Going Mad – Checking the Aftermath

By: Derek Madlem

For those of you unaware – Magic Origins was released last Friday. While I’m not sure how you could simultaneously be unaware of that and still reading this, I’m sure there’s one of you out there. You’ll also be stunned at the news that an SCG Open was held in Chicago, giving this latest and final iteration of the Core Set a grand stage to display it’s powerful contributions to the Standard metagame and boy-howdy was it… lackluster.

Pro Tip:

The first week after a new set is released, it’s often better to play a well tuned deck with very few new cards because it’s going to perform better than a brand new archetype in a vacuum.

The Desks that Weren’t

Coming into this event we all expected to see some sweet Elf on Goblin action… two enemy tribes that have been locked in an eternal struggle ever since they decided to start making Duel Decks.

ElvesVsGoblins

We were not disappointed. Ok, maybe we were very disappointed. Goblins fared better of the two decks, posting an 18th, 24th, and a 39th place finish… hardly a second coming. Elves… well they did a lot worse, posting a single copy in the top 64 at 41st place. As many commentators of old would point out, a ham sandwich could get a 41st place finish in the right hands.

Outside of these failed archetypes, what’s making a splash?

Abbot of Keral KeepAbbot of Keral Keep only showed up in two mono-red decks, one with a 20th place finish and another in 49th. While this is hardly an impressive finish, it’s almost enough to overshadow all the attempts to run Ire Shaman thus far, a card that has been used to gauge Abbot’s power level.

Woodland Bellower

Woodland Bellower? Nope. Zero. While it’s not a resounding endorsement of playability, it will likely give us a little bit of a downward push. I’m still a fan of this card and look forward to picking them up on their way down with hopes of a big payoff on the horizon.

Archangel of TithesThe Archangel here did manage something that none of the cards discussed so far were capable of: cracked the top 16. Showing up in the 14th place mono-white devotion deck, the Archangel joined a laundry list of value-adding creatures like Brimaz, King of Oreskos and Wingmate Roc to overwhelm opponents. This deck took great advantage of the absence of control decks, an archetype that would have normally tear it apart. With multicolored mana so easy to come by, this strategy just doesn’t seem worth the restriction… on the plus side, I’ll have a little more time to get rid of these Archangels I opened.

Erebos's Titan

Erebos’s Titan – Conditionally powerful card with a prohibitive casting cost? Zero. None. I’m obviously still cold on this guy for reasons I’ve already discussed. Maybe there’s still a chance for this guy and his friend Gray Merchant of Asphodel to stake a claim on Standard, but they didn’t pull it off this weekend.

Evolutionary LeapEvolutionary Leap – My pet card, also a no-show in the top 64 decklists. I’m not at all surprised this card wasn’t broken within the first week, it’s going to take a brewmaster to crack this one… I’m looking at you Sam Black and Conley Woods. Though, I admit I am more than willing to settle for a Travis Woo brew just to get the ball rolling. I’m still going to be trading for every copy of this leper that I can get my hands on, it’s only a matter of time.

lilianahereticalhealer

Liliana was destined for great things, like showing up as a one of in Modern Collected Company decks or greedy Rally the Ancestors decks in Standard. I’m still not impressed with Liliana, especially for how much hype she was getting before this weekend. The fact that this card is within $2 of Nissa, a card that fared much better, still baffles my mind. I’m either greatly underestimating the casual appeal of these cards or there’s a lot of people that are going to feel bad about their $25 copies of Liliana going forward.

Jace, Vryn's ProdigyJace was one of two walkers to show up in force this weekend. As it turns out, Merfolk Looter is really good alongside Jeskai Ascendancy…landing this Jace in the top 8 with a 6th place finish. Some non-ascendancy Jeskai decks also featured Jace and round out the top decks with 17th, 30th, 31st, and a 34th place finish. Combining the looter effect with delve spells is proving to be a very powerful combination, especially when Super Sayain Jace starts flashing back Treasure Cruise or Dig Through Time. While his inclusion in these decks is impressive… being limited to one archetype is generally not enough to maintain a $20 price tag. As supply continues to enter the market, expect Jace to start winding down to a more maintainable $10 price point.

nissavastwoodseer If there was a clear winner based on overall inclusion, it’s gotta be Nissa. Apparently Borderland Ranger is an effect that’s welcomed in the plethora of Abzan decks (and few G/R) that Nissa made an appearance in. The ability to ensure that a turn four Languish or Siege Rhino resolves appears to be more than enough to trump the forest-only limitation.

