Both!
I'm kinda neutral on this change myself (I don't buy packs anyway, so eh), but whoever had the bright idea to slam this announcement into the emergency B&R slot certainly made a decision.
General New Booster
- Thread starter Velrun
- Start date
Both!
I'm kinda neutral on this change myself (I don't buy packs anyway, so eh), but whoever had the bright idea to slam this announcement into the emergency B&R slot certainly made a decision.
That's a fair analysis. Thank you very much!
I guess I mean that comparing them to the previous cheapest boosters and feeling like they may not get there in terms of value. I'm not sure how good the EV is for set boosters on given set, so if they were decent typically, then I'm sure this change is fine. I don't like losing out on a cheap option to draft, regardless.
I also enjoy Decadent Dragon, it's a very fun card.
We have some more information about Play Boosters from Weekly MTG:
- Limited play has been consistently on the upswing, both digitally and in paper, for the last three years. On Arena especially, Limited play is huge.
- Some markets had stopped ordering draft boosters from WotC, which caused them to look into a way to merge draft boosters and set boosters.
- WOTC knew relatively early in that set boosters were causing draft boosters to stop being ordered, but it took time to design and develop the play boosters and Limited around them.
-The goal was, as modern design had evolved, it was obvious that they could reduce draft chaff in booster product, thus making play boosters more exciting than predecessors.
- Booster size was originally dictated by printers, not Limited design. Not concerned about 14 cards instead of 15 cards for that reason.
- Most popular aspect of set boosters was multiple rares. The least popular was overwhelmingly thematically connected commons. Play boosters used data from set boosters to improve the design.
- One of the goals was to improve the quality of the commons, starting with Murders at Karlov Manor. This includes eliminating sideboard-style cards and fringe cards from that slot while increasing removal and playables. Commons should all be cards you want to play in a Limited deck mainboard.
-The goal for sideboard cards moving forward is they'll be more modular and also appear as uncommons so you see them less frequently.
- More uncommons per set means they can include a few more niche build-around cards per set that will appeal to enfranchised players who draft more.
- Price increase to match set booster pricing was locked in before extra rares and guaranteed foils. The latter exists to alleviate the pain of the former.
- "Our job as the people making the game is trying to figure out what players want and what players need, and trying new things to meet those expectations."
- Magic is constantly changing and evolving, and while some players are hesitant when it comes to change, the game needs to change and evolve regularly to survive and grow long-term.
- The List has dropped from 300 cards to 40 cards so they can be localized into Japanese, and also so the cards can thematically tie in more easily to either the world or the Limited environment. The full 40 List cards will change with each set, and some sets might have no List and instead opt for a different bonus card slot.
- The success of Bonus Sheets largely led to players wanting The List to be draftable.
- Some cards will be replaced on Arena because they wouldn't make sense in any format on the client. The example provided is Mana Crypt, which is too powerful for either Historic or Historic Brawl.
- The bonus Commander cards in set boosters are being retired moving forward once play boosters launch. The implication is that Commander already has enough support without those cards (duh).
- Packs will contain slightly fewer tokens on average. The hope is tokens will be reused across sets more regularly so you can "carry them over" to future draft sets (Less token creep!).
- 36 packs per box instead of 30 like a set box is because you get three full drafts for every two boxes with 36. 24 was considered, but financials for box toppers stopped making sense at 24.
- There will be slightly more bombs in Limited on average, both because of more rares in a draft, but also because they are going to increase the power level slightly. More removal and answers, especially at common, aim to mitigate the risks of this.
- A big project that WotC isn't ready to talk about yet is in the works to get the new players into Magic, and also to push them to try Limited. "Low complexity" was tried for years, but that actually failed and didn't appeal to new players at all. Excitement and dynamic gameplay is what they want, not simplicity.
- Data suggests that complex cards with cool and unique mechanics actually draw new players in, as they find them cool and want to learn more. Commander is succeeding with new, casual players partially because of that.
- 95% of Sealed play is prerelease, so they're not concerned about play boosters hurting Sealed. The prerelease boxes can be modified to help if need be.
- Extra rares in prerelease packs are very exciting for casual players, so while variance will increase a bit, they believe it'll be more exciting and fun for players.
- Skill-testing draft is still a high priority for the teams designing the Limited environments.
- Play boosters are more flexible overall and has allowed design teams to do new things. MaRo said he's working on a set right now that is doing something radically new that wouldn't be possible without the new booster structure(!) He was very vague about it, but he was very excited talking about it.
- Bonus Sheets will continue, and there are multiple sets currently being worked on that have Bonus Sheets.
- "Raising the floor at common, not necessarily raising the ceiling," so Pauper likely won't be impacted too much by the new structure.
- Universes Within cards will still happen and will be in The List slot whenever they do happen. They will be draftable.
Special Thanks to my friend Jose for compiling this information!
In general, I think this reasoning is sound and should lead to a good set of changes. I was interested to hear about the failure of low-complexity design. My guess is they're referring to sets like Ixalan, Rivals of Ixalan, and the last couple of core sets, along with set-based Jump-star. All of these products purposefully lowered their complexity level at the expense of gameplay quality. I do worry a bit that they are going to push complexity a little too far and make sets that are too hard to parse. Then again, the historic example of a set that was "too complex" is the Time Spiral block, which is considered one of the best blocks of all time by many players. I don't think that level of complexity has yet to be exceeded by a modern set, so perhaps we have nothing to worry about!
It is good news that they recognized that Draft boosters weren't selling as well as they should and immediately adjusted instead of potentially letting limited die in the distant future. I am happy that they immediately course-corrected as soon as they realized there was a problem. The fact that they're using this chance to try new things for future limited sets is fantastic as well! Finally, I am happy that they're killing off some of the draft chaff found in booster packs. Recently, I have had sort of an existential crisis about all of the extra cards I was getting that I would never use in any capacity (sorry Jukai Trainee, there isn't a world where I'm putting you in a deck or a Cube). It feels really wasteful to open a dozen packs at a prerelease and only end up with 20 or so cards you want to use. What do you do with the other hundred? Raising the floor on the average card increases the chance that we get cards worth trying to keep around and use.
What do you all think?
- Limited play has been consistently on the upswing, both digitally and in paper, for the last three years. On Arena especially, Limited play is huge.
- Some markets had stopped ordering draft boosters from WotC, which caused them to look into a way to merge draft boosters and set boosters.
- WOTC knew relatively early in that set boosters were causing draft boosters to stop being ordered, but it took time to design and develop the play boosters and Limited around them.
-The goal was, as modern design had evolved, it was obvious that they could reduce draft chaff in booster product, thus making play boosters more exciting than predecessors.
- Booster size was originally dictated by printers, not Limited design. Not concerned about 14 cards instead of 15 cards for that reason.
- Most popular aspect of set boosters was multiple rares. The least popular was overwhelmingly thematically connected commons. Play boosters used data from set boosters to improve the design.
- One of the goals was to improve the quality of the commons, starting with Murders at Karlov Manor. This includes eliminating sideboard-style cards and fringe cards from that slot while increasing removal and playables. Commons should all be cards you want to play in a Limited deck mainboard.
-The goal for sideboard cards moving forward is they'll be more modular and also appear as uncommons so you see them less frequently.
- More uncommons per set means they can include a few more niche build-around cards per set that will appeal to enfranchised players who draft more.
- Price increase to match set booster pricing was locked in before extra rares and guaranteed foils. The latter exists to alleviate the pain of the former.
- "Our job as the people making the game is trying to figure out what players want and what players need, and trying new things to meet those expectations."
- Magic is constantly changing and evolving, and while some players are hesitant when it comes to change, the game needs to change and evolve regularly to survive and grow long-term.
- The List has dropped from 300 cards to 40 cards so they can be localized into Japanese, and also so the cards can thematically tie in more easily to either the world or the Limited environment. The full 40 List cards will change with each set, and some sets might have no List and instead opt for a different bonus card slot.
- The success of Bonus Sheets largely led to players wanting The List to be draftable.
- Some cards will be replaced on Arena because they wouldn't make sense in any format on the client. The example provided is Mana Crypt, which is too powerful for either Historic or Historic Brawl.
- The bonus Commander cards in set boosters are being retired moving forward once play boosters launch. The implication is that Commander already has enough support without those cards (duh).
- Packs will contain slightly fewer tokens on average. The hope is tokens will be reused across sets more regularly so you can "carry them over" to future draft sets (Less token creep!).
- 36 packs per box instead of 30 like a set box is because you get three full drafts for every two boxes with 36. 24 was considered, but financials for box toppers stopped making sense at 24.
- There will be slightly more bombs in Limited on average, both because of more rares in a draft, but also because they are going to increase the power level slightly. More removal and answers, especially at common, aim to mitigate the risks of this.
- A big project that WotC isn't ready to talk about yet is in the works to get the new players into Magic, and also to push them to try Limited. "Low complexity" was tried for years, but that actually failed and didn't appeal to new players at all. Excitement and dynamic gameplay is what they want, not simplicity.
- Data suggests that complex cards with cool and unique mechanics actually draw new players in, as they find them cool and want to learn more. Commander is succeeding with new, casual players partially because of that.
- 95% of Sealed play is prerelease, so they're not concerned about play boosters hurting Sealed. The prerelease boxes can be modified to help if need be.
- Extra rares in prerelease packs are very exciting for casual players, so while variance will increase a bit, they believe it'll be more exciting and fun for players.
- Skill-testing draft is still a high priority for the teams designing the Limited environments.
- Play boosters are more flexible overall and has allowed design teams to do new things. MaRo said he's working on a set right now that is doing something radically new that wouldn't be possible without the new booster structure(!) He was very vague about it, but he was very excited talking about it.
- Bonus Sheets will continue, and there are multiple sets currently being worked on that have Bonus Sheets.
- "Raising the floor at common, not necessarily raising the ceiling," so Pauper likely won't be impacted too much by the new structure.
- Universes Within cards will still happen and will be in The List slot whenever they do happen. They will be draftable.
Special Thanks to my friend Jose for compiling this information!
In general, I think this reasoning is sound and should lead to a good set of changes. I was interested to hear about the failure of low-complexity design. My guess is they're referring to sets like Ixalan, Rivals of Ixalan, and the last couple of core sets, along with set-based Jump-star. All of these products purposefully lowered their complexity level at the expense of gameplay quality. I do worry a bit that they are going to push complexity a little too far and make sets that are too hard to parse. Then again, the historic example of a set that was "too complex" is the Time Spiral block, which is considered one of the best blocks of all time by many players. I don't think that level of complexity has yet to be exceeded by a modern set, so perhaps we have nothing to worry about!
It is good news that they recognized that Draft boosters weren't selling as well as they should and immediately adjusted instead of potentially letting limited die in the distant future. I am happy that they immediately course-corrected as soon as they realized there was a problem. The fact that they're using this chance to try new things for future limited sets is fantastic as well! Finally, I am happy that they're killing off some of the draft chaff found in booster packs. Recently, I have had sort of an existential crisis about all of the extra cards I was getting that I would never use in any capacity (sorry Jukai Trainee, there isn't a world where I'm putting you in a deck or a Cube). It feels really wasteful to open a dozen packs at a prerelease and only end up with 20 or so cards you want to use. What do you do with the other hundred? Raising the floor on the average card increases the chance that we get cards worth trying to keep around and use.
What do you all think?
Thank you @TrainmasterGT
Some of this we already knew from the first announcement but some are new. A few things I find interesting:
- One of the goals was to improve the quality of the commons, starting with Murders at Karlov Manor. This includes eliminating sideboard-style cards and fringe cards from that slot while increasing removal and playables. Commons should all be cards you want to play in a Limited deck mainboard.
And to the same extend:
-The goal for sideboard cards moving forward is they'll be more modular and also appear as uncommons so you see them less frequently.
This is new I would say. This is also something we as cube curators should be thinking about going forward if this is a success from Wizards of the Coast.
This one is super important also if you ask me:
- The List has dropped from 300 cards to 40 cards so they can be localized into Japanese, and also so the cards can thematically tie in more easily to either the world or the Limited environment. The full 40 List cards will change with each set, and some sets might have no List and instead opt for a different bonus card slot.
I have never seen or heard anyone care about The List before. It's just a meme. Now we will care. Small sets make sense. And this can also replace this feeling of Set Boosters because The List will now have cards that are thematic to the main set. Also it's interesting with this bonus sheet variation.
Then there is this one:
- Packs will contain slightly fewer tokens on average. The hope is tokens will be reused across sets more regularly so you can "carry them over" to future draft sets (Less token creep!).
I bet this will be a home run. Especially for Riptiders.
And now it's time to drop the bomb:
- There will be slightly more bombs in Limited on average, both because of more rares in a draft, but also because they are going to increase the power level slightly. More removal and answers, especially at common, aim to mitigate the risks of this.
More powerful rares. More powerful uncommons. More powerful commons.
Also more rares and more uncommons. Fewer commons.
Some of this we already knew from the first announcement but some are new. A few things I find interesting:
- One of the goals was to improve the quality of the commons, starting with Murders at Karlov Manor. This includes eliminating sideboard-style cards and fringe cards from that slot while increasing removal and playables. Commons should all be cards you want to play in a Limited deck mainboard.
And to the same extend:
-The goal for sideboard cards moving forward is they'll be more modular and also appear as uncommons so you see them less frequently.
This is new I would say. This is also something we as cube curators should be thinking about going forward if this is a success from Wizards of the Coast.
This one is super important also if you ask me:
- The List has dropped from 300 cards to 40 cards so they can be localized into Japanese, and also so the cards can thematically tie in more easily to either the world or the Limited environment. The full 40 List cards will change with each set, and some sets might have no List and instead opt for a different bonus card slot.
I have never seen or heard anyone care about The List before. It's just a meme. Now we will care. Small sets make sense. And this can also replace this feeling of Set Boosters because The List will now have cards that are thematic to the main set. Also it's interesting with this bonus sheet variation.
Then there is this one:
- Packs will contain slightly fewer tokens on average. The hope is tokens will be reused across sets more regularly so you can "carry them over" to future draft sets (Less token creep!).
I bet this will be a home run. Especially for Riptiders.
And now it's time to drop the bomb:
- There will be slightly more bombs in Limited on average, both because of more rares in a draft, but also because they are going to increase the power level slightly. More removal and answers, especially at common, aim to mitigate the risks of this.
More powerful rares. More powerful uncommons. More powerful commons.
Also more rares and more uncommons. Fewer commons.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Less token creep!
I tried to ignore all the things going on:
Some rightfully called bullshit. But then all those "reasons" pop up. It is a replay of all the changes before. Most of the changes have been money grabs and not improvements for the game.
I have been around a long time. My take away of it all is:
We needed to raise the price. We fucked up on a change before and do a 180.
The power will be even more concentrated in higher rarities, so money grab anyone? (good old times of madness...).
I am already out for a long time, but what is shocking (or not seeing the more important real life problems) is that they simply do not learn of their mistakes.
For a long time it has been: we do something and find reasons for it instead of the other way around. They wanted to simplify and did new world order. Lo and behold, the amount of non-grockable text even increased on the played cards in a short time frame.
I loved the game when answer cards and threats did not overlap. Since that went away it devolved in threat -> threat+answer in one card (or bigger threat) ad infinitum until one was out and bricking one turn meant you lose. No thank you.
Before someone blames me for being an angry old person, I tried many times to come back. They are right that the mana fixing in the old days sucked. Fixing that makes the game better, but the other changes are so bad that it completely negates this.
Edit for easy of reading.
Some rightfully called bullshit. But then all those "reasons" pop up. It is a replay of all the changes before. Most of the changes have been money grabs and not improvements for the game.
I have been around a long time. My take away of it all is:
We needed to raise the price. We fucked up on a change before and do a 180.
The power will be even more concentrated in higher rarities, so money grab anyone? (good old times of madness...).
I am already out for a long time, but what is shocking (or not seeing the more important real life problems) is that they simply do not learn of their mistakes.
For a long time it has been: we do something and find reasons for it instead of the other way around. They wanted to simplify and did new world order. Lo and behold, the amount of non-grockable text even increased on the played cards in a short time frame.
I loved the game when answer cards and threats did not overlap. Since that went away it devolved in threat -> threat+answer in one card (or bigger threat) ad infinitum until one was out and bricking one turn meant you lose. No thank you.
Before someone blames me for being an angry old person, I tried many times to come back. They are right that the mana fixing in the old days sucked. Fixing that makes the game better, but the other changes are so bad that it completely negates this.
Edit for easy of reading.
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I really appreciate your posts but I have no idea what you’re talking about half the time.
Me neither. My mind goes from a to z to d to n to e and to a again to h in split seconds. Sometimes I need to take a few minutes and gather my thoughts.
What if I put it like this when I put the changes and their reasons why in perspective:
1) they change things (for good or bad)
2) reasons are invented.
3) they do a 180.
The thing is (viewing the changes through time) is that the changes are made for money reasons and the why is invented afterwards. That is why the choices made do not solve the problem they "tried" to solve. I for one think that more bombs is not good for the game, but hey, I am out so who cares.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Way more boosters are ripped open just for the thrill of opening a pack than for actually playing a draft. More bomb rares is more excitement for those booster rippers (a majority) at the cost of more unbalanced gameplay for limited enjoyers (a minority). However, limited play is still recognized as very important by them, so they aim to raise the floor of commons and include more good removal to deal with those additional bombs. It's really not all bad.
Now, these two points are very relevant for us cube enjoyers. Looks like simplicity is not what new players are looking for, and complexity is okay if the card is cool. I'm betting they were very surprised with this conclusion! I know I am! (Despite my first real deck being built around Temporal Distortion, artifact mana, and vigilance creatures...)
And that is just where the stuff breaks down.
You can either:
1) have a game for the game.
2) try to mix a game with nft (non-fungable token).
I follow 1). Which implies no pay to win. And hence the power should not come from rares. You cannot have both: excitement for (artificial scarcity) rares and raising the power of commons.
Either you follow path 1) and rarity does not matter or you follow power with artificial scarcity (change scarci for rari) and you are at nft terotory.
Thrills should be thrills. Confusing them with the beauty that could be mtg makes thrills thralls.
Edit: I like that your deck was based on temporal distortion. That is fun.
Sadly, in a few years wotc will tell you that players want this...
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I think given the way Magic has historically been designed, you actually can have both, at least in relation to what we used to get.
A huge portion of Magic packs have effectively been duds by design essentially since the game's conception. For the longest time, a normal draft booster effectively was composed of 10 worthless commons, three uncommons that might be ok, and a rare that may or may not be good. The thing about the commons was that they weren't only unexciting, but actively disappointing. I still remember ripping packs as a kid and being greeted by hordes of Wetland Sambars and Silent Artisans. These aren't cards you would ever want to put into a deck you were building, and you would only begrudgingly play in draft if you were short on playables. There wasn't really a reason for the cards to be this boring and arguably worthless beyond artificially inflating the value of rares. In a world without totally worthless cards, we can see more of the exciting game pieces without completely ruining limited. In fact, more powerful answers and filler cards at common can actually mitigate losses to the opponent randomly getting lucky and having a bomb card. It doesn't even make the bomb less exciting because the fun part of bombs is generally their splashy effects and interesting abilities, and not the fact that they can cause you to auto-win the game. In fact, it would arguably make bombs more exciting because you will actually need to use some skill to have them bring you across the finish line.
Magic has so much design space that adding more cards that reside roughly in the middle of the existing power spectrum doesn't necessarily impact the game's overall health while making sets more exciting and worthwhile for players. It's really a win-win.
Interestingly, one of the cards that pushed the design team over the edge on this point was Gollum, Scheming Guide. This card was designed for the LOTR starter decks. Product architect and pro-tour hall of famer Mark Turian thought the card was too complex for new players and tried to get it cut from the decks. As it turned out, Gollum, Scheming Guide and its wall of text was the single highest-rated card among new players in the entire set. The flavorful design and interesting, complex ability were really appealing to new players.
This news has been making me question why exactly so many of us established players have such a big problem with complexity, especially in relation to newer players. I am wondering if there is something else we don't like that we are writing off as a complexity issue.
That's why I put the madness example up there. Madness did not require rares during torment. Your example is one where rarity matters power wise is already going on.
Gollum is not a good example. It is all gravy from the casters side. Look at it from the opponents side. Either the opponent guessed correctly and they cannot kill it through combat since gollom evades that. Or they failed to guess it and they cannot block it...
It is a prime example of what went wrong with this beautiful game. The caster has only benefits...
Gollum, Scheming Guide being the prime example of what is wrong with Magic in 2023 is the single hottest take I've heard in a while...
I wrote an article on the topic for Cardboard by the Numbers and it's gotten pretty heated discussion on Twitter. It's the article I've written I'm most happy with, which is frustrating when I made a dumb mistake on the first iteration (I forgot most sets have 30 set boosters per box, not 24, which threw off some of the math).
tl;dr I don't really take a perspective in the article but I try to analyze it more from the business to suss out why the decision was made.
tl;dr I don't really take a perspective in the article but I try to analyze it more from the business to suss out why the decision was made.
That's pretty simple, honestly — we tend to use wordiness as a proxy for complexity, even though they're only tangentially related to each-other at best. And we don't like wordiness because it's a bit of a drag during draft.
Gollum's honestly a head-scratcher to me, though, because it's a very straightforward card if you actually bother to read it. I'd honestly rate it lower in complexity than something like Swiftblade Vindicator, despite the Vindicator only having four words of rules text, all of which are evergreen keywords.
I think the EV/dollar spent arguments are hard for me to get behind, for my personality type at all. I remember going to a pokemon pre-release and opening like "50 EUR" worth of cards, but that's irrelevant until I go through the effort of finding buyers for them. For me all that mattered was the cost of entry.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I was just about to comment that a higher booster price does mean a higher cost of entry, so it's not all win-win. I do think this change will make retail drafts more exciting, and building a cube to draft "for free" more appealing.
I think this is a fair point. When I was saying this change is a "win-win," I was talking about a gameplay perspective. I think this will have an overwhelmingly positive effect compared to the status quo on that front, provided the information WOTC is providing is accurate. However, from the pricing side of things, there is a minor trade-off. I do think it's worth noting that these new packs are still less expensive than where draft boosters would be if their price had kept up with inflation (as we can see in @MilesOfficial 's review). I would definitely understand being upset about that if the contents hadn't improved, but I do think the fact that we're getting a better product than we were getting before is definitely important here.
To be fair, I believe my perspective is impacted by some of the other hobbies I engage with, specifically model railroading. The cost of electronics for trains has increased substantially due to inflation. For example, the cost of a pair of F-Units in 2013 cost $729.99 in 2013 (pages 60-63 on this catalog), while the cost for the same model in the latest 2023 catalog is $1,199.99 (pages 34-39). That's a 64% increase in cost for two models of the same type of locomotive, with the only substantial difference being the introduction of control using Bluetooth in the 2023 model.* Large price increases for goods over the past decade are pretty common, unfortunately. For example, food prices have risen roughly 34% in the US in that same timeframe. In this context, I think a 20% increase in the price of a booster that also comes with a better product is preferable to the trend of increasing prices with stagnating or declining quality in other sectors.
*I think the tooling for the shell of the 2023 model might be different than the 2013 version, but they're still models of the same locomotive. If there was a tooling update, I think it was before this catalog year. They've released this type of locomotive at least two other times in the past decade that I remember, possibly even more, with each receiving a price increase. For example, the 2018 version 0f these models (found on pages 46-49 of this catalog) cost $899.99.
I can't speak about global trends or the new player experience or the appeal of cracking packs "for value". The only data I have is the following:
- When drafts started costing more than $20 back in 2016-ish, player numbers at my then FLGS dropped and never recovered. We filled out multiple rooms just for the draft portion of FNM, 50+ players some weeks (Especially around PTQ season).
- When drafts started costing more than $28 in 2019, player numbers dropped - I wont talk about recovery, because of the effects of covid, but we did tank from 1.5 to 2.5 pods down to probably 1 pod of between 6 and 10 players.
- The cheapest place to draft near me runs them for $32 now, and we're lucky to field one pod of 8.
Now Wizards is raising the price of the boosters again. Regardless of the ad copy, I think I know how this will play out.
I can say I dislike this change on a personal level and how it will affect me specifically. I like it when limited asks more interesting questions than "Who opened more and better bombs in their sealed pool" and "Did you play around this 1/300 chance to open card you shouldn't have expected me to have?". I had this problem with the Zendikars, Amonkhet, and Kaladesh too.
FWIW I do like the disappearance of set boosters. I don't hate that you open "The List" cards in limited packs, that's a really good way to provide reprints in the packs people actually open en masse - I just currently dislike that you get to play with them.
Remove them with the token at the start of the draft, keep em but not in your pool is how I would personally have liked to handle this (As in, for the very infrequent retail drafts I run with friends), except with 14 cards in a booster I can't even feel right about that. I will do an instant 180 on that if they treat The List cards they reprint as an integral part of the limited environment - Wilds of Eldraine's Enchanting Tales is a perfect example of how to do that, so I believe it's possible.
- When drafts started costing more than $20 back in 2016-ish, player numbers at my then FLGS dropped and never recovered. We filled out multiple rooms just for the draft portion of FNM, 50+ players some weeks (Especially around PTQ season).
- When drafts started costing more than $28 in 2019, player numbers dropped - I wont talk about recovery, because of the effects of covid, but we did tank from 1.5 to 2.5 pods down to probably 1 pod of between 6 and 10 players.
- The cheapest place to draft near me runs them for $32 now, and we're lucky to field one pod of 8.
Now Wizards is raising the price of the boosters again. Regardless of the ad copy, I think I know how this will play out.
I can say I dislike this change on a personal level and how it will affect me specifically. I like it when limited asks more interesting questions than "Who opened more and better bombs in their sealed pool" and "Did you play around this 1/300 chance to open card you shouldn't have expected me to have?". I had this problem with the Zendikars, Amonkhet, and Kaladesh too.
FWIW I do like the disappearance of set boosters. I don't hate that you open "The List" cards in limited packs, that's a really good way to provide reprints in the packs people actually open en masse - I just currently dislike that you get to play with them.
Remove them with the token at the start of the draft, keep em but not in your pool is how I would personally have liked to handle this (As in, for the very infrequent retail drafts I run with friends), except with 14 cards in a booster I can't even feel right about that. I will do an instant 180 on that if they treat The List cards they reprint as an integral part of the limited environment - Wilds of Eldraine's Enchanting Tales is a perfect example of how to do that, so I believe it's possible.
I would not have guessed this. Time to update my heuristics!
Oof. This hurts.
This is interesting to me because I started right around Time Spiral and I remember loving how funky these cards were--same with Kamigawa. I guess I've forgotten this reaction, or maybe the Magic audience has grown up a little. If I've been a bit reactionary vis-a-vis complexity, it's mostly because I know I will go overboard on wordy cards if I don't reign myself in. See the following:
This whole thread is worth a read. Check it out if you haven't recently!For fun, I downloaded some JSON card data and wrote a bit of Python code to find the average number of words per card in a bunch of cubes from this site. It's a metric I'm trying to minimize in my cube, within reason, so this interests me.
I looked at full oracle text, but also the text excluding reminder text in parentheses. The reminder text can be misleading in some cases, since the same keywords may or may not get reminder text, depending on the card's set and rarity. For example, Omeanspeaker vs Sage's Row Savant. But it's interesting to see that some cubes have a bigger difference between the two averages, which indicates more keyword abilities and/or wordier reminder text among those keyword abilities.
It would be fun to come up with a more sophisticated index to estimate the rules density of a cube, or its readability.
Anyway, here are the results for the cubes I ran through the program, with lists pulled from the web within the last couple of weeks or so.
This experience was a little embarrassing, so I really pushed simplicity in future updates and cubes. Maybe it's time to revisit our conclusions ("fewer words gooder") and embrace the walls of text!
yessss, embrace the sexy powerful cards