Post
by if4ko » 4 years ago
I recently posted about this on Reddit, but this entire thing is a poison pill for our local game stores.
WOTC floats a special product as a thank-you to LGSes. The product, which contains the five most demanded reprints in the game, is a glorified re-issue of From the Vault or Mythic Edition under the Secret Lair name. The mere branding, along with the desperate need for fetchland reprints, inherently suggests to people that it should be print-to-demand, but it's not. And to top it all off, their unofficial "MSRP" from the announcement video is about $170, or about a 25% discount from TCGPlayer. At WOTC's price point, it's less value than War of the Spark: Mythic Edition, FTV: Transform, or even FTV: Lore had when they were released. If you're wondering if this is a "meaningful reprint", consider the fact that Misty Rainforest got bought out a month after Secret Lair: Ultimate Edition was announced.
Because WOTC knowingly and willfully decided not to supply enough SL:UE to remotely satisfy that demand, players, drunk on FOMO started a mad rush to buy it anyway. Since demand for fetches is so high and some people will pay a premium for Seb McKinnon or John Avon art, distributors and local game stores raised prices to meet that demand. They are stuck in a Catch-22: either you sell SL:UE at break-even and miss out on your windfall, or you raise prices above "MSRP" and piss off your customers. Even if they do the former, some customers will still be angry because they're still priced out of the product.
Speaking of customers, some of them who want fetchlands for their Modern or Commander decks, but are lower-information will blame their LGS for "raising prices" when WOTC failed to set a proper market value for them. When they direct their pitchforks at WOTC, they shrug and say it's your local game store's fault. Never mind that WOTC, the manufacturer suggested a retail price for SL:UE, it wasn't an official MSRP. It was an unofficial "expected price of sale". Truly Orwellian stuff we're dealing with, folks. Customers are angry, LGSes have to deal with angry customers, and WOTC laughs all the way to the bank, reaping the windfall and declaring the experiment of LGS-based Secret Lair sales a failure. The players lose, the game stores lose, and with no places to play, Wizards loses.
This is far worse than the Mythic Edition ever was. At least then they weren't trying to %$#% over your LGS too.