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Barred at the Gate - by Dangerlinto
The old saying says that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. This phrase is true – stats can be used improperly to make lies look like truth. Mostly however, I find people use this phrase to turn a blind eye to facts. And right now, the stats for classic are pointing at a problem. Force of Will is getting expensive. Now, if I were to call out classic enthusiasts and would be tourney participants and to ask them how much they are willing to spend on a deck, I would get all sorts of answers, ranging from very cheap to a number that would make most people’s head’s spin. So trying to find out what the “correct” price for Force of Will is probably can’t be pinpointed. Sufficed to say though, as the most expensive card currently online - it's $60 - it’s definitely out of a significant portion of people’s price range. That being said, there aren’t any concerns that I have about the current state of classic and the price of Force of Will. As far as I’m concerned, the current price of Force of Will is immaterial to the current heath of the classic meta game. That is to say that it’s price is very likely not having an effect on the number of decks that would use Force of Will in any given event. This is because of two things: Firstly, that the number of people interested in playing a classic is not limited to simply the price of Force of Will. There seem to be enough to go around to fill up the 24-40 places that would normally accompany a 2x PE, and if the price of Force of Will were $1000 or $1 tomorrow, that number would not fluctuate to any great degree. Secondly, because the price of Force of Will has doubled on since it went off sale over a year ago, it’s probable that most of the people who have them and are playing with them in tournaments obtained them long before they ever got to that price. While classic’s popularity has certainly grown over the past year, I wouldn’t classify it’s popularity as double what it was before it was off sale and PEs were still firing. Yet those damn statistics are alarming, aren’t they? The first and most poignant statistic is that Force of Will is now climbing up to $60, which I’m sure eliminates a significant number of people if there were a cut-off point from which you had to spend money on a classic deck. Thankfully a lot of people who would never pay that got them for a lot less. We’ll get back to it’s price in a bit. Right now I’d like to concentrate on another statistic: the usage of Force of Will. In the 10 tournaments that have completed as of when I wrote this article, 53 out of 80 Top 8 decks contained Force of Will. Essentially, 2 out of every 3 winning decklists are sporting Force of Will. It is approached in usage only by 3 other cards – Polluted Delta (57 decks), Pithing Needle (57 Decks), and Brainstorm (51decks). However, since every single deck that plays Force plays 4x, the only other card that approaches it in terms of total numbers (212) is Brainstorm (197). And Brainstorm is a $0.50 common.
(3) Polluted Delta - $17
Now, some of those cards are short term problems for the format. For example, any card in that list that is still a part of Extended is short term, as Extended is currently experiencing a heavy demand period while Extended season is going on in Magic: Pants. These cards were recently available for less than $10 for a period of time (even Tarmogoyf could at one point be had for $9) , so are likely to fall back in price, and with the exception of Tarmogoyf and Breeding Pool, are leaving extended in the next couple of years. Tarmogoyf is it’s own beast – I’m going to leave it out of the discussion because it would take another whole article to discuss it, but long term Tarmogoyf may or may not be a problem on it’s own, dependant on the meta game and how much wizards pushses cheap creatures. While it’s not inconceivable that they actually print a more efficient creature, let’s just hope it’s price remains relatively low. Breeding Pool is going to be outmoded by Tropical Island when MED3 is released, and is a total non-starter. In my estimation, these cards are not long term monetary deterrents to eternal online formats. The only cards that don’t fit this mould are the two blue duals, Phyrexian Dreadnought and Meddling Mage, and even the latter two are well down the list. I think it’s safe to say Stiflenought will always be relatively useful in eternal formats, as will Mage, but ownership of either card probably won’t impact your ability to play a variety of decks long-tem. There are other cards, like Vampiric Tutor and Lion’s Eye Diamond, which are restricted and/or under used and while at any time they might prove expensive to one deck or another. However, singleton cards aren’t usually too much of a problem. And LED will very likely get it’s time on the restricted list too – after all, Yawgmoth’s Will is coming. So that brings us to the big three, as I will now label them. Force of Will, Underground Sea and Tundra. The problems with these cards are like blueberry stains on a cashmere rug. They aren’t going away with a simple scrub. Not only will these cards never see a reprint in a paper magic set (and therefore online as well), they are also unlikely to ever be surpassed in terms of power level. So why is this problem? Well if you are just joining online eternal, a playset of Seas and Force of Will, the two most common and expensive denominators in the game, will run you a cool $384. That is pretty damn expensive. It’s about $150-200 more than you would expect to pay for the same cards in Legacy (not withstanding versions of Sea and condition of the cards). Wizards has already gone on to say that they would like Legacy to be more accessible in paper – where they are hampered by a reserve list – but it’s I think it’s fairly clear they are happy with the price of entering Legacy – that is expensive enough to keep secondary market concerns placated, but cheap enough that the task of joining isn’t insurmountable to the dedicated players wallet.
There would essentially be a bar at the gate for Eternal formats; you’d either own these three cards, or you’d be relegated to playing (depending on the current meta) what appears to be less than half the decks available. The other 3 dual lands, while not nearly as popular, wouldn’t exactly be the price of a cup of coffee either. Not a good situation. So this is the problem. Classic is healthy now, but it’s (and other eternal formats) growth potential is severely limited. Hence it becomes a matter of timing. And here is the crux of the matter – there is going to be a reckoning for the classic format, where it’s participants are going to bitterly argue back and forth about what the format should be about. It really came about when paper decided to make an eternal format that wasn’t nearly as expensive as Type 1 (Vintage), called Type 1.5 (Legacy) which had the expected consequence of disallowing a number of extremely broken plays. This has given rise to two type of eternal players – those who like the “brokenness” of cards like Necropotence, Yawgmoth’s Will and fast mana, and those who appreciate a type of game based less on contracted decisions in longer turns for a game with more turns with less consequence based on every move, particularly on what plays are available in the first two turns. Neither one is better than the other, but expectations for both types in eternal formats are there. The problem is classic can’t straddle the fence in satisfying both groups forever, and eventually, whether by the cards released in MED3 or in Urza’s Saga, Classic is inevitably leaning toward placating the Vintage-style members (with good reason – if not, there would be cards released that you essentially couldn’t play anywhere – for example several rares in MED2 would be useless cards and duals would be even MORE expensive!). Hence, the split is coming, and the only way to make sure both formats have enough constituent members, and particularly that the growth of Legacy isn’t stifled, is to ensure that the monetary barriers to entry aren’t shared between the two and aren’t too high. And statistics point to the big three becoming exactly that. Since Force of Will is hampered with a pseudo-promise to never be released as part of another MED, there seems to be no other alternative but to release that card a promo. Even if WoTC gave away 10,000 packs of MED1 tomorrow, that would only be 182 more Forces or 45 playsets. That means 45 more people could play classic/legacy. The numbers are staggering. I see no alternative but to make Force of Will some sort of promo program before WoTC decides it’s time to try out Legacy online. Hell it might even be nice for someone (*cough* Worth *cough*) to just come out and say that, sometime in the future, he plans on releasing FoW as a promo. That would certainly cut down on the number being held in hoarding or in speculation as it appears is being done currently. Meddling Mage once lost $20 just on the speculation it was in Time Spiral. At least, I don’t see how doing this could hurt. As for the Dual Lands, well, thankfully no such promises were made. The first thing WoTC can do for themselves is to make sure not to repeat the problems of MED2, where they made the constructed playable rare/ jank rare ratio so low. There are essentially only 6 constructed playable rares (5 duals and Necro) in MED2 of any value that aren’t restricted, WotC seems to be missing the bar with how viable the rares from that era are in Classic. For example, one of their first preview cards was Sea Drake. Look, sea Drake is fun and all but no way are you going to be drafting MED2 in the hopes of getting a Sea Drake should you bomb out. So hopefully MED3 will have at least 5 duals, Mana Drain, and preferably a number of good casual/playable cards like the Abyss. My guess is it will only be slightly better than MED2 was (hopefully they keep the set small so the frequency of good cards is higher), so with any luck MED3 will not produce dual land prices like we see now. Secondly, I see no reason why MED4 (what I expect will be the final Chapter of MED) couldn’t just go right ahead and have all 10 duals in it. Just reprint them all – after all, duals appeared in both the original print run and Revised, and it’s the large Revised printing that keeps their price in paper affordable. I see no reason why that parallel wouldn’t hold for MED4. If there were 10 duals in MED4, for sure the draft rate would remain quite high while people made good aquiring duals – and last I heard, WoTC likes high draft rates. There seems to be no end for the appetite for dual lands – might as well feed that appetite and make money while ensuring the long-term stability of the eternal formats online. So remember, while stats may be worse than damn lies, they are also better then anecdotal evidence – the signs pointing to a problem on the horizon are there. I fully expect nothing to be done until the prices for these cards reaches “crisis” levels. I’m not sure anyone agrees on what that level is, but whatever it is, it appears sooner or later we will hit it. Dangerlinto. |
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