One of my basic tenets when it comes to Magic finance is patience. I don’t want to repeat a mistake I made, trading for a foil mythic the week it came out and paying far more than I needed to for the card.
Let’s be clear: I’m talking about cards for your Cube, your Commander deck, your non-competitive decks. If you need a card right away for Standard, well, you’ll pay what you need to for the card you want, and that is why Archangel Avacyn is a $50 card currently. She is seeing play in a range of strategies, she’s a double-faced mythic, and her casual appeal is very high too. The perfect storm of being expensive.
Her price has been one of the few that has ticked upwards since the set has come out. Our price tracker has her at $30 when released, and she’s been as high as $60. She is the outlier, though; lots of other cards have come down in price.
Today, though, I want to talk about those other cards, and evaluate two in particular.
It’s a truism that most cards get cheaper as time goes on and a set is opened more. You can see that in almost all of the cards from Shadows over Innistrad. Almost none have gone up in price, and some have come down quite quickly. It’s been a month and we can prices starting to stabilize, based on how much they have been played and been featured on camera.
Now, I have the magpie curse. I love shiny versions of cards and I pick them up whenever I can. I accept this as part of who I am, and I curse that the regular version isn’t good enough for my Commander deck.
This Olivia is a house in Limited, a cheap and good-sized flyer who grants haste to your next plays without costing any mana. Being free of a mana cost is why Lightning Greaves is better than Swiftfoot Boots, even as hexproof is better than shroud.
I hesitated at first, thinking that I don’t always want to pitch a card to make things bigger and hasty, but then I realized that it’s no-downside. You don’t have to, unless you want to. So I decided I was going to add her to the deck, and then it became a waiting game.
If I had pulled the trigger right away, that is a $25 foil. Not unreasonable for what she does, and if she blows up Modern (not impossible) this could be more. Still, that was more than I wanted to spend, so I decided to wait.
And wait, while it ticked downward.
And wait a little more, as the psychological need to acquire got stronger. I finally pulled the trigger Thursday morning, because it was down to $15 and I doubt it’s going to fall much further. I admit, the small tick downward in the buylist price has me thinking I should have waited, but frankly, I’m okay with a minor cost in order to get what I want now.
The same thing happened with Relentless Dead, where it’s dropped to about $15 in foil from highs of up to $40, but more interesting is that the spread (the difference between the highest buylist and the lowest vendor) is really close to zero.
In each of these cases, waiting saved me significant money. Right now, I can get two for the price that one would have cost me at release.
One thing I find quite interesting is how close the foils and non-foils are to each other. Generally speaking, foils are two to three times as expensive as the nonfoil. These ‘should’ be about $20 or $25, but are a lot less right now.
This is true for a lot of Shadows over Innistrad. The foils are a little underpriced, for reasons that aren’t clear. Will MTGO redemptions play a part? Is the demand for all the cards still high enough that the nonfoils have caught up to the foils? For instance, Declaration in Stone is $15, with the foils at $20. I think that in this case, demand for the card is so high that being foil is only worth a small amount.
The same price pattern appears in Pyromancer’s Goggles, which spiked pretty hard the last few weeks, and the foil is only a few dollars more than the regular. Interestingly, there are foil versions of Dark Petition available for cheaper than the nonfoil, after the Pro Tour-induced spike.
I think that the small gap between foil and nonfoil is due to Standard demand. I’m going to be keeping a close eye on these cards to see where they end up, because if this is a new pattern, I want to learn it right away. I can’t recall a time where so many foils were so close to nonfoils in price. Perhaps I didn’t notice it before? Maybe it’s an effect of two blocks or 18-month rotation? I’m honestly not sure, but if this is the new normal, it’s a significant shift.
In the comments or the forums, come talk about the narrowing gap, and if there’s other trends I’ve missed.
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Trying a new format this week, and although the vast majority of it is going to be focusing on immediate results from the Pro Tour, I definitely think there are some other elements worth mentioning as well. But let’s go ahead and jump on in!
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WINNERS: Green/White Decks. I want to start here because it is both the most obvious and probably the least important. Yes, the finals match was GW Tokens over Bant Company, but those two decks did not feel like the definitive archetypes of the weekend. The Pro Tour had eight very different archetypes represented on Sunday, and I think it is fair to say that any of those decks could have taken first. It’s also worth mentioning that neither of the last two players standing (Rubin and Mengucci) are new to the game, and so it wasn’t the sheer power of their 75 that got them to the end of the tournament. Similarly, Shota Yasooka made Top 8 with Esper Dragons, an archetype that performed SO poorly over the weekend (an estimated ten players registered with it on Friday), that he was the only one to even make DAY 2 with it! This is a good indicator that the format is in a healthy place, where playskill is able to leverage deck selection without devolving into endless mirror matches.
