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toadee posted:I dunno, I like to talk about financials and I don't run a store. Are you confirming that you run a gaming store and that if the prices of Legacy and Modern staples dropped you would go out of business? Nope. I don't run a gaming store but I do sell singles full time for a living. And I support stabilizing the prices of Modern & Legacy singles, although not dropping the bottom out of the market entirely Yu-Gi-Oh! style. There's a problem with high singles prices supported by low supply: even though theoretically I could make a lot of money buying a Port for $75 and selling it for $150, when Port becomes worth $150, the people who have it are going to go to Ebay and Craigslist, not lose $75 by buylisting it. So to keep a lot of expensive format staples in stock, you either need to cut your margins a lot or make a ton of effort getting to the rare people who have those cards and don't care so hard about value. Saeku fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 16:53
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Fast forwarding the redraft conversation to where it usualy seems to end: New or bad or less competitive players pay a premium whether it's in redraft or subsidizing the packs of the people who win. It's hard to calculate whether that once every 18 months or so when they open a badass foil mythic offsets that they're bankrolling Spike in part because you're weighing emotional impact vs. financial impact. I come down on the side that because that poo poo's hard to weigh, I'd much rather have a draft environment that's cheaper and where decks are more coherent because Thoughtseize isn't a windmill slam p1p1. Your mileage may vary. Nehru the Damaja fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 16:55
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Fast forwarding the redraft conversation to where it seems to end: The counterpoint being, "I'll probably only win one game if I'm lucky, but maybe I'll open something cool," is what keeps the bottom half of the draft showing up most weeks (assuming the bottom half of your draft is actually made up of bad players who are going to stay down there). Basically good players benefit from redraft because they get good stuff no matter what they open, pay less, and get a better environment. Bad players benefit from keeper draft because they get to live the dream, enjoy the psychological benefits of not having double feel bads, and don't care so much about the quality of the environment. Both are fine for very different reasons, and both are perfectly appropriate, depending on the attitude/play quality of your store or playgroup.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:05
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Rare re-drafting has upsides and downsides, paying extra for additional prize support has upsides and downsides. Do the one your community enjoys most and please shut the gently caress up about it. toadee posted:I have literally never seen anyone buy anything from the expensive case at either of the LGS's I go to. Im sure someone does or else they would have taken them out completely, but it seems silly, because there's nothing in there that can't be had for substantially less on TCGPlayer And my LGS makes more in sales of Legacy and Modern staples, its a really dumb point. You've basically got a guy who works in a store telling you it would affect his business and your response is "NO IT WOULDN'T" Just flat out admit that you don't care about that, and stop ignoring his concerns, he hasn't ignored yours. You're at opposite sides of the issue with different interests as a retailer and a customer and its perfectly reasonable for you to say "Well, I think the needs of the consumers outweigh those of retailers" but don't pretend his concerns are imagined because they differ from yours. Ciprian Maricon fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 17:06
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toadee posted:I have literally never seen anyone buy anything from the expensive case at either of the LGS's I go to. Im sure someone does or else they would have taken them out completely, but it seems silly, because there's nothing in there that can't be had for substantially less on TCGPlayer And I've seen a guy walk in and at he's building a legacy deck and start off with three Seas. What's your point?
