I'm so impressed with Seth's proactive care and advocacy for the magic artists. They are why so many of us started playing and the game wouldn't feel half as fun to play without the incredible illustrations that bring it to life. They need to be compensated not only fairly, but fare more generously imo. I hope the company can direct some of the massive successes in the game back to the artists who bring it to life (and the game designers and everyone who actually does the work obviously).
Same, it's my favorite non-limited format and has a lot of interesting room to brew with a card pool of over 5k. I have to say though, I don't like Richard's take at 1:02:00, just because it's not an official WOTC format doesn't mean you should "move on." There's a lot of reasons why it has a growing community around it.
Richard you're wronn about this not being what WotC wanted. Chris Cox literally said in a Hasbro investor meeting "This Lair will sell out instantly." They don't care about making a good system for their consumer. All they care about is being able to go other companies who may want to get their IPs into Magic and say "Look how fast this sold out!"
It can never be in their interest to have it sell out that fast. The amount of money they couldve made by simply printing some thousands copies more is huge. Richard is right on that one. Swords to plowshares still doesnt suck in edh though
Yes this is what I assumed. They are either justifying their continued partnership with Marvel (remember they have 3 other card games, one is active, and not including Lorcana); or they are trying to poach One Piece or Game of Thrones or something.
@@tbclabamba8051of course it can be. Money on the table isn’t a good thing, but a good showing for investors always is, and sometimes inflated demand via artificial scarcity can give the appearance that stockholders are looking for.
Richard literally replied to this comment in the video. Also, it doesn't take much to figure out that the FOMO + scalping would cause it to instantly sell out due to their promotion of it. It says nothing about whether they purposefully under-supplied this or wanted people to miss out. What it says is they wanted to create a situation that caused people to go crazy for them and they sell a huge number super fast. They likely made a huge supply of this secret lair and we're just not able to see it because we don't know sale numbers nor see how much is going to be available on the secondary market yet. If you're unconvinced then think of it this way... What looks better to investors: a) WotC's ability to instantly sell out a very popular IP. b) WotC's ability to instantly sell out a huge volume of a very popular IP. WotC would be silly to not make lots of revenue from this. Maybe they misjudged quite how much the demand would be but I think we're silly if we believe they didn't take this opportunity for making huge revenue and a stronger signal of how well UB can sell.
So I do some oil painting on the side. I am by no means a professional artist but I have sold some paintings so maybe I can shed some light on what painters get paid for a painting. The cost of any painting is dictated by three variables, the name of the artist, the subject matter and the size of the painting. For an unknown artist painting a popular subject (like a landscape) can probably sell a painting for about $1 per square inch. That's $320 for a medium 16x20 painting on the low end. A well known artist can basically set their price on the high end. The lesser known the artist the more they will rely on secondary printings and products (giclee prints, note cards, calendars, etc.).
I remember when Nexus of Fate was poppin, there was a tournament I watched where the judges were making people with Nexus of Fate replace them with a basic land with "Nexus of Fate" sharpied on it because they were all foil and curled.
Premodern is by far my favorite format now. There is too much churn for Modern, Legacy, Standard, etc now, and Premodern offers a diverse meta with a lot of fun to be had. Best way to nullify wotc power creep imo. Pauper is at least cheap, so when your cards become obsolete, it's no big deal, but I've sold my Modern and Legacy cards because it is exhausting keeping up. Commander can always be a casual, fun mess, but I find myself less and less interested in keeping up with new sets as time goes on. Don't see that improving in the near future.
The format I really want is True Modern. No universes beyond and no horizons. Just normal sets that have gone through standard. It won't be static and it isn't just nostalgia. I truly want to see how the best modern cards I knew sit alongside the newer comparable cards.
That could be interesting. Unlike a lot of formats I've heard pitched recently, I like that it isn't stagnant and will evolve as no in-universe sets are printed. Could work.
If I had silly money I'd hire a bunch of pros to do modern with only straight to standard sets and see what decks are viable and create a banlist. It'd be great to fathom how the format would work and see what new things are viable which were printed into standard more recently but don't quite make the modern cut because of modern horizons
One of my local lgs has been telling players with proxies that they can't bring proxies to commander nights for a couple of months already. Luckily, there's a second lgs in my town that hasn't said anything yet about proxies.
Good for that store. My dad is wealthy, so I can buy whatever cards I want, and I hate it when other people get to play with the expensive cards even though they aren't rich. Screw proxies. /s
@@HollowdTVHow is it a weird take when they the store is buying commander products from WotC to then sell to their customers but instead they just proxy instead. Think more than 3 seconds next time.
@@entertainmentinc9735 trust me they sell PLENTY of legit wotc product 😂 they still don’t care if you have a proxied marsh flats in your deck or something. Most LGS’s don’t care about proxies that I’ve played at. We’re talking about commander. It’s a casual format.
@@entertainmentinc9735 Being proxy friendly is a good thing for the community, especially for expensive formats like cEDH. Magic is artificially expensive, and gatekeeping the game based on income is bullshit. Sure, you shouldn’t proxy everything, but how many people have the funds to get a Gaea’s Cradle so that they can compete?
Print to demand also reduces the EV for scalpers. It should make them more affordable of the secondary market. As for Wizards, the added value/profit margin should be large enough that printing at quantity should be the most profitable market strategy.
@@KunushiHThat’s a byproduct of being a limited run product of a popular IP, not of the the print to demand model. If it was run the same as this Marvel drop it would be even more expensive.
That depends on their long term goal. If they want to establish UB Secret Lairs as super hyped luxury brand long-term, it makes sense to shortprint all future ones and then step by step raise the price. We've seen with the Magic Anniversary Edition what kind of prodcts they actually want to sell.
They missed the big issue on the art scandal. Wizards is requiring all art to be digital only and not sending artists proofs or allowing artist to sell proofs or originals because they want full control of all the art now.
This! As an artist myself I find this outrageous. Only digital so they can own the art completely and feed the AI database to eventually get rid of the artists, plus leaving them without anything to sell afterwards. They hate to pay for the art, and they are planning on cutting even more costs: less MTG IP sets is less art they have to pay for / more UB that have their own procedure for the art part of the license.
The best way for wizards to fix secret lairs is to have serialized versions for presale to build fomo, then do print to order for anyone who wants them.
My pre watch guesses: Crim thinks it’s great as long as he got one and thinks that it means there will be even more of these NFT-adjacent releases Richard says it’s good for the bottom line for WOTC and all the talk about it means they next one they do they can make half as good and offer twice as much and it’ll sell out Seth slowly loses his will to talk about magic, outside of gameplay, positively as he best represents how the average player feels rn 5:31 lmao the icing on cake is even though they used this release method directly from the terrible 20/21 nft hype cycle, they did not do some basic checks such as a global library clock rather than reading the system one, and mass farming active links under the domain until you find the back door link that lets you directly in
The amount of people who are vocal about quitting buying magic is quite obviously dwarfed by the mass of consumers who don't give a fuck and just buy the new thing. This isn't unique to magic, it's always like that. "magic is dying" is also not a remark on how much money WotC makes or how many players there are, it's a remark on how the approach to the setting & gameplay is changing massively & for the worse - whether correct or not.
Exactly. Old Magic, characterized by no Standard bannings, non-rotating Modern, and at-most annual EDH products, is dead and buried; UB in all formats is really just the spit on the grave. Evidently there is an audience for Fortnite the Funko-Gathering, which personally saddens me, but that doesn't mean that Magic the Gathering is still alive.
For real. After Eternities (Or whatever the latest Magic set end up being), I’m just gonna ignore the latest set, and use the official tournaments to determine whether Standard is worth playing.
I'll only buy singles from fundations and I'm waiting until Lorwyn to stop buying MTG for good. This year I only plan on playing the Tarkir pre release and maybe get a box if the sets looks good to play at home. Then I'll expend lots of Money on Faeries in Lorwyn, update my all commander decks one last time, and sell everything else.
@@SSolemn Tarkir and maybe the Space Set, I mean ... I'm a huge SciFi Fan and *maybe* its cool. But I even canceled my Foundation PreOrder - It kinda makes no sense for me. Due to the fast rotation, you'll get the Boosters in couple of months (when the next Set is released) anyway for half the price via Scalpers. And the Singles will drop significally too. Recently I picked up couple of Duskmourn Boosters für three Bucks.
Within 5 minutes he said “new players can experience magic for the first time if they’re big fans of marvel” and “just proxy your card if you really want them wizards doesn’t have to make anything affordable or accessible.” Lmao
Shocker, salty person who didn't get it makes a comment like this. Btw I do sympathise, just bit disappointed people have to make the lucky people feel bad/guilty
@@chrismarlow9585 Well that wasn't the point I'm trying to get across. If you got one that's cool, I just wish I did too. My point is that he seems less critical of the whole situation than the others. It's just a shame that a content creator that a lot of people respect and enjoy kinda looks like he is on the payroll now. Not saying he is, I have no idea. Just disappointed he wasn't a louder voice of dissent.