In total, Nissa appeared in twenty of the top 64 decks at this weekend’s open, just under 1/3rd…a fairly impressive number. This is the point in the article that I admit to totally misjudging this card. Nissa’s presence in so many decks is a clear sign that this card has struck a chord with the player base and is going to continue showing up in the top decks, especially as long as so many powerful green cards exist in the format. If Nissa posts a strong finish at the Pro Tour, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this spike up to the $35 range as players scramble to acquire copies while supply is still relatively low. Six months from now I expect Nissa to be somewhere between $15-$20, so I wouldn’t hold onto this card past a spike if you don’t plan on using it.

Gaea's RevengeThe quiet breakout hit of the SCG Open is not a new card, but a forgotten friend returned to us. Gaea’s Revenge ruined a number of games for Jace players back in the day, dodging countermagic and spot removal gave this card a huge advantage against the blue decks that only had one real answer: Day of Judgment, and many times it was already too late as Gaea’s Revenge has that whole hasty giant fatty thing going for it.

Currently listed under $1 a piece, there has to be significant upside to this card… keep in mind that the first time it was printed it was at Mythic, so the existing supply is not even that extensive. Gaea’s Revenge will be exceptionally powerful going forward as it’s going to require a Crux of Fate or an End Hostilities for control decks to take it out…Languish just isn’t going to cut it.

Day's Undoing

Day’s Undoing did make a couple of appearances at the SCG Open this weekend. One in the latest iteration of everyone’s least favorite deck: Turbo-Fog and another couple of Legacy decks: Affinity and Omni-Tell, both of which managed to crack the top 8.

We were already warned about some of the sicko affinity hands that could dump and reload thanks to this card, but as it turns out: that strategy actually worked. It also turns out that this card was powerful in the Omni-tell, a great way to rebuy those Show and Tells and cantrips, or just refill after sticking an Omniscience.

The Turbo-Fog deck took advantage of the “free refills” this card provided despite the counter-intuitive interaction with it’s main win condition: Sphinx’s Tutelage. Reloading with a fist full of Fog effects wasn’t enough to crack the top 64, I imagine due to the reality that Fog doesn’t work very well against a fist full of burn spells.

Day’s Undoing is clearly a powerful effect, but how pervasive will that effect be? That remains to be seen. This price on this card has already mellowed from that $20 preorder to a more reasonable $15, but I imagine that number will continue to shrink as more and more Standard players finding themselves asking, “What the hell am I going to do with this?” I’m on the same train as a number of other writers with this one: I’m not excited at $10, but if it hits $5 you can bet that I’m a buyer.

Caution: Wet Cement

The format is far from solidified. We’ve come a long way from the days when a new brew was sure to tear up the first big tournament. Much of today’s innovation comes from MTGO and those results transfer to paper on a slight delay, which is unfortunate because Magic Origins isn’t even out on MTGO yet.

While we have an initial sampling, it’s clearly not time to panic sell yet. There should still be a fairly substantial shift in the metagame coming as players are able to acquire and try out more of these cards over the next couple of weeks, culminating in a grand hurrah at Pro Tour Magic Origins in less than two weeks.

Shameless Self Promotion

I’ve got a busy few weeks ahead of me, I’ll be attending GP Dallas this weekend working with those Aether Games folk followed by a four day stint at GenCon in my home town of Indianapolis at the MythicMTG booth and finally at GP San Diego with Aether Games. Like always, I hope to see you guys there and make sure to introduce yourselves when you come up to the booth.


 

PROTRADER: Lost in Translation

By: Travis Allen

Financially oriented websites are an odd duck in the ocean of content production that is the internet. Those whose business models are to make you money exist in this tenuous balance of profitability; on the one hand is yours, on the other, theirs.

Production Values

StarCityGames.com makes sense as a content producer. Articles are written regarding competitive strategy, mulligan decisions, and deck-building tips. You pay money to learn how to be better at the game. Similar arrangements exist for nearly any topic under the sun. One can read about scrap booking or crocheting or bee husbandry or south Asian cricket teams or whatever it is that one fancies.

Content about making money is where things become murky. Articles on SCG designed to make you a better player aren’t directly disadvantageous for the writers. Few people that wouldn’t have beaten Tom Ross before reading his articles will beat him now. It’s in his best interest that there be a wealth of robust players anyways, as a healthy competitive scene will ensure that there’s plenty of fish out there. Websites whose content is about making you a better player, rather than about making you money, have more obfuscatory processes between a writer creating content and ultimately being less successful because of it.