LOSERS: Green/White Decks. There is a lot that can be taken from this weekend and applied to a long-term, nuanced understanding of this environment and the direction of the game as a whole. That does not, however, sound like the vast majority of Magic’s audience. Everybody loves a front-runner, and I expect these white-based aggressive decks to have a big target on their backs moving forward. These are also the types of decks least-equipped to handle that kind of preparation. Expect to hear someone complain about how good these decks are at FNM, as though Lin-Sivvi, Defiant Hero never happened.
WINNER: Hissing Quagmire. I don’t think that Green/Black decks over-performed this weekend. In fact, I think that this is likely one of the best color combinations in the format, especially because it gives access to Languish AND Seasons Past. Languish is a for-sure 4x moving forward, and is therefore able to maintain most if not all of its price gains from this weekend, although Seasons Past is much trickier. I expect Seasons to level off a bit more just because decks really don’t want more than two copies (but four Dark Petitions is correct!), and in my brief time playing with Finkel’s list, it feels much more tuned for a Pro Tour than the format moving forward. The Aristocrats deck, however, has so much raw power that it should have no trouble going ahead, and there are certainly other good decks in that base combination (I’m still VERY MUCH enjoying that Jund deck I posted last week, and it’s possible that an Abzan strategy materializes at some point, combining the BG control shell with Sorin, Grim Nemesis, Declaration in Stone, and Shambling Vent).
LOSERS: Platinum Pros, HOFers. I am not going to pretend that I fully and completely understand the impact of this. I WILL say that this feels like an experiment, and I don’t think that these are changes are permanent. I do feel, however, that WotC is going to have to take a much harder look at how the Hall of Fame is set up and how those benefits are treated going forward. Unlike other “similar” institutions, Magic’s Hall of Fame does not honor retired players who are no longer able to compete, but left an impact on their sport or profession. In this situation, however, Jon Finkel has created a career worthy of HOF induction SINCE he was first inducted!
Magic’s Hall of Fame was conceived at a time when the game was not doing very well, and the idea was partially to try and retain lapsed competitors while giving an air of legitimacy to tournament play and aspirants. Remember, eSports did not exist in any form close to how they do now, and Magic’s player population was about 25% of the number WotC gives out today. Keeping the Hall of Fame program as it was represented a program that was very likely to balloon in cost, while providing little in the form of the benefits it was created to generate. Magic is also no longer on what seemed to be its deathbed, and is not nearly as worried about generating new players as it was just ten years ago. While I hope some sort of balance is able to be struck in terms of compensation for Platinum, I do think some hard changes need to be made with regard to the Hall of Fame.
UPDATE: WotC went ahead and rolled the benefits for Platinum over for next year, which makes more sense.
WINNERS: Modern Players. The removal of Modern from the Pro Tour (again!) was met with very vocal disapproval from a large portion of the community. However, the response from pro tour regulars was much more positive. The truth, ultimately, lies somewhere in the middle. Formats are tricky things, especially when there are serious stakes involved (as is the case with a pro tour). The goal of a small Modern tournament at your store is to get people to buy older cards, play some games, and hope to create repeat customers. Your small tournament is likely to contain a reasonable percentage of players who own one “real” Modern deck, a smaller amount of more serious competitors, and some number of people who just have nothing else going on that Saturday. Modern is a format that benefits from not having a very bright spotlight on it, and the Pro Tour is the brightest light you can put a format under1.
Honestly, this is probably the best thing that could happen to Modern. Modern is, at most, a GP format- rewarding to regulars, while not forcing the focus of the collective best players to break it. I expect that cards will have more organic growth in this scenario, which means that cards that have large price increases will likely have more guaranteed outs (unless anyone knows where I can get full value for this Wheel of Sun and Moon on my desk…). We don’t know for sure yet, but I suspect we will see more Modern GPs moving forward, which is good news also.
LOSERS: People Who Don’t Like Standard. Yes, Standard is the weakest format in terms of long-term investment. Yes, Standard is not as wide and dynamic as Modern (lol) or Legacy. However, Standard IS the face of Magic, and this last weekend cemented that stance. The good news is that WotC is doing a lot to make Standard a healthier, more robust game. Some people will drag their heels on getting on board, but I expect the people who just complain about Standard regardless will dwindle over time. Your devout “I only play EDH!” players will likely be the last holdouts, but that’s only because they clearly have trouble evaluating what good Magic should be like.
