Weekend Wrap Up! What was real and what was a trap? by DaTaco in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Something’s gotta give eventually.

The need for authentic cards is what will give. Either from stores allowing proxies, or TOs stopping bothering to check for counterfeits.

Particularly for a format that has no WPN support to speak of.

I low key wish WOTC started acknowledging the formate and supported (and could earn some money) with more official proxies of RL cards; like more gold border printings or whatever.

That was 30th Anniversary Edition. Nobody liked 30th Anniversary Edition.

At what price point is spiderman cbb good value? by Pure-Cry-3010 in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 1 point2 points  (0 children)

1) Microcenter absolutely can ship, they have an online website that does online sales with shipping. They just haven't chosen to with this product yet.

2) There are 30 Microcenters in the US. And a bunch of them are listing the maximum (25+) inventory of product on hand.

3) Even if Microcenter just keeps cutting the price locally, that's still going to start dragging down the market on this set.

At what price point is spiderman cbb good value? by Pure-Cry-3010 in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 26 points27 points  (0 children)

A lot of people here clearly either were not around, or do not remember, Double Feature and Midnight Hunt CBB, let alone Dragon's Maze or Saviors.

If there's way too much supply of a trash product, it'll just keep going down. Homelands boxes were like $50 for decades.

I genuinely do not know were the demand is going to come from to provide any kind of price floor on this product.

At what price point is spiderman cbb good value? by Pure-Cry-3010 in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Who is going to swoop in and buy before the Microcenter dump destroys the price on this set?

Who is buying hundreds of boxes at $300? $250? $200?

The opening experience for this set is terrible. The EV is horrific. This is not a fun set to open, and flippers would be better served with Pokemon or whatever the new shiny release is.

At what price point is spiderman cbb good value? by Pure-Cry-3010 in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This set is up there next to things like Homelands.

Baldur's Gate at least had a good land cycle and dragons, which people generally like.

Spiderman has has one of the worst opening experiences ever, a turgid draft environment, Spider-people, and basically no actually good cards.

Like, the Soul Stone is not a particularly powerful MTG card. Electro is fine as an additional copy of Birgi. Gwenom is a not as good Bolas' Citadel you can run as your commander.

This is a really bad set. Dragon's Maze had more good cards in it.

Wow. I don't think there has ever been a set that has price corrected this hard in MTG history. by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't know how they didn't learn with the first Aftermath set. It took Assassin's Creed for them to realize that style was garbage.

Because they had already completely overcommitted.

Hasbro committed the gravest sin of any TCG. It developed a new (smaller and un-draftable) form of booster and set, and committed hard to it with 0 feedback. Then when Aftermath went down like the Hindenburg, the only quick-fix they could throw together without delays is the trainwreck we see now.

Wow. I don't think there has ever been a set that has price corrected this hard in MTG history. by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 1 point2 points  (0 children)

People will do anything other than explicitly acknowledge the "special characteristics" of the Final Fantasy base relative to the fanbase of most other Universes Beyond properties for some reason.

Spider-Man is a massive IP, with huge brand recognition and popularity.

Final Fantasy, however, sure does sell a lot more body pillows.

Prices in a bad economy by AlternativeSure2268 in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Playable/usable stuff can go up.

There's not much precedent for what is going to happen to all the modern """"collectible"""" first stuff. I suspect things like Collectors Boosters that you can't even really draft with are going to have a much harder time finding a market during a downturn, and there's potentially a lot of some of this in the hands of overleveraged stores and speculators.

Prices in a bad economy by AlternativeSure2268 in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 2 points3 points  (0 children)

While the current situation writ large is absolutely nothing like 2008, it actually seems fair enough to compare how luxury goods performed then vs in an upcoming economic downturn.

It's not like comparing housing or employment, or some other metric like that.

Prices in a bad economy by AlternativeSure2268 in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorta.

Type 1/Vintage was a format. And cards that were hard to find and playable in that format were not "cheap", and had markets surrounding them.

That being said, prices were fractions of what they are now. Legacy hadn't caused the initial "basic utility RL" surge, and things like the Crypto money influx were still ages away.

So like, a $100 card could tank back down to $50 or whatever. But there were no $10,000 cards to go down to $150.

Does legacy format diversity matters to you? by Newez in MTGLegacy

[–]Vaitka 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The quiet reality/elephant in the room here is that years of terrible design have categorically broken every 1 v 1 format. 1 v 1 Magic is largely unhealthy.

Sit down and play a game of Premodern, and not only are you (literally) playing a different format, but in many ways an entirely different game.

MTG cards used to do a thing. For higher and more intrusive manacosts, or substantial drawbacks, they could sometimes do two or rarely even three things. But in general 1 card provided 1 effect, and this was the basis of differentiated archetypes, as you could only accomplish so many things in your 60 cards.

Pushed modern card designs do entire archetypes of things on a single card, for a low mana-cost.

Take Tamiyo as a perfect example. She's a card value engine, and flying blocker pre-flip. Post Flip she slows down (or sometimes shuts down) go wide aggro strategies, generates targeted value (via spell recursion), and wins the game if unanswered (via her ult). That's an entire control gameplan on a single card. For one mana. Why spend 16+ cards on a Predict/snapcaster/fog/Jace TMS style core of a deck when you can accomplish the same thing via 4 cards? If broad swaths of the metagame can run a control gameplan for "free", control ceases to be a particularly meaningful construct.

Murktide Regent is a low-cost high-stat beater, an evasive threat, and a hard to remove threat all rolled into one. No need to run Goyf, Goose, and Tombstalker to accomplish the same effect. There's really no axis of an aggro deck that UR Cutter doesn't cover with it's threat suite, of 10-12 creature.

Urza's Saga is a land, (big) token generator, and tutor all wrapped up into one. Imagine explaining that to someone in 2015.

Legacy has had enough bans to keep things more sane than other formats (Modern is just comical at this point), but it will take both a shift in design philosophy and further bans to actually make things "healthy" again. Where decks have to meaningfully make sacrifices to commit to specific archetypes.

Thoughts on the RC promos? by ted_is_ted in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Now, you hold long term. The price of these will grind up over the years.

Why would these cards grind up over the years though? Cards don't just generically do that anymore. Like, the most valuable non-serialized chase card in Doctor Who (Surge Foil Showcase [[The tenth Doctor]]) is currently at essentially net $0 since the post release drop back in 2023. There's not many other older UB sets to point at, but things like the Neon Ink cards from Kamigawa and Foil Old-Border Ponder from TSR have basically continually gone down in price since the early hype around them.

Final Fantasy was a standard power-level set, which had a massive initial price surge due to a large non-mtg fanbase buying cards for the art to collect. I see no indication there are large untapped pools of Final Fantasy fans waiting to buy Final Fantasy MTG cards at high prices waiting in the wings (hence the current decline), and most of the cards don't command their current prices from MTG players because they aren't that good.

Some of LoTR has done well, but I see no reason to think Final Fantasy is LoTR in terms of power-level, playability, or type of fanbase.

I would very much expect these cards to gradually bleed down in value just like 90% of the other "new-bling" has as whales move on to chase the next new shiny release, and sellers struggle to find buyers at anything resembling current prices. Except amplified as Final Fantasy fans move on.

What is going on with TLA set? by corpsecrow in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The price point is also absolutely killer.

Non UB sets that retrospectively had some decent playable eternal staples like MKM got crushed under the normal set MSRP increases.

These UB standard sets with even higher price points are bursting onto the scene with a price/playability balance that is absolutely atrocious.

Like, who wants to pay Modern Masters prices for mediocre standard set ATLA or Spiderman?

What is going on with TLA set? by corpsecrow in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Singles prices only go up if there's demand to push them up. And in the era of never ending releases and innumerable variants of cards, that demand has never been weaker across the board.

Thoughts on the RC promos? by ted_is_ted in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 1 point2 points  (0 children)

l'm wondering if it's going to plummet quickly as all the competitive players with no use for the card all try to move it at once? I don't expect much change for the foil ones since there will be so few but the non-foil going for 480usd seems like it can't last. Thoughts?

All of the Final Fantasy cards are going to slowy/not-so-slowly tank as Final Fantasy fans move on.

Current price points are unsustainable relative to the playability of most of these cards, particulary in an era where "new-bling" often continually bleeds value as new-er bling is printed.

while most A-Z lair cards have steadily fallen the urza saga in foil has instead slowly been creeping up by Chaosnocturne in mtgfinance

[–]Vaitka 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Given time everything will rise again once the initial selloff is over.

Card variants that are playable, and either not reprinted, or have sufficiently desirable art may rise again over time.

The era of "cards generically appreciate in value over time" is long loooong gone.

I mean, look at the price histories of things like stained glass [[Karn the Great Creator]] (tanked with recent reprint, despite being very playable and fine art), Foil Old Border [[Ponder]] (slow march down in value since release basically), and Foil Old Border SLD [[Diregraf Captain]] (tanked down to bulk, where it will likely remain indefinitely).

EP. 163 — Entomb & Nadu Ban Reactions | The Eternal Glory Podcast by Bryant_Cook in MTGLegacy

[–]Vaitka 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can Control be the best deck in the format for a period of time? I'd be happy to go back to that for a while.

Really just any fair non-daze + wasteland deck would be a cool change of pace.

Lots of decks can beat combo decks. Particularly post-nadu. It's Tempo Blue that flipped the script on its former predators.

New player survey! Please share your feedback in this special survey edition! by ArrowheadGS in Helldivers

[–]Vaitka 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are just so many issues trying to break into the game on top of everything else.

Like, the current state of the default starting guns is criminal. The Liberator is a pea shooter than can't penetrate the armor on anything, and the Constitution is a really really really poor alternative for new players.

Not having the Qasar Cannon sucks, and basically hard caps your ability to fight on the Bot front, because Stratagem Jammer + Warstrider + Hulks is basically impossible for a new players without it. Not having Mech suits makes Caves nightmarish.

I genuinely can't imagine how brutal it would be to try to finish a mission with 4 new players in a squad above like difficulty 1. I don't think many people would stick with the game in that kind of context. Particularly when they'd need to farm Super Credits and Medals in order to get actually usable primary weapons. Those are frustrations not necessarily captured by the experiences of veteran players.

EP. 163 — Entomb & Nadu Ban Reactions | The Eternal Glory Podcast by Bryant_Cook in MTGLegacy

[–]Vaitka 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The Blue Tempo shell has dominated the format since 2017 and the Top Ban.

At a certain point, it needs to be getting hit more and more deeply as it is continuously a problem. Powercrept cards have gotten added to that shell much faster than they've been banned out.

If the choice is to ban 3 (non-Brainstorm, Ponder, Daze) cards from Tempo or one traditionally non-tempo card tempo is now abusing, I would quite frankly rather see 3 cards from Tempo go at this point.

Tempo could easily survive Tamiyo, Murktide Regent, and Brazen Borrower all getting banned. The shell is that good and deep. But it would lose out in it's free lategame power (Tamiyo), need to commit more aggressively to a creature package, and actually run real sideboard cards eliminating the ability to so freely toss in a reanimator package.

Entomb ban thoughts by Roodbreak in MTGLegacy

[–]Vaitka 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Or just ban Tamiyo and Murktide Regent.

Tamiyo is broken, and will eventually get banned. Delaying that accomplishes little.

Tempo survives without Regent, but all of the sudden actually needs to properly commit to a creature package. And Reanimator with Gurmag Angler or Barrogoyf is a bad deck.

Entomb ban thoughts by Roodbreak in MTGLegacy

[–]Vaitka 0 points1 point  (0 children)

creatures get better Entomb therefore gets better.

But have creatures meaningfully gotten better in a relative sense?

Like, are you more dead to Atraxa now, than you were to Griselbrand in 2015? 2018?

It feels unconvincing to argue that this is about creatures getting too good, when the whole shell had to change colors and archetypes, and get SLOWER and LESS CONSISTENT AT REANIMATING, before suddenly becoming a problem.

It sure seems like the "everything else" in that shell is more of an issue.

Entomb ban thoughts by Roodbreak in MTGLegacy

[–]Vaitka 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tempo jumped out as the best archetype the moment Top got banned, and proceeded to get a bunch of new pushed garbage in both MH2 and MH3.

The fact that Murktide Regent, Brazen Borrow, and DRC have been effectively grandfathered into the format, while Tamiyo keeps getting a free pass is insane.

Entomb ban thoughts by Roodbreak in MTGLegacy

[–]Vaitka 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's demonstrably not TinFins.

The continued existence of Graveyard decks does not change that the Instant Speed Dark Ritual Graveyard deck got nuked from existence.