If I teach you how to mulligan better, it’s extremely unlikely that it will come back to bite me in the ass in a meaningful setting. If I teach you to buy piles of Obelisk of Urd, there’s going to be a lot fewer cheap copies available on TCGplayer for me, which means I can quite easily see how my advice is actively costing me money.

Content creators for websites that teach you how to make money, whether it’s Magic cards or Monsanto stock, deal with this issue. The more information I give you about how to succeed in the same market I’m in, the less overall money there is for me. A true #mtgfinance warrior wants to write nothing and tweet nothing. Knowledge is power, and power is money, so transitively, knowledge is money. Why would you want to share knowledge if it means someone else is buying your 25-cent copies of Hangarback Walker?

It’s a question of how we each assign value. Teaching you all how to spot cards that are worth scooping up may mean that there are fewer copies available when I decide to do it, and consequently I make less money because of what I wrote, but it provides value in a different vein. Rather than operate in the shadows, making 10 percent more than I would have otherwise, I get to be a public face in this niche field of a niche hobby. I have 1,300 Twitter followers, strangers occasionally approach me at Grands Prix, and thousands of people read my articles. All of that makes me feel like I’m doing something that at least a few people out there enjoy. 

“You’re just doing this to feed your ego!” you may say, and you’d be quite correct. We all need our own ways of making ourselves feel better about being us, and if my way of doing that is sacrificing some amount of personal financial gain for a shred of visibility, then so be it. Any writer who shares information that they could otherwise be using to profit themselves is doing the same thing.

Of course, each of us has to find our own personal threshold between money and fame. I can talk about slumming the ban list as a means of finding undervalued cards that will skyrocket in value because I don’t expect there to be enough of a drain on that particular inventory set that it will prevent me from doing the same. Maybe I’m only able to pick up four sets of Bloodbraid Elf instead of six. On the other hand, I made sure not to talk about Chord of Calling or See the Unwritten before I purchased stacks for myself, and I didn’t tweet about Rally the Ancestors until I had grabbed several sets of that either. All of us writers are willing to share our processes about making money, even if it costs us in the long run—up to a point.

A Well-Kept Secret

If you had a personal relationship with certain writers or dealers two or three months back, you may have noticed a hole in the overall coverage landscape of Magic finance. A lot of us had, in our own ways, stumbled upon a fairly lucrative process. We were all keeping quiet about it, willing to share it with friends and insiders, but we weren’t ready to broadcast it to the masses. This was still a little too good to share; not yet would the personal validation be enough to out-value the money.

Of course, one kid in class has to point out to the teacher that the multiplication table on the wall is still visible during the math quiz. A few weeks ago, for the first time since I started writing about Magic finance, I found myself slightly agitated with an article a peer had written. Being tipped off by a comment on Twitter, I looked up Sigmund’s article that was set to be published in twelve hours. I told him there was a reason none of us had written that article already. We weren’t quite ready to let more people into this specific treehouse yet, and here he was kicking down the ladder.

You can sheer a sheep many times, but you can only skin it once.

Gone Shoppin’

Rather than attempt to recap Sig’s article, just go read it if you haven’t already. I’m instead going to pivot to discuss some of my own experiences with this topic, eventually getting to some actual useful piece of information. You’re going to have to earn it this week.

I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to visit Japan early this year, and I didn’t miss the chance to stock on up Magic product. About $3,000 worth of cards came back with me. When I wrote about it, I attempted to create something with even just a modicum more depth than my usual fare. I’m not sure I succeeded. That’s for you to decide.

Covered in my article about the trip was how much smaller margins were on competitive staples relative to casual ones. Cards like Force of Will and Tarmogoyf and Snapcaster Mage were more expensive in Japan, while casual staples were practically free for the taking. This was completely fine by me: profit margins are profit margins, and between TCGplayer and eBay, outing casual staples isn’t too hard. 

The only caveat is that English copies were far less common than Japanese ones. Chalking that up to the region was easy. After all, it was Japan. Why wouldn’t most of the cards be in Japanese?

Literature uses foreshadowing to tip off the reader as to events to come. Life does, too, though identifying the passages is considerably more challenging.

On my return I had, among other things,  27 JP* Mana Reflections, each acquired at $7.25, and 37 JP Black Markets, at under $3 each. How could you not love those prices? Over on TCGplayer, Mana Reflections were $17 or more at the time, and Black Markets were easily $10. When I found a store with 37 Black Markets in stock at that price, I think I actually made the cash register sound in my head. I snagged a few English copies of both of those as well, though far fewer.

