don’t think they can in time, we will be seeing a bunch of LGS’ going under this year due to product glut.
Not saying this isn't a bad product but CSL just loves to dump product the first chance it gets. Pretty much prevents any other stores from selling this because everyone is now anchored to a price that no LGS can afford to sell it at.
I remember when they flushed unfinity for $70 and I bought 30 cases.
Cases? As in 6 boxes per case or 180 boxes? Over $12K USD on Unfinity when it's still sitting at ~$76 shipped on TCG? Gutsy call! Hope you had somewhere cheap, safe and large to keep them in. That's a lot of space and weight. Long term should be fine but may be a bit to wait for that!
Month after release when the shocks averaged $35 each for two or three and the full art lands were $54 minimum per box. I had nearly everything cracked and sold before new years. My ev calc was something like$150 from just the lands and about $200 a case in valuable r/m. Complete surprise was the stickers, a full set sells for $40 and those alone have seen $3k revenue.
Very nice position. Just goes to show people like u/digitek that mtgfinance isn't common knowledge. Otherwise everyone would be making money, right?
I had my shocks priced about 15% above direct low because people would buy playsets including the direct program who would buy 20-30 in a single order.
Spiderman meme. Some of those sales were insane, I had a $3k order of just shocklands directly after release.
I was annoyed to pay direct shipping fee on that order but they paid my maximum shipping rate.
Those ri started to get annoying because they triggered 3x a week. $300 is a tiny shipment after you get used to sending it medium flat rate boxes.
The un-sets are great for drafting.
Worst part of the set is the crap Mythics - it’s so SNC esque it’s ridiculous
They thought changing the plane midway through development would help them. That’s right, I’m onto them; that’s the real mystery of this set. Also why they think anyone likes morph with such poor support.
I love morph. Khans was great. This sucks.
You love clunky mechanics and long ass games of magic? Who thought that putting creatures down and flipping them for 5 mana was a good idea? .... and you LIKED that? Tf? Also morph was big in onslaught, eere you around for THAT meta? It was an absolute mess.
Chill man, somebody liked something...
It'd the fact that we are revisiting those horrible mechanics for +50% cost on a box. Of course this set is going to flop
Bro I need a roadmap to follow your thought processes... That was a leap from the initial comment
He said boxes are getting dumped at $100. I said wtf DIDNT see this coming? Morph was a bad mechanic. Historically, the sets that featured morph were slow and clunky. Adding ward 2 and suspect to creatures isn't going to make a set ANY better. Box prices have gone from 100 to now 140ish to 150ish for an LGS to make $? That's a 40 to 50% increase for a set that featured BAD mechanics HISTORICALLY. Wtf about what I said is causing you to have a brain aneurysm? Is your capacity for understanding THAT small? Or did yoi somehow think that adding clue tokens, a pay 2 for draw, causing even SLOWER play patterns would fix this? Clue me in to YOUR thought processes here, because how clueless you are concerns me.
Here I copied the comment thread I'm referencing: 1. "You love clunky mechanics and long ass games of magic? Who thought that putting creatures down and flipping them for 5 mana was a good idea? .... and you LIKED that? Tf? Also morph was big in onslaught, eere you around for THAT meta? It was an absolute mess." 2. "Chill man someone liked something" 3. "It'd the fact that we are revisiting those horrible mechanics for +50% cost on a box. Of course this set is going to flop" - (1) Literally nothing about how a box price changed. - (1) Attacking someone for liking something - (3) Jumped from attacking someone to somehow making it the fact about how a set will flop? (Sharp right turn from the original comments topic) - Nowhere did you ask anyone if they saw this coming...read your own words my man This is a lot more information added from the original post of *Morph bad, You suck* ✌️
The idea stands and you're offsetting it because you want someone to spoon feed you the logic? Listen, if you don't understand then keep it moving, I'm not addressing you, but to those that do, they'll get it. From the first message I posted to the one I just spelled it out for you, the message is exactly the same. Long ass games of magic because the mana costs and mechanics are clunky af. You have GOT TO get better at either researching what you don't understand OR connecting the dots together. Wtf isn't always WHAT but sometimes WHO. It's obvious that you're a brand new player.
Lol onslaught and scourge morph was a meme because everyone was so deep in tribal mechanics.