@@inscrutablewut Not everyone is going to have that opinion. He said pretty clearly that he goes into those things accepting he might not get it. So I think your comments that he only thinks that way because he got it and now that he's on the payroll are really off base and unwarranted.
Premodern is 4th edition to Scourge. There is a short-ish ban list on the format webpage. The Premodern events in my area get 4x the weekly players as Modern and 100 players at monthly and quarterly opens far surpassing RCQs.
I propose an eternal format like modern but only uses sets that are A: have been printed into standard, and B: is a "universes within" set. So, there are no horizens sets, no UB sets.
Modern was NEVER an Eternal format. Vintage, Legacy, Pauper, and Commander are the ONLY Eternal formats. Modern was, and still is, the evolution of Extended. It's better for it, and the Horizons sets, save the big fuckups, made the format far more diverse and straight up better.
@Xoulrath_ ok, Mr. Technically correct. I guess I should have used a word other than "eternal". Non rotating if it makes you feel better or whatever. But it being "better" with horizens sets is literally an opinion only shared by the "interesting gamepeice" crowd. IE the aspiring spikes that only care about the mechanical value of a card and if it's BIS or not. I want sets with worlds and flavors, not just a dump of power cards with no context specifically to sell packs cause it juices a format so hard.
@andrewbrock3675 get out of here with your bullshit "technical," dude. We're talking about the most technical fucking card game on the planet and you wanna cry? Yes, NON-ROTATING is the word that you're looking for. You don't want to be corrected? Then use the right word. As for your take on the game, you are more than welcome to it. But I've got news for you: Modern was a COMPETITIVE beast from the start. You can enjoy all of the flavor that you want from the dozens of sets available. The people that still play Modern, or try to in my case, do give a damn about cards that allow the format to be bigger, and yes, ultimately better.
@@andrewbrock3675kinda would miss some mh cards, but maybe that would be the right way. I noticed taking out multiple mh3 cards after putting them in my commander decks, as they felt just too powerful 😅
Only sane person in this podcast is Seth. Crim is the equivalent of a Disney Adult, who put their money into plastic toys instead of the S&P500. And Richard literally doesn't care about Magic anymore, seen it all vibes, that can only be excited by outside IPs coming to the game. Richard would be a really good fit for WotC management.
The internet reaction is likely overblown but not completely false. I am one of those that is retiring from 1v1 Magic and I have no desire to buy anything at this point since my commander decks don't need anything to play. However, I think that for every person like myself that leaves Magic there are several others that are returning to Magic or picking it up for the first time. I think WotC knows this and I think their plan to attract new players has worked.
52:28 New player here! For me, I made the choice to not play alchemy and play standard instead since I wanted to learn the cards. I do not think I’m alone in new players who have gotten far enough into magic to install the game that they know alchemy is online only and standard is paper. New players download arena to learn the game to play in person, so I chose the in person format. Hopefully im not alone
Bad take. Premodern's a dope format. I think Magic is a large enough game to incorporate it for those of us who have been burned out over a lot of WOTC's well chronicled missteps. Some of us just like older magic formats. Not everyone wants to acquire six sets worth of chase mythics/rares to update their deck even in "non-rotating" formats.
We're already there. - UB. is enough of a taunt tho'. _ Been crushing the same player at my local game store - 6 games in a row. Show up with a LotR Precon or any other UB-commander, and my cEDH decks magically appear at the table. Bully them ingame, since violence gets you disqualified.
@@JayoticMTG if a card costs more than 1$ its fine to proxy it. Even 1$ per card has such a huge profit margin for wotc. It's insane paying more than that.
@@sunfos First of all, if a card has a secondary market value of $1, your money spent on buying that single goes to the LGS, not to WotC. To your point, f you bring a fully proxied deck to an LGS that consists entirely of $1 cards, you're probably going to be kicked out. No store is going to host you if you can't be bothered to even pick up the cheap cards they have available. That being said, absolutely proxy any card that Wizards releases in consumer unfriendly ways like the Secret Lair system. Don’t spend $100 on Storm when Wizards could have sold you the whole drop for $40 like they used to.
I think a 5x buy limit is fine as long as it is actually a limit of 5 overall. 5x everything bundle, 5x foil, 5x nonfoil, then 5x of each individual drop equals 15x of each foil and nonfoil lair for 1 person. Excessive and far beyond the intended 5x limit. Like Richard said, if you get 5x of the everything bundle then you're now maxxed out. Would solve a lot of problems if they don't want to return to print to demand.
TCGs always have artificial scarcity due to the rarity distribution of cards in randomized packs, but the random aspect obfuscates the artificially of the scarcity and makes it feels more natural. These direct FOMO sales, on the other hand, where you are hust paying a premium for a specific one-time-offer, highlight just how artificial the scarcity is, eroding player willingness to spend real money for cardstock. It shatters the illusion.
With artists and AI: I would note that a recent crowdfunded cardgame (sorcery) has explicitly leaned into the artist and art element as a key part of its appeal, and this has been successful. There genuinely is something important about the position WOTC are in here; they are able to set a good example for how to treat human artists in the 21st century, whether or not they could potentially replace them with AI. The commercial logic is obvious. But the actual underlying issues are much, much more significant - and an unironic commitment to human creativity and dignity is something they *should* display. And I hope that the market punishes them if they don't.
I’m not going to put Bloomburrow and Duskmourn against eachother. 2 queens can co-exists (even tho I’m way more of a Bloomburrow fan) Now the real question is, which set is more disliked: Murders at Karlov Manor or Thunder Junction?
Thunder Junction is more hated, but that's an objectively incorrect take because of the ridiculous amount of character assassination in Murders. The best part about Murders was the Clue cards.
I liked a lot of the cards from Murders, at least it was on Ravnica even if the detective theme is goofy. Outlaws is my least favorite set possibly ever in terms of aesthetic. The epitome of vapid
@@delailama736people are playing with the slivers and head I win tails you lose lairs. Even if a year later. Most players will never spend $100 on a single card for a format with no competitive play AKA the only technical reason to not proxy outside of convenience. Play with cards a year later, or never. I pick former. Obviously we could jsut have a competent company but everything outside of WOTC clearly shows Hasbro can’t even set a bottle down upright
@@delailama736 Yeah, it doesn’t take a year to actually make and deliver the products that they’re doing, they’re just terrible at the business model. They get hate because they keep screwing up.
i got in the que within 5 seconds , pre logged in navigated to the bundle i wanted and once the add to cart appeared clicked the QTY and check out. took almost 2 hrs to checkout. it was insane!! im a frequent secret lair buyer and had to clue you could cheese it but ive also never had an issue getting what i wanted
I mean, Yugioh has exactly two official formats and one is entirely unsupported and not something anyone, including Konami, cares about. Being second largest in that context is not actually super meaningful.
WOTC's new model of crafting FOMO is such a bad look on the hobby. Let's see how many incidents it takes until they reverse their choice due to backlash.
Mark saying "if you want a non-UB format make one" is such an insult. Magic WAS that before UB exists. WotC did follow, and then monetized it. Why do we think they would not do the same with another format made by fans?
He’s right. We should make a format. Like how 60 card formats got stale and allowed for no expression or variance. Maybe we can make a singleton format to add some variance. Maybe even let you pick one pet card to build around and use cards that otherwise wouldn’t see play. But then it gains steam. Employees and judges play it. WOTC sees it’s popular, and then makes it commander. We haven’t had EDH since. Just a singleton format wizards ruins several times a year. So even if we made a standard, let’s call it type 3, they would just bring it under their umbrella and sell kits and bundles for that too. Which makes it even gross he’s saying “make your own and we’ll leave you alone,” but “make your own so we can then take ownership and profit off of that too.” Maro got paid enough in 2020 to become a different human. Any person with that level of wealth isn’t a good person
I’m trying to start a new format. This is what I have so far, I’m hoping to have it finalized by the end of the year with a website. I don’t know if anyone will be interested but it’s fun putting it together: Only two to three standard sets a year for the last 5 years is legal. Rotation is in March, where sets from the previous year are chosen to be rotated in. There will be community input on which standard sets from the year before will be legal, but we’re looking for the set that most closely resembles OG play/sets. At a minimum, the banned list consists of any card which was banned in standard when that set was legal in standard. 5 year rotation 2020 - TBD 2021 - TBD 2022 - Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty - Dominaria United 2023 - Dominaria Remastered - Phyrexia: All Will Be One 2024 - Coming March 2025
Bloomburrow plays extremely well in mono-red, the mice ARE the current RDW shell. But Duskmourn has overlords and other strong, niche pulls that did do a lot for the larger format. Seems like everyone is either playing discard, azorious reanimator, overlord beans, or RDW right now
The more expensive the secondary market gets the more you push people to proxies. Consumer confidence and goodwill is a fickle thing, and it usually is either there or not. If this type of stuff keeps happening I’d imagine a straw will break the camels back and everyone not in sanctioned formats rapidly moves to proxying their deck lists.