*Use ‘JP’ when shorthanding Japanese, not ‘Jap.’ The latter developed into a slur in the era of World War II.

At the time of my return, TCGplayer hadn’t yet installed the infrastructure for selling foreign cards. I sold one or two JP casual/EDH cards through a private board, and listed a few on eBay that didn’t see any action. I mostly waited, knowing that the foreign card sales on TCGplayer were coming in the near future. While sales at the start were slow, that was mostly an issue of being unable to reach my target market. Once I was able to connect with that huge casual segment, I was going to plow through this huge stack of sweet Japanese EDH and casual cards, perhaps even at better-than-English prices. After all, Japanese is more desirable than English.

This time, I’m the one doing the foreshadowing.

When foreign functionality was added to TCGplayer a month or two later, everything I had went up at 10 to 20 percent more than their English counterparts. In fact, I was one of the first to add foreign versions of many cards. Now I just had to wait for the money to start rolling in. Each morning I awoke eagerly to check the Gmail notification on my phone, anticipating a deluge of orders.

Alright, so it wasn’t moving that fast. In fact, in the first month, I didn’t sell a single copy of either Reflection or Market. I kept lowering prices on the Japanese copies closer and closer to the English low, without success. Eventually I had Japanese copies cheaper than English ones. You know what happened?

My English copies, which cost more than the Japanese copies, sold first. Welp.

Language Barrier

We’ve been fed this idea that foreign language cards are preferable. We enjoy tossing around price tags for foil Russian Emrakul and its ilk. There’s a stated knowledge that Korean, Japanese, and Russian cards are worth more than any of the other languages. Foils particularly so, but even the non-foils are generally worth some percentage more.

It turns out that isn’t exactly true. First of all, in all my Magic dealings over the last several years, the only time foreign cards spark interest is when they’re foil. Yes, foil JP stuff people are interested in. Non-foil JP product, though, even format staples, typically elicit a, “You don’t have any English copies, do you?” from people.They’ll take the Japanese or Russian Spellskite, but it’s not their first choice. And these are competitive staples: cards players need any legal copy of for competitive play.

Here’s the issue. A guy trading for a Spellskite is using it in a tournament setting. Everyone in that room knows what Spellskite does. The owner of the card doesn’t care what it looks like. He’s not going to be reading it, and neither is his playgroup. Casual players, though? They actually read the cards.

This is a rather alien concept to most of us. How often do you need to actually read a card outside of a new Limited environment? Maybe occasionally you’ll pick up Norin the Wary just to ensure you understand it, or double check the wording on Cryptic Command, but for the most part, you’ve memorized nearly all the cards you regularly come in contact with.

Casual players, on the other hand, don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of most Magic. Hence, “casual.” And even if they know what Mana Reflection does, it doesn’t mean everyone at their table will. Mana Reflection is fairly simple, too. Black Market is far more wordy. “At the beginning of your precombat main phase” is going to require some real parsing for guys with Consuming Aberration in their decks. Cards in foreign languages make it difficult for players to understand both their own cards and each other’s cards.

Being able to read one’s own cards is important to casual types. You know what they don’t care about much? Visual flair. Many casual players not only don’t find foils more appealing, they actively dislike them. Check out Consuming Aberration. There’s only a 60-cent gap between non-foils and foils, or roughly a 20-percent markup. That’s an obscenely low markup, simply because the interested market for Aberration doesn’t care for foils. Casually oriented players play Magic to have fun. Excitement comes from finding a new card for a deck they never knew existed, not from finally replacing a FTV Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre with a pack foil Rise of the Eldrazi copy.

And so my non-foil Japanese casual cards sat. And sit. I’ve managed to get rid of a few so far. I’ve sold four JP Reflections on TCGplayer since January, all within the last month. Two JP Markets. There’s still plenty to go.

I’ve looked for elsewhere to out them, as I’m deathly afraid of reprints. Cards like Tarmogoyf do just fine with second and third copies. Casual cards, not so much. I did manage to sell a handful of each at GP Vegas. I carried around a copy of Reflection and Market from booth to booth. I’d ask dealers how much they were paying for each. Most told me they didn’t want either, and more still would offer numbers that had me taking deep losses. There were at least a few that bit, thankfully. They’d offer $13 on the JP Reflection, and I’d ask how many playsets they wanted. I’d get looks.