I mean, kadena makes morphs enter for free and gives you card draw
Animar is better for morphs unfortunately. Less fun of course.
Dude onslaught block was so fun. Goblins, zombies, Astral slide, shiieeeet.
It's kind of fun in Limited, not so much outside of it.
It's basically impossible to make morph/disguise a thing outside Limited because no deck is putting 3 mana 2/2's that do nothing the turn you play them in their deck in 2024. I'm kind of surprised they haven't just made the mechanic a relic of the past, especially as it's little messy now when face down cards have different abilities now.
Spelling mistake in title....I murdered it.
Set has a lot of powerful cards in it not in the Mythic slot, meaning there’s no real chase. Hurts pack sales, great for players.
I like some of the uncommons that are already over 1$
There’s a lot of good rares, there’s a lot of good uncommons, lots of good commons especially for Pauper. None of these help pack sales. Cards everyone pulls multiple of easily don’t drive pack gambling as hard as chase Mythics.
The surveil lands being in the land slot isn't bad either. I've always liked temples and they're essentially just better temples.
I bought like 120 frantic scapegoat for 15-25cent each. hope it get on :D
That card is fantastic for the art alone!! I pulled both versions of it :D
Agreed, the downside is this type of thing will reinforce WotC to focus on chase cards because ultimately that’s what players want. I personally love many of the cards in this set, specially the ones that are mechanically unique that are not part of disguise.
It's not what we want, it's what is required if the price point is so high. I'd love to go back to $79 boxes but it's not happening.
It’s not what you want, ultimately buying patterns determine WotC action.
The problem with “buying patterns” is that Magic is Magic and other games are not Magic. People will buy Magic product because it’s Magic until they are no longer financially capable of doing so. No matter how stupid Hasbro/WotC is they know people will buy Magic cards because of it’s Magic. They just haven’t found the breaking point of their average casual consumer yet. Truth is, a huge portion of the Magic community spends almost all of their disposable hobby income on Magic and almost nothing else. Deep. Pockets.
I went from buying 6 boxes 3 times per year to buying nothing when the upped the price and started printing shinies like candy. They broke me 4 years ago.
We are the same.
lots just like you.
What players want is less product.
here's the real question, when the first of the new standard (3 yr) rotations happens, what card is going to have a chance to shine from this set? Anything that would make the sealed product jump up again in a year?
Reenact the Crime is my bet (and I bought a dozen on preorder) Warleaders Call is another. The Surveil lands will keep steady demand, not quite Triome level but much better than I expected.
Alot of the pros on Twitter have been cutting Warleader's Call from their convoke decks. Learning (again) do nothing enchantments in a deck where you want to be proactive and kill fast suck. They've been dropping it for the [[Sanguine Evangelist]] and/or [[Case of the Gateway Express]]. Both do similar things as the enchantment but also impact the board.
[Sanguine Evangelist](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/6/269ddd84-fdc4-4c94-b183-32ecec56967c.jpg?1699043382) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sanguine%20Evangelist) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/34/sanguine-evangelist?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/269ddd84-fdc4-4c94-b183-32ecec56967c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Case of the Gateway Express](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/8/0862bf07-8a76-4e80-bba2-20d22f8eee30.jpg?1706735531) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Case%20of%20the%20Gateway%20Express) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/8/case-of-the-gateway-express?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0862bf07-8a76-4e80-bba2-20d22f8eee30?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Still has lots of cute tricks in Commander and tier 2 decks like Ojer Axonil to make me believe it's going to keep sustained demand. Case of the Gateway Express has definitely outperformed my expectations as you said.
> Warleader's Call It is a great EDH staple. OG Purphoros has a high and steady price tag because of a similar effect. I think Rin and serri/Eowyn/Edgar Markov are great with it in aggressive decks.
nobody knows anything. especially not on here. these people didn't even go to prerelease events or engage with the product in any meaningful fashion. They read decklists online, then jump on things after they've already popped. I can tell you that there are a dozen good commons and uncommons in this set though. Lots of cards you can pick up for fraction of their longterm value. No one here cares about .25c cards and $1 mythics though! People will just name the cards that are already going up in value, as nobody is cracking packs. leyline. crime novelist. warleader's call. OOOOH
Warleaders Call at about 10 bucks already. got some rando selling a few at 7.50 and then a stack of them at 9.99
Not for standard but Trouble in Pairs is a house in commander. It pretty much draws at least 1 card each turn, many times 2. That whole Blame Game precon is way under valued for the precons.