I'll buy packs here and there... but I proxy almost everything for my decks if I haven't got lucky and pulled it. No one in their right mind should spend 40$ for each boseiju copy they need. I guess if you don't own/want more than one deck.... but once I realized I'm needing the same card multiple times I just started proxying everything instead.
Magic and yugioh are, of course, very different games at their cores, but they have something called time wizard formats that see play as side events. Things like goat format which is 2005- somewhere around the very first banlist- and edison which is a 2010 format. And instead of stale, people have actually changed decklists, come up with entirely new decks, and shifted the meta from time to time. Not saying premodern is the new best way to play, but it's entirely possible for people to come up with new ideas on a set list of cards.
Seth's Magic-con proxy example is a bit of a confirmation bias moment. You're at a location that people probably had to pay upwards of let's say two thousand dollars just to attend between ticket price, hotel, travel, etc. So you're talking about people who had two thousand bucks to blow on an event dedicated to a single card game. I'd wager that magic-con players probably represent the top 1% of Magic Players in terms of financial investment, so these are people who can afford to blow ten grand on random jank decks, and have no real need to proxy when they have excess disposable income. EDIT: Thank you Richard for immediately saying this the moment I was done typing this lmao.
Jeez, are you all programmers? 😂 I didn't know that about you Seth. Great video though. Always love listening to you guys talk, whatever it's about tbh
@@MTGGoldfishPodcast Oh I knew Richard was/is. I figured you are too since you said "I work in programming" in this podcast haha. Thanks for clarifying :)
The thing about 'new players' and Arena is I don't think most new Arena players are new *Magic* players. Generally you get into Magic through friends/family/local store which means you get in through paper. Thus starting up Arena you're going to go towards the formats you know and recognize which Alchemy is not.
Even Crim had to cut in line by knowing someone who was further ahead. I joined the que a few seconds after 9 and didn't get an arcane signet, I would had accepted it if it didn't seem like all of the different types of cutting were such a big deal. The que did two huge push backs for the estimated time which I would guess cutters were the main cause of. Sucks when people can't get 1 arcane signet when some people probably cut in line and bought max carts and are swimming in them. If I ever try to buy a secret lair again, I may have to come up with multiple strategies and join the cutters to have a chance to get what I want which is lame.
the effect of 6 standard sets a year won't be seen until after a year. players wont be able to take more than a month break from the game with out falling behind.
The premodern reddit did not appreciate the Premodern hate at the end of the video, especially coming from MTGGoldfish that still refuses to recognize Premodern as a format unlike every other major site (MtgTop8 is well regarded on the premodern redditand with a lot of anger directed at MtgGoldfish for this reason). The funnest aspects of Premodern are the historical nostalgic and the not having to worry about upgrading decks with future set releases. With MTG about to turn into a Marvel game featuring spidermen jumping thru planes, this will happen you guys too as you grow older. Nostalgic formats that allow players to relive Magic cards from their prime magic playing years, featuring the best or coolest deck of each year from any format are surging these days.
The copyright issue on UB is a completely normal IP business thing. WotC cannot grant art rights to the artists because they do not own the art for the copyright; the IP holder does. This is why there are 2 copyright lines on UB cards. So with the Marvel Cards, Disney will own the art on the card, and WotC owns the symbols, frames and design of the cards. If the artists want to use their art on products, they will need to get copyright clearance from Disney, not Hasbro.
The line jumping was egregious. I was in line within 15 seconds and got knocked from the queue after 3.5 hours. Timer kept bouncing back up after it would drop below an hour.
I’m with Richard on the proxy topic. It’s rapidly gaining popularity in casual play, especially in local Commander playgroups. With AI image generation now accessible, and easy to create high-quality proxies, it’s becoming a trend. My playgroup sold almost all our expensive lands and made cool alternate proxies, so we don’t have to spend a fortune on our mana base anymore. We’ve also started creating custom commanders. Universes Beyond opened the door for us to create other themes, like Batman cards-I’ve even built an entire deck, for example.
I was able to get Storm as my birthday gift so not thinking in selling at all, but at this prices I actually talk to the person that bought it for me about if we resell them, this marvel secret lair is really crazy. By the moment it arrives, I'll have to decide... They should do the print on demand in most secret lairs, the actual system is absurd.
What they need to do is limit sales to one per person. Seeing pictures online are people getting like 10 of every layer and getting 20 Arcane signets is messed up when I couldn't get the one single copy I hoped for
I met one magic artist last weekend and she said they're not allowed to sell secondary merchandise while working on UB, but they're getting paid double as a compensation.
Towards the end of the pod they discuss turnover in player base. Both of these can be true: universes beyond has driven many players out of the game by changing the nature of the game, and universes beyond has attracted many new players by changing the nature of the game.
You can look up Maro discuss how WotC views natural player turnover. Pretty much WotC knows most players only play for 2-4 standard cycles. Doesn't matter how good the product is players inevitably get bored and move to a different game. It was back in the mid 00's.
These were longprinted into oblivion, absolutely intentional, you have scalpers buying 10-20 using bots and straw accounts, everybody knew this one would 'sell out' as in if it wasn't print to demand it was going to be gone, scalpers become a short term supply sink as well and they sell way more this way rather than the people who actually want the cards buying 1 or 2. Pretty confident on this, Wizards always does whats best for them, there's no reason they wouldn't print to demand if that was how they sell the most product. Edit: The good news is that eventually these will come down in price I'd imagine because people will eventually dump supply but the price will be firm for a little while I think but it might be awhile because people are going to peg these as very valuable in their minds for awhile. Edit 2: Richard is wrong, they do want it to sell out immediately, the only way they get bots to buy 10-20 or even more is if they're selling out immediately, if regular people can get it then they aren't worth getting so many. This is intentionally done and it's the best way for them, the only guessing they do is how many can we do and still guarantee them to sell out instantly. And Seth being naive, "they could just limit to 1 per person" that's explicitly the opposite of what they want, they could sell 100 units to 100 people who want it or a thousand units to scalpers and bots for the demand of a hundred Edit: Also magic is due for a crash, nothing modern is valuable, proxying is just fine now, there are way too many generic chase cards, there's hundred of SLs, there are special versions of everything in collectors, the way it was supposed to work is people would seek out special versions for their decks and commander was perfect for that however there's just way too many generic special cards that hold absolutely no value over time and 6 sets a year 6 sets of chase cards in collectors, half unplayable, when everything becomes generic it pulls everything else down.
Just wanted to mention something about the younger demographics. On the pre release for foundations on my LGS there was a couple of kids playing it. Their parents took them there and everything. Also seeing that made me realize how much welcoming the Magic community is nowadays compared to when I was young. Goddamit I had to be careful of creeps trying to persuade me to trade my nicest cards with their junk!
Richard nailed the problem at 44m: we consistently underpay and undervalue artists because "so many people would be willing to do the job for free! why do you want to get paid, to do something you love?"
19:00 sorry seth, these cards won't be in the upcoming marvel set. The upcoming marvel set is spiderman and none of these characters are in the spiderman universe
Unless you played Spider-Man and Xmen for the SNES or read any of the 100's of comics where Spider-Man kicks it with the xmen. Other than that, yeah, they have never met.
I do so enjoy the Seth as a nice middle ground to crim and rich, people will keep claiming "magic is dead" but I will never agree with that until I actually see people playing less or not excited for new sets and not showing up en mass
7:38 from how I read that Reddit post, it seems like queue it or whatever the software is called is fairly standard, but wotc didn’t actually go through the steps to fully integrate it properly and that’s why the loopholes were still present from other integrations of the software Also honestly how hard would it be to integrate a hybrid system where they pre-print a certain batch of cards for faster shipping and then the rest are printed on demand, if somebody wanted their card now, they can spend extra and get it, or just wait. But if a company isn’t able to properly meet the extra demand generated by the limited drops and continue to generate bad will they are leaving money on the table
Richard's first statement should have been an apology after all the bullshit about WOTC "they will have enough cards, no way they will run out" and just keep on laughing about it. at this point everybody should proxy their magic cards, this company is just gonna get worse. also kinda psychotic of him to say, "i dont know how this can be solved" thank god Crim said it. we had a great way, its pure bullshit that they switched to this limited amount.
