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Too Much is Not Enough - by Dangerlinto
You see, as I intend to show, there is simply too much left to release, and not enough of it is any good. I think for the purposes of this discussion, we can assume there will be at least an Master’s Edition 4 – not only does it seem like the icon is waiting for a third and finally fourth quarter circle to cover the icon, but I think it’s just general consensus that is where we are headed, and I don’t think I’ll have to try to hard to convince anyone of that. However, recently I have heard talk from fellow classic enthusiasts about an MED5. And maybe beyond. These musings may have been only speculative, but it seemed to me that some people believe that there will continue to be MEDs beyond the 4th one. At first glance, I immediately dismissed such notions – in my estimation, there simply aren’t enough useful cards left to put together an MED5. And when I say useful, I mean cards that will satisfy the two large camps that comprise the vast majority of people who’ll buy into MED sets. Tourney staples and nostalgic cards. The first camp is easy to appease. While there may be some argument about what cards will ultimately get used in classic (At this point I feel compelled to point out there are numerous people who argued vehemently that Armageddon would be such a card, and I can’t resist a good “told-ya-so”), sufficed to say even the cards that *might* get used in classic are a part of this list, and that people are generally in consensus when it comes to the cards that the mere appearance of which appeases them. The second group is a much more clouded lot. You see, what is nostalgic for some is not automatically so for others, and while some cards are a home run in this area, like Juzam Djinn, most cards fit into this group in a very hazy manner. While the first group relies mainly on hard fact (the card is of tournament quality), the latter relies on fuzzy feelings a user might have had years and years ago. It’s almost impossible to find a card that has a nostalgic feeling that appeases so many people. And yet it’s almost always possible to find at least one person who did have fuzzy feelings for a card. So, with that in mind, I set out to list out which cards I thought were tournament staples that could still appear in an MED (by the MED rules – pre-mirage and unreleased in a set online) and which ones I thought appeased my warm fuzzy feelings. So I started to go through the list, and then realized how pointless any list I made would be: Everyone was sure to agree (mostly) with the tourney staples, and practically everyone would disagree with the nostalgic cards, and so I tossed my list out. But, I did have one useful list – one that may have much more interesting applications. I give to you: All The Remaining MED Eligible Cards I’m hoping that you are still reading, but honestly, it is very easy to get lost in the 1229 remaining cards and just sit there and poor over them. But more important to me are the numbers involved. It’s 1229 cards.
Folks, if you think there is going to be an MED5, then why not an MED6, MED7 and MED8 and MED9? That’s about how many MEDs it would take to actually fit all the cards on the list so that none were missed. Or is it you really think that there are enough cards on that list that would satisfy the constructed enthusiasts and the appreciably nostalgic to divide into all the MEDs that would need to be printed to cover all of the remaining cards? I hope I need no further proof than the list itself to show that is a large “X” filling the “not a chance” box. And so you see, too much is left, and not enough is any good. Considering how much grief WoTC has taken with the contents of MED2 and it’s penchant for providing 45 cards worth of utter junk to the average draftee, I’m hoping that the message has sunk in to stop holding back on the good cards and start filling out these sets properly – or at least at a good ratio. If you are only going to put 6 top-notch quality tournament rares in a set, you can’t put it in a 240 card set that doesn’t draft well and is only of interest to a much smaller portion of your player base. Especially one filled with Fallen Empires and Homelands, two of the most reviled sets in Magic’s history. And I find it inconceivable that they could intentionally repeat MED1’s performance by having just a single tournament worthy card (albeit with a small supporting cast) in a 180 card set. By the same token, you can expect WoTC to string it out as long as they can. After all, the more sets they sell is essentially more money for them, and they can sell more sets by including more crap in each and increasing the number of sets, right? Wrong. I don’t think it’s a far stretch to say that MED1 and MED2 were both failures as releases in terms of attracting the masses to draft those sets. MED1 was simply never heavily drafted (Leagues and a heavy dose of those homerun nostalgia cards saved it from being a travesty), as it was a poor draft format, and while MED2 was admittedly much better in terms of limited balance, it didn’t take long for Underground Sea to become the most expensive in-print card in the history of MTGO. As of this writing, not even queues that effectively make MED2 packs priced at $1 have taken it down more than a small notch. No matter how hard they try, (and it will be much harder now that they’ve used up the Fallen Empires themes) to make the drafting environment fun, the only way to make sure MED cards get in the hands of those that want them is to make sure there is a healthy dose of those cards that appease our two groups in each set. So see for yourself just how easy that might be. Oh, and for extra fun, while your at it, try doing so without including any tournament worthy cards that sell in paper-form for more than $100, since WoTC seems so squeamish to do so. (You may include Strategic Planning, since Imperial Seal was in MED2). Now, this is why I have a hard time believing in MED5. If there is to be an MED5, it means one of a handful of things. 