WINNER: Hearthstone. New set launched, and it’s really fun. There were server issues, but if you don’t expect those from Blizzard on Day One at this point, then that’s your fault. Love that they “gave away” so much stuff to players! Hearthstone is awesome, but please stop comparing it to Magic.
LOSERS: Origins and Dragons of Tarkir. So this is the kind of thing I’m fascinated to see develop as we move into the new Magic life-cycle. A lot of people are treating these sets like they’ve already rotated out, even though we have them for another six months or so. This is especially relevant for Magic Origins, which had a big number of surprise role players at the Pro Tour. Will players buy more lame duck product, or are these cards free to get as expensive as they want in their final lap? Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy actually saw a dip after the weekend, but that has to be THE safest card from the set to own. Dragons is a little different, in that a lot of the cards that allowed for in-block synergy (Morph, Manifest, etc) are gone, which probably hurts the viability of former stars like Deathmist Raptor. What will happen when Battle for Zendikar is in this spot? My expectation is that WotC is now devoting more design time to synergizing blocks not just with their immediate successor, but also the block after that. If that is the case, then these sets are going to take on a very different texture in each phase of their life.
But don’t forget, that change was made during BFZ design.
If, moving forward, sets continue to have dynamic phases, then that is going to go a long way in combating the doldrums of “solved” sets from a finance angle.
Speaking of upcoming sets, let’s close with some tiny bits of information looking ahead.
First, and most speculative, is a point made by Steven and Kevin of the “So Many Insane Plays” Vintage Magic podcast. They discussed the impact of changing converted mana cost rulings on transform cards (a la Duskwatch Recruiter), so that transformed cards now retain the cost of their front side, rather than suddenly counting as 0. Steven touched on this as potentially opening up new design space- maybe WotC will be designing more in that space soon? I can’t imagine they saw Engineered Explosives as keeping Delver of Secrets down in non-rotating formats.
Secondly, here is a clip from Sam Stoddard’s article a couple weeks back on the development of Shadows (part 1). This was a comment from Dave Humpherys on Declaration in Stone.
DH 4/14: We have Rosewater buyoff on this. It can go to WW if we want it to be weaker, less-generic, etc. Rather not go to 3-mana or an enchantment due to Sorin’s card in set and Blood enchantments.
I’m not sure if this means that Blood has a very specific cycle of enchantments or that enchantments are a major theme. There are rumors that the 2016 fall set will take us to Kaladesh (Chandra’s home plane), but that is yet to be confirmed. From what little flavor stuff I read, that would make it seem like artifacts would be more relevant than enchantments, but WotC could also try and pull a reverse Urza’s block.
Finally, this is going to post before the NFL draft starts on Friday night, but I’m calling the Top 8 now:
Goff to Rams
Wentz to Eagles
Tunsil to Chargers
Elliott to Cowboys
Jack to Jaguars (at which point I will yell and throw things)
Ramsey to Ravens (throwing things intensifies)
Buckner to the Ducks Niners
Bosa to the Browns (although I could see them trading down again)
By this point, I have likely broken all of my TVs in a fit of rage. So I guess I’ll find out what else happens the next morning.
Let’s talk promos next time?
Best,
Ross
1Things like Worlds are bigger, but also feature multiple constructed formats and much smaller player pools.
Editor’s note: We’d like to thank Matt Nafa for his coverage of Grand Prix Albuquerque, and hope to follow with more floor reports in the future.
Hey guys! Floor reports have become increasingly popular and I noticed not as many #MTGFinance peeps went to Grand Prix Albuquerque as usually go to GPs so I took it upon myself to write this!
GP Albuquerque was a great event to go to if you were looking to play some Limited Magic with Shadows over Innistrad. The same may not be said for the weekend of trading. Since I wasn’t trading, I had a lot of time left to myself to walk around. I gathered a ton of information. The vendors were out in force and looking to buy, with great buy prices on a lot of modern cards and standard alike. Nine vendors at the event meant a lot to see and a lot of research to be done. Let’s jump into it!
MTG Deals
The first table you saw walking into the room, accosted by their bright yellow table cloths and just past the score keeper stage. MTG Deals may have not always been a big name in GP vending, but they have decided to make a change to that and a change they have. Appearing at quite a few events these days they usually run a pretty tight ship and have very competitive prices, and this weekend was no different.