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Feb 28, 2014 17:11
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Literally The Worst posted:And I've seen a guy walk in and at he's building a legacy deck and start off with three Seas. What's your point? Yeah, Toadee and I clearly live in very different market realities. In my reality I have 3x the case space devoted to non-Standard cards than Standard cards, my Modern FNMs are bigger than my Standard FNMs, and I just can't loving keep Wasteland/FOW/Port/City of Traitors/Karakas in stock. I wager that my LGS's financial breakdown on singles is completely different than Toadee's LGS's, so giving out exact numbers isn't tremendously helpful, lends to overgeneralization, and if I give enough details to paint a proper context, then it's identifiable who/where I am and I'm showing my hand to competitiors. Saeku fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 17:20
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Saeku posted:Yeah, Toadee and I clearly live in very different market realities. In my reality I have 3x the case space devoted to non-Standard cards than Standard cards, my Modern FNMs are bigger than my Standard FNMs, and I just can't loving keep Wasteland/FOW/Port/City of Traitors/Karakas in stock. I wager that my LGS's financial breakdown on singles is completely different than Toadee's LGS's, so giving out exact numbers isn't tremendously helpful, lends to overgeneralization, and if I give enough details to paint a proper context, then it's identifiable who/where I am and I'm showing my hand to competitiors. When I get home I'll actually respond to this because it sounds very similar to where I am. Trying to do long posts on the phone sucks.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:25
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Saeku posted:Yeah, Toadee and I clearly live in very different market realities. In my reality I have 3x the case space devoted to non-Standard cards than Standard cards, my Modern FNMs are bigger than my Standard FNMs, and I just can't loving keep Wasteland/FOW/Port/City of Traitors/Karakas in stock. I wager that my LGS's financial breakdown on singles is completely different than Toadee's LGS's. Boy its almost like Wizards reprint policy has to navigate a complex web of contradictory interests. Between balancing the accessibility and appeal of 3 different constructed formats, attempting to appease as best as possible several groups of players with very different interests, and finding a way for the company to protect its bottom line and continue to be an excellent partner to the retail outlets, who also have very different interests from one another, that are critical to its organized play experience. A play experience that since the earliest days Wizards has identified as a cornerstone of its business model. No couldn't be something like that, obviously Wizards are just assholes, and they haven't made Tarmogoyf five dollars because they hate their players.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:27
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Stinky Pit posted:You've basically got a guy who works in a store telling you it would affect his business and your response is "NO IT WOULDN'T" Well my central point is also that the temporary hit in stock value would be offset by the increased trading volume since people are more apt to buy cheaper singles. Also at this point I'm really just saying I want numbers, because without them we're ALL just telling stories.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:30
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toadee posted:Well my central point is also that the temporary hit in stock value would be offset by the increased trading volume since people are more apt to buy cheaper singles. Also at this point I'm really just saying I want numbers, because without them we're ALL just telling stories. Look, my anecdotal evidence is better than yours because I'm right, duh.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:33
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Discussions about card prices really highlight how competitive players in this thread are. Honest question, does anyone here just play kitchen table magic, or are there prizes on the line at every game you play? Sometimes It seems like most players here would rather give up the hobby rather than play unproven/janky decks.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:36
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I love my LCS  Top 8 this weekend get foil Pain Seers, and they've got some sort of March Madness event going on, and I'm not sure if this ties in with that but the highest and lowest rolls of what is probably a D20 get to play for free.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:37
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NofrikinfuN posted:Discussions about card prices really highlight how competitive players in this thread are. Honest question, does anyone here just play kitchen table magic, or are there prizes on the line at every game you play? I don't know if this is true...considering Murdergoats is the staple of this forum... I play for fun, but I do it to win too...
