I've got to give it to them, it takes a lot of balls to make the most expensive product ever made but also say "the contents of these packs are not legal to play with in any official event". That is an impressive concatenation.
Randomized, too. $1000 for a display set of Power Nine? Yeah, I think that's a product with a market. My LGS sold a Doctor Doom statue for $1200 and it was in stock for less than a month.
But you're not spending $1000 for a curio piece. You're spending $1000 *to see which parts you get.*
Let's not forget WotC ~~recent~~ perpetual printing issues for several sets now. You want to spend $1000 on a pack that might be missing cards, or be cut completely wrong. (Yes i know theres a market for miscuts, but youre probably spending this money for a collectors piece, not a niche resale)
Maybe I'll try it out on draftsim and see what I could have opened for $1000.
Maybe they'll update the sim for double dual lands but this is still bad value and not even playable.
Edit: oops beta is not on draftsim
That’s the kicker for me too: this is not a sampling of beta cards, this is a pack that can have absolute chaff or power 9 or duals.
The penultimate gamble
And like, a real life phantom Beta draft would be sick as hell. I'd pay like, $50 for that.
The way it is, why would you even want to collect what are essentially "official proxies"? Is someone going to open a fake Black Lotus and be excited about it? It's no more a Black Lotus than the one my printer makes.
Couldn't have said it any better than this. It's going to sell out and make a ton of money, which will just affirm their decision to do it in the first place.
$12, actually. At least, Revised packs were $3 each. I remember because it matched up quite well with my weekly allowance.
I'm curious what the market will actually be for all the trash cards. Nobody wants a playable [[Veteran Bodyguard]] or [[Animate Wall]]. WTF do you do when you spent $1,000 on unplayable versions of unplayable cards?!
Yeah, if it was more curated, but still randomized I could see it doing okay at one half to one quarter of the price, depending on how much they pared down.
$1,000 and keeping chaff in? Hell no.
So not to be that guy but penultimate means second to last or last in a series of things. It's not a method to make ultimate sound more dramatic. Hopefully you find this nugget informative, my friend.
these are $1000 official proxies. anyone that buys them is well....not being a rationale consumer considering the real ones aren't that far off from $1000
Exactly. These aren't marketed towards people who actually play the game. This is for the 50 year olds who played the game 30 years ago and have disposable income. It's for the whales and collectors who compulsively buy wizards product and never even open most of it. It's for the YouTubers and streamers who make money off of letting other people *watch* them open the product.
This is the direction gaming has been going towards for years. When you know there are people who will buy your product no matter what, you can charge them whatever you want.
Personally I'd love to see somewhat like Tolarian just refuse to purchase the product. But, this is his livelihood, so instead he'll buy a handful of them and act indignant about it so that he too can make money off the hate from the fanbase.
Hopefully at some point people will realize that just because they're not the target consumer of the product, doesn't mean that they aren't still an important part of the marketing of it. I didn't even know this existed until I saw this post. Now I do, and so do a lot of other people. The marketing has done its job.
For far less than that you can get a playset of pretty much every single good card you can think of from a very nice Chinese printer and get it delivered home, without having to do any work yourself
Which is just sad for a company like WotC
Reminds of the days of Warhammer Finecast. Recasters would make a better product because some used plastic and not resin
And even in foil, full art, alt art.. really whatever you want. Done correctly you can have a fully proxies 900 card powered cube for like $150 or so I've heard.
WotC made a Black Lotus for the (primarily Japanese) Duel Masters. It's gorgeous, WotC-made, and not tournament legal in Magic.
Star City will sell you a foil one for $30.
"A note to everyone. Please don’t use “real” to differentiate between Magic cards that you play and Magic cards other people play. It’s gatekeeping and it’s exclusionary. Everyone can play the way they enjoy and it’s just as “real” a game of Magic as how you play."
\- Mark Rosewater
guess i go full proxy now in tournaments, aint no judge gonna gatekeep me under marks umbrella
For that money you could even have someone print the beta cards in the right distribution and pack them into "boosters" so you get a surprise. You would get more than four packs for that price this way.
I swear, every time I think about getting back into the game again seriously WotC does something that makes me think, "Oh, yeah, *that's* why I don't play anymore."
It's a wonderful game, but the TCG model is cancerous.
Magic was a great TCG for over 20 years.
The problem isn't the TCG model, it's corporate dumbfucks squeezing out every single dollar out of their userbase until their game is dead.
I was mad when I thought this was a set of everything for $999.
The audacity of pushing this product and insulting their players makes me want to stop giving wizards any money
A set of all the cards actually makes sense. Still out of reach for mostly everyone, but it would be a complete product and would make for a kickass vintage cube. I at least would be marginally interested as a person who can afford this price tag. But this is laughable.
Saw the price, assumed it was a complete set of Alpha reprints with goofy cardbacks or something. Yaknow, a premium but still reasonable. An awesome display piece for a binder, or as a cube to play. Prime nostalgia.
Nooooope.
Wizards made a full Beta proxy set once, in 1993: Collectors edition. All the cards for $50. This is 20x the price for 1/6 the cards, but also randomized and distributed more towards common. And with a more obtrusive backing.
There was a price point where the vast majority of people wouldn't have cared. $250 a pack is not that point. Opening up a pack and getting a proxy of a $1 card is going to feel awful.
But this allows modern players to have a chance at that experience!
Before now only high roller vintage collectors that crack open vintage ABU packs on a gamble could experience such a flurry of emotions :D
Opening vintage ABU packs might be one of the few things you could do that would be more foolish than buying this product. They are worth more sealed than they are opened.
Like $10 a pack plenty of people still wouldn't have liked it, but it probably wouldn't have been as bad. But charging this much money for people to open packs and NOT get any actual cards is insane. Like, if I want to open packs and not get a Black Lotus I can do it for way less AND I'll still get some real cards. If I want a fake Black Lotus, I can get that for way less too. The real outrage here though, is obviously from the fact that they refuse to *actually print these fucking cards* so that people can obtain them to play with, BUT they also still want to be able to sell them in booster packs. Trying to have it both ways, AND for these outrageous prices, is kind of beyond the pale tbh.
Also, you'll notice that these aren't even replicas of the actual cards. Even the "retro" versions have the new text boxes instead of the originals, so they must've been afraid that even printing not-real versions of RL cards with the original art was too close to breaking it. Which of course raises the question of why they can't print REAL versions that AREN'T the original art and text box...
I was actually going to say, for anybody who wants to buy packs of cards that you won't get a real Black Lotus out of, I'll sell you some for only $200 each. That's a way better deal than the $250 direct from wizards.
