Let's Talk MTGO Redemption Sets

wildfire393
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Post by wildfire393 » 2 years ago

I'll be the first person to admit, I'm definitely something of a whale for M:TG. My long-term goal is to collect one of every uniquely-named card, and I'm actually fairly far along in doing so. By my estimates, it'll take another ~2-3 years to backfill most of the missing stuff from my collection while staying on top of new releases.

I'm regularly tossing significant sums of money at the game, both for acquiring newly-printed cards as well as tracking down old ones. But the biggest problem I'm having is that it seems like none of Wizards' traditionally-sold products are really aimed at me.

I don't really play limited, so Draft boosters are right out. I've avoided buying any of those for over a year at this point and I'm much happier not having to sift through and dispose of hundreds of extra commons and uncommons while still ending up far shy of set completion.

So maybe Set boosters are more my speed? Except, not really. The ratio of R/M to C/U is slightly more favorable, meaning less waste, but there's still a lot of chaff and even two boxes is likely to leave me short about half the set's mythics.

I'm a collector and a whale, so clearly Collector boosters should be something tailored to my needs, right? Nope. There's far fewer chaff commons and uncommons, but it actually goes a bit too far in that direction, to the point where two boxes (in addition to being about twice the price of two Set/Draft boxes) leaves me having to track down a number of C/U to complete my set. While the rare distribution is better and two boxes would get me close to a set of R/M, it's still likely bogged down with duplicates and short a fair few; and at twice the price that's even a little rich for my blood. And all the special versions (foils and booster fun) are neat, but don't actually further my goals, and make it harder to catalog what is missing as I have to deal with beyond-normal-count set numbers, multiple versions of things, etc.

There is one product that is cost effective and extremely time-efficient (no sorting, no removing duplicates, no TCG cart selection to fill in gaps) at meeting my need - MTGO Redemption sets. There's still a few problems with these though:
1) They are much slower than traditional products. The redemption sets aren't released until around a month after the paper release, plus the shipping time from there to my door. The AFR prerelease was July 16th, and I just got my redemption set today, having ordered it as soon as WotC released them. That's a six-week lag time, and with Wizards' aggressive preview schedule, I've now got less than a week to actually incorporate any of these cards I want into a deck before the next set's previews begin.
2) I can't get it at my LGS. I like being able to support my LGS. Even if the price is a few bucks more expensive than the cheapest online merchant, contributing to their doors staying open so I have a place to play is something I try to do when able. If I could order my redemption set through them rather than a faceless ebay seller, I would 100% of the time, even if it meant it cost 10-15% more.
3) It doesn't include the extras. Every premiere set these days comes with some set of additional cards; generally this is Commander deck exclusive cards, but there's also things like Kaldheim's Set/Theme Booster exclusives, M21's Planeswalker deck cards, etc. Tracking down a handful of these isn't as problematic as a whole set, but it'd still be nice to get them from a one-stop shop.
4) Non-standard sets. This is the real big kicker. Sets like Commander Legends, Battlebond, Modern Horizons, and similar have a ton of new cards, but there's no redemption available for them. That means my options are back to maybe poor-fit pack choices and always mass singles orders.

In my ideal world, WotC would offer LGS's a small number of redemption sets, made available at the Pre-release to players who preorder (hell, I'd even consider signing up for a subscription service to do this automatically). If I'm burning an entire genie wish here, I'd also love for it to cover non-Premiere sets and mechanically-unique extras like associated Commander deck cards.