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Feb 28, 2014 17:40
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NofrikinfuN posted:Discussions about card prices really highlight how competitive players in this thread are. Honest question, does anyone here just play kitchen table magic, or are there prizes on the line at every game you play? I just built and ordered a 9 dollar monored Goblins tribal Pauper EDH deck. I'm gonna play a bunch of kitchen Emperor with it and laugh all day.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:40
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We have a beer league going - we all meet Monday nights at a pub near here. Started off like 4 of us EDH'ing it while watching soccer, has since grown to like 25 people all playing casual stuff. I don't do FNM anymore because I got sick of the spikes who can't even hold a conversation about anything but poo poo they read on a magic blog or saw in a youtube video or whatever. Next week we're experimenting with a format we're calling "2-Headed Jackson". 2HG version of our "Jackson Constructed" which focuses on one rule: "At the end of the night, if someone offers you $20 for your deck, you have to sell it to them." We based it off of the self-policing strategy that the 24 hours of LeMons uses. We've done it twice before and are fine-tuning a ban list. Right now, Gary is banned because it loving stomped everyone last time, to the point where even the guy piloting the deck didn't have fun. I'm working on prize packs for the events now - anyone have bulk rares/uncommons from BNG/THS they want to sell? FreelanceSocialist fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 17:42
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NofrikinfuN posted:Discussions about card prices really highlight how competitive players in this thread are. Honest question, does anyone here just play kitchen table magic, or are there prizes on the line at every game you play? The brew house is a bit more kitchen-tabley. I do however play janky kitchen table magic, I most recently made a whelming wave deck for that. NofrikinfuN posted:Sometimes It seems like most players here would rather give up the hobby rather than play unproven/janky decks. In a tournament, that is certainly true of me, and I'm sure its true of a lot of people. At home, or in testing, or with friends, a deck can be janky. However at a competitive event, I am there to compete. I'm pretty sure that holds true for a lot of people here.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:42
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NofrikinfuN posted:Discussions about card prices really highlight how competitive players in this thread are. Honest question, does anyone here just play kitchen table magic, or are there prizes on the line at every game you play? But casual players want to buy cards as well and many are prohibitly expensive, turning them off from the game.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:45
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Magic was sort of featured on The Daily Show last night, in a segment about bitcoins. You can watch the episode here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-february-27-2014-kevin-roose It's the first segment.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:47
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toadee posted:Well my central point is also that the temporary hit in stock value would be offset by the increased trading volume since people are more apt to buy cheaper singles. Also at this point I'm really just saying I want numbers, because without them we're ALL just telling stories. And the point others have made is that those numbers wouldn't tell you very much except "it depends store to store" It's funny you mention numbers because my senior capstone project actually has been to take my LGS's giant excel sheet and turn it into an actual accounting solution. Without over stepping and making my LGS's poo poo public knowledge I will say that because our players are very savy to internet sales, my store buys singles at the highest buylists and has to then try to sell them at the lowest prices. This is awful and the profit margins are either tiny or just non existant, especially when it comes to Standard cards. Eternal Staples though have much higher profit margins and if it wasn't for them singles wouldn't make any money at all. Another side effect or our online savvy customer base is that they buy very little sealed product a all. Selling a booster pack that isn't for draft or prize support is a rarity in my LGS. One month last year I looked at the total number of packs sold at retail, not liquidated for drafts/prize support was SEVEN. SEVEN PACKS IN ONE MONTH. The store went through multiple cases, but almost all of it was liquidated at near cost. Magic doesn't make my store a lot of money and dropping the bottom out of the singles market would have an effect on it and other stores like it. To be completely fair, most of the revenue at my LGS comes from Comic books sales, and so that particular business isn't going to go tits up if the bottom drops out of Legacy or Modern. Frankly I do think any business that would die from an event like that needs to diversify, but its absurd to try and argue that it isn't a concern, my LGS owner isn't going to tie up giant chunks of his money buying product with terrible profit margins, he's going to stop carrying Magic. He did the same last year, when after years of being pressed by terrible business practices, my LGS ceased to carry Games Workshop product and stopped organizing events. The reprint policy affects lots of business and players very differently and its why Wizards is cautious with how they handle it. Please stop posting like making cards significantly cheaper via mass reprints is a 100% no brainer and that Wizards are dumb for not doing it. Ciprian Maricon fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 17:50
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Nehru the Damaja posted:I come down on the side that because that poo poo's hard to weigh, I'd much rather have a draft environment that's cheaper and where decks are more coherent because Thoughtseize isn't a windmill slam p1p1. Thoughtseize is almost always a windmill slam, redraft or no redraft. 
