Metamorphosis
Spoilers, Rumors, and Speculation forum
Posted on Aug. 25, 2014, 11:14 a.m. by spyroswiz
According to today's article in Daily MTG, Mark Posewater announced the new structure of blocks. We are going to have 2 rotations each year( one in fall and one in spring). Also, in summer 2015 its going to be the last core set. From then we are going to have 2 blocks each year. Whats your thoughts about the new model? For more informations: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mm/metamorphosis
JonathanSamurai says... #3
I think it's a double-edged sword. More potentially viable decks and hopefully less net-decking would be nice, 18 month rotation could help with that. I think prices will go up for certain cards and drop for others, so it may balance out, but it could increase your deck price if you like to use a lot of rares and mythics, because people will want to invest in them sooner. Rotating cards will become cheaper faster but newly released cards could very well increase. Standard players wanting to play the Khans block are already bracing for spending more money than on previous sets because it's a wedge block and you will need fetches and duals. How this effects that, I'm not sure. The down side is we could see more reprints or functional reprints as fillers instead of truly new cards. We could also see a few returns to previous blocks because of this. I play on a tight budget, most of decks are relatively cheap in comparison to the meta, but usually are also less competitive as well. It's honestly too early to say anything will be concrete though until the system actually rotates a couple years.
September 1, 2014 11:08 p.m.
Yeah. For those of you who like Standard (and I understand that is a large chunk of MtG players), this sounds like it should be good. For a casual/EDH player like myself, the quicker rotation is the last straw for me ever getting into Standard in the first place. It was already a money and time sink that didn't have a great payoff in my opinion, and now it's going to be even faster? No thanks.
I do like that we'll get to more planes faster, more opportunities for stories and new cards :D
September 3, 2014 3:09 p.m.
canterlotguardian says... #7
Gruss029 I loved Standard as a format; that's what got me back into Magic. however, the cost barrier was a huge turn off for me. granted, my budget Boros aggro deck (which I still run in a different variant to this day, mind you) has won more games than it's lost, but I hated the prospect of dropping 200 or so dollars on a deck just to stay "competitive". and now we're gonna have to do that even more often? yeah screw that. I'll stick with EDH.
September 3, 2014 3:13 p.m.
jlwalker20 says... #8
Gruss029 canterlotguardian You're both viewing this from a VERY shallow standpoint. You have to consider what DESIGN changes will occur in conjunction with this to make it a viable business model for Wizards. To elaborate:
Identify the profit center. Consider that WotC makes money on sealed product, not on singles sales. Having four cards to a set that are actually worth using and the rest considered garbage by a majority of the player base is NOT a good value proposition for anyone, least of all the producer of the sealed product. Fewer sets to a block means each set is packed with more powerful cards and archetype parity will be built into each block. Which leads to...
Card Parity. They've already said that the goal is to create an environment and meta that is harder to "solve." That means more variety and power across archetypes, and likely even multiple powerful archetypes per color. Going from ~4 viable Standard archetypes to something like ~10+ will do wonders for card values. The barrier to entry must be lower and competition parity must happen on a sliding scale from FNM up through Top 8s at major tournaments. This doesn't mean printing more of each of the popular cards, but rather designing more popular cards. Or...
Reprints. Without a core set, reprints will occur in flavor sets and will become more powerful (already seeing this with Fetch Lands and the strategy was confirmed by MaRo on Tumblr if I recall correctly). This lowers barrier to entry for Standard, Modern, Legacy and even EDH. All of this adds up to...
Incentive to open sealed product. Whether it's drafting or buying boxes, if you pack a set with more powerful cards, people will open more sealed product and each card's demand goes down and the single prices are manageable.
It's all cyclical. TL;DR:
Designing a set with more gooder cards...
A. Adds variety to the meta, cutting down on "money cards"
B. Incentivizes opening sealed product/drafting (increasing supply), further lowering singles prices
Additionally, basic economic principles tell us that a lower shelf life will result in a lower market price, but that's up to the Magic players. Either way, it looks like WotC is doing their damnedest to pull money out of the coffers of resellers and it should benefit most players.