1) That MED3, MED4 and MED5 would all be mediocre sets at best. As you’ll quickly find out, there aren’t enough unprinted rares that anyone needs 4x of to fill 3 more sets. In fact, there were really only 12 of these cards to begin with, and one was promoted to rare and I assume another will be. 10 dual lands, Mishra’s Workshop, Bazaar of Baghdad, Force of Will (was promoted) and Mana Drain (I assume will be a rare when it’s released). The rest of the cards that are or would be included in large number of tournament worthy decks are all restricted. It would be possible to also increase this number by promoting some cards to rare that I think most would consider an inappropriate promotion – for example, making Sinkhole a rare would probably up the rares most would need, but moving it all the way from common to rare seems unnatural. Nostalgia cards simply don’t have the draw that tournament quality cards do. The only redeeming quality here with the remaining cards is that there are a lot of favourites still to pick from, since Legends, as nostalgic as set as there has ever been, is highly underrepresented in the currently available MEDs. Speaking of auto-restricted cards - you can also see the difficulty that lies in releasing cards that are automatically restricted on release. These cards can’t drive a lot of sales. While the people who are interested in the tourney cards are striving hard to get, say, a playset of duals, finding someone to sell them a single, say, Fastbond, isn’t much of a problem, because people are bound to have more than enough of them in their chase to get 4x of the cards they want. Hence, you really can’t count most of those cards on the Vintage restricted list as being the type of cards that will help drive sales. 2) In order to alleviate the above mediocrity, the sets contain a lot of reprints. So maybe MED3 has 5 duals and some good cards, and we’re all happy, but now we are looking at two more MEDs and no more dual lands? They can’t just make new tournament relevant cards. Something is going to have to drive sales. At MED4 or MED5, WoTC would have to go back to the proverbial well to and pull up some reprints to sell the set. 3) They put in the P9. It wouldn’t matter that they are restricted; the P9 would sell any set all on their own. It could be the P9 and 51 other rare of the quality of Choaslace and Gravebind, it would sell. At any rate, I guess I should propose some solutions. First of all, the quickest and simplest solution I can think of to the problem of restricted cards is to make them of the mythic rarity. And while I know that the Mythic rarity was invented with the idea that it would contain limited-bomb Timmy cards that would ruin a draft if they appeared at the normal rate and not for constructed staples, it also was invented with the idea they’d never release a card you could only use one of – ever. This approach works from several angles. Firstly, it allows WoTC to create another subsection of cards that will drive pack sales from it’s main group – people interested in the constructed rares. After all, you might have picked up all your duals, but you might not have picked up all your mythics. Secondly, it allows those mythic cards to appear at a rate more in line with the rate they will appear in constructed use. So if a mythic rare is twice as rare as a regular rare (this depends on the # of rares, # of mythics and the rate at which they appear in a pack), but is only used 1/4th the amount of another classic staple, we are still talking double the amount of mythics needed in comparison to their full playset counterparts. So we aren’t talking about $50 rares, here. Hence, this solution might allow you to pack all the necessary and useful cards into just two highly successful MED releases instead of three mediocre or crappy ones.
Him: “How was your draft?”
Something just seems wrong with that, but it is what already occurs with Imperial Seal and Mana Crypt, and I feel its just, well, wrong. Kinda like it’s wrong for an American to not like apple pie, or a Canadian to not like hockey… or a Russian to not like vodka. I hope you get what I mean. Another solution: Even if we got the P9 and there was a possibility for a relevant and successful MED5 and everything was honky-dory in the world of MED releases, there would still be several hundred unreleased cards left. To some, the concept that there is a card that exists in paper that doesn’t online is simply abhorrent, even if that card is as useless as Purelace. Well for those people I have a plan; if all that’s left is total chaff and unloved garbage, they could release a single pack that could house one of each of these cards. They could call it “FTV: What’s Left”. Over eight hundred cards of pure crap for $34.99!. Sounds like a good deal to me. Maybe even a good deal for casual lovers. And that’s all I have for now. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the handy reference guide to the remaining eligible MED cards. As always, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts in our forums. |
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I don’t expect many people to get the reference of this title, which is actually the background chorus line in U2’s track Numb from Zooropa. And even though our favourite Irish crooners were trying to dazzle us with their ability to re-invent themselves while trying to throw social commentary into their music, the verse is at least tangentially appropriate enough to the topic at hand that I felt the need to use it to tie my favourite band with my favourite subject: The contents of Master’s Edition sets.