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Feb 28, 2014 17:53
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NofrikinfuN posted:Discussions about card prices really highlight how competitive players in this thread are. Honest question, does anyone here just play kitchen table magic, or are there prizes on the line at every game you play? It's basically all I play anymore. I haven't really played Standard since Darksteel turned me off of that. I play decks built around Mirrorweave and poo poo, it's p.fun.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:54
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theironjef posted:I just built and ordered a 9 dollar monored Goblins tribal Pauper EDH deck. I'm gonna play a bunch of kitchen Emperor with it and laugh all day. How does pauper EDH work? Does the commander not necessarily have to be legendary? I suppose thats a fair point about Murdergoats being a forum darling. It's just weird when people bemoan modern staple prices when new cards rotate into modern all the time. If a strategy becomes too expensive, by all means abandon it for a different one.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:55
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BJPaskoff posted:Magic was sort of featured on The Daily Show last night, in a segment about bitcoins. You can watch the episode here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-february-27-2014-kevin-roose It's the first segment. I still want to know how their MODO exchange was when that was still a thing for them just for some history.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:55
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NofrikinfuN posted:Discussions about card prices really highlight how competitive players in this thread are. Honest question, does anyone here just play kitchen table magic, or are there prizes on the line at every game you play? I play in tournaments to have fun and I have fun playing in tournaments. If I wasn't having fun doing that I wouldn't play magic at all. Its part of the reason why I can't really get into Commander.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:08
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NofrikinfuN posted:How does pauper EDH work? Does the commander not necessarily have to be legendary? Pauper EDH: Commander is any uncommon creature All 99 other cards are commons To count as a common a card has to have been printed as a common at one time (could be uncommon now) No card that was every printed as rare or mythic rare, even if it's also been printed as a common 30 health instead of 40 16 commander combat damage instead of 20 for a win There's a few more banned cards, like two more than regular EDH, but I don't remember them offhand. I've had a blast with it so far running a bouncy Mistmeadow Witch UW. There's no banned Pauper Commanders, but I guess there's a few considered "watch listed" like Bloodbraid Elf, Shriekmaw, Psychatog, Invisible Stalker, etc. I still haven't been able to find the rules on casting an Evoke spell from the command zone, since having 1B creature removal on a stick would be basically the opposite of fun in that system. theironjef fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 18:12
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Star Man posted:I still want to know how their MODO exchange was when that was still a thing for them just for some history. IIRC, there wasn't one. There was a plan to build one. I remember they had the domain and a placeholder site, but it didn't go live I don't think. Then, bitcoins.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:12
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NofrikinfuN posted:How does pauper EDH work? Does the commander not necessarily have to be legendary? Usually the rule is, 99 commons and your commander can be uncommon but doesn't have to be legendary.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:12
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NofrikinfuN posted:Discussions about card prices really highlight how competitive players in this thread are. Honest question, does anyone here just play kitchen table magic, or are there prizes on the line at every game you play? The answer is in the middle? I play some kit he. Table with janky decks. I've also been to 2 modern events this month and gotten 1st and 3rd for about a box worth of packs in prizes and I'm going to GP Richmond. I'm also bummed a bit at prices and reprints due to building a cube, I want to let some of my more casual friends experience some of the best cards magic can offer.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:13
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NofrikinfuN posted:Discussions about card prices really highlight how competitive players in this thread are. Honest question, does anyone here just play kitchen table magic, or are there prizes on the line at every game you play? I always start off trying to play a combo deck deck in any format but then go to one of the proven archetypes that I like playing. There's not really much consistency there I'm currently on Affinity in Modern and U/W in standard v  v.Dredge lists are my one true love though.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:16
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The funnest MTG format will forever be Winston draft. I have a box of Modern Masters squirreled away for some hypothetical bad dudes single elimination Winston Draft tournament. edit: Four pods of two, because I am sure some witty and charming person is going to nitpick this.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:16