September 3, 2014 4:33 p.m.
jlwalker20 I agree with potential Wizards' motivations to protect their revenue stream (we all know ad nauseam how retailers hate the secondary atomized and globalized market and we all know also that quite a bunch of players spend much more money on single cards than on sealed material), however, I am not sure a lower shelf life will result in lower prices: OTOH, sadly, economics only forecast trends, and, although I agree cards could rise not so much due to the shorter life span, they might reach spikes at least as big as currently, and, OTOH, there's also the interaction with formats... a Standard-deprecated power card could be bonkers in an old Modern or Legacy archetype and become very sought after, and despite more boosters opened, it would have also been printed for less time... All I'm saying is I wish you are right and your valid points will be verified, but I think it is very difficult to assess prices not going up so much as before the metamorphosis in short time periods (let's say a block), while I agree Wizards' benefit is surely guaranteed to be higher...
September 3, 2014 4:52 p.m.
Jwalker20, I don't doubt that the removal of the core sets and the faster meta of standard is a good thing for overall card quality and deck variety, both in Standard and other formats. I'm excited as a general player for more story, more cards, etc.
I just have had little interest in playing standard as is with the rotations, and they are speeding that process up which makes me want to invest in Standard even less. Even if the investment in buying a Standard deck is less post-metamorphosis than is was previously, I doubt it will bring competitive standard decks significantly down in price to the point where it balances the faster rotation of that deck to make it worth it. I only bring it up because Wizards focuses so much on Standard and bringing in new players to it. Anything that is off-putting about their flagship format is worth mentioning. If you liked Standard before, you should like it more now as the meta won't be stagnant (theoretically). If you didn't like it before, you have less reason too now.
Again, I'm speaking only as someone who already dislikes the artificial limitation of limited/standard and plays EDH/Modern because of the giant card pool and lack of rotation.
September 3, 2014 5:08 p.m.
jlwalker20 says... #11
Abubroki I have faith that WotC will devise cards with Standard and the various eternal formats in mind. That said... I think the lower shelf life will have an impact on the amount people are willing to pay for a card for Standard use. All bets are off on eternal cards, but that was the case prior to the change, anyways. To piggy-back...
Gruss029 The design ideology and card quality is not happening because of the change in set formats - it's what's CAUSING the change. This is what most people are missing. They are not printing cards for longer periods or shorter periods - the literal timeframe remains the same.
Truthfully, the "shorter" timeframe that a card is Standard legal is more a regulation than anything - I referenced this in an earlier post. Standard is no longer taking a huge dump and nuking a full four sets anymore, but rather more regularly doing away with two sets at a time. The design ideology change combined with this schedule change means that there is a likelihood that your deck will actually be an evolving list that changes incrementally from rotation to rotation rather than a finished product that has to be reconstructed each time September rolls around. THAT'S where you'll save your money.
I didn't like Standard before because of the financial investment. I love it, now.
September 3, 2014 6:06 p.m.
At0micpickle says... #12
I hate this change beyond belief. i always see core sets as a nice break between blocks, and i love seeing PWs and unique new cards pop up. sure they may be catered towards beginner, but seriously, how many of you learned how to play WITHOUT core set cards? they also teach players why some cards are good, and some cards aren't. Devonin, expensive, value cards are not everything, nor are competitive formats. EDH and casual decks love many core set cards, as well as the fact that core sets tend to have quite a few Johnny cards. as for the block format? i always felt it takes 3 blocks to properly make a block. it was always beginning/middle/end, now its beginning/end which just feels awkward, and will make standard less diverse. i understand that making cards is a very complex process, but i feel like R&D is just being lazy by abandoning a third set just because recent sets have been problematic. In conclusion, i believe that this is not only removing a fundamental part of the game, but taking away from the uniqueness of each block.