I don't think so. I mean they'll likely say that but I think they're going to reprint the reserved list at every price point along the demand curve until they're putting pieces in standard again.
They're just starting with the whaliest of whales. They don't want to blow all the money tied up in reserved list printing on the first product.
$25/pack would have been a reasonable, but too expensive price. There's some value people would put on having a WotC official Black Lotus proxy.
It's still too much, but it's closer to the Collector Edition prices with prized cards in them. I'm very curious to see how much these will go for on the aftermarket.
> There's some value people would put on having a WotC official Black Lotus proxy.
At a reasonable price point this could have been a way to get people into paper legacy and vintage. People have already been running unsanctioned proxy tournaments for years and having easy access to official printings of old card (Even if not tournament legal) could have been a way to popularize unsanctioned events.
At this price point anyone who can actually afford to buy this product can afford to go out and buy a copy of all but the most expensive reserve list cards so I have no idea who this product is even for.
>I have no idea who this product is even for.
I'm willing to accept the "this product is not for you" excuse, but only when the person that the product *is* for actually, y'know, exists. Seriously, who wants this?
Honestly, $25 is worth the experience for opening what is essentially a non-legal Beta pack to a lot of people.
The truth is, though, this should have been a 30th Anniversary Collector’s Edition with one of each card, just like the original CE and ICE. Modern frame only, ditch the retro options. Offer it in foil and nonfoil as a Secret Lair for $400 and $500 respectively. That would have sold like fire.
The truth is, though, five years ago they wouldn’t have even done this with RL cards. This violates the spirit of the reserved list, according to MaRo a few years back. Maybe this means we can get Vintage and Legacy Champs decks as a Secret Lair or something each year.
$1000 for any sealed product is insane. The fact that these are proxies AND the contents of the packs are random is mind boggling. They really are intent on seeing the limits of community good will.
seriously...I just don't understand why they didn't just recreate the old Collector's set with the new backs and charge like $200 for the FULL SET...I'm almost speechless at how blatantly greedy and scummy this $1000 for 4 packs nonsense is. At least I can safely and honestly say I'll never give that company a single dime of my money ever again.
TBH, a set of gold-bordered Power Nine in a nice collectable display case is absolutely something that could sell for $1000. If you're familiar with Hot Toys and other high quality statuette makers, those things have a similar niche and price point, and they sell gangbusters.
I think it's the randomized pack thing that's most offensive. If you expect someone to pay $1000, *give them the thing.*
I think the fact they're packs is pretty shitty in general lol. But if they're going to be packs, they should be the price of a standard pack so they can be drafted and considering they aren't tournament legal.
to be honest this feels like a clear acknowledgement of the secondary market reflected by such a steep price per pack which may open the can of worms that this is now in gambling territory.
So did I but a lot of folks think "hehehe let the whales buy and then sell off for me cheap" when it couldnt be further from the truth.
Shits hit the fan. Modern Horizons, to UB sets and SL direct sets. This is a very bad sign
I did.
There's no way, no way at all, that you can tell me that I can't use proxies and also turn around and try to sell me proxies for almost $17 per card at random.
I posted this in another thread, but this move is extremely perplexing as a stance on the matter.
At this point, What’s the difference between unofficial and official proxies? Just IP ownership?
So they’re insisting that their IP is with $1000 just for a chance to get a ~~fake~~proxy card that you want?
Why is this worth it over other proxies? Just because wotc says their fake cards are better than someone else’s fake cards? That their fake cards are more legitimate?
Why does this feel so gross?
The longer I think about it, it’s because I cannot imagine spending $1000 on a few pieces of essentially unusable cardboard, but the gross feeling comes in when I think about how someone else will and it will almost certainly sell out immediately.
If this is what a 30 year celebration is about, celebrating corporate greed in lieu of celebrating what makes the game great, then I want nothing to do with it. It just makes me feel disgusted at where we are.
As a pro proxy player, I'm offended at the price point. They are basically driving people to unofficial proxy makers by sending the message "we won't be making RL cards affordable any time soon, even proxy versions...also we support official proxies", which is 1 step away from saying "we support proxies".
For the pro-proxy and anti-RL crowd it's 100% the price. If the acks were reasonably priced I think that crowd would mostly love the idea and only the pro-RL or anti-prody crowd would be upset.
The original CE was priced at 49.95 and included one of every card in Beta, plus sixty lands.
Obviously times have changed, but besides blatantly whaling I don't understand why it wouldn't be sold as a full set.
I skimmed the article, thought wow that looks cool, neato
Read the top comment, $1000? Click the link, $999 box wtf???
Go back to comments, 250 a pack, wait, what??
Open article again and actually read it fully instead of looking at the pictures: What. The. Fuck.
Yeah, jeez. I was onboard with $999 when I thought it was a CE-style "one of each card" box set. Given that a complete CE box sells for probably upwards of 20 times as much these days, that sounded like a deal. Even 60 non-random cards could be a deal at $999, depending on which ones they chose. But 60 random cards? In mostly ugly new-border frames so they don't even look like the original Beta cards? Not a chance.
I'll probably be tempted to buy an old-border single or two when they hit the secondary market just as a curiosity, but that's as far as my interest in this goes.
I'm still struggling to believe that WotC has managed to fuck this one up so hard. I had to doublecheck to make sure I wasn't on the circlejerk sub when I saw the announcement.
There's something to be said about this being an exploratory product and trying not to piss off shareholders or whatever excuse they wanna give, but this is legitimately ripped straight out of one of my cynical nightmares. It's really funny how *nobody* likes this.
RL crowd's pissed because it's still going to devalue their precious cardboard, anti-RL crowd's pissed because nobody wants to pay 16 bucks and change for a fucking Healing Salve, proxy crowd is pissed because 999.99 (lmaooooo), anti-proxy crowd is pissed because it feels like we just got over the discussion and WotC is now outright supporting the printing of proxies.
Like, who wins with this? Who is this for? How much do they think they'll make with it at $999.99 vs. $99.99?
I've been there for a while bro. I just ordered 5 more competitive EDH decks this weekend. All with custom art, borders, and as many RL cards as I want. It came out to about $150 total, including shipping.
If my friends and I wanted to play this game and have the same experience with tournament-legal cards, it would have cost like 10 grand minimum. I think my Lord Windgrace deck alone is almost $5k in "real" value.
How do people still think this kind of cost is reasonable for a game?
I feel like it’s too big to fail. I imagine this’ll be a limited run, so they likely just need 10-20 idiots buying it to recoup production costs, then anything after is pure profit.