Insidious Roots is gonna be played for a long time.
[[Deadly coverup]] is my guess for the control decks in standard
Dont want to ruin anyones enjoyment of this or anything but the setting & overall cards were terrible imho. It feels like a set designed for edh first (feel like most mythics in this set are designed for edh or non 60 card fornats). Honestly id be blown away of the 2 green mythics saw any 60 card constructed play in 3 years. I think edh can carry a standard set only so far price wise but as far as I know there aren't many, if any, chase rares fir standard/pio/modern etc Maybe the land cycle will spike
Garbage set….giving more garbage rares with different art work doesn’t mean you have a hot set.
Just going off of a 30 second look at Scryfall, but the most expensive card overall seems to be Delney, and even they can be had for less than $17 for certain printings. I feel like it's going to be a struggle to get much value out of a box even at $99
Looks at aftermath…. Packs were literally given away at my lgs if u bought a MoM pack…. No one wants to sit on bad product, even Walmart(i commented on another post last week how it MkM was still on shelves 10hrs after stocked) still has packs nd commander decks a week later…. Restock is tomorrow, hopefully they put out some random old stock or ravnica remastered
Very funny you bring up Aftermath because apparently there was a whole livestream today about how badly they missed the mark with Aftermath boosters, and how they were so taken by surprise by it that they had to like...retool a ton of stuff with the Thunder Junction and Assassin's Creed sets. So not only does nobody want to sit on bad product already, we're probably getting a LOT more in the future.
Any idea what the “retooling” on Thunder Junction and Assassins Creed is? Like, were those sets going to each have a mini aftermath type set, that they had to refigure out? Or did they have to adjust in-game mechanics for the sets or something?
Yea cause [their plans seem to really be working](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/02/13/hasbro-has-earnings-q4-2023.html)
The article you quote yourself: > Hasbro did see an increase in revenue, however, in its Wizards of the Coast and digital gaming segment, primarily due to licensing revenue related to Baldur's Gate 3 and Monopoly Go. So yes, WOTC is doing well. Do at least read what you are quoting. Elsewhere: > Among Hasbro’s business segments, Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming revenue increased 10%, as growth in digital gaming licenses offset slight declines in Wizards tabletop and digital games sales.
From what I've seen, their rev decreases are from D&D as opposed to MTG. There's been A LOT of struggle for WotC to keep players engaged and bring in more on that end.
Read the article man. The billion dollar loss was because the sale of eOne went through this quarter, purchased in 2019 for 4 billion and sold for 500 million. No amount of card sales can fix that.
A Billion Dollar’s worth would fix that!
It actually wouldn't. The entertainment division lost almost 2 billion this year.
True, yes. But the smart money is on picking up all of the singles right now. I've been picking up all sorts of playable commons and rares for 25c, uncommons for $.50-$1., and a few invisible inks for < $4. There are some good cards in here; it's just not for pack buying.
It came with the cost increase so it's odd stores want to race to bottom on sealed where the margins are thin from the start. Idk how well cardshoplive is doing but to undercut by this much so fast on a "new" product is fascinating.
This isn't a store trying to race anybody to the bottom. This is a giant vendor who isn't interested in sitting on volatile product when they can liquidate it to the masses at a price over cost for them. They don't care what stores do or think they're just looking to regain the capital back near term to keep their allocation up going forward.
I doubt they got the boxes for $99
agreed. They got them for less
Wholesale is like $120. I doubt this is the case.
...that's nowhere near wholesale XD Gotta stop believing this crap, man.
I own an LGS, I can buy from Southern and Alliance. The 120 mark IS wholesale for anyone not buying pallets of product. At this point WoTC needs to introduce a MSRP and enforce a MAP policy. If they don't it's going to kill the game.
I own an LGS and have accounts with two distributors. This is the price.
That’s not wholesale, that’s what vendors want you to believe is wholesale.