They intentionally used this bad system to make more drops like this. Can’t have a CEO obsessed with NFTs and not bring everything bad about them into his resume building job opportunity
My favorite author had his convention tickets go on sale earlier in the year. 20 thousand people were all trying to buy 7500 tickets. The site crashed and slowed down. Getting 3 tickets was one of the most stressful things I've done LMAO all the tickets sold out in a few minutes
As for the Universes Beyond ip art: Wizards should play the artist $6000 for commons $8000 for uncommon $10,000 for rares $12,000 for mythcs something like that, but the catch is, they should negotiated into the price of the UB ip contract, so for instance Marvel will have to pay the difference of the base $1250 and the new UB price. $8000 dollar difference at 300 new cards would be 2.4 Million. or The UB ip can save money and let the artist retain their original rights and get payed the base $1250. I could also a see a limited time artist rights, like they can sell playmates and artist proofs for only the first year with the original $1250 pay. All right, I'm no lawyer but wizards should defiantly listen to me.
Does anyone remember the Ravniva mythic edition disaster? The prelude to secret lair. Except that time Wizards actually compensated people who got screwed over for their horrible system. And then learned absolutely nothing.
With these types of things, and it applies to products than trading cards as well, you can either print to demand or print to scalpers. There is no middle ground.
Seth is right that they could fix the line jumping and work arounds but even if they did that, Wizards would have to spend more money to pay for a more adept queueing system which means players would need to pay more for the product which is something players would inevitably also end up complaining about. Even if you did this, it wouldn't guarantee that if you were in line within the first 5 minutes that you would get the product. People need to accept that some Magic products are promos that are collectibles and are more elusive. 95% of Magic cards don't fit this criteria and instead have these massive print runs with hundreds of thousands of not millions of copies of a card are in supply. This is an exception to the rule. I don't think it's a problem as long as the cards are reprinted in a more accessible way at some point in the future. Everyone can't have access to every card. that's the point of a collectible trading card game. Some of the collectible cards are actually scarce. I don't understand why that's so hard for people to fathom.
I know probably about a dozen guys who would have bought secret lairs but are now instead going to buy proxy's to stick it to Wizards so that is a factor as well.
Just a thought. Just because you are see influx of people playing doesn't mean there's no problems or that people are leaving the game. That should be a sad thing. Stuff can seem to be good but rotting in the center.
I was legitimately curious about this news of the alternate Commander format. You guys are my main news source when it comes to mtg, would you be able to hit that topic next week?
I think I have put together a clear picture on why Seth doesn't know any other geek IP. So, he likes football. Seth is a bro who's only geek interest is MTG
Even though I got mine, I still think it's a disaster. Monday at noon is a stupid time to do SLD. Why are there so many easy ways to skip the line? Terrible website and management
Explorer being less popular than Alchemy is depressing. That's probably due to how expensive it is compared to standard or even paper. If you just need to buy the cards, then pioneer isn't that expensive because reprints have made so many staples drop.
Speaking of sold out pre-release: I wanted to attend one back in Neon Dynasty, but only had time on that Sunday. I appeared and the only thing I could do was play commander. Someone even laughed at me for being too stupid to be on time and just said I should commander. It soured me to the point that I now play rather Flesh and Blood instead of MtG because there are nice people in that game.
not a hot take at all: WotC sold them all and made their money so they really don't care how you feel about it. And you all keep letting them get away with this.
As someone who worked ina multinational corporation, that call makes too much sense. They did what they did because that is what the CEO wanted. That’s it! It’s not about efficient management and reasonable business decisions, it about people’s ego in a position of power.
41:13 with the artist pay I think it’s similar to tipped workers like bartenders and servers. Like they get a relatively small paycheck but they have the potential to make a lot more if they’re good at their job. That’s like the people who get that doubling season commission or whatever. However that’s not quite fair to the servers who have to work bad shifts. Like the artists who get the commission for the draft shaft no one cares about. If they took away the rights from artists and paid a little more upfront it’s better for the people who get the bad cards but the really sought after art and artist makes way less money. I think because of the potential to make so much on playmats and original art the artists would probably push against that. Like servers pushing back against getting rid of tips
I’ll add I used to serve and bartend and some nights I could walk away with a few hundred bucks a night vs the guaranteed 15-20 some places have proposed. I’d would rather have the potential for more money because it evens out to higher hourly overall. Still a worse deal for the people working the bad shifts/getting the bad art though
Established players have already said they were keen for foundations because it looked like a magic set of old, and I’d say they were the majority of players who played at prerelease. To say people are hyped for UB sets so they are playing foundations is funny, made me chuckle a bit. Comparing prerelease numbers to potential 60 card format numbers is dumb, as I don’t play standard but will continue to play non-UB prereleases.
I'm so impressed with Seth's proactive care and advocacy for the magic artists. They are why so many of us started playing and the game wouldn't feel half as fun to play without the incredible illustrations that bring it to life. They need to be compensated not only fairly, but fare more generously imo. I hope the company can direct some of the massive successes in the game back to the artists who bring it to life (and the game designers and everyone who actually does the work obviously).
Inkjet Masters looking better and better with each Secret Lair!
R/mpcproxies
@@heinrichrahm1531GOATED, I had all the marvel SLDs before they were even sold
Stop saying you're going to do it and just do it lol. I bought these and still proxy shit too. Just do it instead of getting mad.
@@bobross8585Bob Ross would not respect your condescension. Have a wonderful day, friend! :)
Bootlegs look fly these days
I love premodern, it’s my favorite format. There’s a big tournament called Lobstercon coming up in 2025. Don’t knock it till you try it.
Same, it's my favorite non-limited format and has a lot of interesting room to brew with a card pool of over 5k. I have to say though, I don't like Richard's take at 1:02:00, just because it's not an official WOTC format doesn't mean you should "move on." There's a lot of reasons why it has a growing community around it.
The more I listen to this podcast, the more I appreciate Seth ✨
I read that as Magic sells out in seconds, and honestly that's fair.
only if its real magic
I see what you did there
Richard you're wronn about this not being what WotC wanted. Chris Cox literally said in a Hasbro investor meeting "This Lair will sell out instantly." They don't care about making a good system for their consumer. All they care about is being able to go other companies who may want to get their IPs into Magic and say "Look how fast this sold out!"
It can never be in their interest to have it sell out that fast. The amount of money they couldve made by simply printing some thousands copies more is huge. Richard is right on that one. Swords to plowshares still doesnt suck in edh though
Yes this is what I assumed. They are either justifying their continued partnership with Marvel (remember they have 3 other card games, one is active, and not including Lorcana); or they are trying to poach One Piece or Game of Thrones or something.
@@tbclabamba8051of course it can be. Money on the table isn’t a good thing, but a good showing for investors always is, and sometimes inflated demand via artificial scarcity can give the appearance that stockholders are looking for.
Richard literally replied to this comment in the video.
Also, it doesn't take much to figure out that the FOMO + scalping would cause it to instantly sell out due to their promotion of it. It says nothing about whether they purposefully under-supplied this or wanted people to miss out. What it says is they wanted to create a situation that caused people to go crazy for them and they sell a huge number super fast. They likely made a huge supply of this secret lair and we're just not able to see it because we don't know sale numbers nor see how much is going to be available on the secondary market yet.
If you're unconvinced then think of it this way...
What looks better to investors:
a) WotC's ability to instantly sell out a very popular IP.
b) WotC's ability to instantly sell out a huge volume of a very popular IP.
WotC would be silly to not make lots of revenue from this. Maybe they misjudged quite how much the demand would be but I think we're silly if we believe they didn't take this opportunity for making huge revenue and a stronger signal of how well UB can sell.
There's gotta be at least one shareholder who's like "If this sold out so fast, why didn't you print more so we could make more money?"
So I do some oil painting on the side. I am by no means a professional artist but I have sold some paintings so maybe I can shed some light on what painters get paid for a painting. The cost of any painting is dictated by three variables, the name of the artist, the subject matter and the size of the painting. For an unknown artist painting a popular subject (like a landscape) can probably sell a painting for about $1 per square inch. That's $320 for a medium 16x20 painting on the low end. A well known artist can basically set their price on the high end. The lesser known the artist the more they will rely on secondary printings and products (giclee prints, note cards, calendars, etc.).
I remember when Nexus of Fate was poppin, there was a tournament I watched where the judges were making people with Nexus of Fate replace them with a basic land with "Nexus of Fate" sharpied on it because they were all foil and curled.
Yeah, that was the best.
One of the more surreal moments when you were actively penalized for using the official version.