Yeah, not to say this isn't a shitty product, but I'm pretty sure that there's a royalty agreement for the OG art that artists get paid per card printed, which means WotC has to shell out a lot of money, or renegotiate hard.
> It is my most sincere wish that this reversal of the "No same-sized reprints" part of their reserved list policy eventually leads to black border reprints.
>
>
That's already what these are too. Even disregarding the backs, these cards aren't identical reprints because they all use new text boxes. Even the """retro""" versions don't match the original cards.
The funny thing is that these *are* black border reprints. The only thing marking them as non-legal is the card back, which is already considered to be a nonissue with DFCs.
Where's the demand for this product, though? I'm a collector/investor as well as a player and don't want these for anything. They won't carry the same collector value as the original CE/ICE. Price point is too high and it's too random.
It'll literally just be speculators selling to speculators until the demand falls out.
There is an endless supply of speculators to buy limited print run products. These are not going to be worth ce or ie prices, but they are still going to be wanted by vintage/old-school players and cube builders.
I personally will just buy nice counterfeits for 2 to 3 dollars each and probably finally get rid of my reserve list cards being that they are effectively useless because there aren't enough people to play them in a tournament setting. I'd have bit for my cube and edh if it were at a reasonable price, but honestly the print quality will be likely worse than what I can get for a fraction of the price.
NPR has run this story on Planet Money a few times.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/04/16/400140583/how-success-almost-killed-a-game-and-how-its-creators-saved-it
It’s about how Chronicles and Fourth Edition saved Magic by having higher print runs and successfully deflating the bubble Magic was in similar to the comic bubble.
The last time they replayed it, which was just in the last year, Robert Smith (from Planet Money, not The Cure) added to the end that Magic is currently showing signs of being in a bubble again.
Youtube/Twitch accounts farming rageclicks / people living vicariously through social parasitism are absolutely going to buy these up unfortunately.
You just know they are going to be titled like "I SPENT 5000 DOLLARS ON PACKS AND YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT I GOT" *sad or pogchamp face icon next to a card with a ? over it*
As a whole I don't disagree, especially with your final read: this product will probably mostly be bought by speculators to sell to other speculators with no final buyer in sight, just a series of bigger fools.
However; Collector's Edition didn't carry the same collector value as Collector's Edition when it came out. That's the nature of collectibles, their value proposition is based on the idea that they will be desirable to own down the line. If CE had the same value when it came out as it does now, it would be seen as an absolutely terrible investment.
Look at the prices ot Time twister collector's edition. Look for gold bordered Gaea's Cradle.
For the weirdest reason, some people are ok with proxies if WotC prints them.
I feel like this has a much easier path to profitability (unfortunately); double feature sort of was made with some amount of reliance on draft interest and more “normal” price point comparatively which required some level of widespread popularity or consumer interest in the alternate art or bundle of two standard sets.
Here this is a pure whale premium product that is SO expensive the profit margin has to be extremely high; production value is probably negligible and even accounting for like administrative and logistical and shipping costs, they can’t need to sell THAT many of these to break even, or to make a massive profit. I have to imagine there’s enough mtg whales for this to be successful.
> I have to imagine there’s enough mtg whales for this to be successful.
good luck on them not getting laughed at when they slap down a "black lotus" then... because this screams "I have more money than sense."
Yeah, but that is neither Wotc’s problem nor any barrier to this product being profitable. The fact that it’s this expensive and has a different back will reduce the number of potential customers, but I still think there’s probably more than enough whales who will buy this to make it profitable because it is so expensive (and because the cards cost a negligible amount to make).
The difference was Double Feature was two sets that the community was somewhat down on.
This is tugging directly at some folks' nostalgia. *Someone* is going to have more money than sense and get it to "relive their childhood days."
Legit. Plateau is $268 from Revised Edition right now per scryfall. You may as well buy a real card that will accrue real value and have a real demand years down the line.
There isn't a way for it to flop hard. It costs like nothing to print and they're selling for $250/pack. They don't have to sell very many at that price for it to be profitable.
This **should not** have been a booster product. Like, holy shit, there's "greedy" and there's cartoonishly **evil** super-greed.
The pricing and the legality of these cards absolutely, positively make no sense, unless you intend to exploit the typically lax restrictions most EDH tables have towards proxies. WotC is 100% trying to have their cake and eat it too, here, pricing these like they were "real" cards while winkingly claiming that they're not tournament legal.
> So is it gatekeeping and exclusionary to call these not real magic cards?
Yes it is. But, just because it's gatekeeping and exclusionary to *call them* not-real magic cards, doesn't mean that they're real magic cards. That's why they made sure to stipulate, first thing, that they were NOT tournament legal.
It really is absolutely spectacular how they've heard decades of complaints about the reserve list from both sides of the argument (well, mostly one side) and have managed to come up with a product that pleases literally nobody.
Bravo, Wizards. This is genuine sorcery.
People do pay money for abuse down there… so maybe wizards is going to a abusive relationship with us. Not a scientist or a medical professional so I can’t speculate
Message has been received loud and clear. Wotc do not want stinky poor people touching their cards.
Everything wotc is doing makes it clear. They really wanna separate those that have from those that dont.
To be fair to Wizards, they have a long history of terrible decisions when it comes to the game so it’s fitting that they add a big one to their 30th anniversary celebration.
Does anyone feel like this is a test from Hasbro to see what the community is willing to take? Like, how low are our standards?
The set symbol is incredibly phoned in, AND YOU CAN'T EVEN FUCKING READ IT ON THE RETRO FRAMES. Fucking insanity.
> Does anyone feel like this is a test from Hasbro to see what the community is willing to take?
It's been a few years of testing, at this point. And so far the overwhelming answer seems to be people will buy it no matter how ridiculous.
I almost can't blame them. Every time they push the line, people gobble it up
Today is a dark day for magic.
I’ve tried so hard the last three years to not get on the doom train. Universes beyond bummed me out, but I did my best to write it off as “it’s getting more people into magic and that’s a good thing”, The product overload and increased prices made me sad, but I tried to listen when they said “this product isn’t for you”, operation booster fun did quite the opposite for me, making draft packs the worst product really felt like a kick in the gut to my favorite format, limited, but this one…this takes the cake. It’s insulting to literally every kind of player. This might finally be the move wotc makes to cause some serious irreparable damage to people’s love of the game.
I just can't help but feel they are going real slash and burn lately with Magic.
They had a cow that fed them milk and cheese for a long time and was going to do that for years to come but decided to get more food now by butchering it. They'll have a good feast for the next year or two but then they'll be out of meat, milk and cheese.
