Pattern Recognition #60 - Masters

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

15 March 2018

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Hello everyone! My name is berryjon, and I am TappedOut.net's resident Old Fogey and part time Smart Ass. I write this series, Pattern Recognition, as a means to entertain, educate and something else that starts with an E. Apparently, that's supposed to be ... checks dictionary ... examine. Huh, I can roll with that.

Today, I'm going to talk about one of the more ... well, let's be polite and call it 'divisive' sets in recent Magic history.

Now, please be aware that I am going to be leaning very heavy on the Opinion tag for this particular edition of Pattern Recognition. So don't take my words for gospel truth, and don't feel afraid to voice your own opinion in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

So, let's talk about the Masters Sets. Modern. Eternal. Iconic. 25.

Oh Urza, where to begin? Well, I can tell you that I'm not going to talk about the online only releases. Just the actual physical paper printings.

Modern Masters was released in 2013 as a something of an experiment by Wizards. You see, they noticed that the Modern Format was not only stable but growing in popularity with their player base. But, they also noticed another problem. One of accessibility. To put it simply, a great many cards that players wanted in their decks to make them fun and competitive were out of print. Often by many years as the format starts with Mirroden, published in 2003.

So Wizards decided to take a chance, and perform a very limited experiment. They collected information about the majority of Modern style decks, and determined that there was a card availability gap stretching from 8th Edition from 2003 to Alara Reborn in 2009 and beyond. But for the most part, it was this six year stretch that was addressed.

After some deliberation, it turned out that there weren't really enough cards to justify a full set, especially with an untested and unproven product. That meant that Wizards put into the set more cards that were more for the flavour and the 'awe' factor than for anything else.

With all that out of the way, there was one last thing to decide. How many cards to print? And Wizards, being a business that has to keep an eye on the bottom line, went with a small print run. They didn't know how well these cards would sell as packs, so they made the quite reasonable decision to not try to flood the market with these cards. After all, if it doesn't sell, they don't loose much and the cards won't be floating around stores for months and years on end, like I've seen when working at my FLGS. And if the demand is high enough, well, they can just print more, right?

Well, Modern Masters was a success that exceeded all expectations. The fears that a set composed entirely of reprints wouldn't sell was ill founded, and it effectively sold out.

Now, there's something I need to point out here. I was working at my FLGS at the time, so I got to see this first hand. The MSRP - Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price - for a pack of Modern Masters was $6.99 US. Up here in Canada, that got converted to $8.99. We were selling them for $14.99 and up, and people were still buying them.

This isn't just a success, this is the Natural 20 Critical success for a product. Sure, limited supply would affect the price, it's only a natural product of supply and demand economics. But there was an honest drive in the player base to get these cards. If only for many of those self-same players, this was the only reasonable chance they would get to have these cards.

But soon enough, the cards ran out. And the player base wanted more! So Wizards said, effectively, "We hear you! But please give us some time to put together a proper release with more cards and everything. Come back in 2015." And the players agreed. This was reasonable, as sets needed time to be developed, art to be commissioned, and marketing to do their thing building hype.

And so 2015 rolled around, and Modern Masters 2 came out. Or rather, MM2015. I still call it Modern Masters 2, so what? Anyway, Wizards decided to mix things up a bit. First, they increased the price of each pack of cards to $9.99 US, or $12.99 CDN. Secondly, they reduced the number of packs in a box from 36 to 24.

This, I think, is where things started to go wrong for Wizards' ideas about the Masters sets. You see, by doing this, Wizards went all in on the Draft format. 3 packs per player, 8 players in a pool meant 24 packs in a box. And while this was a sound decision from the part of the designers, as a guy who ran Drafts and Sealed every Friday, this wasn't always a good thing as I would often have more than 8 players at a time.

And they didn't want to fork over the money required for an MM2 draft. Because packs like that were expensive! Enough so that I would, as part of the store's prizing, trade three normal booster packs for a single MM2 booster.

Another issue was the near schizophrenia regarding what it means to Draft. MM2 was, as I like to put it, top heavy. That is, a lot of the focus in the set was on the Mythics and the Rares. And in a draft, you're only going to get three of them, unless the person behind you is doing something very specific. And you can't really build a Limited deck around three of those cards. Draft decks are built at the common and uncommon level, which is a reason why Cube exists, I think.

But the real big example of this set trying to be too many things at once came with the Auras. In this set, Daybreak Coronet saw the first light of day since Future Sight. Now, this by itself doesn't seem like a bad choice. However I want all of you to look at this list of all Auras in Modern Masters 2. There are six in total. Of these, we have Daybreak Coronet itself. Then we have three Pacifism effects in Arrest, Narcolepsy and Pillory of the Sleepless. Nothing against the Pillory, I got quite some use of it back in Ravnica. Goblin War Paint and Splinter Twin.

