By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin
The latest episode of MTG Fast Finance with myself and James Chillcott discusses the week’s biggest moves, our cards to watch, and Eternal Masters. Check it out here!
It’s been a wild two weeks, hasn’t it? I said in at least two mediums that Eternal Masters was a baseless rumor that sounded more like a Reddit pipe dream rather than an actual coherent business strategy, and then Wizards went ahead and announced it. The community was especially flush with drama regarding a few deepthroat-esque accounts regarding EMA, the full set list, and supposedly clandestine vendor operations. And to top it all off, a Maro Tumblr post sent pockets of the community into a tizzy with the perceived promise of a new constructed format.
Compared to June, when I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for article ideas, this is great. So many topics worth discussing!
I’ll start with an amusing image I posted on Twitter this weekend:
lol pic.twitter.com/fhTMKyJSws
— Travis Allen (@wizardbumpin) February 20, 2016
What are we looking at here? Within the 24 hours leading up to that tweet, r/mtgEternal was the subreddit which had grown the most across all of Reddit. Someone made a subreddit not for Eternal Masters, mind you, but rather this imaginary constructed format called Eternal, and so many people joined it was the fastest growing subreddit. Why? Where is all of this coming from? Can we profit on it?
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Missing a whole bunch of images…
I agree with your take on the rumored Eternal format. Not going to happen, and you hit on the reasons above.
I want to add that while I didn’t learn any MTG Finance stuff in the above article, I did learn about a poetic metaphor regarding color swatches as well as an Edgar Allen Poe story. I always liked The Tell-Tale Heart and The Raven.
from tumblr on FTV:
eastonator asked: HI mark will there be a FTV this year? I’m asking because conspiracy 2 seems to have taken its place.
There is a From the Vault this year.
and this response previously:
Our attitude towards supplemental products is a little different than normal expansions. We like to have the freedom to experiment and try different things. This year we’re experimenting with doing three different supplemental sets (Eternal Masters, Conspiracy 2, and Commander decks) each with their own audience. The player reaction to these sets will help inform us on what type of experiments we’ll want to try in the future.
Yeah, Eternal format seems unlikely, but it does have one thing going for it from Wizards’ perspective. If they want to keep doing Eternal Masters, I think the Eternal format needs to exist. The demand for non-reserve list Legacy staples is limited by the RL. I don’t think any legacy-only staple could survive more than one reprint without crushing it’s value, even at mythic. It’s unclear whether they will even be able to handle even one reprint (we will find out soon). If an Eternal format somehow became a thing and became popular, it would provide more demand for non-RL legacy-only cards and make multiple Eternal Masters sets more feasible. Without the Eternal format, how many Eternal Masters could they realistically make? 2 or 3 at most?
I bet the CEO of Hasbro would jump on the chance to scrap legacy and replace it with Eternal from financial perspective, if it weren’t for the anger from the community that would surely follow.
We already have the “non-RL Legacy” format that will support all those old cards. It’s Modern. Cards they want to bring into that format will eventually be reprinted and made Modern legal, and the rest will be resigned to occasional Legacy/Vintage events and casual formats.
This is the point of it all: “Eternal” already exists. It’s Modern.
Yes, I suppose that is another way of tapping into the value of old cards. But if reprinting Force of Will in Modern was their ultimate plan, why even bother with Eternal Masters? Seems like a waste of a FoW reprint. Can you imagine the hype if Modern Masters 2017 included a now Modern-legal Force of Will and Wasteland reprint? The downside to that would be people complaining about $30 MM2017 boosters, but that demand for that set would be through the roof.
I agree that there’s no room for a format between legacy and modern, but the finance community’s reaction to EM is going to drive people to start asking for it.
In th last week, we’ve seen reserve list cards exploding in asking price online. Someone is trying to pump Scorched Ruins to type digits, for Petes sake. Obviously, not all people monitor mtg finance should be painted with the same brush, and just as obviously, many of the new prices won’t stick.
But, things just move too fast for anyone to keep up, and Legacy players are getting inundated with speculation. The problem of the Reserve List and it’s possible solutions ate a hot topic and it will get hotter as more people bet that the market will bear a higher price for cards on it.
Beck // Call Elves isn’t really all that hot in Modern to be honest, even if Birchlore Rangers were legal.
I’ve got a pretty good amount of experience with a Bant elves deck (the white is pretty much to give SB access to hate), and honestly it’s not all that strong in modern.