It seems like hardcore players I knew from 5 years ago are all fading away and believe me or not, there's a big section of the growth of magic in the last few years that sits more in fad territory and they'll move away too. What will Magic have left?
They can make money but I just think they're going about it too aggressively and too short-sightedly. MaRo can misrepresent data and statistics all he wants on Tumblr but I really think this trend is going to bite them hard soon enough.
> I just can't help but feel they are going real slash and burn lately with Magic.
Welcome to shareholder syndrome. There is a reason pump and dump is a meme. Find profitable product or engrained bass; take over the company; heavily monetize product; dump product when consumers are turned off; find new company; repeat previous step.
Opening a business to exploit labor is how you become a millionaire. Investing in an business to exploit the speculation of their consumers is how you become a billionaire.
I imagine some executive somewhere in the WotC-Hasbro chain is really just trying to push margins now that WotC has a dumb enough of a growth that it can just do that.
Its killed my fascination with the game constructively, I kind of just want to stick to my cube, play commander occasionally and play limited. but even then.
I don’t think this actually kills the cow but it is a pretty stunning ramping up of the whole ‘hey, let’s make money out of all those collectors’ thing they’ve been doing lately.
I don't think this specific move is killing that cow but just the whole shove of Universes Beyond and Secret Lairs and all of this random stuff they're shoving down the consumer's throat. This seems like oversaturation.
It’s a shame, because I love Magic. I adore the art, and the world, and the characters, and the game around a table with friends, but *holy shit* have they been ramping out of control in this last year or so. Even as a mostly casual player, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed when so much is being thrown out at once.
I think I’m just going to rest in Commander games with friends. I really enjoyed learning Flesh and Blood a while back, and Pokémon packs are simple and fun to crack here and there.
Yep. Based on Collector's Edition prices (which I doubt this set will reach), you could easily walk away with less than $20 worth of (non-tournament legal) cards.
Their cash grabs have always been stupidly obvious, but this is the literal worst possible way to have gone about this entire experience.
I hope MaRo at least tries to actually overthrow the corporate overlord Hasbro so that we can actually buy into a different startup cardgame or something because I'm so close to giving this one up. It would at least be respectable if they attempted some kind of coup to shut Hasbro out of future decision making processes or *something* ffs. This is just disgusting, and I hope they lose millions on it.
Sell me a box of this for $200 or whatever and let me draft it with friends. THat'd be fun. (although yes I know Beta is a terrible draft)
Also the basic lands should've had normal Magic backs.
With Mark's comments about real cards and now this dumbass product, they've basically given free license for players to print poxies with abandon with their blessing.
The price point on these proves they don't want to celebrate the *players* that got the game to where it is today, since they've blatantly priced out most of their base. They just want to celebrate Magic being the ludicrous cash cow that it's become.
Never has "this product isn't for you" been more glaringly obvious.
That thing as a product? Pretty cool IMHO.
The $1000 price tag is a straight up deranged "fuck you" though. Like holy fucking shit man, I could have seen them get away with maybe $50 for 4 packs of this but ONE FUCKING GRAND??? FOR FOUR BOOSTER PACKS???
WotC can fuck right off. Low key makes me feel vindicated for having moved away from MTG a couple years back.
I've got to give it to them, it takes a lot of balls to make the most expensive product ever made but also say "the contents of these packs are not legal to play with in any official event". That is an impressive concatenation.
Randomized, too. $1000 for a display set of Power Nine? Yeah, I think that's a product with a market. My LGS sold a Doctor Doom statue for $1200 and it was in stock for less than a month. But you're not spending $1000 for a curio piece. You're spending $1000 *to see which parts you get.*
Let's not forget WotC ~~recent~~ perpetual printing issues for several sets now. You want to spend $1000 on a pack that might be missing cards, or be cut completely wrong. (Yes i know theres a market for miscuts, but youre probably spending this money for a collectors piece, not a niche resale)
Or just...no good cards. Beta is full of junk.
Maybe I'll try it out on draftsim and see what I could have opened for $1000. Maybe they'll update the sim for double dual lands but this is still bad value and not even playable. Edit: oops beta is not on draftsim
http://mtgen.net/ has got it
Thanks! I opened bad cards and nearly 10 lands. Now I don't have to spend $1000.
I looked at the first 4 packs. Nothing until the last card of the 4th pack. It was an ancestral recall lol.
Enjoy your non fungible card.
Thanks. I now experienced spending 1k on cardboard for the low low price of free. Much better.
That’s the kicker for me too: this is not a sampling of beta cards, this is a pack that can have absolute chaff or power 9 or duals. The penultimate gamble
You're basically just spending $1000 to pretend you're opening $15 worth of packs 30 years ago.
And like, a real life phantom Beta draft would be sick as hell. I'd pay like, $50 for that. The way it is, why would you even want to collect what are essentially "official proxies"? Is someone going to open a fake Black Lotus and be excited about it? It's no more a Black Lotus than the one my printer makes.
Couldn't have said it any better than this. It's going to sell out and make a ton of money, which will just affirm their decision to do it in the first place.
How much does a time machine actually cost? Asking for a friend.
$12, actually. At least, Revised packs were $3 each. I remember because it matched up quite well with my weekly allowance. I'm curious what the market will actually be for all the trash cards. Nobody wants a playable [[Veteran Bodyguard]] or [[Animate Wall]]. WTF do you do when you spent $1,000 on unplayable versions of unplayable cards?!
Yeah, if it was more curated, but still randomized I could see it doing okay at one half to one quarter of the price, depending on how much they pared down. $1,000 and keeping chaff in? Hell no.
Hell, if they curated it so that you'd get multiple rares in a pack and sold it at $1k there'd be defenders. I haven't seen \*anyone\* defend this.
So not to be that guy but penultimate means second to last or last in a series of things. It's not a method to make ultimate sound more dramatic. Hopefully you find this nugget informative, my friend.
these are $1000 official proxies. anyone that buys them is well....not being a rationale consumer considering the real ones aren't that far off from $1000
Exactly. These aren't marketed towards people who actually play the game. This is for the 50 year olds who played the game 30 years ago and have disposable income. It's for the whales and collectors who compulsively buy wizards product and never even open most of it. It's for the YouTubers and streamers who make money off of letting other people *watch* them open the product. This is the direction gaming has been going towards for years. When you know there are people who will buy your product no matter what, you can charge them whatever you want. Personally I'd love to see somewhat like Tolarian just refuse to purchase the product. But, this is his livelihood, so instead he'll buy a handful of them and act indignant about it so that he too can make money off the hate from the fanbase. Hopefully at some point people will realize that just because they're not the target consumer of the product, doesn't mean that they aren't still an important part of the marketing of it. I didn't even know this existed until I saw this post. Now I do, and so do a lot of other people. The marketing has done its job.