Seth pronouncing scalpers as scawlpers throwing my brain for a loop
Also, the way his camera was slightly tilted after it fell was slightly triggering (but obviously not his fault)
Premodern is by far my favorite format now. There is too much churn for Modern, Legacy, Standard, etc now, and Premodern offers a diverse meta with a lot of fun to be had. Best way to nullify wotc power creep imo. Pauper is at least cheap, so when your cards become obsolete, it's no big deal, but I've sold my Modern and Legacy cards because it is exhausting keeping up. Commander can always be a casual, fun mess, but I find myself less and less interested in keeping up with new sets as time goes on. Don't see that improving in the near future.
The format I really want is True Modern. No universes beyond and no horizons. Just normal sets that have gone through standard. It won't be static and it isn't just nostalgia. I truly want to see how the best modern cards I knew sit alongside the newer comparable cards.
That could be interesting. Unlike a lot of formats I've heard pitched recently, I like that it isn't stagnant and will evolve as no in-universe sets are printed. Could work.
That's pretty much what pioneer is supposed to be. I would imagine pioneer of today would be comparable to modern of 10 years ago.
@@drewbos3791*what Pioneer was supposed to be. Spider-Man and Final Fantasy are standard sets, so they're entering Pioneer as well
If I had silly money I'd hire a bunch of pros to do modern with only straight to standard sets and see what decks are viable and create a banlist. It'd be great to fathom how the format would work and see what new things are viable which were printed into standard more recently but don't quite make the modern cut because of modern horizons
@@sosukelele Yeah that is why the community is making Voyager to ban Universes Beyond from the Pioneer card pool.
One of my local lgs has been telling players with proxies that they can't bring proxies to commander nights for a couple of months already. Luckily, there's a second lgs in my town that hasn't said anything yet about proxies.
Good for that store. My dad is wealthy, so I can buy whatever cards I want, and I hate it when other people get to play with the expensive cards even though they aren't rich. Screw proxies.
/s
such a weird take from that lgs. Both of the stores i play at dont care they just want the community to have fun
@@HollowdTVHow is it a weird take when they the store is buying commander products from WotC to then sell to their customers but instead they just proxy instead. Think more than 3 seconds next time.
@@entertainmentinc9735 trust me they sell PLENTY of legit wotc product 😂 they still don’t care if you have a proxied marsh flats in your deck or something. Most LGS’s don’t care about proxies that I’ve played at. We’re talking about commander. It’s a casual format.
@@entertainmentinc9735 Being proxy friendly is a good thing for the community, especially for expensive formats like cEDH. Magic is artificially expensive, and gatekeeping the game based on income is bullshit.
Sure, you shouldn’t proxy everything, but how many people have the funds to get a Gaea’s Cradle so that they can compete?
Print to demand also reduces the EV for scalpers. It should make them more affordable of the secondary market. As for Wizards, the added value/profit margin should be large enough that printing at quantity should be the most profitable market strategy.
You'd think that, but the mentioned princess bride and evil dead Lairs were print-to-demand and are 3x or more their original sell-price.
Exactly, it is counter intuitive. While it was print to demand no one cared^^
@@KunushiHThat’s a byproduct of being a limited run product of a popular IP, not of the the print to demand model. If it was run the same as this Marvel drop it would be even more expensive.
@@Kommander That's nonsense. No one cared because the IP is bad and doesn't make sense in MTG.
That depends on their long term goal.
If they want to establish UB Secret Lairs as super hyped luxury brand long-term, it makes sense to shortprint all future ones and then step by step raise the price.
We've seen with the Magic Anniversary Edition what kind of prodcts they actually want to sell.
They missed the big issue on the art scandal. Wizards is requiring all art to be digital only and not sending artists proofs or allowing artist to sell proofs or originals because they want full control of all the art now.
This! As an artist myself I find this outrageous. Only digital so they can own the art completely and feed the AI database to eventually get rid of the artists, plus leaving them without anything to sell afterwards. They hate to pay for the art, and they are planning on cutting even more costs: less MTG IP sets is less art they have to pay for / more UB that have their own procedure for the art part of the license.
"And then, of course, a fishmail or two"... As if they weren't as rare as a serialized card
Preach
@amawithafox7109 at this point fishmail is just engagement bait.
The best way for wizards to fix secret lairs is to have serialized versions for presale to build fomo, then do print to order for anyone who wants them.
My pre watch guesses:
Crim thinks it’s great as long as he got one and thinks that it means there will be even more of these NFT-adjacent releases
Richard says it’s good for the bottom line for WOTC and all the talk about it means they next one they do they can make half as good and offer twice as much and it’ll sell out
Seth slowly loses his will to talk about magic, outside of gameplay, positively as he best represents how the average player feels rn
5:31 lmao the icing on cake is even though they used this release method directly from the terrible 20/21 nft hype cycle, they did not do some basic checks such as a global library clock rather than reading the system one, and mass farming active links under the domain until you find the back door link that lets you directly in
That isn’t fair. Every podcast about Secret Lairs follows that exact same outline.
Not fair, you took my prediction.
Crims such a big consumer , hes what I assume all LA residents are like.
@@wedgearyxsaber
Every American
1/3 ain't bad.
Crim said go proxy it
Seth you were right
Richard said it was bad for WotC's Bottom line because they undershot demand.
The amount of people who are vocal about quitting buying magic is quite obviously dwarfed by the mass of consumers who don't give a fuck and just buy the new thing.
This isn't unique to magic, it's always like that.
"magic is dying" is also not a remark on how much money WotC makes or how many players there are, it's a remark on how the approach to the setting & gameplay is changing massively & for the worse - whether correct or not.
Exactly. Old Magic, characterized by no Standard bannings, non-rotating Modern, and at-most annual EDH products, is dead and buried; UB in all formats is really just the spit on the grave.
Evidently there is an audience for Fortnite the Funko-Gathering, which personally saddens me, but that doesn't mean that Magic the Gathering is still alive.
Print to order Secret Lairs! Screw the secondary market on things like this.
55:35 Seth that's because the players that hate universes beyond see Foundations as the big goodbye.
For real. After Eternities (Or whatever the latest Magic set end up being), I’m just gonna ignore the latest set, and use the official tournaments to determine whether Standard is worth playing.
Selling my collection - the game is ruined for me.
This makes sense, Foundations is the most Magic-y Magic set we've had in a while, as weird as it is to write that.
I'll only buy singles from fundations and I'm waiting until Lorwyn to stop buying MTG for good. This year I only plan on playing the Tarkir pre release and maybe get a box if the sets looks good to play at home. Then I'll expend lots of Money on Faeries in Lorwyn, update my all commander decks one last time, and sell everything else.
@@SSolemn Tarkir and maybe the Space Set, I mean ... I'm a huge SciFi Fan and *maybe* its cool.
But I even canceled my Foundation PreOrder - It kinda makes no sense for me. Due to the fast rotation, you'll get the Boosters in couple of months (when the next Set is released) anyway for half the price via Scalpers.
And the Singles will drop significally too.
Recently I picked up couple of Duskmourn Boosters für three Bucks.
Shocker, Crim is pretty much fine with it since he got his.
Within 5 minutes he said “new players can experience magic for the first time if they’re big fans of marvel” and “just proxy your card if you really want them wizards doesn’t have to make anything affordable or accessible.” Lmao
Shocker, salty person who didn't get it makes a comment like this.
Btw I do sympathise, just bit disappointed people have to make the lucky people feel bad/guilty
@@chrismarlow9585 Well that wasn't the point I'm trying to get across. If you got one that's cool, I just wish I did too. My point is that he seems less critical of the whole situation than the others. It's just a shame that a content creator that a lot of people respect and enjoy kinda looks like he is on the payroll now. Not saying he is, I have no idea. Just disappointed he wasn't a louder voice of dissent.
@@inscrutablewut Not everyone is going to have that opinion. He said pretty clearly that he goes into those things accepting he might not get it. So I think your comments that he only thinks that way because he got it and now that he's on the payroll are really off base and unwarranted.
@@inscrutablewuthe’s got a ton of money, he’s wizards golden boy
Premodern is 4th edition to Scourge. There is a short-ish ban list on the format webpage. The Premodern events in my area get 4x the weekly players as Modern and 100 players at monthly and quarterly opens far surpassing RCQs.
Yes, your area is indicative of the entire Magic community. 🙄
Shame
christ these deck prices
@@Frostgiantbutsmall Depending on the group/store the format is very proxy friendly. Our local monthly tournament is 100% proxy friendly.
MaRo: "See? It sold out! That means you love it, and you want us to do that again! Money talks!"
He isn't wrong
If players hated it so much they would abstain from purchasing them on the secondary market let them rot.
This is what yall wanted when you made LotR the best selling set of all time. Yall don't get to complain.