Of these two, only Goblin War Paint has any sort of synergy with Daybreak Coronet.

You read that right. Wizards put a card into a set they advertised as a draft set that could only work with a single other card in the set! That it cost about $40 US before its reprinting had nothing to do with that, I'm sure.

Yeah, I'm being sarcastic here.

One of the themes that seems to have developed over the course of the Modern Masters sets, one that I happen to agree with many detractors on, is that Wizards will occasionally print cards that are there for the purpose of being a financial draw card - a lottery if you will - rather than because it's a good card for the advertised purpose of drafting or just a powerful or useful card in Modern. And Daybreak Coronet was simply the one that tipped me over that edge due to my appreciation for all things Time Spiral.

Eternal Masters, the next set, was designed to promote Legacy and Vintage as a format much as Modern Masters did with Modern. Well, I didn't do much with these cards, save that Wizards repeated the same notion that they did with MM2. 24 packs in a box, $9.99 per pack, and a "focus" on Drafting.

Look, if you're talking about Vintage and Legacy, you are going to run afoul of The Reserved List. These cards, especially, say, the first Dual Lands, form a large part of how these formats work. And they can't be reprinted at all! So you have a set that is trying to do something good for a format, but is hamstrung by a promise that Wizards intends to keep.

Modern Masters 3/2017 came out, and it was more of the same. By now, Wizards was on a roll. They liked the Masters sets. Their players liked them. What wasn't to like?

Well, they flooded the market.

When MM2 was released, the owner of my FLGS decided that because MM1 was high-priced and sold out, that they would order more boxes and dribble out their sales for quite some time.

When I left, the store was still sitting on over 24 boxes of MM2 with MM3 on the horizon. There were too many cards out there that went unsold because stores fell for the same hype that Wizards was putting out and falling for themselves. They thought that people would buy at the same rate as MM1, and suffered for it.

Oh! And then, just to cap it all off, over the course of 12 months, Wizards released Modern Masters 2017 (March 17, 2017), Iconic Masters (November 17, 2017) and then Masters 25 (March 16, 2018). Which should be ... checks watch ... TOMORROW!

I'm going to skip over Iconic Masters. It was just a mis-named set from the get-go, and the theme of the set - that of famous tribes - didn't really work when it turned out to be another drafting set where you were presented with Tribes. I mean, Lorwyn and Shadowmoor were both amazing Tribal sets that you could draft, but that was because the decks could work without being narrowly defined by Angels, Sphinxes, Demons, Dragons or Hydras. None of which have received proper tribal support in the past.

So not only were they flooding the market with the quantity of packs in a set, they were also flooding the market with sets themselves, all of which cause the players to get burnt out on the idea. MM1 worked so well because it was new and fresh, yet the constant shoving of more and more Masters sets at the player base has soured them on the whole idea.

Which leads us to the latest straw for the haters.

And let me remind you first, that cards go to the printers months in advance of the actual release date.

Masters 25, and the unbanning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

Now, the idea of celebrating 25 years of Magic with a "Greatest Hits" set is actually pretty appealing. But once again, Wizards became their own worst enemy. This was another set where "DRAFT ME!" is heavily advertised, in a set where it's all about the famous combos and power cards of ages past. Like Flash and Protean Hulk. And again, this set is top heavy. I mean, seriously!

Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Wizards knew they were unbanning this card months in advance so they can put it on the print sheet, and only gave a hint to this when he got unbanned a month ago.

This was, in retrospect, pretty damned blatant. I mean, sure, people were more impressed with Bloodbraid Elf more, but still, it's the sheer gall of it that caused, from what I am hearing, many people to become soured on the whole notion of the Masters sets.

So, what is to be done? What would I do?

Well, for started, stop trying to do a dozen things at once! Are Masters a reprint set aimed to make accessing a format easier? Are they dedicated Draft sets that are simpler than Conspiracy? Are these 'Best Hits!' reprints? Pick something, and stick with it. Also, stop putting out so many so fast! Yes, I know that reprint sets are easier to design, but that's not a reason to just half ass it!

Second, don't worry about the pricing. Yes, their will be people who will bitch and moan that their card will devalue in price because there is another printing of them. Well, guess what? The Reserve List is complete and Wizards won't make that mistake again! More people getting into the game is better for the game and Wizards. And if the price of long term stability is the tears of people who want their Fetch Lands to be special and out of the hands of new players? Then that is a price I will cheerfully pay.

Third .... Actually no. Number three is something I want to address against Draft sets, so I can leave that one alone.

Fourth! 36 packs in a box. Not 24. 36. Lower the price even a dollar. These are supposed to be enablers, not for Glory Seekers and those who want more of what they have. These are supposed to be packs for players to begin and fill out their collections!

And that's it. I'm out of energy. Join me next week when I talk about something a bit more uplifting. If you have a suggestion, let me know!

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream, and you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!