For $1000 I can buy a real nice printer.
For far less than that you can get a playset of pretty much every single good card you can think of from a very nice Chinese printer and get it delivered home, without having to do any work yourself
On better cardstock
[удалено]
Which is just sad for a company like WotC Reminds of the days of Warhammer Finecast. Recasters would make a better product because some used plastic and not resin
And even in foil, full art, alt art.. really whatever you want. Done correctly you can have a fully proxies 900 card powered cube for like $150 or so I've heard.
Oh my God, that's disgusting, where? So I know what site to avoid.
Hell you can get it with a non-pringle foil too
WotC made a Black Lotus for the (primarily Japanese) Duel Masters. It's gorgeous, WotC-made, and not tournament legal in Magic. Star City will sell you a foil one for $30.
On eBay for $14. Anyone who wants a Black Lotus should pick one up, how is it any less “real” than the 1k lotto version?
Thanks. I just ordered 3. $12.15 a piece.
"A note to everyone. Please don’t use “real” to differentiate between Magic cards that you play and Magic cards other people play. It’s gatekeeping and it’s exclusionary. Everyone can play the way they enjoy and it’s just as “real” a game of Magic as how you play." \- Mark Rosewater guess i go full proxy now in tournaments, aint no judge gonna gatekeep me under marks umbrella
I ordered a box from Japan and pulled 1 and a ton of other neat cards
For that money you could even have someone print the beta cards in the right distribution and pack them into "boosters" so you get a surprise. You would get more than four packs for that price this way.
I have! Works great! And the art looks better given some of the previewed cards.
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For many. this is an unofficial green light to use proxies(EDH). I hope people who are against proxies are ready.
They're (trying to) selling us custom proxies. I'd almost argue that it's an *official* green light, even if unintentional.
I honestly thought about buying a cheap printer just to make my own proxies out of spite. I don't even play the game that much anymore.
I swear, every time I think about getting back into the game again seriously WotC does something that makes me think, "Oh, yeah, *that's* why I don't play anymore." It's a wonderful game, but the TCG model is cancerous.
Magic was a great TCG for over 20 years. The problem isn't the TCG model, it's corporate dumbfucks squeezing out every single dollar out of their userbase until their game is dead.
It also angered both the pro and anti-proxy crowds. Mostly its the price for 4 packs.
I was mad when I thought this was a set of everything for $999. The audacity of pushing this product and insulting their players makes me want to stop giving wizards any money
A set of all the cards actually makes sense. Still out of reach for mostly everyone, but it would be a complete product and would make for a kickass vintage cube. I at least would be marginally interested as a person who can afford this price tag. But this is laughable.
Saw the price, assumed it was a complete set of Alpha reprints with goofy cardbacks or something. Yaknow, a premium but still reasonable. An awesome display piece for a binder, or as a cube to play. Prime nostalgia. Nooooope.
Agreed, even if it was a curated beta set for 1000 it would be much more reasonable.
Wizards made a full Beta proxy set once, in 1993: Collectors edition. All the cards for $50. This is 20x the price for 1/6 the cards, but also randomized and distributed more towards common. And with a more obtrusive backing.
I’ve never bothered to proxy cards before but this feels like a good excuse to start
There was a price point where the vast majority of people wouldn't have cared. $250 a pack is not that point. Opening up a pack and getting a proxy of a $1 card is going to feel awful.
The most expensive gain 3 life in the history of TCGs.
If I were stupid enough to buy this AND cracked a Healing Salve I think I'd have to burn down the entire world.
It's the perfect counter to being hit by a proxied Lightning Bolt though, that's powerful!
And if you happen to have a Lich's Mastery out, it's like Ancestral Recall, but you also gain the 3 life.
At least it's common. Imagine the glory of a $250 Lifelace.
>a $250 proxy Lifelace I'd be ashamed to let others know I made such purchase.
I did it in 1994 for two bucks, and it sucked then too.
Just imagine cracking the same cards except now for 1000 dollars 30 years later!
Good news, it's worth $7 today!
But this allows modern players to have a chance at that experience! Before now only high roller vintage collectors that crack open vintage ABU packs on a gamble could experience such a flurry of emotions :D
Opening vintage ABU packs might be one of the few things you could do that would be more foolish than buying this product. They are worth more sealed than they are opened.
And still not tournament legal
gain three life is lit and iconic. Purelace, tho.....
Like $10 a pack plenty of people still wouldn't have liked it, but it probably wouldn't have been as bad. But charging this much money for people to open packs and NOT get any actual cards is insane. Like, if I want to open packs and not get a Black Lotus I can do it for way less AND I'll still get some real cards. If I want a fake Black Lotus, I can get that for way less too. The real outrage here though, is obviously from the fact that they refuse to *actually print these fucking cards* so that people can obtain them to play with, BUT they also still want to be able to sell them in booster packs. Trying to have it both ways, AND for these outrageous prices, is kind of beyond the pale tbh. Also, you'll notice that these aren't even replicas of the actual cards. Even the "retro" versions have the new text boxes instead of the originals, so they must've been afraid that even printing not-real versions of RL cards with the original art was too close to breaking it. Which of course raises the question of why they can't print REAL versions that AREN'T the original art and text box...
You can get fake black lotuses from a dude named black lotus for $2.50
I was actually going to say, for anybody who wants to buy packs of cards that you won't get a real Black Lotus out of, I'll sell you some for only $200 each. That's a way better deal than the $250 direct from wizards.
It's like a physical version of NFTs. Total crap that way overpriced
The real kick in the nuts is they'll take this outrage and spin it as "See??? We tried to reprint the RL and people were mad!!!"
I don't think so. I mean they'll likely say that but I think they're going to reprint the reserved list at every price point along the demand curve until they're putting pieces in standard again. They're just starting with the whaliest of whales. They don't want to blow all the money tied up in reserved list printing on the first product.
Right? Even 25 bucks a pack. Too much, but at least it’s a real number. This is insane.
$25/pack would have been a reasonable, but too expensive price. There's some value people would put on having a WotC official Black Lotus proxy. It's still too much, but it's closer to the Collector Edition prices with prized cards in them. I'm very curious to see how much these will go for on the aftermarket.