Unfortunately, ignorant execs don’t care about the difference between natural demand and coerced FOMO.
@@casteanpreswyn7528at least lord of the rings was a adjacent type of fantasy ip, this is just nonsence
@Shimatzu95 it isn't adjacent, unless you consider Marvel adjacent too.
I propose an eternal format like modern but only uses sets that are A: have been printed into standard, and B: is a "universes within" set.
So, there are no horizens sets, no UB sets.
Lame
Modern was NEVER an Eternal format. Vintage, Legacy, Pauper, and Commander are the ONLY Eternal formats. Modern was, and still is, the evolution of Extended. It's better for it, and the Horizons sets, save the big fuckups, made the format far more diverse and straight up better.
@Xoulrath_ ok, Mr. Technically correct. I guess I should have used a word other than "eternal". Non rotating if it makes you feel better or whatever.
But it being "better" with horizens sets is literally an opinion only shared by the "interesting gamepeice" crowd. IE the aspiring spikes that only care about the mechanical value of a card and if it's BIS or not. I want sets with worlds and flavors, not just a dump of power cards with no context specifically to sell packs cause it juices a format so hard.
@andrewbrock3675 get out of here with your bullshit "technical," dude. We're talking about the most technical fucking card game on the planet and you wanna cry? Yes, NON-ROTATING is the word that you're looking for. You don't want to be corrected? Then use the right word.
As for your take on the game, you are more than welcome to it. But I've got news for you: Modern was a COMPETITIVE beast from the start. You can enjoy all of the flavor that you want from the dozens of sets available. The people that still play Modern, or try to in my case, do give a damn about cards that allow the format to be bigger, and yes, ultimately better.
@@andrewbrock3675kinda would miss some mh cards, but maybe that would be the right way. I noticed taking out multiple mh3 cards after putting them in my commander decks, as they felt just too powerful 😅
Only sane person in this podcast is Seth. Crim is the equivalent of a Disney Adult, who put their money into plastic toys instead of the S&P500. And Richard literally doesn't care about Magic anymore, seen it all vibes, that can only be excited by outside IPs coming to the game. Richard would be a really good fit for WotC management.
S&P 😂😂😂😂 yeah, ok.
Some of their takes are so weird. I'm assuming crim has to spin it positively since he is more invovled with wotc and doesnt want to burn bridges.
The internet reaction is likely overblown but not completely false. I am one of those that is retiring from 1v1 Magic and I have no desire to buy anything at this point since my commander decks don't need anything to play. However, I think that for every person like myself that leaves Magic there are several others that are returning to Magic or picking it up for the first time. I think WotC knows this and I think their plan to attract new players has worked.
52:28 New player here! For me, I made the choice to not play alchemy and play standard instead since I wanted to learn the cards. I do not think I’m alone in new players who have gotten far enough into magic to install the game that they know alchemy is online only and standard is paper. New players download arena to learn the game to play in person, so I chose the in person format. Hopefully im not alone
Bad take. Premodern's a dope format. I think Magic is a large enough game to incorporate it for those of us who have been burned out over a lot of WOTC's well chronicled missteps. Some of us just like older magic formats. Not everyone wants to acquire six sets worth of chase mythics/rares to update their deck even in "non-rotating" formats.
100%
This will bring on the meta of, "Oh you have a Marvel commander? I'll hit you first then."
Honestly, I’ve decided Commander is exempt from this duty. It’s supposed to be casual, after all.
We're already there.
- UB. is enough of a taunt tho'.
_
Been crushing the same player at my local game store - 6 games in a row.
Show up with a LotR Precon or any other UB-commander, and my cEDH decks magically appear at the table.
Bully them ingame, since violence gets you disqualified.
More like: "You play UB cards I don't like, I don't play with you!"
@@joeferreti9442 If you mean 'all UB.'-cards, I would agree.
@@jesperwinther518honestly pathetic
Proxy everything
Found the entitled brat
Proxy prohibitively expensive cards, otherwise the game literally dies.
PROXY EVERYTHING
@@JayoticMTG if a card costs more than 1$ its fine to proxy it. Even 1$ per card has such a huge profit margin for wotc. It's insane paying more than that.
@@sunfos First of all, if a card has a secondary market value of $1, your money spent on buying that single goes to the LGS, not to WotC.
To your point, f you bring a fully proxied deck to an LGS that consists entirely of $1 cards, you're probably going to be kicked out. No store is going to host you if you can't be bothered to even pick up the cheap cards they have available.
That being said, absolutely proxy any card that Wizards releases in consumer unfriendly ways like the Secret Lair system. Don’t spend $100 on Storm when Wizards could have sold you the whole drop for $40 like they used to.
I think a 5x buy limit is fine as long as it is actually a limit of 5 overall. 5x everything bundle, 5x foil, 5x nonfoil, then 5x of each individual drop equals 15x of each foil and nonfoil lair for 1 person. Excessive and far beyond the intended 5x limit. Like Richard said, if you get 5x of the everything bundle then you're now maxxed out. Would solve a lot of problems if they don't want to return to print to demand.
New format: Battle for the Universe (only cards legal are those printed in a universes beyond set or product i.e. commander decks or secret lairs)
TCGs always have artificial scarcity due to the rarity distribution of cards in randomized packs, but the random aspect obfuscates the artificially of the scarcity and makes it feels more natural. These direct FOMO sales, on the other hand, where you are hust paying a premium for a specific one-time-offer, highlight just how artificial the scarcity is, eroding player willingness to spend real money for cardstock. It shatters the illusion.
With artists and AI: I would note that a recent crowdfunded cardgame (sorcery) has explicitly leaned into the artist and art element as a key part of its appeal, and this has been successful. There genuinely is something important about the position WOTC are in here; they are able to set a good example for how to treat human artists in the 21st century, whether or not they could potentially replace them with AI.
The commercial logic is obvious. But the actual underlying issues are much, much more significant - and an unironic commitment to human creativity and dignity is something they *should* display. And I hope that the market punishes them if they don't.
agree
In EU foundations was not sold out at all, people even didnt know the PreRelease was a thing.
Some events didnt even fire as not enough registered.
I was willing to pay $250 for the 5 of these. I will now print them all for about $2 that ain't going to WotC.
with all these new players coming I think MTG Goldfish should make some shorts explaining the basics of the game
I’m not going to put Bloomburrow and Duskmourn against eachother. 2 queens can co-exists (even tho I’m way more of a Bloomburrow fan)
Now the real question is, which set is more disliked: Murders at Karlov Manor or Thunder Junction?
Thunder Junction is more hated, but that's an objectively incorrect take because of the ridiculous amount of character assassination in Murders. The best part about Murders was the Clue cards.
I think it has to be MKM. I like The Big Score from Outlaws at least, MKM didn't have much for me outside of Surveil lands.
I liked a lot of the cards from Murders, at least it was on Ravnica even if the detective theme is goofy.
Outlaws is my least favorite set possibly ever in terms of aesthetic. The epitome of vapid
I miss the print to demand model that secret lair was supposed to have
And then Wizards can get hate for taking a year to ship. A lot of people will find a reason to hate them regardless of what they do.
@@delailama736Better than never.
@@thesamuraiman Is it? I agree with Richard. Just do a lottery.
@@delailama736people are playing with the slivers and head I win tails you lose lairs. Even if a year later. Most players will never spend $100 on a single card for a format with no competitive play AKA the only technical reason to not proxy outside of convenience.
Play with cards a year later, or never. I pick former. Obviously we could jsut have a competent company but everything outside of WOTC clearly shows Hasbro can’t even set a bottle down upright
@@delailama736 Yeah, it doesn’t take a year to actually make and deliver the products that they’re doing, they’re just terrible at the business model. They get hate because they keep screwing up.
DSK is a banger set for sure, there’s so many good cards that I think will be played in standard for a long time.
i got in the que within 5 seconds , pre logged in navigated to the bundle i wanted and once the add to cart appeared clicked the QTY and check out. took almost 2 hrs to checkout. it was insane!! im a frequent secret lair buyer and had to clue you could cheese it but ive also never had an issue getting what i wanted
Thank you Morgan for keeping in the most important part.
Seth's camera falling over is the belly laugh I needed today.😂
Watching Seths background slowly tilt more and more throughout the cast until it eventually fell over was a ride!!!
1:00:18 Yugioh has a format called Edison where the cardpool is locked at April 2010. It is the 2nd largest format in that game.
It's they only other format in the game and most people don't play it
Third largest is goat, also has a locked card pool.
I mean, Yugioh has exactly two official formats and one is entirely unsupported and not something anyone, including Konami, cares about. Being second largest in that context is not actually super meaningful.
Rush duels are cool though
@@abeybaebe2514 Rush is an entirely separate game, not a format. The cards don't cross over.