September 3, 2014 8:57 p.m.
@At0micpickle They announced, in that same announcement, that they were already planning new products, which aren't the Core Set, to be for new players and beginners, so "what will the beginners do?" is really a non-starter as far as objections go.
The idea that trimming a middle act of one story in place of an act of a whole other story makes it less diverse is also pretty strange to me. How is "Greece/Greece/Greece/Mongolia/Mongolia/Mongolia" MORE diverse than "Greece/Greece/Mongolia/Mongolia/Egypt/Egypt"?
By condensing each block into two sets instead of three, they don't need to hold things in reserve between the two small sets to keep both interesting. They almost always end up with one that is crappy, where if they could take all the good ideas for the two small sets and put them in one big set (which is smaller than the two smalls combined) they end up with a much higher density of interesting things.
As well, while Core Sets may have a bunch of arbitrary big johnny cards, it's pretty clear to me that the expert-level sets have lots of them too. And it's honestly not that hard for a good Creative Team to find a way to take an idea that they thought might be say...a giant wizard and re-theme it for an Egypt block as an avatar wizard or something similar. I don't think cutting the Core Set is going to impact their ability to print the cards they want to print.
I don't feel they are removing a fundamental part of -anything- and are -adding- to the uniqueness and flavour of each block and the game as a whole, because there is simply less filler in every set, meaning all the juicy flavour become concentrated.
September 3, 2014 9:28 p.m.
CanadianShinobi says... #14
@ At0micpickle I somehow doubt I'm not the only one who didn't use a core set to learn Magic. I picked it up during Gatecrash and figured it out from there. I'd be a better player if I could find a deck that doesn't bore me after a week or two :( That and Modern has finally made me sad enough in terms of budget to try EDH.
September 4, 2014 7:47 a.m.
Here's the thing, casual modern may be fun playing anything you want in a larger card pool but tournament modern requires all the expensive cards. bob, man lands, shock lands, fetch lands, Snapcaster mage, tarmagoyf, any expensive planeswalker, etc. Modern is much more expensive than standard will be. Modern decks can change as well. Maybe you want to play more than one tournament worthy deck for modern also. I love standard much more and can build a decent deck without spending money on planeswalkers or lands that cost $20 a piece and still do decent at a tournament or decent enough to have had fun. Standard is changing and I like that. We will be losing cards more often, but only a small pool of cards each time. Fine by me! I'm excited. EDH is fun for casual and I have heard of tournaments but the main constructed tournament formats are legacy, modern, and standard. I am a tournament kind of guy. I'll play fnm every week and go to a prerelease and a game day at any opportunity. I am looking to maybe go to a ptq or state match or something of the like for my first big tournament.And yes my deck will most likely not have any planeswalkers in it. (I currently only have Xenagos, The Reveler
. I'm looking forward to this. And yes, the tournament will be for standard that I attend.
September 4, 2014 8:05 a.m.
As a matter of fact, a couple decks I have posted on here I came up with because I like the cards and they are Planeswalker hate decks haha.
September 4, 2014 8:08 a.m.
NuBByThuMB says... #17
Anyone who took the time to actually read and understand the article knows the direction in which magic is headed. MaRo didn't leave much to speculation when it came to this. Even with Khans of Tarkir only seeing 18 months of Standard, I can pretty well guarantee this expansion will sell out. Past the fetches, we haven't seen much yet that we didn't anticipate when it comes to cycles and such. There's something important to be stated about how much Wizards favors it's casual (Commander) crowd, and it shines brightly in a large portion of this next set. I think Khans is the best way they could have possibly ended this tired routine of XPac/Xpac/Coreset/Xpac and I'm pretty excited to see how the rest of the set pans out. Even if that means that it's spread just a little too thin.
With the thoughts about upcoming standard in mind, we can definitely have a look at the direction the game is going and make some really informed inferences.