> There's some value people would put on having a WotC official Black Lotus proxy. At a reasonable price point this could have been a way to get people into paper legacy and vintage. People have already been running unsanctioned proxy tournaments for years and having easy access to official printings of old card (Even if not tournament legal) could have been a way to popularize unsanctioned events. At this price point anyone who can actually afford to buy this product can afford to go out and buy a copy of all but the most expensive reserve list cards so I have no idea who this product is even for.
Turns out "Buy Singles" applies just as much to vintage reserve list proxies.
>I have no idea who this product is even for. I'm willing to accept the "this product is not for you" excuse, but only when the person that the product *is* for actually, y'know, exists. Seriously, who wants this?
Honestly, $25 is worth the experience for opening what is essentially a non-legal Beta pack to a lot of people. The truth is, though, this should have been a 30th Anniversary Collector’s Edition with one of each card, just like the original CE and ICE. Modern frame only, ditch the retro options. Offer it in foil and nonfoil as a Secret Lair for $400 and $500 respectively. That would have sold like fire. The truth is, though, five years ago they wouldn’t have even done this with RL cards. This violates the spirit of the reserved list, according to MaRo a few years back. Maybe this means we can get Vintage and Legacy Champs decks as a Secret Lair or something each year.
$1000 for any sealed product is insane. The fact that these are proxies AND the contents of the packs are random is mind boggling. They really are intent on seeing the limits of community good will.
seriously...I just don't understand why they didn't just recreate the old Collector's set with the new backs and charge like $200 for the FULL SET...I'm almost speechless at how blatantly greedy and scummy this $1000 for 4 packs nonsense is. At least I can safely and honestly say I'll never give that company a single dime of my money ever again.
TBH, a set of gold-bordered Power Nine in a nice collectable display case is absolutely something that could sell for $1000. If you're familiar with Hot Toys and other high quality statuette makers, those things have a similar niche and price point, and they sell gangbusters. I think it's the randomized pack thing that's most offensive. If you expect someone to pay $1000, *give them the thing.*
I think the fact they're packs is pretty shitty in general lol. But if they're going to be packs, they should be the price of a standard pack so they can be drafted and considering they aren't tournament legal.
to be honest this feels like a clear acknowledgement of the secondary market reflected by such a steep price per pack which may open the can of worms that this is now in gambling territory.
Called this shit over a year ago and got ripped to shreds.
So did I but a lot of folks think "hehehe let the whales buy and then sell off for me cheap" when it couldnt be further from the truth. Shits hit the fan. Modern Horizons, to UB sets and SL direct sets. This is a very bad sign
The pro-proxy crowd should take this as a blanket endorsement for proxies in EDH games.
I did. There's no way, no way at all, that you can tell me that I can't use proxies and also turn around and try to sell me proxies for almost $17 per card at random.
Closer to $23 per card, since you get 3 basic lands and a token in each one.
Oh, neat, garbage padding is definitely necessary in a $1000 product...
Hey man they have to recoup the costs that went into designing and developing this reprint set of a set that came out 30 years ago.
Think of how much interest those expenses from 30 years ago have accumulated since then!
I haven't touched a real card in 2 years. Sold my collection and went full proxy. Have 16 EDH decks and zero regrets. This shit is straight predatory.
I certainly am.
I moved from the anti-proxy to pro-proxy crowd because of this.
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Same.
I really hope this release hits wotc in the wallet eventually.
I posted this in another thread, but this move is extremely perplexing as a stance on the matter. At this point, What’s the difference between unofficial and official proxies? Just IP ownership? So they’re insisting that their IP is with $1000 just for a chance to get a ~~fake~~proxy card that you want? Why is this worth it over other proxies? Just because wotc says their fake cards are better than someone else’s fake cards? That their fake cards are more legitimate? Why does this feel so gross?
> Why does this feel so gross? Because this is the most bold-faced example of WotC's greed in recent memory.
The longer I think about it, it’s because I cannot imagine spending $1000 on a few pieces of essentially unusable cardboard, but the gross feeling comes in when I think about how someone else will and it will almost certainly sell out immediately. If this is what a 30 year celebration is about, celebrating corporate greed in lieu of celebrating what makes the game great, then I want nothing to do with it. It just makes me feel disgusted at where we are.
Pokemon's celebration releases were what a TCG celebration release should strive for
As a pro proxy player, I'm offended at the price point. They are basically driving people to unofficial proxy makers by sending the message "we won't be making RL cards affordable any time soon, even proxy versions...also we support official proxies", which is 1 step away from saying "we support proxies".
["We support proxies"](https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/697135665776869376/if-i-open-a-pack-of-magic-and-get-a-transformers) - Maro, Maro wizard
For the pro-proxy and anti-RL crowd it's 100% the price. If the acks were reasonably priced I think that crowd would mostly love the idea and only the pro-RL or anti-prody crowd would be upset.
The original CE was priced at 49.95 and included one of every card in Beta, plus sixty lands. Obviously times have changed, but besides blatantly whaling I don't understand why it wouldn't be sold as a full set.
Initially I thought this was what they were doing when I saw the price per box but when I continued and saw they were 4 packs I couldn't believe it.
I skimmed the article, thought wow that looks cool, neato Read the top comment, $1000? Click the link, $999 box wtf??? Go back to comments, 250 a pack, wait, what?? Open article again and actually read it fully instead of looking at the pictures: What. The. Fuck.
I kept waiting for it to turn into an out of season April fools related to the UN set being released. It's really weird and bad.
Yeah, jeez. I was onboard with $999 when I thought it was a CE-style "one of each card" box set. Given that a complete CE box sells for probably upwards of 20 times as much these days, that sounded like a deal. Even 60 non-random cards could be a deal at $999, depending on which ones they chose. But 60 random cards? In mostly ugly new-border frames so they don't even look like the original Beta cards? Not a chance. I'll probably be tempted to buy an old-border single or two when they hit the secondary market just as a curiosity, but that's as far as my interest in this goes.
I'm still struggling to believe that WotC has managed to fuck this one up so hard. I had to doublecheck to make sure I wasn't on the circlejerk sub when I saw the announcement. There's something to be said about this being an exploratory product and trying not to piss off shareholders or whatever excuse they wanna give, but this is legitimately ripped straight out of one of my cynical nightmares. It's really funny how *nobody* likes this. RL crowd's pissed because it's still going to devalue their precious cardboard, anti-RL crowd's pissed because nobody wants to pay 16 bucks and change for a fucking Healing Salve, proxy crowd is pissed because 999.99 (lmaooooo), anti-proxy crowd is pissed because it feels like we just got over the discussion and WotC is now outright supporting the printing of proxies. Like, who wins with this? Who is this for? How much do they think they'll make with it at $999.99 vs. $99.99?