Buylists are an option, too. SCG is paying $7 on JP Reflections and $5 on Markets. That’s a loss on the Reflections, and a fairly minimal profit on the Markets. I still need to do more homework on buylists that want foreign cards. I’ve heard ABU is good for it, though I haven’t checked myself. I’m dragging my feet on this and I’m quite literally going to pay for it if I don’t hurry up.

There are two pages in my trade binder: one at the front of the green section, the other at the front of black. A sheet of nine Reflections and Markets respectively. The only times I’ve managed to trade out of either page, it was for the English copy I had in the middle so players would know what the card does.

Leftovers

Here I sit, with piles of JP Mana Reflection and Black Market still in hand, fearing a reprint, with no good place to sell them. I’ve got others, too, though nothing I’m so deep on. Some Darksteel Plates, some Akroma’s Memorials. They’re cards intended for casual and EDH markets, except that casual and EDH players don’t want them. Remember that foreshadowing I mentioned earlier about how the stores had very few English copies of this stuff, but plenty of Japanese? Well, this is why. Even the market that supposedly wants them doesn’t want them.

The lesson here, which I’ve taken an incredibly long path to get to, is to stay the hell away from non-foil foreign cards unless you know damn well what you’re going to do with them. “Put them on TCGplayer” isn’t an option, either. Don’t buy this stuff unless you can plainly see a buylist that makes flipping the cards worth it, or someone has already promised to take copies off your hands. When you’re browsing foreign sites, prices on these can be awfully alluring—trust me, I get it—but at the end of the day, you may find yourself with plenty of profit on paper yet a wallet that remains oddly light.


 

PROTRADER: Counting Boats

Let me preface this article with a warning. You’re going to get sick of the puns in the title that are some variation on both the deck I want to discuss and boating because I’m doing a whole series on that whole a-rising-tide-lifts-all-boats motif way before I do. I promise. I. Promise.

Want me to spoil the deck I want to talk about by explaining the title to you? Sure, eat your dessert before you finish your salad—you’re an adult and you can make your own decisions by now. I want to talk about decks that put counters on creatures in light of a few cards (rather than just one) from Magic Origins that are going to go off with these strategies. We’ll look mostly at Vorel of the Hull Clade decks, but we won’t limit ourselves to that.

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Understanding the Changes to MTGO Payouts

Once again, major changes are afoot in the Wonderful World of Magic Online™, this time targeting Constructed events and their prize structures. This announcement is bigger than just some minor restructuring, though: the quick summary is that Wizards is introducing a new currency, doubling entry fees for Daily Events (without a corresponding prize increase), and stifling player-to-player trading, including player-to-bot trading. This is a big deal, and whether or not it goes well, the MTGO economy will be seeing the fallout from this for the foreseeable future. If you play Magic Online or are concerned about its economy, you should definitely check out the official post with full details.

However, because that article is written with a whole lot of coded language and corporate doublespeak, I’ll be FJM‘ing it below. Without further ado, here’s Magic Online Digital Product Manager Lee Sharpe:

Magic Online is an awesome place to play Magic. We think it could be better with some changes, particularly focused on Constructed events. Recent player feedback supports this as an area where we can improve, especially when alternative Limited events such as the Tempest Remastered or Cube Drafting are available. In this spirit, today we are announcing some changes to Magic Online events.

This is a promising start. Wizards is listening to player feedback and instituting the Constructed-equivalent of Tempest Remastered and MTGO Cube. Could this be the long-promised return of leagues?!

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS WITH MAKING THESE CHANGES?

We focused on what Constructed players want to do with their prizes and made sure our prize offerings reflected those goals:

  1. Provide a prize that allows a Constructed player to immediately jump in another event.
  2. At least some events provide players with prizes that allow for better deck customization as preferences and sets change.

Okay, okay. You might think this is getting good. I assumed that what Sharpe was saying with point number one above is that events will now pay out once you finish your final round, as they currently make you wait for every match to finish before handing out prizes. (Spoiler: this is not what Sharpe is saying.)

What Sharpe is really saying with point number two is, “At least some events provide players with prizes that have actual value.” This, in fact, is not good.

WHAT ARE THOSE CHANGES?

Play Points will now be used as prizes for Constructed queues and Daily Events. Eight-Player Queues and Daily Events will award prizes that are a combination of Play Points and boosters, while two player queues will award prizes that are entirely in Play Points. Additionally, all three of these plus many other Magic Online events will have an additional entry option that consists entirely of Play Points.

