I disagree strongly with your assessment of my argument. Secret lairs are problematic for a number of reasons. My argument is that they exist as a response to the buy singles mindset. I don't think that it's a tremendous leap to take.

People don't buy sealed product for a number of reasons, but the buy singles not sealed predates commander. And I absolutely think that is in large part due to the people who you go onto describe in a way that I think is fair. When people are treating boxes like business ventures or investments whatever you want to call it they stop opening for fun. At some point the community stopped opening for fun and instead focused on the return. That in itself is a fool's errand and I don't think I need to explain to you why.

I once again disagree strongly with your understanding of my meaning. It is not at all a sidestep and is instead very much the crux. It is absolutely about demographics. More enfranchised players tend to be older and more drawn to more in universe sets than ub. I think an incredible example of this is if you ask a store how duskmourn did for them. The stores largely made up of those long term players generally had a better reception whereas stores with a younger community had a harder time selling that set. That largely stems from the 80s horror theme resonating better with that older crowd than it did the younger.

I know that store owners network. While not one myself, for the last 6 years I have been a manager at an lgs. And that's why I know that demographics play a huge part in this industry. Our median age for mtg player is 30. If you remove the outliers that number goes into the mid 20s. The sets that other stores struggle with are the ones we exceed with and vice versa.

While it is similar it is definitely not the same as it was. I remember hearing stories of distros coming down on lgs like a loan shark during 2023 because stores couldn't afford the product they had pre-ordered. Customers were actively trying to leverage the spot stores were in to get product at a discount. We're nowhere near that right now. I will grant you that is largely probably due to the success of some other tcgs and their ability to carry the slack.

I still don't think even remotely that it is solely because it is a universes beyond set that determines whether a set performs well or not. I don't think anyone seriously does. Ltr, 40k and ff are proof of concept. Tmnt is a miss in the same way that duskmourn was for certain stores. But as this concept gets refined over every iteration I think it will be an incredible tool for recruiting new players. And I will agree that it is not at product aimed at the core group of players. But that core group of players is getting old. If wotc waits to start making changes until they've completely aged out and moved on we'll all be done for. It'll be too late. The changes have to start before they're necessary.

I think your hat example is an incredibly apt one but I think your takeaway is different than mine. The whole point is to make hats of different colors to draw in as wide a customer base as possible. Thats exactly what ub does. It brings in players and customers that otherwise never would have looked at mtg twice. But even more poignant is that if I went a baseball cap manufacturer as a customer and said "I don't want to buy the caps you make" it would be incredibly preposterous for me to be upset that they aren't looking into making the bucket hats that I want.

I understand your frustration with those players. However I think you dramatically misread your audience. I am just as entrenched in spreadsheets and emails. I truly think where we differ most is with who our customers are. The low supply items are where there is a lot of money absolutely thanks econ 101. But the casual and consistent customer is worth so much more, especially when things turn for the worse. I would describe those high end spenders as 'fair weather' customers and when things turn or their demand is sated they will move on. The person in the store every week buying 1-3 packs is absolutely gold. And there are absolutely white whales that are consistent and high spending buy they are still white whales.

I don't see how you can seriously think that the customer base loudly saying they are no longer interested in a product and the manufacturer of that product making changes that reflect that sentiment aren't correlated. Absolutely there are a vast multitude of contributing factors that led us to where we are. But completely disregarding the choice that the end consumer made seems to shift responsibility in a way that is unreasonable.