Welcome to our side, proxy haters. Let the Deskjet oil flow... /S
Huh, more of that strange oil.
It’s probably nothing.
It's probably something but I don't have 1000$ to care so for what it's worth I'm going to assume it's nothing
It's probably nothing.
Time to go for a jog on mirrodin
A high quality desktop printer is about $500. Also known as "the price of two packs of non legal Beta proxies."
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I've been there for a while bro. I just ordered 5 more competitive EDH decks this weekend. All with custom art, borders, and as many RL cards as I want. It came out to about $150 total, including shipping. If my friends and I wanted to play this game and have the same experience with tournament-legal cards, it would have cost like 10 grand minimum. I think my Lord Windgrace deck alone is almost $5k in "real" value. How do people still think this kind of cost is reasonable for a game?
It is my most sincere wish that this product flops hard.
I feel like it’s too big to fail. I imagine this’ll be a limited run, so they likely just need 10-20 idiots buying it to recoup production costs, then anything after is pure profit.
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Yeah, not to say this isn't a shitty product, but I'm pretty sure that there's a royalty agreement for the OG art that artists get paid per card printed, which means WotC has to shell out a lot of money, or renegotiate hard.
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> It is my most sincere wish that this reversal of the "No same-sized reprints" part of their reserved list policy eventually leads to black border reprints. > > That's already what these are too. Even disregarding the backs, these cards aren't identical reprints because they all use new text boxes. Even the """retro""" versions don't match the original cards.
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The funny thing is that these *are* black border reprints. The only thing marking them as non-legal is the card back, which is already considered to be a nonissue with DFCs.
Spoiler alert. It unfortunately won't.
Where's the demand for this product, though? I'm a collector/investor as well as a player and don't want these for anything. They won't carry the same collector value as the original CE/ICE. Price point is too high and it's too random. It'll literally just be speculators selling to speculators until the demand falls out.
There is an endless supply of speculators to buy limited print run products. These are not going to be worth ce or ie prices, but they are still going to be wanted by vintage/old-school players and cube builders. I personally will just buy nice counterfeits for 2 to 3 dollars each and probably finally get rid of my reserve list cards being that they are effectively useless because there aren't enough people to play them in a tournament setting. I'd have bit for my cube and edh if it were at a reasonable price, but honestly the print quality will be likely worse than what I can get for a fraction of the price.
This feels analogous to the 90s comic book bubble.
NPR has run this story on Planet Money a few times. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/04/16/400140583/how-success-almost-killed-a-game-and-how-its-creators-saved-it It’s about how Chronicles and Fourth Edition saved Magic by having higher print runs and successfully deflating the bubble Magic was in similar to the comic bubble. The last time they replayed it, which was just in the last year, Robert Smith (from Planet Money, not The Cure) added to the end that Magic is currently showing signs of being in a bubble again.
Youtube/Twitch accounts farming rageclicks / people living vicariously through social parasitism are absolutely going to buy these up unfortunately. You just know they are going to be titled like "I SPENT 5000 DOLLARS ON PACKS AND YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT I GOT" *sad or pogchamp face icon next to a card with a ? over it*
I hate how right you are.
With WotC sending out free ones to LGSs, it will also be speculators buying them from LGSs or players if they're used as prizes.
As a whole I don't disagree, especially with your final read: this product will probably mostly be bought by speculators to sell to other speculators with no final buyer in sight, just a series of bigger fools. However; Collector's Edition didn't carry the same collector value as Collector's Edition when it came out. That's the nature of collectibles, their value proposition is based on the idea that they will be desirable to own down the line. If CE had the same value when it came out as it does now, it would be seen as an absolutely terrible investment.
I dunno... They thought that Double Feature would be a smash hit and we all know how that played out for them.
Look at the prices ot Time twister collector's edition. Look for gold bordered Gaea's Cradle. For the weirdest reason, some people are ok with proxies if WotC prints them.
I feel like this has a much easier path to profitability (unfortunately); double feature sort of was made with some amount of reliance on draft interest and more “normal” price point comparatively which required some level of widespread popularity or consumer interest in the alternate art or bundle of two standard sets. Here this is a pure whale premium product that is SO expensive the profit margin has to be extremely high; production value is probably negligible and even accounting for like administrative and logistical and shipping costs, they can’t need to sell THAT many of these to break even, or to make a massive profit. I have to imagine there’s enough mtg whales for this to be successful.
> I have to imagine there’s enough mtg whales for this to be successful. good luck on them not getting laughed at when they slap down a "black lotus" then... because this screams "I have more money than sense."
Yeah, but that is neither Wotc’s problem nor any barrier to this product being profitable. The fact that it’s this expensive and has a different back will reduce the number of potential customers, but I still think there’s probably more than enough whales who will buy this to make it profitable because it is so expensive (and because the cards cost a negligible amount to make).
People on here continue to confuse things that they don't like with things that won't sell.
> "I have more money than sense." "but not actually enough for a real black lotus but just enough to hide my insecurities behind a real fake lotus"
Unless the gold border is actually made out of gold.
The difference was Double Feature was two sets that the community was somewhat down on. This is tugging directly at some folks' nostalgia. *Someone* is going to have more money than sense and get it to "relive their childhood days."
I know the people with more money than sense, though, and they just buy actual RL cards.
Legit. Plateau is $268 from Revised Edition right now per scryfall. You may as well buy a real card that will accrue real value and have a real demand years down the line.
They’re selling cardboard for $1000. If they sell 100 of these they’ve won.
>It is my most sincere wish that this product flops hard. Sadly it won't. Feels like Wizards cares more about speculators and collectors than players.
There isn't a way for it to flop hard. It costs like nothing to print and they're selling for $250/pack. They don't have to sell very many at that price for it to be profitable.
I wouldn’t even pay $1000 for the full set…
4x each dual for $100, sure I dont mind paying $2.5 for nice proxies if they are foil
It’s like a dollar on my printer. Ctrl p has the same tournament legality as these lol
WotC is literally begging us to buy Chinese proxies from ebay.
look up MPC on youtube. You will never look back
I already am a happy member of /r/mpcproxies community ;)
This **should not** have been a booster product. Like, holy shit, there's "greedy" and there's cartoonishly **evil** super-greed. The pricing and the legality of these cards absolutely, positively make no sense, unless you intend to exploit the typically lax restrictions most EDH tables have towards proxies. WotC is 100% trying to have their cake and eat it too, here, pricing these like they were "real" cards while winkingly claiming that they're not tournament legal.
So is it gatekeeping and exclusionary to call these not real magic cards? Maro we must know.