They had the highest buy price on Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy at $68, and among other notables they were also buying Voice of Resurgence at $27, Linvala, Keeper of Silence at $30, and Noble Hierarch at $30 as well, buy prices either the highest or tied for highest in the room.
They left the played case at home this time in favor of bringing staples from Legacy to Standard, both foil and non-foil, and they had quite the foil case! They had some crazy low prices, almost everything in their case was priced to sell and the crowd in front of them surely showed it. Between rounds and on Friday there were at least five people browsing the case at a time, many stopping to hand an employee money for around TCG Low on most cards.
I was on the hunt to grab some playmats as a collector and for some friends back home, and when I asked about it I was given the personal number of an employee and told to text them periodically to see if they had bought some mats for me to purchase. This was also the booth that multiple different vendors stopped by to check buylists, and change prices accordingly (Tales of Adventure sent over people multiple times).
I was able to buy a set of World Magic Cup Qualifier Thalia, Guardian of Thraben at $35 and walk over to another vendor to sell them at $40. Who doesn’t love some good ol’ arbitrage?
As good as MTGDeals was, one of my biggest problems of the GP came from them.
I was waiting behind a store owner who was selling the bulk of his magic supply. I’m talking four full binders, five small 2×2 binders and a box of high end cards. Because of the swarm of people MTG Deals had only one buyer and it was the owner himself sitting down to buy cards, I waited in a growing line for two hours. And then I noticed another person waiting to sell had been seated at another table attached to the adjacent Dex Protection space and an employee from MTG Deals was buying from him. I waved down another employee to let him know that I had been waiting and was not with the man currently selling and I should be next in line. I then watched as another two people were seated to sell cards while I still waited.
It took over two hours for me to finally sit down and sell cards. Thankfully I will say that the owner was very apologetic and extremely nice about the whole ordeal. He didn’t mind chatting with me while he pulled cards out and bought everything I expected him to without a hassle, and though it was worth the wait I did feel a bit slighted watching multiple people essentially cut ahead of me.
Overall I would say I had a great experience with MTG Deals minus the little hiccup.
Brainstorm Games
Being from Texas and having only attended GPs within that general area before this, I had never had a run-in before with Brainstorm Games. They had a lot of smiling faces and were very approachable. Despite the smaller booth they definitely had a lot to offer, showing off many foreign foils, and foreign cards in general. They did not have the best prices but were able to be talked down to some degree on most things. This is where I ended up buying the bulk of a legacy Death and Taxes list after haggling with the owner on many prices. Overall things went smoothly purchasing cards from them and I was able to leave happy.
I did not sell anything to them though as their buy list prices weren’t close enough to my asking range. They also had a few foreign Mirrodin Besieged-era boxes that were quick to sell.
Amazing Discoveries
I have seen these guys at a few events, but they never seem to have the highest buy prices on cards I am looking to sell. Nor do they have great sell prices on random cards.
Rather than having a row of cases they show up with a shelf of 5k’s. There is something to be said about them having just about any card if you are willing to pay their asking price [Editor’s note: can confirm this was great]. A lot of their prices are firm on many things, however they do have a played or signed case that they usually show up with and a hefty supply of recent foreign product and more accessories than you could imagine. Their buyers were always busy however with someone in front of them. I imagine it was due to their Standard buy prices on Friday being so high, but those quickly came down by Saturday afternoon. They were paying the highest on playmats however, at $10 and selling them at $20.
MetaGaming NW
I had never seen these guys before, like I said. They had a moderately sized table at the back of the room right underneath a Jace banner from the venue. Their own personal banner was larger though. Their prices on some things were quite odd, however they had quite the collection of older cards and had them very accurately priced. No one batted an eye when I very thoroughly inspected some dual lands before purchasing them. Additionally, their playmat game was on point, with very competitively priced popular playmats such as Delver of Secrets from GP Tacoma and a Christopher Rush playmat with some hand drawn Lotus art added to it. They also had some adorable hand-drawn tokens up for sale, as well as a free lifepad with any purchase.
That being said, their lack of any sort of written buylist and strange pricing did drive me away from buying anything else.
Channel Fireball
I feel there might be some stigma against the big dog in the room, assuming that their buy prices are going to be lower than anyone else’s — and sometimes that is true, though not always and not in this case.