I wonder why they don’t just pay out in event tickets, the already-established currency on Magic Online?

We believe Play Points will do a great job of achieving the first goal, which is to allow players to play events more easily. To make sure the second goal is also met, we are still awarding some prizes as booster packs. Players can trade or open these boosters to help them get new cards for their decks.

Again, why not just award event tickets rather than introduce a new currency? There has to be a catch.

In the future, we plan to look at other ways to use prizes to promote deck customization besides booster packs (mainly because they are mostly used currently to join Limited events). However, for now we want to focus on the changes that we’re announcing today.

This is a completely unnecessary paragraph. I imagine that Sharpe is hinting at prizes of singles for Constructed events in the future, but Wizards doesn’t have much of a track record of delivering on promises related to Magic Online, so don’t count on this paragraph ever meaning anything. It exists solely to say, “This isn’t the only thing we’re doing, guys! We know this isn’t good enough or even good at all but we’re super seriously working on something better! Pinkie promise!” If it’s not actively being instituted, assume it will never happen.

DETAILS OF THE NEW CONSTRUCTED EVENTS

Before we talk about additional ways to use Play Points, here are the details of the events where you can win them!

Constructed Two-Player Queue

Start Times: Fire on demand
Location: Constructed Queues
Entry Options:

  • Option 1: 2 Event Tickets
  • Option 2: 20 Play Points

Size: 2 players
Play Style: Single Elimination
Duration: One round, lasting up to 50 minutes.

Sharpe is starting with one of MTGO’s biggest weaknesses: two-player queues. For the uninitiated, two-player queues cost two event tickets to enter for each player. The MSRP for a booster pack is four tickets, so ostensibly, the winner gets the full value for the four total tickets of entry fee.

However, ever since the 2013 increase of redemption fees from $5 to $25—the impact of which would take an entire article to fully describe—pack prices have plummeted. Generally, a player should be able to get between two and three tickets each for booster packs, with occasional jumps above three or dips below two. With pack prices consistently lower than MSRP, there have been times during the last two years where you could have a 90-percent win percentage in two-player queues and still be losing money. The problem is that many competitive players see these queues as the most time-efficient way to play meaningful games to test their decks.

So how do the Play Points prizes look?

Place
1st
Prizes 30 Play Points
QPs 0
2nd
Prizes 5 Play Points
QPs 0

Before, Wizards could pretend like it was not taking a cut off of two-player queues when essentially selling a booster pack for four tickets. Now, the players know upfront that 12.5 percent of their combined entry fee is going to the house. I bet Sharpe tries to spin this positively:

The Two-Player Queue is available for Standard, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Pauper, and Momir Basic. If you win, you get enough Play Points to play in another one, plus you’re halfway to the one after that. If you lose, you’re a quarter of the way to a free one. Keep earning more points!

Told you.

Ultimately, not much changes economically for players of these queues. This essentially stabilizes the winner’s prize at the equivalent of three tickets, with a pity half-ticket going to the loser. I’m not a math scientist, but that still seems to be unfavorable to the average player, who wins about 50 percent of his or her matches. If Wizards actually gave the full amount of Play Points back to the players, it might be a different story.

Constructed Eight-Player Queue

Start Times: Fire on demand
Location: Constructed Queues
Entry Options:

  • Option 1: 6 Event Tickets
  • Option 2: 60 Play Points

Size: 8 players
Play Style: Single Elimination
Duration: Three rounds, each round up to 50 minutes.
Prizes:

Place
1st
Prizes 2 Magic Origins booster packs and
140 Play Points
QPs 2
2nd
Prizes 1 Magic Origins booster pack and
60 Play Points
QPs 1
3rd-4th
Prizes 60 Play Points
QPs 0

The Eight-Player Queue is available for Standard and Modern. Winning the first match gets you enough Play Points to play in another eight-player queue. Winning the second match gets you enough Play Points to play in another eight-player queue, plus a booster. Finally, if you can win all three matches, you’ll receive more than enough Play Points to enter two more eight-player queues, on top of two boosters!

I’m sure there will be players unhappy about these only being available for Standard and Modern, but the eight-man queues don’t seem so egregious to me. The old prize payout was five packs for first place, three packs for second place, and two packs for third and fourth places. If we’re assuming that ten Play Points are worth roughly about the price of a ticket and that packs are worth about three tickets each, this seems like about the same payout for everybody except slightly better for first place. Whether you like a top-heavy payout is purely a matter of personal preference.