I'd love to hear what other players (and collectors) think about this. I imagine it's something that could be very helpful to Commander players, as you get every single new tool to experiment with. And competitive Standard players would have this as an emergency valve to keep enough copies of high-demand mythics circulating so as not to catapult the price to the stratosphere.

user_938036
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Post by user_938036 » 2 years ago

The problem is Wizards doesn't "sell" redemption sets. And they have no intention of ever "selling" a product like it. The main reason being in undermines the core concept of how their product is currently distributed. Though the main reason they would never do this is that it would put a hard cap on how much a set costs and that isn't something they are interested in doing. The soft cap in place more than meets their needs of keeping prices where they want them. So sadly such a product would only hurt their bottom line and while it could be great for the players there is a very strong chance that if they implemented such a thing it would be at a price point where it would be woefully unpopular and quickly canceled. There just aren't enough "super whales" who want one of every card while there are plenty of non-whales who want to open packs and sell valuable cards to "tournament whales" who are only after the high-value cards.

wildfire393
Posts: 260
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Post by wildfire393 » 2 years ago

user_938036 wrote:
2 years ago
The problem is Wizards doesn't "sell" redemption sets. And they have no intention of ever "selling" a product like it. The main reason being in undermines the core concept of how their product is currently distributed. Though the main reason they would never do this is that it would put a hard cap on how much a set costs and that isn't something they are interested in doing. The soft cap in place more than meets their needs of keeping prices where they want them. So sadly such a product would only hurt their bottom line and while it could be great for the players there is a very strong chance that if they implemented such a thing it would be at a price point where it would be woefully unpopular and quickly canceled. There just aren't enough "super whales" who want one of every card while there are plenty of non-whales who want to open packs and sell valuable cards to "tournament whales" who are only after the high-value cards.
Right, they don't sell them directly. That's what I'm hoping could change. But they very much sell them *indirectly*, as the components to exchange for one are exclusively available in MTGO, which Wizards runs exclusively. So rather than get money directly from me in exchange for this product, they'd rather get it like three or four levels removed: I give money to an eBay seller who gave money to a goatbot runner who gave resources to actual players who maybe gave WotC some money for the tix to play in drafts. Why is WotC spending resources supporting this ecosystem for marginal gain when they could just take my money directly or via an LGS?

user_938036
Posts: 338
Joined: 4 years ago
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Pronoun: he / him

Post by user_938036 » 2 years ago

wildfire393 wrote:
2 years ago
user_938036 wrote:
2 years ago
The problem is Wizards doesn't "sell" redemption sets. And they have no intention of ever "selling" a product like it. The main reason being in undermines the core concept of how their product is currently distributed. Though the main reason they would never do this is that it would put a hard cap on how much a set costs and that isn't something they are interested in doing. The soft cap in place more than meets their needs of keeping prices where they want them. So sadly such a product would only hurt their bottom line and while it could be great for the players there is a very strong chance that if they implemented such a thing it would be at a price point where it would be woefully unpopular and quickly canceled. There just aren't enough "super whales" who want one of every card while there are plenty of non-whales who want to open packs and sell valuable cards to "tournament whales" who are only after the high-value cards.
Right, they don't sell them directly. That's what I'm hoping could change. But they very much sell them *indirectly*, as the components to exchange for one are exclusively available in MTGO, which Wizards runs exclusively. So rather than get money directly from me in exchange for this product, they'd rather get it like three or four levels removed: I give money to an eBay seller who gave money to a goatbot runner who gave resources to actual players who maybe gave WotC some money for the tix to play in drafts. Why is WotC spending resources supporting this ecosystem for marginal gain when they could just take my money directly or via an LGS?
Wizards support that ecosystem because at every reasonable level they are the ones profiting. A simplified version of the sheet "purchase" is lots of money is given to wizards to sell packs. Then a small percentage of the cards from these packs is given back to wizards in exchange for the sheet. This is a massive win for wizards. The fact that you bought your tickets and cards from a company or that some players are able to use playpoints is an insignificant blip to Wizards. The vast majority of cards that exist on MTGO exist because Wizards was given money. Also, very few resources are spent by wizards on this cycle while companies literally pour money into MTGO to keep it running.

At the end of the day the current model is the grease the keeps MTGO spinning while the suggested change wouldn't positively impact sales.

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