They had one of the largest tables at the back left of the room. With my research done ahead of time and reinforced by their paper buylist at the venue, I was ready to sit down in front of my favorite buyer at the venue and catch up since we had last seen each other at GP Houston. I made sure to start with telling him there is still a standing invite to meat on swords (Brazilian Steakhouse), what has now become a GP tradition. He went through the usual of pulling cards out of my binder and I won’t bore you with the yes-no details. He was always very upfront on why they were buying at what price and what they sold them at and my numbers worked out. I sold off over $500 worth of items to Channel Fireball and sat in the chair for around an hour making small talk. I left a happy customer confident in the decisions I had just made.
On their retail side, things were a bit odd but expected. All Standard cards were still at presale prices and they were shying away from paying too high on buylist for most things in Standard.
The prices on Legacy staples were priced to sell however, with duals at close to prespike prices: Tundras were $180 when they were $230 at Houston, the same spread for the rest of the duals and it was a bit off-putting. I didn’t spend much money here except for taking home two boxes of CFB Ultra Pro sleeves. For some reason they are a hit amongst my playgroup and I got a good enough deal on them from the manager of the booth.
Tales of Adventure
With a table that could rival CFB but slightly less organized, Tales of Adventure showed up at yet another GP. You seem to see these guys everywhere “Buying Pokemon to Power” as they like to say.
This time they were buying a humble amount of cards at very reasonable prices, but also had a paper buylist ready to go Friday morning. I sat down to sell a few cards I had replaced with foils and had a pleasant experience. I was helped right away, as it looked as if they had been very light on people selling to them — their prices may not have been competitive enough for the room they were in.
They did, however, have a lot of great foils, and good enough pricing on many staples. They also brought along a huge selection of playmats, which didn’t surprise me (they are usually my main competitor with playmat sales on eBay), as well as the usual happy-to-help smiling faces you come to expect from someone who has been at this as long as they have.
Q&A Magic
They didn’t get up a buylist until late Friday and by that point everyone had made their way to other vendors to sell. However these guys did have a nicely sized table with lots of pretty cards in their cases. They laid out a not-so-humble foil selection and quite a few legacy and vintage cards. Their prices weren’t the most competitive but they were one of the few vendors in the room with the kind of card selection they were offering.
I did not spend any money here as I was not in the market for power and would have liked to get things a bit cheaper to help along my margins. I would like to hear how their weekend went as most of the time it looked as though it was employees sorting cards, and waiting to help someone.
CoolStuffInc
This is another big store that had higher-than-necessary prices on most cards. They did not need to be as competitive with others due to taking the SCG approach. That’s not to say the employees weren’t friendly or that they didn’t have an amazing selection of cards. But they are definitely an online giant and act like it. They did not deviate from their printed and online buylist all weekend nor did they change many prices in their case.
That being said, they were friendly and quick to help you purchase any cards you were looking to buy. They also had their new playmats with them as well as some other popular playmats up for sale that seemed to be selling quite well. They did have a damaged and foreign binder but it was absent of any “coolstuff.”
Hi De Ho Comics
Not a stranger to GP’s but definitely an odd one to see. The booth was run most days by a one-man team but I believe there was another employee hiding behind their wide sign. These guys had a prime space at the front of the hall on the far end. And they looked to be quite busy. This was the only seller in the room with WMCQ Thalias at $60. They also didn’t have the greatest buylist on many cards so the only thing I sold to them were Thalia’s. They did have some attractive cards in their case and some good pricing but I didn’t spend any money here.
Cascade Games as TO
I feel like something needs to be said about Cascade Games as the tournament organizer for this event.
And it is that they did a fantastic job.
They started off Friday morning with an entirely free Mini-Master, anyone was allowed to play in it as a thank you to maxed-out attendance. They ran multiple Friday morning events. I played in one, other friends played in several. I traveled up to New Mexico with a group of judges and heard a lot about behind the scenes with Cascade. From what I heard and what I saw they handled the event phenomenally. When the main event sold out they made accommodations including hiring more judges last minute, adding a Saturday morning event that was as much value as the main event at half the price.
The only catch was you weren’t playing for anything more than prize tix, but to the people I saw in that room playing that was all that mattered to them. They paid $40 for a playmat, a promo, and six packs and to a lot of them that was more than enough; the prize tickets to them were just an extra bonus.