With the rotation changing to twice a year now, we are guaranteed to always have 5 sets in a Standard year, sometimes six. This means that the cardpool will ALWAYS be about the same size and we aren't sitting on an 8 set Standard praying for Thragtusk to rotate. What this means for Standard is simple: Spikes happen more often, and barring staples, drop more often. Yes, this means that Standard gets more "Expensive" to play should you be deciding to purchase singles. This leads to point number two.
Sealed product becomes a lot more appealing to open! I work as a Magic: the Gathering Coordiantor and retailer out of my local Bookstore, and I feel I can certainly say that with blocks becoming more compact, they are less inclined to print filler and more inclined to focus on the mechanics and flavors the sets are going for. Overall this means "better cards" from packs. This leading to point three.
With Core set being annihilated from Standard Rotation in 2015, we are no longer seeing an obligation to rare lands that may or may not make the cut in current Standard, or tired rotations and cycles as filler; ie: staffs, souls, titans, planeswalkers, etc. Instead we see that the reprints will now come in Expansions, where they will be much more flavorful and useful. This makes the idea of opening sealed product a lot more appealing as Price Spikes in the Standard market make it a little more difficult to keep up.
Keeping in mind that these sets will see the same amount of time in print runs, just less time in Standard, it could be inferred that Sealed Product will likely stay the same cost. This means that should the two set paradigm prove to be fruitful and flavorful for everyone involved, you have a much better chance of pulling something useful from Sealed Product!
Overall, I feel this is a step in a healthy direction for the game itself. Wizards doesn't care that Polluted Delta is currently pre-ordering for $30 and sold-out on SCG. They care that you're going to be buying boxes upon boxes to complete your 20 set, which at this point is not economical due to under-saturation, but may become economical in the future.
September 4, 2014 12:09 p.m.
Candyman949 says... #18
I still think they should have a set for 5-6 planeswalkers and then cards that didn't make the cut or cards that support those specific planeswalkers.
September 4, 2014 3:24 p.m.
pumpkinsword says... #20
I feel like a lot of the people here complaining didn't even read the whole article.
September 4, 2014 4:20 p.m.
Core sets as they are don't really add a lot to the game. Most people I know who play standard spend the 6+ month gap between set 3 of block 1 and set 1 of block 2 playing the same old stuff. All M15 gave us that really shook things up is a turn 2 indestructible 5/5.
September 5, 2014 10:58 a.m.
Goblin Rabblemaster , Nissa, Worldwaker , Chord of Calling , Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth , Genesis Hydra , Liliana Vess , Painlands didn't shake things up?
I don't have much love for core sets, but M15 had a pretty big impact on standard. As a set, I like it more than anything from Theros block.
September 5, 2014 11:59 a.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #24
Right, so only 11 cards versus some 100 in theros.
September 5, 2014 12:15 p.m.
Femme_Fatale says... #27
My point still stands. The amount of cards that are used in a core set versus the amount of cards used in a block set is drastic.
September 5, 2014 12:41 p.m.
JonathanSamurai says... #28
Yes it is. I'm not big on core sets myself. Cards are either really good or really crappy.
September 5, 2014 12:58 p.m.
VampireArmy says... #29
I'd like to interject that most of the "Good" stuff printed in core sets have been planeswalkers and reprints which are both done better in real sets anyways...
September 5, 2014 3:26 p.m.
yet without these core sets, it would be VERY difficult to put in Nissa, Worldwaker into any set in any plane other then zendikar, as well as cards like Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth because we aren't going back top dominiara anymore, and Chord of Calling because it was original rav and we are never coming back to rav
September 5, 2014 3:32 p.m.
VampireArmy says... #31
It DOES mean however that we will see a Return to Zendikar sooner, cards like Urborg i agree with you there. We won't be seeing much of them. Cards like cord have a generic enough name that it could be seen in other planes
September 5, 2014 3:34 p.m.
VampireArmy says... #33
What do you mean?