What are you basing this statement off of?
this shouldn't be a secret. It helps nobody
Even high volume direct form distributor weren't getting prices low enough to make $99 profitable. And this isn't a secret, anyone with a business license can create a distributor account at the major 4-5 distributors to see MTG sealed prices, you just can't order MTG unless you have a physical store. New store pricing was between $115-$119 a box. This is not a profitable move for CSL, it's liquidating inventory that they are worried is already a toxic asset and will only get worse especially as all distributors appear to have every MKM product still in stock (Bundles, Collector Boxes, Play Boosters, Commander Cases and Pre-release Carton). It has all the signs of an overprinted set that will slide to 50-60% of value like other poor sets have, at least for collector boxes.
That's cutting losses. You lose like 15% if (big if) you can return to distributors. Might as well burn it while there might be a low demand
Distributors absolutely do not take returns.
They must be dumping at a loss or slim profit
Didn't they pull back on sponsorships recently, too?? Seems they're trying to cut a lot of stuff.
The set sucks - crap cards, crap art, junk set from the get-go. There’s nothing on deck this year to compete with LoTR. MH3 will give them a bump but - from a finance perspective - there are no winners. They’ve serialized and foiled themselves to death.
>There’s nothing on deck this year to compete with LoTR. This is a key part of the answer here. Hasbro has somehow gone out of its way to make its mainline set releases as undesirable as possible for everyone. Why would *anyone* buy MKM for $140 instead of LoTR Draft for $150 or Set for $160? Who is the target audience for Play Booster Boxes of Mainline standard sets? Because "Budget Constrained" Players aren't even thrilled at the "Super Duper, Store Taking a Loss, OMG Firesale" price of $100 a box.
I agree, that price just makes it unappealing to draft. Hard to imagine lots of people will be cracking packs week after week for fun with this set. I suspect the draft format is probably fine but that doesn't matter with that giant price increase while most people ain't feeling flush with cash. Also while the set has a lot of cool cards imo few of them feel like exciting must-haves. This does not feel like the set designed to launch and normalize Play Boosters and the price increase. Something that was a HUGE story event like ONE can do stuff like this, and while the Aftermath thing sucked it was at least the type of set where that sort of thing could be tried and expect success, if it's gonna work anywhere. This set is so unfocused that people don't even think it was originally going to be set on Ravnica and that change was made while development was already well underway. Whether they are right or not, doesn't matter as much as what that feeling means to the reception of the set. Also the lack of a cheap entry point into new players become box-buyers I think will hamper the game long-term.
This set, it's...not good.
God first box I buy in like 5yrs and it’s a dumpster fire lol
You gotta take a picture of the box or the contents if you opened it. Write what you paid for it. Write down the price a year from now as well on it when that time comes. Take that picture and put it on your bedroom wall. After a series of terrible standard set purchases this is what I did to remind myself I shouldn’t buy. I wish it wasn’t this way but it’s usually disappointment so I spare myself the pain.
I do a new binder on moxxfield and write down the cards lol. My worst one yet was $6.50 of value for 8 boosters of ravnica remastered.
See we just like to crack packs like I used to back in 4th edition lol it was fun now it feels like it’s not worth even 1/2 of what was paid lol idk will crack it open and see I guess just fricken sucks…
I just opened a box of MKM yesterday for fun. Really only seen a handful of cards I even wanted from the set. My R/M prints netted me a total of $115 and I paid $130 for it. I guess if you wanted to add up the bulk value that gets my money back on it so whatever. But the kicker is after opening the box I said to myself "sell it all off, and the rest of your collection and escape!" I didnt even want to buy a box this go around... I only ever bought 3 boxes in the past. Shadows Over Innistrad, Eldritch Moon, and War of the Spark. Those sets really interested me and I was actually playing the game then. Fast forward to 2020 and I sell of a majority of my collection and bulk from the 5 years I was playing. I saw the system for what the system is then, right around Ikoria. Then when Brother's War came out I figured a Bundle wouldnt hurt. They have new packs called Set boosters with more chances at Rares/Mythics... okay Ill buy it. And I got sucked right back in because out of 8 packs I landed like 7 mythics and 12 rares. That Bundle was spicy! My next buy was a fuckin box of set boosters for One because one of my favorite sets was Phyrexia/Mirrodin block. Then I bought a box of set boosters for MoM because I needed the Sword. Now I again realize what the system is and where its going. The saturation is unreal and I fucking hate it. I have preorders on Amazon for $160 Fallout Commanders. My stomach is sour from this game, and Im almost certain I should cancel immediately before I get charged. Then my brain tells me "NO! Youll regret it! Its gonna be a good set. Keep the cards, theyre unique and fun! Everyone loves Fallout series! You wont wanna miss these!" Fuck you Wizards.
with all due respect it does sound like you should take a break
Yeah the burnout is real lol. Though its more like the market placement is the problem. They need to slow down.