They also opened two more ballrooms for the venue to put On Demands and the Saturday Morning Special in as the main event hall was full to capacity. Cascade handled any issues that arose very professionally. Their prize wall was stacked with great prizes from UltraPRO to Dex Protection. The only complaint I can imagine is that the chairs in the venue weren’t the best, and side events were cash only. There were a few scheduling errors but they were handled as best as they could be. I would love to return to a Cascade Games event and hope that they continue to run GPs close enough for me to attend.
Thanks for reading, these are my opinions on the event. I would love some feedback and to hear your experiences if you went to GP Albuquerque. Leave it in the comments below or you can reach me on twitter @MattNafarious
Sometimes I tend to just ignore the recent MTG “drama” because, frankly, a lot of the time it’s just made-up concerns that the Internet wants to rage about because that’s what it does. So I brush it off and move on.
This is not one of those cases, and I can’t do that.
The (since retracted) cut to Platinum pros may not seem like something that affects most of us — and for the most part it’s not — but the community has stood together on this and come out with a very strong reaction. All of us at one point or another have dreamed of playing on the Pro Tour and (gasp) make a living playing Magic. That was something very few players in the world got to claim, but it was something that was possible thanks to the prizes Wizards gave those players.
This hurts all of us. Even if you don’t care about the financial plight or the death of the Pro dream, chances are you do care about content. Kenji (Numot the Nummy) stopped streaming for a week in solidarity. The Vintage Super League was delayed due to players pulling out. Content will likely be affected, and there’s the realest possibility I’ve ever seen of a Pro Tour being boycotted.
Since then, Wizards has walked back this change. Players are getting their benefits for the next year and the World Championship will keep the increased prize pool, while future changes may be made.
This is a good decision by WotC and I’m glad they recognized the need to make a change. They should be applauded for their decision to right the wrong and move forward. That said, we must also question why this decision was ever made in the first place, what led to this decision and what that might mean for the future.
I hate that a very good Pro Tour and the awesome success of Steve Rubin has been overshadowed by this decision. I can understand some of the reasons this change may have been made, but the fact that there are some valid reasons doesn’t change the reality that the narrative has become that Wizards “tried to kill the highest level of the game,” regardless of how accurate that statement is.
I’m glad that they took the minimum step of extending the benefits through next season so those players who have been pushing so hard to reach that level this year don’t have that bombshell dropped on them three-quarters of the way through the season.
So while I wanted to spend today writing about the Pro Tour results and the effects it would have our seemingly wide-open Standard metagame, instead I’m going to talk about how important the pro system is to Magic, the danger in losing it, and where we might go from here.
Everyone likes a Big Check
I’m not talking about the appearance fees here — I’m speaking about those big Happy Gilmore sized checks. Checks like this.
Notice something about all those checks? They all come from big sporting tournaments, both of the eSports variety and the Happy v. Shooter kind. They’re big, in both value and size. They are heralded by fanfare. They’re exciting. They generate interest, headlines and, most importantly, revenue for the company.
All it takes is a quick Google search of “DotA championship” and you’re blasted with images of stadiums sold out and players sporting those big checks. Every year there is a new round of articles talking about just how big the prize pool is for this year’s International, the equivalent of the World Magic Championship.
We don’t know the full reasons behind the cut to the Platinum appearance fees. There’s been no shortage of theories, from basic cost-cutting to legal reasons to a desire to see new faces at the top. Every few hours over the past few days there’s been a new conspiracy, all of which seems aimed at the belief that Wizards “wants to kill the Pro scene to save a little money.”
I don’t believe this is true. In fact, I know it isn’t. They want a vibrant pro scene, and they want those big checks for themselves. That’s the reason why most of this “lost money” was funneled into the World Championship, which is meant to be Magic’s marquee event on the calendar.
This in itself isn’t a bad thing. Magic benefits from a robust World Championship prize pool, and especially given the fact they’ve placed it at PAX means that there are going to be news stories written about it, headlines seen and coverage given from outside news outlets. They don’t want less money for pros, they want more — they just don’t want it to come from within.
Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Those big checks given out at the International? That’s what those DotA players made — they didn’t receive an appearance fee for being there. With a few exceptions — basically just the LCS in League of Legends where Riot provides a minimum salary for players that is supplemented by their teams — players in other eSports aren’t paid by their parent companies, they’re paid in sponsorships for their teams or have outside means of income of their own.
There is some of this in Magic. Article writing, for instance, is in many ways a sponsorship — the prestige of having a writer like Sam Black or Owen Turtenwald on your site is worth more than the actual income generated per clicks. While this is somewhat unique to Magic thanks to the secondary market — a positive side effect of that thing players like to blame for all of the game’s evils, by the way — it in many ways mirrors the sponsorships other eSports players receive in their games.