Constructed Daily Event

Start Times: See Schedule
Location: Constructed Scheduled
Entry Options:

  • Option 1: 12 Event Tickets
  • Option 2: 120 Play Points

Size: 8 players
Play Style: Swiss
Duration: Four rounds, each round up to 50 minutes.
Prizes:

Match Wins
4 Wins
Prizes 6 Magic Origins booster packs and
360 Play Points
QPs 3
3 Wins
Prizes 3 Magic Origins booster packs and
180 Play Points
QPs 1

SOUND THE OUTRAGE ALARM.

Sharpe really buried the lede here, as now we’ve gotten to the part where Wizards is doubling of the price to enter Daily Events, one of the defining tournament series on Magic Online.

Most recently, Daily Events cost six event tickets to enter and consisted of four rounds of Swiss play. If you went 4-0, you got 11 packs, whereas 3-1 got you six packs. Even when packs are as low as two tickets, this is more than a triple-up for going undefeated and a nice double-up for going 3-1.

I should really note how important Daily Events are to Magic Online players who want to “go infinite.” These aren’t the best value in history (Daily Events used to give 13 packs for 4-0, for example), but they’re good enough value that players can dream about stringing together enough 3-1 and 4-0 finishes that they don’t have to put money into Magic Online anymore, with the best players even turning a profit.

From WOTC’s perspective, players turning a profit or playing for free appears bad, but there’s a bigger picture here. How many players have dumped a ton of money into Magic Online hoping to go infinite but never really get there? My guess would be many, many more than those that do actually reach the goal of playing for free. However, with this move, Wizards has shattered the dream of going infinite for a whole lot of players, as the prizes have not increased as sharply as entry fees.

For illustration’s sake, let’s assume a three-ticket booster pack price, even though that’s not very realistic recently. Old Daily Event 4-0s would pay out 33 tickets after an entry fee of six, an increase of 550 percent. Now a 4-0 record pays about 54 tickets of value compared to a 12-ticket entry fee, an increase of only 450 percent.

Does a 3-1 payout improve? With a three-ticket booster, the old system’s 3-1 record would result in a triple-up from six tickets to 18. Now players get roughly 27 tickets for their 12-ticket entry fees, nine tickets short of that triple up we used to see.

There’s no doubt about it: Wizards is significantly lowering the payout for Daily Events.

Constructed Daily Events are available for Standard, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, and Pauper. They reflect the highest level of regularly available competition on Magic Online. As such, we are increasing the number of event tickets used to join to reflect this and help distance it from the eight-player queues. Since the quality of play in Constructed Daily Events can be quite intense, we expect some players will stick to the queues. Choose the level of event that is right for you.

“We determined that Daily Events were decidedly better value than everything else we offer, and rather than consider the fact that these being scheduled events is a reasonable enough downside to justify that better value, we decided to double the entry fee instead.”

You’ll also see the prize structure provides some very good rewards for those who do well under this system: Three wins gets you three boosters as well as enough Play Points for another Constructed Daily Event entry and halfway to one after that. Four wins is six boosters, plus enough Play Points for three more Constructed Daily Event entries. We hope these events are exciting—and the prize structures different enough from each other—that no matter what kind of player you are, you will be able to find the event offerings that are right for you.

No mention of the fact that the Daily Event payout has been neutered. Sharpe has failed to convince me that these are “very good rewards.”

WHAT ELSE CAN I DO WITH PLAY POINTS?

We want players to have the options to select a variety of ways to use their Play Points. You can see above how you can use them in Constructed Queues and Daily Events. Play Points, like Phantom Points before them, are untradeable…

Let me cut you off right there, Lee. He’s trying to skip over the most important part, but the fact that these are untradeable is a crucial point.

As someone who plays on MTGO primarily for Cube, I can appreciate Phantom Points, but they are terrible value for anything other than that one format. I’ve avoided phantom Draft and Sealed events like the plague, but now Magic Online is instituting a terrible system for all of its Constructed queues. Got that? Let’s move on.