I didn't get my Ultimate guard comment of the week 😭 it was the whole episode, but i was waiting for my shout out.
Wrong podcast, the Ultimate Guard comment of the week is on the Commander Clash Podcast, so it's still coming :)
WOTC's new model of crafting FOMO is such a bad look on the hobby. Let's see how many incidents it takes until they reverse their choice due to backlash.
The FOMO is meant to create driving prices of singles, make chase cards so they can catch the allure of the pokemon finance bros
Mark saying "if you want a non-UB format make one" is such an insult. Magic WAS that before UB exists. WotC did follow, and then monetized it. Why do we think they would not do the same with another format made by fans?
He’s right. We should make a format. Like how 60 card formats got stale and allowed for no expression or variance.
Maybe we can make a singleton format to add some variance. Maybe even let you pick one pet card to build around and use cards that otherwise wouldn’t see play.
But then it gains steam. Employees and judges play it. WOTC sees it’s popular, and then makes it commander. We haven’t had EDH since. Just a singleton format wizards ruins several times a year.
So even if we made a standard, let’s call it type 3, they would just bring it under their umbrella and sell kits and bundles for that too.
Which makes it even gross he’s saying “make your own and we’ll leave you alone,” but “make your own so we can then take ownership and profit off of that too.”
Maro got paid enough in 2020 to become a different human. Any person with that level of wealth isn’t a good person
I’m trying to start a new format. This is what I have so far, I’m hoping to have it finalized by the end of the year with a website. I don’t know if anyone will be interested but it’s fun putting it together:
Only two to three standard sets a year for the last 5 years is legal. Rotation is in March, where sets from the previous year are chosen to be rotated in.
There will be community input on which standard sets from the year before will be legal, but we’re looking for the set that most closely resembles OG play/sets.
At a minimum, the banned list consists of any card which was banned in standard when that set was legal in standard.
5 year rotation
2020
- TBD
2021
- TBD
2022
- Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
- Dominaria United
2023
- Dominaria Remastered
- Phyrexia: All Will Be One
2024
- Coming March 2025
Bloomburrow plays extremely well in mono-red, the mice ARE the current RDW shell. But Duskmourn has overlords and other strong, niche pulls that did do a lot for the larger format. Seems like everyone is either playing discard, azorious reanimator, overlord beans, or RDW right now
The more expensive the secondary market gets the more you push people to proxies. Consumer confidence and goodwill is a fickle thing, and it usually is either there or not. If this type of stuff keeps happening I’d imagine a straw will break the camels back and everyone not in sanctioned formats rapidly moves to proxying their deck lists.
I'll buy packs here and there... but I proxy almost everything for my decks if I haven't got lucky and pulled it. No one in their right mind should spend 40$ for each boseiju copy they need. I guess if you don't own/want more than one deck.... but once I realized I'm needing the same card multiple times I just started proxying everything instead.
Magic and yugioh are, of course, very different games at their cores, but they have something called time wizard formats that see play as side events. Things like goat format which is 2005- somewhere around the very first banlist- and edison which is a 2010 format. And instead of stale, people have actually changed decklists, come up with entirely new decks, and shifted the meta from time to time. Not saying premodern is the new best way to play, but it's entirely possible for people to come up with new ideas on a set list of cards.
Seth's Magic-con proxy example is a bit of a confirmation bias moment. You're at a location that people probably had to pay upwards of let's say two thousand dollars just to attend between ticket price, hotel, travel, etc. So you're talking about people who had two thousand bucks to blow on an event dedicated to a single card game. I'd wager that magic-con players probably represent the top 1% of Magic Players in terms of financial investment, so these are people who can afford to blow ten grand on random jank decks, and have no real need to proxy when they have excess disposable income.
EDIT: Thank you Richard for immediately saying this the moment I was done typing this lmao.
55:24 It’s almost like the big company planned it that way!
Jeez, are you all programmers? 😂 I didn't know that about you Seth. Great video though. Always love listening to you guys talk, whatever it's about tbh
Ha, I'm very much not a programmer, Richard is though.
@@MTGGoldfishPodcast Oh I knew Richard was/is. I figured you are too since you said "I work in programming" in this podcast haha.
Thanks for clarifying :)
@@JpDubbed Hmm, I don't remember saying that, but if I did I misspoke.
The thing about 'new players' and Arena is I don't think most new Arena players are new *Magic* players. Generally you get into Magic through friends/family/local store which means you get in through paper. Thus starting up Arena you're going to go towards the formats you know and recognize which Alchemy is not.
I got into Magic through the Arena Open Beta, so it’s not out of the question.
@@ericlizama8552 exceptions prove the rule.
You're severely underestimating how many kids are just not going anywhere outside and discovering shit on the internet these days.
Even Crim had to cut in line by knowing someone who was further ahead. I joined the que a few seconds after 9 and didn't get an arcane signet, I would had accepted it if it didn't seem like all of the different types of cutting were such a big deal. The que did two huge push backs for the estimated time which I would guess cutters were the main cause of. Sucks when people can't get 1 arcane signet when some people probably cut in line and bought max carts and are swimming in them. If I ever try to buy a secret lair again, I may have to come up with multiple strategies and join the cutters to have a chance to get what I want which is lame.
Met multiple people at the foundations pre release that started playing magic this year
the effect of 6 standard sets a year won't be seen until after a year. players wont be able to take more than a month break from the game with out falling behind.
8:52 there is a very simple way to fix the problem, make to order instead of limited supply
“Skulpers” classic seth comment bait. And it worked on me
The premodern reddit did not appreciate the Premodern hate at the end of the video, especially coming from MTGGoldfish that still refuses to recognize Premodern as a format unlike every other major site (MtgTop8 is well regarded on the premodern redditand with a lot of anger directed at MtgGoldfish for this reason). The funnest aspects of Premodern are the historical nostalgic and the not having to worry about upgrading decks with future set releases.
With MTG about to turn into a Marvel game featuring spidermen jumping thru planes, this will happen you guys too as you grow older. Nostalgic formats that allow players to relive Magic cards from their prime magic playing years, featuring the best or coolest deck of each year from any format are surging these days.
The copyright issue on UB is a completely normal IP business thing. WotC cannot grant art rights to the artists because they do not own the art for the copyright; the IP holder does. This is why there are 2 copyright lines on UB cards. So with the Marvel Cards, Disney will own the art on the card, and WotC owns the symbols, frames and design of the cards. If the artists want to use their art on products, they will need to get copyright clearance from Disney, not Hasbro.
The line jumping was egregious. I was in line within 15 seconds and got knocked from the queue after 3.5 hours. Timer kept bouncing back up after it would drop below an hour.
I’m with Richard on the proxy topic. It’s rapidly gaining popularity in casual play, especially in local Commander playgroups. With AI image generation now accessible, and easy to create high-quality proxies, it’s becoming a trend. My playgroup sold almost all our expensive lands and made cool alternate proxies, so we don’t have to spend a fortune on our mana base anymore. We’ve also started creating custom commanders. Universes Beyond opened the door for us to create other themes, like Batman cards-I’ve even built an entire deck, for example.
I was able to get Storm as my birthday gift so not thinking in selling at all, but at this prices I actually talk to the person that bought it for me about if we resell them, this marvel secret lair is really crazy. By the moment it arrives, I'll have to decide... They should do the print on demand in most secret lairs, the actual system is absurd.
What they need to do is limit sales to one per person. Seeing pictures online are people getting like 10 of every layer and getting 20 Arcane signets is messed up when I couldn't get the one single copy I hoped for
Yeah. A limit of 10 is insane 😅.
Hopefully you can get that Arcane Signet at a reasonable price
I met one magic artist last weekend and she said they're not allowed to sell secondary merchandise while working on UB, but they're getting paid double as a compensation.
Towards the end of the pod they discuss turnover in player base. Both of these can be true: universes beyond has driven many players out of the game by changing the nature of the game, and universes beyond has attracted many new players by changing the nature of the game.
You can look up Maro discuss how WotC views natural player turnover. Pretty much WotC knows most players only play for 2-4 standard cycles. Doesn't matter how good the product is players inevitably get bored and move to a different game. It was back in the mid 00's.
These were longprinted into oblivion, absolutely intentional, you have scalpers buying 10-20 using bots and straw accounts, everybody knew this one would 'sell out' as in if it wasn't print to demand it was going to be gone, scalpers become a short term supply sink as well and they sell way more this way rather than the people who actually want the cards buying 1 or 2. Pretty confident on this, Wizards always does whats best for them, there's no reason they wouldn't print to demand if that was how they sell the most product.
Edit: The good news is that eventually these will come down in price I'd imagine because people will eventually dump supply but the price will be firm for a little while I think but it might be awhile because people are going to peg these as very valuable in their minds for awhile.
Edit 2: Richard is wrong, they do want it to sell out immediately, the only way they get bots to buy 10-20 or even more is if they're selling out immediately, if regular people can get it then they aren't worth getting so many. This is intentionally done and it's the best way for them, the only guessing they do is how many can we do and still guarantee them to sell out instantly. And Seth being naive, "they could just limit to 1 per person" that's explicitly the opposite of what they want, they could sell 100 units to 100 people who want it or a thousand units to scalpers and bots for the demand of a hundred
Edit: Also magic is due for a crash, nothing modern is valuable, proxying is just fine now, there are way too many generic chase cards, there's hundred of SLs, there are special versions of everything in collectors, the way it was supposed to work is people would seek out special versions for their decks and commander was perfect for that however there's just way too many generic special cards that hold absolutely no value over time and 6 sets a year 6 sets of chase cards in collectors, half unplayable, when everything becomes generic it pulls everything else down.
Your last edit reminds me of the comic crash in the 90s because of all the variants.
Just wanted to mention something about the younger demographics. On the pre release for foundations on my LGS there was a couple of kids playing it. Their parents took them there and everything. Also seeing that made me realize how much welcoming the Magic community is nowadays compared to when I was young. Goddamit I had to be careful of creeps trying to persuade me to trade my nicest cards with their junk!
Richard nailed the problem at 44m: we consistently underpay and undervalue artists because "so many people would be willing to do the job for free! why do you want to get paid, to do something you love?"
19:00 sorry seth, these cards won't be in the upcoming marvel set. The upcoming marvel set is spiderman and none of these characters are in the spiderman universe
Unless you played Spider-Man and Xmen for the SNES or read any of the 100's of comics where Spider-Man kicks it with the xmen. Other than that, yeah, they have never met.
I do so enjoy the Seth as a nice middle ground to crim and rich, people will keep claiming "magic is dead" but I will never agree with that until I actually see people playing less or not excited for new sets and not showing up en mass
7:38 from how I read that Reddit post, it seems like queue it or whatever the software is called is fairly standard, but wotc didn’t actually go through the steps to fully integrate it properly and that’s why the loopholes were still present from other integrations of the software
Also honestly how hard would it be to integrate a hybrid system where they pre-print a certain batch of cards for faster shipping and then the rest are printed on demand, if somebody wanted their card now, they can spend extra and get it, or just wait. But if a company isn’t able to properly meet the extra demand generated by the limited drops and continue to generate bad will they are leaving money on the table
Saved $200 by using my printer, and what Magic player could complain? Proxy them, force a change.
I think artists needing paid way more for universes beyond is the only way we keep them from printing six universes beyond sets a year
Richard's first statement should have been an apology after all the bullshit about WOTC "they will have enough cards, no way they will run out" and just keep on laughing about it. at this point everybody should proxy their magic cards, this company is just gonna get worse. also kinda psychotic of him to say, "i dont know how this can be solved" thank god Crim said it. we had a great way, its pure bullshit that they switched to this limited amount.
They intentionally used this bad system to make more drops like this. Can’t have a CEO obsessed with NFTs and not bring everything bad about them into his resume building job opportunity
My favorite author had his convention tickets go on sale earlier in the year. 20 thousand people were all trying to buy 7500 tickets. The site crashed and slowed down. Getting 3 tickets was one of the most stressful things I've done LMAO all the tickets sold out in a few minutes
As for the Universes Beyond ip art:
Wizards should play the artist
$6000 for commons
$8000 for uncommon
$10,000 for rares
$12,000 for mythcs
something like that, but the catch is, they should negotiated into the price of the UB ip contract, so for instance Marvel will have to pay the difference of the base $1250 and the new UB price. $8000 dollar difference at 300 new cards would be 2.4 Million.
or
The UB ip can save money and let the artist retain their original rights and get payed the base $1250.
I could also a see a limited time artist rights, like they can sell playmates and artist proofs for only the first year with the original $1250 pay.
All right, I'm no lawyer but wizards should defiantly listen to me.
Does anyone remember the Ravniva mythic edition disaster? The prelude to secret lair. Except that time Wizards actually compensated people who got screwed over for their horrible system. And then learned absolutely nothing.
I clicked on this video quicker than I clicked on the secret lair website
They really should have had the vid start with a "You're more than 1 hour from the podcast" screen.
And you didn't have to wait four hours to get a sold out message!
With these types of things, and it applies to products than trading cards as well, you can either print to demand or print to scalpers. There is no middle ground.
The thumbnail is like that Simpsons joke. “Great Disaster”, omg! Nooo, I forgot the punctuation! “Great? Disaster?” 😂
Seth is right that they could fix the line jumping and work arounds but even if they did that, Wizards would have to spend more money to pay for a more adept queueing system which means players would need to pay more for the product which is something players would inevitably also end up complaining about.
Even if you did this, it wouldn't guarantee that if you were in line within the first 5 minutes that you would get the product.
People need to accept that some Magic products are promos that are collectibles and are more elusive. 95% of Magic cards don't fit this criteria and instead have these massive print runs with hundreds of thousands of not millions of copies of a card are in supply.
This is an exception to the rule. I don't think it's a problem as long as the cards are reprinted in a more accessible way at some point in the future.
Everyone can't have access to every card. that's the point of a collectible trading card game. Some of the collectible cards are actually scarce. I don't understand why that's so hard for people to fathom.
A non-UB format is a good idea! Especially now because WotC increased the number of UB sets. 🤮
I would say the negative bumb in standard was the bloomburrow redleyline decks and the up was the banning in best of one ... Just a guese😅
I know probably about a dozen guys who would have bought secret lairs but are now instead going to buy proxy's to stick it to Wizards so that is a factor as well.
Just a thought. Just because you are see influx of people playing doesn't mean there's no problems or that people are leaving the game. That should be a sad thing. Stuff can seem to be good but rotting in the center.
Richard bringing a massive load of cope on wotc's behalf
I was legitimately curious about this news of the alternate Commander format. You guys are my main news source when it comes to mtg, would you be able to hit that topic next week?
I think I have put together a clear picture on why Seth doesn't know any other geek IP. So, he likes football. Seth is a bro who's only geek interest is MTG
Seth is a frat boy with one niche interest he hyper-focuses on.
Even though I got mine, I still think it's a disaster. Monday at noon is a stupid time to do SLD. Why are there so many easy ways to skip the line? Terrible website and management
Explorer being less popular than Alchemy is depressing. That's probably due to how expensive it is compared to standard or even paper. If you just need to buy the cards, then pioneer isn't that expensive because reprints have made so many staples drop.
Speaking of sold out pre-release: I wanted to attend one back in Neon Dynasty, but only had time on that Sunday. I appeared and the only thing I could do was play commander. Someone even laughed at me for being too stupid to be on time and just said I should commander.
It soured me to the point that I now play rather Flesh and Blood instead of MtG because there are nice people in that game.
Old formats with unchanging card pools are very popular in Yu-Gi-Oh
Im genuinely glad the scalpers won for multiple reasons, as a non-scalper myself.
not a hot take at all: WotC sold them all and made their money so they really don't care how you feel about it. And you all keep letting them get away with this.
But they could have sold more, so they wasted a business opportunity!
As someone who worked ina multinational corporation, that call makes too much sense. They did what they did because that is what the CEO wanted. That’s it! It’s not about efficient management and reasonable business decisions, it about people’s ego in a position of power.
One thing I’ll say about not many proxies at Vegas, people there could def afford to not have proxies 😂
41:13 with the artist pay I think it’s similar to tipped workers like bartenders and servers. Like they get a relatively small paycheck but they have the potential to make a lot more if they’re good at their job. That’s like the people who get that doubling season commission or whatever. However that’s not quite fair to the servers who have to work bad shifts. Like the artists who get the commission for the draft shaft no one cares about.
If they took away the rights from artists and paid a little more upfront it’s better for the people who get the bad cards but the really sought after art and artist makes way less money. I think because of the potential to make so much on playmats and original art the artists would probably push against that. Like servers pushing back against getting rid of tips
I’ll add I used to serve and bartend and some nights I could walk away with a few hundred bucks a night vs the guaranteed 15-20 some places have proposed. I’d would rather have the potential for more money because it evens out to higher hourly overall. Still a worse deal for the people working the bad shifts/getting the bad art though
Established players have already said they were keen for foundations because it looked like a magic set of old, and I’d say they were the majority of players who played at prerelease. To say people are hyped for UB sets so they are playing foundations is funny, made me chuckle a bit. Comparing prerelease numbers to potential 60 card format numbers is dumb, as I don’t play standard but will continue to play non-UB prereleases.