The difference is entirely in scale — Star City and Channel Fireball aren’t paying what Red Bull or AlienWare are. Per-article payments from Magic sites aren’t alone enough to live the modest life of a Magic pro — that’s where WotC’s appearance fees came in, and why pulling it from Platinum Pros was so devastating to those relying on it. It’s possible that Wizards thinks that by funneling that money into the World Championship instead for that all-important big check picture, it will help grow Magic’s image as an eSport enough to attract those “real” sponsors and make up that gap in pro’s lives.
Of course there are plenty of problems with this line of thinking — which we’ll get to shortly. But it’s likely that this was the intent behind the changes: make players less reliant on Wizards, put the onus on sponsors, and increase the prize pool and visibility of the World Championship to help speed up that second point.
I have no idea if this was the reasoning or not. For all I know it was a simple matter of just cutting costs. I’m just trying to envision ways in which there was an intent other than “cause the faces of our game to revolt.”
Regardless of that intent, the rollout itself illuminates some problems with the current system.
The Problems
Let’s start with the obvious: you can’t pull benefits from players without any advance warning. That was obviously the biggest problem with the rollout, and the one that has since been addressed by keeping these benefits in place through the end of next season.
We can all agree that reinstating that subsidy for those promised it is a good thing. But the fact that such a subsidy was necessary in the first place is a problem. Twitch streams aren’t supporting Magic pros. Articles go a long way, but aren’t in themselves supporting Magic pros. Appearance fees alone aren’t enough to support Magic pros. Tournament winnings are not large or consistent enough to support Magic pros.
All of these things together combine to give these players an income they can live on, but let’s not pretend they’re living well. Taxes are difficult to plan for. Basic bills like rent must be planned for months in advance due to uneven income. Forget about putting much of anything back into a 401k.
Things can be summed up simply: being a professional Magic player is a good job, but it isn’t a career. Compare this to professionals in other eSports, where they may not enjoy a career as long as the average Magic pro but they make orders of magnitudes more, meaning that there is plenty left over after the peak of their career to be invested or saved or see them through college.
None of this is necessarily Wizards’ fault. They have a tall order in front of them: sell the dream of making a living “as a pro” without having anywhere near the money of other eSports titles. The dream of being a Platinum Pro is incredibly important to keeping Organized Play going at the lower levels — as I said, we’ve all dreamed of winning the Pro Tour — but reconciling that with a game that simply doesn’t have the reach that other titles do is a difficult task.
Add to that the fact that Magic has more inherent variance, that an 0-3 start in a Pro Tour doesn’t mean a player isn’t still one of the best in the world, while an 0-3 start at Worlds for a League of Legends team means they have no ability to compete at the top. Appearance fees were actually a great way for Wizards to try and offset this problem of variance, but the problem is that money by necessity pulls away from the top of the prize pool, which we’ve established is an important tool for outside attention. No one cares that the 185th-place finisher received $3,000 for being there — they care what the number of that big check is. While I was watching Enter the Battlefield on Twitch, there were plenty of people in Twitch chat unfamiliar with Magic watching the documentary. The most common question wasn’t “how sustainable is the life of a Magic pro?” It was “How much does the winner get?”
Consider all of this and you can see why it’s not as simple as “pay the pros” or “give us more prize support.” Yes, Wizards of the Coast can increase the prize support (and they should), but that only addresses part of the problem. Prize pools alone don’t make for a healthy and growing eSport game — look at Versus from the late ‘90s in which big payouts were given but the game died anyway — and in 2016 player income provided primarily by the game’s parent company is an outdated model.
There is no easy solution to this, and there is no one answer to fix the problem. But here are a few steps that I believe will come about over the next few years to help push Magic into the future.
Teams
Let’s talk League of Legends. I’ve followed it very closely over the past three or four years, though I admit I fell off a bit this split. That said, when the playoffs began I was ready to watch with a vested interest: I wanted TSM to win.
Why? I know Bjergsen and Doublelift (who I’m not even a huge fan of) but after they revamped the lineup this year I don’t have any particular pull to any of their players. But when they opened the first round you can bet I cared about their prospects regardless of roster because I enjoyed following them in the past.
That’s brand loyalty to a team that doesn’t exist in Magic. And it’s not Wizards that’s to blame here. Just like I’m a TSM fan or you’re a Cubs or Packers or Duke fan, the names on the back of the jersey matter less than the names on the front.
We don’t have that yet in Magic. ChannelFireball has come the closest of any pro “team” to achieving this goal, and I think that Team EUreka and Team Ultra Pro have been doing a good job recently. But even as someone who follows the ins and outs of Magic teams closely, it can be hard to keep track of rosters. Further confusing the issue is that different members of the same team actually have different “sponsors” when it comes to the shirt they want to wear in front of the camera. Players write for one website, play on the team of another and are sponsored by a third. It’s insanity on the part of sponsors and impossible to keep up with.
This is all a problem. If Magic’s own companies don’t want to invest in teams, how can we possibly expect Red Bull or Monster to do the same? Until we see more “internal” investment in teams and branding to the point that fans want to buy jerseys (or polos or what have you) like they do for Cloud 9, it’s going to be hard to expect much more than we have now.
Another benefit of effectively branding teams is that when Casual Joe from your FNM does happen to find the Pro Tour on Twitch, they’ll be going into it with a team in mind and some faces to root for whether they’ve ever seen them in the past or not.
Teams are a wonderful thing, and the concept has not been pushed nearly enough in Magic. I hope to see that change in the years to come.
Outside Sponsorships
I know I’ve talked about how Magic doesn’t draw the eyeballs that it needs to lure in big sponsors, but let’s not pretend that Wizards — a subsidiary of Hasbro, as we’ve been reminded — is a little upstart company with no strings to pull. Sure, maybe Coke or RedBull isn’t interested in sponsoring just the Pro Tour — but I bet they’d be willing to listen to an agreement that includes integration with other Hasbro products. When we see Optimus Prime plastered all over 12-packs of soda, why isn’t Hasbro including another of their “core brands” in Magic as part of those negotiations?
Sure, it may not be super desirable for Mountain Dew to put Jace on its packages, but they’re also unlikely to make it a huge sticking point when it comes stapled to other Hasbro properties. Hasbro has an opportunity to use its existing brands to increase exposure to another in Magic, and to date we’ve never seen much of an indication of that.
I’m aware this is a mammoth goal, but there’s no reason it can’t start on a much lower scale. Magic doesn’t have the raw numbers to pull in the sponsors it would like — but in this case being owned by an industry giant like Hasbro should be a positive. After all, Heroes of the Storm isn’t so popular as to be on ESPN over something like DotA or League of Legends, but the fact Blizzard merged with Activision years back means they have the power to make deals like that happen. I’d like to see Hasbro step up in a similar, if smaller, manner.
Magic Online
Obviously this is a touchy topic, and one I don’t to spend forever on. I’m of the opinion that Magic Online is much better than it’s generally given credit for — I very rarely encounter bugs — but the fact that it both is difficult to learn, use and watch is a big problem for interest in Magic as an eSport. Magic is a much more complex game than Hearthstone — that’s why it’s better and always will be — but due to the cost and ease of viewing online it holds a huge advantage in the Twitch realm.
I’m not going to claim to have the solutions to this, but I’m cautiously optimistic about the rumored “Magic Next” platform we’ve seen mentioned in company filings. Provide a product that better sells to the masses in both accessibility and viewability, and you open up a huge realm of income for the game’s top players and most entertaining personalities.
Integrate with the culture
On this note, I have to give Wizards credit for doing a lot of good things in this area. Tying Worlds to PAX is a genius move that elevates the event and its status in the world of eSports. The Spellslingers series is great. LoadingReadyRun is awesome. As much some people may not like it, having Wil Wheaton narrate Enter the Battlefield is great.
For all the flak that Wizards receives, the marketing team actually has been doing a great job in the past few years, and the Escape Rooms for Shadows Over Innistrad are just the latest step in this.
The problem is that these things are overshadowed by the blunders made in other parts of the company. Too many times it feels like the PR department either doesn’t exist or isn’t consulted, and these missteps overshadow good work done by the company and just serve to give the Internet something to rail against the game’s parent company, which happens to be a favorite pastime of the Internet.
Conclusion
Pro Magic is not dead. Wizards didn’t do this to kill professional Magic, and they didn’t do it because they don’t care about their players. They made this reallocation of funds in an attempt to grow the game in the big picture, but as is too often the case with Wizards they gave the impression they forgot those standing in that picture.
The pros got paid, and I’m glad they did. But this is not when we sit back in chairs and chant “we did it, Reddit.” There are still very real problems with Magic as an eSport to solve, and that’s a conversation we need to have.