There will be more sets, more sets mean less time to wait for Return sets
I agreed on urborg or plane specific names.
- I thought Chord of Calling was the example? It's a card that was originally has a Ravnica keyword but as we seen in khans with delve and morph, keywords like that can move from plane to plane...
September 5, 2014 3:39 p.m.
Won't see Nissa on any plane but Zendikar? Yeah, because I know the rest of them have all stayed put too and never travel anywhere...oh wait.
September 5, 2014 4:14 p.m.
SHE hasn't... other I can think of are venser, and tibalt, koth. They have rarely, if ever left their planes
September 5, 2014 4:20 p.m.
"they have rarely, if ever left their planes", hmmm well if they've never done it before I guess they'll never do it ever.... lol. I bet they're jealous of the Planeswalkers that do travel to other planes.
The end of core sets does not mean the death of certain Planeswalkers or other cards typically found in them. It simply means they'll be put in sets where the story line makes them relevant. The new rotation set up will cause the story line to progress faster. This means it's easier for the story line to intersect with the path of these Planeswalkers as we no longer have core sets wasting design space without advancing the story line.
I really wish people would read the article that was posted and try to get an understanding of what's actually going on before they come on here and complain. Everything is explained pretty clearly in that article about what's happening and why. I wish people would understand that just because they personally feel there wasn't a problem with 3 set blocks or core sets, it doesn't change the fact that it's been a problem Wizards has been dealing with for close to 20 years. Instead of whining, imagine how much more you'll enjoy this game not having these problems hindering R&D so they can put out an even better product than they do now. It's amazing how many people enjoy this game, but yet have no faith in the company that designs and produces it.
September 5, 2014 4:51 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #37
@Asher18: Except Nissa declared she was leaving Zendikar to find Sorin and bring him back to fix the mess with the Eldrazi. She doesn't like to own up to the fact that she fucked an entire plane over. Furthermore, both Venser and Koth did a fair deal of planeswalking during and after the mending and the Mirrodin conflict.
September 5, 2014 9:59 p.m.
bogieman145 says... #39
The new change is great. Dominate cards will rotate out more quickly, decks won't get stale, and while some sets leave sooner (the fall and winter blocks), others will stay longer (spring and core/summer). Happy to see this change, and I don't think it will be that dramatic of an effect on prices.
September 7, 2014 11:18 a.m.
Epochalyptik says... #40
@bogieman145: I'm not sure you understand the rotation. All blocks are going to have 18-month lifespans. Also, there are no longer core sets.
September 7, 2014 7:06 p.m.
TheWaltSpot says... #41
Or Just play Commander/EDH because it is one of the best and most expressive format (my opinion of course so don't get mad). Also this doesn't really effect me because standard is hard and expensive to get a deck plus when I can only play maybe once a month at FNM it becomes pointless.
September 8, 2014 7:29 p.m.
VampireArmy says... #43
Important enough to make you upset about it.....
September 8, 2014 7:47 p.m.
Yeah for those who are griping about losing $100.00 I hope you understand that your not losing that deck in sixth months you'll still have over a year.
abenz419 says... #1
The end of core sets doesn't mean it's the end of cards like that. They'll just see prints when their story line intersects with one of the blocks. It just means that now there isn't a whole set wasted to design space where they couldn't effectively put out a product that catered to new players and effectively appealed to experienced players as well. By putting out a set with just basic mechanics for new players they lose the interest of experienced players. By bringing back some of the more complex mechanics to keep experienced players interested then they're not really helping the new players learn the basics of the game. Core sets just put the entire design team in a bind, something he talks about in the article they released, and it slows the story line down. A slower story line means it takes longer to do the "Return to" set, especially if they want to introduce new planes in between them as well. We're not going to see reprints that the community wants until we visit a plane where it's relevant. Speeding up the story line means we go to these relevant planes sooner, effectively making it easier for them to put out reprints that people want along with introducing more new cards and mechanics as well.
August 31, 2014 11:57 p.m.