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BJPaskoff posted:Magic was sort of featured on The Daily Show last night, in a segment about bitcoins. You can watch the episode here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-february-27-2014-kevin-roose It's the first segment. Also kinda odd they picked all red cards, but I guess it's for background contrast. Can't get too mad about Akroma anyway in EDH
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Feb 28, 2014 18:21
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I choose to open packs because- I like playing draft/sealed with my friends. (In fact we are going to do a italian theros sealed with pre-release boxes on tuesday, going to be fun, I love limited formats.) Buying from the UK is insane compared to the US and shipping dictates that it would be a similar price anyway for singles. I can buy boosters for ~£1.50 each (not including shipping) for theros/BotG packs from europe whereas I could spend £10-15 for one card, I rather chance my luck and get some other rares in the process. I like to get a bigger collection of cards since I only seriously started playing a few months ago. I can't even fill a holiday box full of cards yet. I like cracking packs, buying singles is horrifically boring compared to opening a pack and finding a card you never thought of using and it could be part of your new standard or commander deck! I... like collecting the little blurbs/tokens that come with the booster packs. I only buy singles to finish of a deck or if I like the card itself. For anything else I open packs, but I am a kitchen table player so maybe I am biased and much rather have fun than play competitively/speculate on prices of wizard cardboard.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:21
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Zero_Grade posted:What's the card on the left? I recognize Akroma and Chandra, but not that one. Viashino Slaughtermaster is the one on the left.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:23
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MrBling posted:I play in tournaments to have fun and I have fun playing in tournaments. If I wasn't having fun doing that I wouldn't play magic at all. Oh, I don't mean to imply you're not having fun. I just assumed early on that being priced out of a strategy was part of the game. I didn't realize so many people sighed and got out their checkbook instead. If you have the money and have fun by all means keep doing what you do. WotC certainly didn't get where they are by selling bulk commons to players like me.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:35
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Samael posted:I am biased and much rather have fun than play competitively/speculate on prices of wizard cardboard. Other people have fun speculating and playing competitively, Magic has lots of different ways to be enjoyed which I think is a big reason why its so successful.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:37
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NofrikinfuN posted:Oh, I don't mean to imply you're not having fun. I just assumed early on that being priced out of a strategy was part of the game. I didn't realize so many people sighed and got out their checkbook instead. Well, I actually haven't bought a card worth more than €2 in the last 15 years at least. And the two boxes of Return to Ravnica I bought were the first packs I bought just to open since Nemesis was released. Winning plenty of prize packs and cracking them gets you a lot of trade fodder, and also having kept a lot of older/weirder cards allowed me to trade them off to Commander players for standard staples. I guess I'm actually a terrible LGS customer since I basically just pay entry fees and buy the occasional pack of sleeves.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:45
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NofrikinfuN posted:Sometimes It seems like most players here would rather give up the hobby rather than play unproven/janky decks. I can definitely say that there's something that feels weird and gross and crappy to me about playing a deck that doesn't work right. It just so happens that most of the stuff that makes decks work right is expensive.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:47
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MrBling posted:I guess I'm actually a terrible LGS customer since I basically just pay entry fees and buy the occasional pack of sleeves. That's totally OK. Just be a good member of your community instead, your LGS owner isn't going to mind that you don't spend a lot of money there if you contribute to an atmosphere and community that help attract other players.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:49
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Stinky Pit posted:That's totally OK. Just be a good member of your community instead, your LGS owner isn't going to mind that you don't spend a lot of money there if you contribute to an atmosphere and community that help attract other players. I'm similar. I almost never buy cards there, maybe once every couple months when they update the foreign case or its bad decks night or somethīng. Even if I have the store credit to cover it I still make a point to pay entry fees in cash and buy a few bucks of snacks every week so they at least get something out of me. By my count though I have 'made' money off of them though if I count store credit spent on cards as money.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:53
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Zoness posted:Viashino Slaughtermaster is the one on the left. These are the kinds of cards that make me wish I played during Shards 
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Feb 28, 2014 19:11
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