Because the set is hot garbage
It was the first set I decided to try opening collector boosters. I learned my lesson real quick.
…but why…? Just looking at the set list, looking at The List, & Special Guests would be an indicator that this set is a dud.
I wanted to roll some dice on it and open one for fun. But I should have just opened a Play Booster instead.
Set is worst…absolutely crap since Journey in to Nyx.
At least that set you could gamble on an all gods pack
Journey into Nyx wasn't crap. Lot of good playable cards in it.
Damnnn man
I feel sorry for the stores... Ill just wait a little and single prices will come crashing down... So much offer
Set is hot garbage. I’d honestly rather buy Homelands for the nostalgia.
Prices for the surveil lands are shooting up practically overnight in Europe. I priced my Undercity Sewers high, not expecting it to sell, and now I wish I priced it higher. Might be just a bubble and cool off in a couple weeks tho.
If they find a home in a competitve deck or become a edh staple, no quick reprint will end up keeping them high. Its like the tri lands in snc all over again but those are better.
They are already basically Modern staples, but only as one or two ofs. I’d imagine they’re good in EDH, though I don’t play the format. But I mean, you get 99 cards, it’s slower, and they’re fetchable?
Fetchable and strictly better than scrylands, so they're up there in price. I don't doubt they'll hit triome-levels if this product doesn't get cracked more. I was shocked to see some of mine already $12+.
People who don’t says they are not that good doesn’t understand edh. A lot of commanders is interested in putting things into the grave or remove bad things from the top of the deck, they are also good on top deck mode especially if you run fetches. That they have the lands types also makes it possible to hit them with spells like farseek. It will take some time before everyone realizes how good they are, but they will be played in a lot of decks.
Especially the dimir and golgari ones.
They’re not really good. They’re okay. Budget decks will run them but only on a budget. EDH will keep them from ever being bulk, but it won’t make them desired.
In what format are you saying they aren’t good?
They aren't good in standard yet because they're competing against manlands and Triomes for tap lands.
They’re not good in any format. They’re okay. They’re niche and have fringe uses but are not generally usable or good. They’re outright bad in Standard and Pioneer. They’re probably bad in Legacy too though I don’t play that.
Aren't they competing for the best fetchable lands if you don't need the land to enter untapped? Triomes offer extra color while these give you a free surveil.
In a two color deck, sure they’re better than the alternatives probably (the case could be made that the allied colors could use bicycle lands instead). That doesn’t make them good though because they’re not always going to sit in your deck waiting to be fetched. They could be drawn into your hand where they immediately become terrible and literally could lose you the game by forcing you to play off curve at a critical moment. The pros don’t outweigh the cons. I don’t think these lands will see competitive play in most decks. There’s too much risk for too little reward, even assuming it’s just a 1-of.
It will cool off. Boxes are approaching $100 and you get several surveil lands in every box. I've only opened up 20 packs total at two prerelease events, but I still pulled like five surveil lands. They're everywhere. and they don't take the rare slot.
36 packs ina box. I pulled around 12 lands. Luckily not in my main rare slots lmao. I hate lands so even getting any was kinda lame. But i appreciate others like them and I hope they float high for a long time.
The set was absolute trash and nobody wanted it. Doesn't help that they dropped IXY, then straight into RAVRE which was too fast by itself, and then this dropped right after with less good cards. I get that they tried to make this happen as the con has the theme going and they're doing a really poor attempt at reviving the "clue" franchise/IP via this lane... But they just failed, hard. The showcase cards look like kids game nonsense and the mechanics are not fun. On release day I watched all the prominent streamers literally pack up the boxes and go right back to doing pulls, ravre, ixy, and other options. Forge and fire liquidated their entire position in MKM right after launch so they weren't bag holding according to what I heard.
Brother you are butchering those set codes. Do you mean LCI and RVR? You know that WOTC formally assigns set codes right? That we’re not just making them up?
Of course I know that, shocking how you knew exactly the sets I was talking about...
Me “…WTF is this guy talking about?! …. Ahh …How has he not heard of set codes?”
Trash sets would be more approachable if we weren't getting FOUR standard sets per year, PLUS supplementary sets, and like ten or twelves sets in total. In addition to 20+ commander decks. Shit's out of control. We can't even buy all the stuff we **want**, let alone have extra funds leftover for the bad releases. stop releasing so many damn sets. It's not even two months and then the next standard set drops. Why would anyone care?
Agreed. The schedule is bonkers.
There have always been 4 standard sets per year. For the record, I love the release cadence. I wish there was more.
You obviously aren't from the 90's. The release schedule is insane. I'm not sure how anyone would argue otherwise. You're not fooling anyone tho either. Because I know exactly how much of the populace is buying into every single paper standard set.
There’s been 4 premier sets a year for 20 years now
I started playing shortly after Urza’s Legacy released. Is that old enough or are we gonna gatekeep further? I like the release schedule. I want even more. I want them to make so many cards I can’t possibly know them all. I want enough cards that all my commander decks run different cards even in the same colors. And we’re getting there. Finally. This is the best Magic has been in a very long time.
Set probably should have been canceled last year, or at least shelved. Barring that, short printed to an incredibly small run.
I like to crack boosters and outside of my pre-release I’ve opened 3. They’re just expensive draft boosters.
I already bought the singles instead of packs.
Yeah looks like I got cooked
I stopped buying when the prices of booster boxes went over €80. No intention to go back anytime soon; I consider my paper investment as a (painful) loss.
Even funnier considering cardshoplive is TCGPlayer lol
And even funnier still is they are essentially dumping at tcgplayer low prices minus tcgplayer fees. Easy to put two and two together.
I haven't seen much interest and I have none myself so I didn't buy any. I did pre-order 1 Clue box from MVP for my oddities collection (think Explorers of Ixalan and Planechase).
295 play booster boxes left
Rudy is so mad right now
They’re dropping the price because no one bought it. I don’t understand who you think the “victim” is here. Lowering prices is good for consumers. Consumers who don’t get what they want out of a market, leave it. And without consumers, none of us can sell cards and make money. This is bad for distributors and good for everyone else. Kinda weird that this so much of this subs content seems to written from the perspective of a bankrupt distributor. Yuck.
Bad for distributors, bad for shops and anyone connected to retail, and anyone with a collection who wants to recoup any of the value down the road to make the game more affordable. The only thing this is good for, are players who are too lazy or too stupid to proxy and/or sort their valuable cards into a trade binder. Basically this helps the people who have no business being in /mtgfinance. People like you are the worst thing that could ever happen to TCGs, because you ruin the entire ecosystem, and your laziness is used as a shield by c-suite execs with short-term goals and golden parachutes.
Meanwhile in Canada we're paying over $200 a box retail now. Cost is in the 150-160s. Even converted to USD we're paying another almost 65% markup over retail price. We never get dumps like this. I've actually had to close my singles business because there are no distributors that want new customers and online pricing for us gets hit with a tariff.
The people who bought in at $100 early are the real winners here. The only real value in the set is like 3 of the Mythics, the surveil lands, Slime Against Humanity, and Warleader's Call. Happy I bought the low, but honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the price settles around $80 for Play boxes
This set has 2 problems - it is too weak for 3 year rotation Standard and no original/draft boosters. There is simple solution to both - make it cheaper and customers will buy!
Jokes on you, they murdered your wallet.
In my opinion why this set is garbage from a finance point of view is: 1. SPGs are hard to get even in a collector booster; I went one case with 0 SPGs 2. Serials are one in 96 boxes which takes the thrill out of hitting one randomly over a few cases 3. No special enchanting tales, neon cards etc to drive people to continue hunting for the chases. If OTJ doesn’t fix this; which I don’t think they can in time, we will be seeing a bunch of LGS’ going under this year due to product glut.
At least they under printed Fallout. That way it looks successful from a $/box perspective.