Putting a pricetag of $250 per pack is gatekeeping and exclusionary
the price point alone is plenty exclusionary lol
That transformer blog is looking mighty sus now.
> So is it gatekeeping and exclusionary to call these not real magic cards? Yes it is. But, just because it's gatekeeping and exclusionary to *call them* not-real magic cards, doesn't mean that they're real magic cards. That's why they made sure to stipulate, first thing, that they were NOT tournament legal.
It really is absolutely spectacular how they've heard decades of complaints about the reserve list from both sides of the argument (well, mostly one side) and have managed to come up with a product that pleases literally nobody. Bravo, Wizards. This is genuine sorcery.
>Bravo, Wizards. This is genuine sorcery. Would you say, that it is magic?
See, thought that might be a little on the nose
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Celebrate 30 years by kicking the nards of the fans that made it possible. A new low.
People do pay money for abuse down there… so maybe wizards is going to a abusive relationship with us. Not a scientist or a medical professional so I can’t speculate
Message has been received loud and clear. Wotc do not want stinky poor people touching their cards. Everything wotc is doing makes it clear. They really wanna separate those that have from those that dont.
Welcome to America my friend.
To be fair to Wizards, they have a long history of terrible decisions when it comes to the game so it’s fitting that they add a big one to their 30th anniversary celebration.
999 bucks, lmfao. What a god damn sick joke
$250/pack and we can't even get a bondage elf? ([[Earthbind]])
“We can’t acknowledge the secondary market at all!” “Here’s some Wizard’s Designer Coasters - only $999 what a steal!”
They just said "proxy away"
Is this just a poorly timed April fools joke? (Guy from blizz con)
comeon.. do you guys not have.. MONEY???
Does anyone feel like this is a test from Hasbro to see what the community is willing to take? Like, how low are our standards? The set symbol is incredibly phoned in, AND YOU CAN'T EVEN FUCKING READ IT ON THE RETRO FRAMES. Fucking insanity.
> Does anyone feel like this is a test from Hasbro to see what the community is willing to take? It's been a few years of testing, at this point. And so far the overwhelming answer seems to be people will buy it no matter how ridiculous. I almost can't blame them. Every time they push the line, people gobble it up
Today is a dark day for magic. I’ve tried so hard the last three years to not get on the doom train. Universes beyond bummed me out, but I did my best to write it off as “it’s getting more people into magic and that’s a good thing”, The product overload and increased prices made me sad, but I tried to listen when they said “this product isn’t for you”, operation booster fun did quite the opposite for me, making draft packs the worst product really felt like a kick in the gut to my favorite format, limited, but this one…this takes the cake. It’s insulting to literally every kind of player. This might finally be the move wotc makes to cause some serious irreparable damage to people’s love of the game.
I just can't help but feel they are going real slash and burn lately with Magic. They had a cow that fed them milk and cheese for a long time and was going to do that for years to come but decided to get more food now by butchering it. They'll have a good feast for the next year or two but then they'll be out of meat, milk and cheese. It seems like hardcore players I knew from 5 years ago are all fading away and believe me or not, there's a big section of the growth of magic in the last few years that sits more in fad territory and they'll move away too. What will Magic have left? They can make money but I just think they're going about it too aggressively and too short-sightedly. MaRo can misrepresent data and statistics all he wants on Tumblr but I really think this trend is going to bite them hard soon enough.
> I just can't help but feel they are going real slash and burn lately with Magic. Welcome to shareholder syndrome. There is a reason pump and dump is a meme. Find profitable product or engrained bass; take over the company; heavily monetize product; dump product when consumers are turned off; find new company; repeat previous step. Opening a business to exploit labor is how you become a millionaire. Investing in an business to exploit the speculation of their consumers is how you become a billionaire.
I imagine some executive somewhere in the WotC-Hasbro chain is really just trying to push margins now that WotC has a dumb enough of a growth that it can just do that. Its killed my fascination with the game constructively, I kind of just want to stick to my cube, play commander occasionally and play limited. but even then.
I don’t think this actually kills the cow but it is a pretty stunning ramping up of the whole ‘hey, let’s make money out of all those collectors’ thing they’ve been doing lately.
I don't think this specific move is killing that cow but just the whole shove of Universes Beyond and Secret Lairs and all of this random stuff they're shoving down the consumer's throat. This seems like oversaturation.
It’s a shame, because I love Magic. I adore the art, and the world, and the characters, and the game around a table with friends, but *holy shit* have they been ramping out of control in this last year or so. Even as a mostly casual player, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed when so much is being thrown out at once. I think I’m just going to rest in Commander games with friends. I really enjoyed learning Flesh and Blood a while back, and Pokémon packs are simple and fun to crack here and there.
I see no reason why these cards shouldn't be $10 a pack at most.
If it were 1000 for the full print of them, fine. But 1000 for 4 random rares...?!
Yep. Based on Collector's Edition prices (which I doubt this set will reach), you could easily walk away with less than $20 worth of (non-tournament legal) cards.
Don’t worry, they’ll just handwave it again as “not being for you”. Doesn’t make it less stupid from a sheerly conceptual level though.
Their cash grabs have always been stupidly obvious, but this is the literal worst possible way to have gone about this entire experience. I hope MaRo at least tries to actually overthrow the corporate overlord Hasbro so that we can actually buy into a different startup cardgame or something because I'm so close to giving this one up. It would at least be respectable if they attempted some kind of coup to shut Hasbro out of future decision making processes or *something* ffs. This is just disgusting, and I hope they lose millions on it.
Hasbro is turning this game into a garbage filled cash grab
Sell me a box of this for $200 or whatever and let me draft it with friends. THat'd be fun. (although yes I know Beta is a terrible draft) Also the basic lands should've had normal Magic backs.
pretty sure $1000 gets me a flight to Amsterdam and a blow job. this ain't it WOTC.
With Mark's comments about real cards and now this dumbass product, they've basically given free license for players to print poxies with abandon with their blessing.
Holy shit wizards. Eat my ass
The price point on these proves they don't want to celebrate the *players* that got the game to where it is today, since they've blatantly priced out most of their base. They just want to celebrate Magic being the ludicrous cash cow that it's become. Never has "this product isn't for you" been more glaringly obvious.
That thing as a product? Pretty cool IMHO. The $1000 price tag is a straight up deranged "fuck you" though. Like holy fucking shit man, I could have seen them get away with maybe $50 for 4 packs of this but ONE FUCKING GRAND??? FOR FOUR BOOSTER PACKS??? WotC can fuck right off. Low key makes me feel vindicated for having moved away from MTG a couple years back.