…and we’re excited to be able to use them creatively in new and exciting ways because of that. Also like Phantom Points, Play Points will be available as an entry option for Phantom Queues, and we are expanding their use as entry options in the following other events:

Event Type
Booster Drafts
Current Entry Options Option 1: 14 Event Tickets
Option 2: 3 Boosters and 2 Event Tickets
New Additional Entry Option Option 3: 140 Play Points
Four-Booster Sealed Events
Current Entry Options Option 1: 18 Event Tickets
Option 2: 4 Boosters and 2 Event Tickets
New Additional Entry Option Option 3: 180 Play Points
Sealed Daily Events
Current Entry Options Option 1: 26 Event Tickets
Option 2: 6 Boosters and 2 Event Tickets
New Additional Entry Option Option 3: 260 Play Points
PTQ Preliminaries
(Constructed and Sealed)
Current Entry Options Option 1: 30 Event Tickets
New Additional Entry Option Option 2: 300 Play Points

The prize structures of these event types are unchanged. They will not award any additional Play Points. But we believe this new structure will provide players Constructed players with the opportunity to use Play Points beyond events that award them as prizes.

Admittedly, it would be pretty annoying to not get to enter Limited events with these, and at least they’re not trying to pay out in only Play Points, so this part is basically fine.

WHEN ARE THE EVENTS CHANGING?

The new structures will begin after the August 12 downtime, when release events for Magic Origins end.

Just enough time to sell your account! (And MTGO Traders owner Heath Newton confirmed that many players are.)

CAN I USE PLAY POINTS ALREADY IN MY ACCOUNT FOR THESE EVENTS?

Yes! As I stated in the June Events article, Play Points will be introduced and Phantom Points will be retired during this Wednesday’s downtime. However, each account will receive 6 Play Points for every Phantom Point they have in their account at that time.

Thanks, I guess?

CAN I BUY PLAY POINTS IN THE MAGIC ONLINE STORE?

No. The only way to get Play Points is through events (although sometimes they also may be available through special promotions). Most events that support a Play Point entry option will also support an event ticket entry option, and those tickets are available in the Magic Online Store.

Yep, these are totally the replacement for phantom points.

WHERE SHOULD I SEND MY FEEDBACK?

You can send detailed feedback to magiconlinefeedback@wizards.com. This email goes directly to Worth Wollpert, Mike Turian, Chris Kiritz, and me—the team making the day-to-day business decisions about Magic Online. I generally read everything the same day it comes in.

We also read Magic articles published online and the Magicsubreddit. You can also reach us via Twitter through the official @MagicOnline Twitter account or directly at my account, @mtg_lee.

Lee Sharpe
Digital Product Manager—Magic Online Events

Such a large section devoted to soliciting feedback indicates that Wizards knows this is a player-unfriendly move. The Magic community has been able to get Wizards to backtrack on bad decisions before. If you feel this impacts you negatively, let Wizards know.

The Future of the MTGO Economy

Nobody really knows what will happen to Magic Online’s economy as a result of these changes, but we can make some educated guesses.

First, let’s discuss booster pack prices. It stands to reason that if fewer boosters are being put into the hands of players, the price of individual boosters will increase. As prizes for events, this is good, but keep in mind that most events now pay out in Play Points, so this ultimately ends up being a minimal payoff for Constructed players. Limited players, however, will be paying higher pack prices, meaning that drafting on Magic Online will be more expensive. This doesn’t appear to benefit Constructed or Limited players. I wonder who does benefit, then? (Wizards).

Second, players will have less need to sell boosters or singles for tickets, so player-to-player trades will decrease. This includes player-to-bot trades, as bots are owned by individual Magic Online players. This move should decrease secondary market commerce significantly.

Third, players will have less ability to liquidate their collections. Since Play Points can’t be traded, they can’t be sold on the secondary market, either. A player looking for some quick cash used to be able to sell prize packs and singles for tickets and sell tickets for cash. While that is still technically true, Constructed players will have fewer packs to work with and will be accumulating Play Points that can’t be liquidated quickly or efficiently.

The community at large seems to be quite upset with these changes. The fallout may not be as bad as many are predicting, but I would hardly call these changes a good thing for the player base. Still, this Reddit post outlines much of the expected value of events moving forward, and yeah, the world will probably go on. I’d still love to see WOTC’s internal numbers after this change.

Magic Online has long justified its high prices despite its low costs by stating that the paper and digital games should have as much in common as possible. Now it appears that Wizards is taking steps toward making Magic Online a self-contained economy where one is not able to liquidate cards or currency, like what we see in Hearthstone and SolForge. The problem is that the prices remain comparatively high to those games.

There’s so much more to be said about Magic Online, but this should be a good overview of why there is controversy regarding Monday’s announcement. If you’re unhappy with these changes, let Wizards know. And hey, post your thoughts in the comment section below. Remember, Wizards has backed off due to community backlash before. Do you think these changes benefit anyone but the company’s shareholders?

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY