What bothers you most about the Walking Dead commanders?

[pokken]

Not to make limited availability black border promos

I am starting to see these differently after my knee-jerk reaction. They're nowhere near as restricted as say, promo cards for attending a convention. These will absolutely flood the market, and there is no evidence there is any limit to the number of SL's they print.

They're far more available to most players than most limited products.

Look at every other secret lair product. There're bajillions of them out there easily attainable. Even the insert planeswalkers which were rarer are pretty cheap and easy to come by.

[toctheyounger]

None of the options really cover my ire, and I guess it's partly because it's a multitude of things that irk me about the scenario. I guess ultimately it comes down to the fact that to me this is Wizards trying to print money in a ham fisted, blatant way that screams 'we have you and you know it'.

Ultimately though, I won't be buying them, a)because I can't and b) because I have zero interest whatsoever in TWD, or for that matter anything that breaks the immersion of MtG lore. That's just cheesy and gross. Would I feel differently if the cards were super busted strong, or way cooler? Or if there was a different Vorthos flavour to em, say Middle Earth or Castlevania? Maaaaybe, but I still wouldn't spend the money on it.

What I'm really interested in is whether/how wizards will walk this back or make it right. They either maintain the stance they have now, or they try (somehow) to godzilla print them into an upcoming set (and honestly, I thought for all money that they'd do this with Commander Legends), or they silver border them. Either way they manage it they're lying to someone, it's just going to be interesting to see whether their bottom line is more important to them than their customers.

I guess I shouldn't really be surprised or disappointed that a corporation would be so greedy, but it's a game, dammit, and I hate that not everyone can afford to have all of the pieces.

[JWK]

Look at every other secret lair product. There're bajillions of them out there easily attainable. Even the insert planeswalkers which were rarer are pretty cheap and easy to come by.

No other SL product included mechanically unique cards. You are comparing apples and airliners.

[pokken]

No other SL product included mechanically unique cards. You are comparing apples and airliners.

Which means there will be even more purchased and likely plenty for everyone.

[toctheyounger]

No other SL product included mechanically unique cards. You are comparing apples and airliners.

Which means there will be even more purchased and likely plenty for everyone.

For what its worth, I have it on good authority that print runs for these aren't as limited as Wizards would have you believe on face value. If they have demand exceed initial print runs they can, will and have done additional SL print runs before.

Do with that what you will I guess.

[pokken]

For what its worth, I have it on good authority that print runs for these aren't as limited as Wizards would have you believe on face value. If they have demand exceed initial print runs they can, will and have done additional SL print runs before.

Do with that what you will I guess.

Yeah, I have not ever had a hard time getting one. They absolutely reprinted the Theros Stargazing ones to fill demand. I had friends who didn't get them for 3-4 months but they all got them.

[toctheyounger]

For what its worth, I have it on good authority that print runs for these aren't as limited as Wizards would have you believe on face value. If they have demand exceed initial print runs they can, will and have done additional SL print runs before.

Do with that what you will I guess.

Yeah, I have not ever had a hard time getting one. They absolutely reprinted the Theros Stargazing ones to fill demand. I had friends who didn't get them for 3-4 months but they all got them.

I spoke to my LGS owner about the TWD's today and this is precisely what happened to him. It turns up 4 months after they say they're out of stock? I call BS. FWIW he's loving this whole TWS story arc with Wizards because he wants to see the secret lair product die in a fire. It screws with his bread and butter, so fair call I say.

It doesn't change how I feel. I still think the whole thing is crummy, but the fact is they can clearly skew things to work in their favour.

[Yatsufusa]

I gave the topic some thought, since it asked for "most".

I pointed out the the Unreleased/New cards thread that the most unnerving thing about the cards was how much they felt like celebrity vanity cards to people without knowledge of the franchise, but that's the cards themselves, not so much the situation.

Printing functionally new cards in a limited distribution so they could pseudo-reserve-list-strangle them is a scummy move, but at the end of the day it can also be easily reversed because they do have autonomy over to reprint.

The one, ultimate thing that bothers me at the end of the day is simply other IPs entering black-bordered Magic. It straight-up means the Comprehensive Rules has to acknowledge them now and that has functionally scarred the sanctity of the Comprehensive Rules of the entire game by itself. It doesn't matter how they intend to fix the "functional reprint problem" (assuming they're not even just lip-servicing it), the first print is the one the rules recognizes, even if they did reverse-Godzilla to functionally fix the multiple copies issue, it means the MAGIC-FLAVORED NAME is actually just FLAVOR TEXT for these TWD cards in its own game and honestly as a Vorthos, that's an insult to the Magic Brand.

The counter-argument to my irritation is that technically it has always been in the rules at the start - Arabian Nights and P3K pretty blatantly refer to well-known characters/events outside MTG. I admit I let off some leniency to those because MTG by itself was in its infancy then, but at the same time it adds a layer of hypocrisy to the TWD product - for years these old cards were treated as transparent by WotC even in reprints because they felt it was a mistake and wanted to steer the game of it and admittedly a lot of them aren't good in EDH (but they still don't print Three Visits, go figure), but TWD is a complete 180-degree flip with a slap that scars the MTG brand. Why not do a P3K-edition of new good Commander cards with already in-rules characters if you really want to test the waters?

Also at the very least, Arabian Nights was at least classic folk tales (just done too directly compared to today's standards) and P3K was historical (and pretty much a classic as well since there are fictional elements in the story-version). TWD is a modern-day series that (despite me never watched it, but from hearsay) I'm pretty sure is in no way making its way to "classic zombie stories" for generations, let alone millennia to come,

My faith in MTG lore has been admittedly eroded over recent years, but this is the first time I felt like it was dealt a potentially lethal blow because there's a distinction in the comprehensive rules. All things considered in the grand scheme I could be argued to be petty to be angry over this factor (rather than the new-cards-in-limited-run problem, which is still a problem I definitely won't deny), but it's a game, where else better could I be petty for than the game I've immersed myself for over a decade?

[Treamayne]

I thought WotC learned this lesson decades ago with DragonCon's Nalathni Dragon, and the Harper Prism exclusives Mana Crypt, Sewers of Estark, etc.).

If they can break the promise to not print mechanically unique black bordered cards in limited/unavailable runs, why can't they remove the reserved list?


That said, what I have not been able to find is a legit answer as to why these were not silver bordered.

Also, I'm fairly disappointed in the RC's decision to not ban these cards based on "barrier to entry."

These should be in the category of "don't use unless everyone agrees" (like silver bordered), not in the category of "use unless everybody agrees not to do so."

[pokken]

limited/unavailable runs,

People are ridiculously overstating what limited availability is if each person can order 10-30 of the things. It's nothing at all like the previous circumstances.

[DirkGently]

So I've been thinking a lot about this recently, obviously. I see there being basically two main focuses of contention, which are roughly pts 1 and 2 on the RC's statement. The flavor of the product, and the distribution of the product. (Pt 3 I really couldn't care less about tbh, but I also don't see it being a major focus on the conversation)

So, starting with the problem of non-mtg flavored cards with a black border.

My initial inclination (and my first vote on the poll) was to vote for that option, but if I'm being honest I don't think that's true. Or at least it's not specific enough - because not only am I fine with P3K and arabian, but I actually love those sets. I love old cards that have real-world flavor text on them too, like the TS elliot wasteland. I'm not really a huge fan of the mtg lore - I like that it exists to give aesthetics to the cards, but I don't care to read any of the stories or anything. Yes, I think TWD is a garbage show with a garbage plot being handled badly by a garbage network, but mtg isn't exactly crushing it with incredible pathos or anything, especially not recently. Compared to the tragedy of darth bolas the wise, 3 kingdoms is way more engaging to me, not least because it has some history and truth to it.

My problem with having TWD on the cards is not one of black and white, but one of degrees. TWD has always felt like a heavily marketed show to me, a transparent product trying to sell itself as hard as possible even when it knows it isn't very good. Having it infringe upon my own hobbies feels like an invasion, partly because it is a modern show and all shows are commercial enterprises, but especially because of how I feel about TWD in particular. Flavor-wise, it's also got the too-modern problem, the too-close-to-the-real-world problem (P3K has this problem to an extent, but fantasies it up a bit at least, plus being more historical it's at least got the "swords" of "swords and sorcery"). But reimagine the product except with Game of Thrones instead, and if I'm being honest, it bothers me a lot less - at least in regards this element. Do I think it's tasteless to use TWD to sell magic cards and vice versa? Yes, absolutely, but I can't deny a certain degree of hypocrisy in that opinion. I, personally, dislike TWD, but there's nothing categorically bad about it necessarily. If TWD was a public domain work instead of a currently-marketed show, if the writing was less terrible, if it had fewer guns in it, I doubt I'd see the problem nearly as strongly.

Alright, so that's point one. Point two, the distribution.

Time to go into a bit of a rant. Or perhaps a ramble.

I think early magic was a lot like LEGOs. Here's a thing we created. It exists. Now use your imagination and build whatever you want with it! Some people will build a deck full of dragons, some people will build a deck that synergizes around artifacts, some people will build a deck with nothing but black lotuses, channels, and fireballs. It's an empty canvas, go nuts! And while of course iterations changed the extreme open-endedness of the original product, I think most earlier sets don't have an obvious vibe of pushing certain cards, but rather pushing the game as a whole. "This is a fun game with lots of unique possibilities to explore. Why not buy some random cards and see what you can create?"

I think the first big step downhill started with the introduction of planeswalkers and mythic rares. Because now wotc wasn't just selling the game, but they were marketing specific cards. "Look how powerful this card is. Why not buy some random cards and maybe you'll get one?" But I think it's been a gradual decline since then. At first I think the intent was for these new cards to fit into the model that already existed. But more and more, decks aren't just supplemented by chase mythics, but defined by them. And I think a lot of the fault lies in the popularity of commander as a format.

Commander is casual, so in theory there's no requirement to keep up with the meta by buying new cards. It's also not rotating, so again, no requirement to buy new cards. And unfortunately for WotC, commander has become more and more and MORE popular, to the point that it's swallowed a lot of the customer base - both existing and new - that might otherwise be playing standard. Simply offering a bunch of similarly-powered cards with interesting possibilities might catch some players' attention, but for those entrenched in their decks it's probably not going to get them to start spending much money. And meanwhile, they're constantly being pressured by Hasbro to produce more and more money, because capitalism sucks taints sometimes.

So they have to create cards to motivate the great unwashed masses of commander players to buy product. At first, commander precons with cards designed to appeal to commander players, and increasingly obvious designed-for-commander cards in standard sets, which are usually expensive and niche enough to avoid rocking the boat in other formats.

But this starts to get tricky because they really need to keep pushing power creep, or commander players - who aren't just looking for a deck with a 1% better winrate like a standard player, but want something big and splashy and new - will stop buying new stuff. Every time you're trying to get the commander player to go out and buy a new product, it's gotta be more pushed every time, or it won't be more exciting than what he's already got. And while some commander players might be considering a whole intricate deck, most commander players are - apologies - morons. They see a card that looks big and splashy - Yarok, Muldrotha, Golos, Chulane, whatever - and that's what gets their attention. That's what gets them to go out and buy more product. And eventually, in order to get the commander players' attention, you've gotta push the cards so hard that they become a problem for other formats even. I think we're starting to see this problem with cards like Korvold, Uro, and Omnath. Maybe wotc will realize how bad this is for their other formats and dial it back a bit, or at least stick to slower, more expensive bombs that are less likely to cause problems in standard, but they can't stop pushing or commander players won't buy.

All of this has created a situation where it's no longer about the game, but about the cards. Because it's the cards that are getting people to get out and buy stuff, which is all that matters. People hate rotation, and I get that, but rotation is a way to keep this sort of thing from happening to the game, because it guarantees that people will keep buying new stuff out of necessity, without needing to constantly flash newer shinier things in people's faces. Look at all the stupid gimmicks wotc is resorting to, in order to get our attention so we'll spend more. Now we've got alternate arts, full borders, godzilla cards - just owning the card isn't enough, you need to get the one-in-a-billion full alternate art foil version so you can show all your friends how cool you are. So keep cracking those %$#%$#% packs, little piggies.

So finally we come to the current nadir, though I fear it will keep going down, and down; how far I cannot say. But make no mistake, this is a huge step down into the stygian pit that this game is destined to be swallowed by. Remember how it started off like LEGOs, just a fun thing that exists that you can build with using your imagination? SLxTWD is the antithesis to that beautiful dream. It's not about the game at all anymore. You get, what, five actual cards? For $50. There's no game to play here, there's no imagination. There's just a desperate hand grabbing at your wallet.

I want to talk about the price a bit because I think it's going overlooked among the other things. Only 2 people have voted for it, but I think it might actually be my #2 choice at this point. The original model of MtG was that they'd sell a bunch of random stuff, some would be good and some bad, and the secondary market could figure that out, wotc didn't really care. So yeah, dual lands are now absurdly expensive. Bummer. But wotc doesn't make money off the duals being expensive. If anything they're losing tons of money by not reprinting them. It's fine to hate the reserved list, I mean I get it, but in a lot of ways I think it represents something I love about magic - sometimes cards are really good and mostly they're not, but wotc doesn't exploit that fact. They just make random stuff. If they accidentally make a $1000 card, then that's just how it goes.

The pricing of these is different. I think the original lairs were definitely a testing ground for this sort of thing. Because yeah, everyone knows that bitterblossom is worth whatever the SL cost if you were buying it on the secondary market, but obviously it doesn't cost anything to wotc to print it. But people accepted the cost because the secondary market had already spoken. 15 cards for $3 a pack or whatever is obviously a bit steep, but y'know it takes a lot of time to make art and design the sets distribution and yadda yadda, and if you squint your eyes you could kind of see how it wasn't toooo outrageous. Sure, you probably only actually cared about the rare most of the time unless you were drafting, but I think the semblance of value from all the junk commons at least made it feel like you were getting something that took effort, even if it likely wasn't useful to you personally.

JTMS was $100 because it was the best card in the set by a lot. That price was so high because of all the other cards that "took the hit" financially. The EV of a pack is never going to go too high, or else they'll just get cracked and cracked until the supply reaches a reasonable equilibrium, at least while it's in print. So while people were digging for JTMS, all the other cards got opened a ton too, but without JTMS's demand, and were worth nothing. When card is worth a lot, it's because other cards are worth less. I can forgive a card getting super expensive because in the end, WotC doesn't necessarily profit. They're only selling booster packs of random cards, and the random cards are only as valuable as the average value of those random cards. So sure, Ashaya is a $10 card, but that's because nearly every other card that wotc also spent a bunch of time designing in ZNR is worth less, and mostly worth much less. WotC makes a couple hundred cards, sells them in boosters, some of those cards are Ashayas that make the boosters worth buying, and some are the nahiri's lithomancys that do not, even though wotc spent a bunch of time on that card too. And that's even within the paradigm of designing pushed cards like Ashaya explicitly to sell more packs. In a more beautiful, naïve world, where wotc just makes random stuff without trying to push (mostly towards commander players), it takes even more effort creating cards to end up with just a couple that become expensive.

With SLxTWD, WotC isn't playing that game anymore. They don't need to make a bunch of random cards and watch a few of them push packs while most of them are "wasted" effort. Instead they'll just ONLY print the Ashayas, except instead of hoping they catch on and become popular, which is too risky even when they're deliberately pushing, they'll instead just set the price where they want it. $10 for a card. No effort to create a whole set from which the wheat can emerge from the chaff. Just 5 cards for $50. There's no justifying that kind of price for how little effort it takes to create. But they don't have to, because they've already trained us to accept those kinds of prices from the secondary market. And because of nightmares like JTMS and tarmo that have driven the price of cards outrageously high, they know they can count on our FOMO to drive us to buy this pig slop even if we don't even really WANT it. Because we might wish we'd bought it in the future.

Because of this requirement of endless growth (magic is on track to double its revenue from 2017-2023 or something, I believe I've heard - and that's not a "neat fact", that's a target they're being set by their higher-ups...and once that's achieved they'll have to keep doing even BETTER), they can't ever back down on this stuff. They can try to get new customers - and obviously they are, I'm sure that's a big part of their goal with this dumpster fire - but at the same time they're going to keep flogging their customers harder and harder and HARDER. And it's never going to lighten up. It might stay the same, at least for a while. But it'll never, never go back to what it was like before, because they can never let their revenue go down or even stagnate. It's gotta keep going up, or the game is dead and buried. So more products, all the time. Until you literally cannot spend more money on this game, they will keep increasing the pressure.

One last note, vis a vis selling via the internet, which is my actual vote for #1 worst thing. This is yet another way that they're no longer selling the game, but just the cards. Selling via an LGS keeps people coming into stores and playing. But if they were selling through stores, the product would have to sit on shelves, and the price might have to shift if people weren't buying enough of it. This distribution model is pure, unadulterated evil because they can set the price for exactly what they want and it doesn't have to hold up whatsoever. If the product sucks, if people hate it, they don't have to worry about warehouses full of garbage. They don't have to make a game that's good anymore. They just say "hey, we're printing fake $50 bills, how many can I put you down for?" Then they print that many, and they make their money, and they don't have to give a %$#% about what anybody thinks because it couldn't lose money if it tried. I can't imagine a product that more perfectly encapsulates late-stage capitalism.

If SLxTWD cost $10 (realistically it would be overpriced at $2 for just 5 cards, but I'm feeling generous) and I could buy it from my LGS, and if it wasn't an IP I find personally obnoxious, I might grumble but I'd probably pick it up. But between all the different factors, this is unforgivable. I'm soft-boycotting wotc, and unless it becomes completely untenable I intend to refuse to play against any of these cards. But I doubt any of it will make a difference. I doubt anything CAN make a difference. Their distribution model is too good. Until the game finally dies, they're never going to stop, because they'd be fools to stop. It's the perfect product for everyone except the people actually playing the game. The game isn't dead, not yet. But it's probably never going to be more alive. It's going to keep moving while it slowly rots from the inside out. It truly is the walking dead (TM).

Ba-dum...sad tssh.

[Treamayne]

limited/unavailable runs,

People are ridiculously overstating what limited availability is if each person can order 10-30 of the things. It's nothing at all like the previous circumstances.

I wasn't referring to number of cards printed, I was talking about those people who happen to be in a country to which WotC refuses to support. Essentially, WotC said "we ban Invoke Prejudice because being one community is important" then said "we won't sell product to you because your country is not important."

It's limited availability not because X number of cards will be printed (though, no matter how many pre-orders are received, I have a problem believing anything near the number of copies that would result from a standard release will hit the market) but because they are setting themselves up as the only point of sale, then essentially refusing to sell to 2/3d of the world.

[JWK]

As part of doing what little I can as a customer and player to let my thoughts about TWD SL cards be heard, and to speak with my wallet, I will not be supporting any created content that promotes these cards or shows them on their streamed games. I follow quite a few MTG commentary and livestream channels, supporting some on Patreon, subscribing to others. If I see these cards played on Game Nights, the EDHRECast, Mana Curves or whatever, or see any programs running deck tutorials about these commanders, that will be it for my involvement with those programs and content creators. I strongly urge others who feel as I do about those cards to consider drawing that sort of line in the sand regarding normalizing these cards and accepting them into the format.

[pokken]

, I was talking about those people who happen to be in a country to which WotC refuses to support. Essentially, WotC said "we ban Invoke Prejudice because being one community is important" then said "we won't sell product to you because your country is not important."

They're selling all over the world and continually expanding as far as I can tell. Wasn't it already pretty challenging to get Magic in some countries?

[umtiger]

Here I was thinking that my dislike of partner (+any other EDH-specific mechanic) and the yearly Commander pre-cons was a big deal.

[Legend]

Essentially, WotC said "we ban Invoke Prejudice because being one community is important" then said "we won't sell product to you because your country is not important."

I'm not sure about countries as I suspect they want to sell product in every country. But I'm sure Hasbro's okay with classism in every country - i.e. "This product isn't for you."

[Hermes_]

At this point, i'm mainly upset that they put a really good white card in this package.

[cryogen]

limited/unavailable runs,

People are ridiculously overstating what limited availability is if each person can order 10-30 of the things. It's nothing at all like the previous circumstances.

I wasn't referring to number of cards printed, I was talking about those people who happen to be in a country to which WotC refuses to support. Essentially, WotC said "we ban Invoke Prejudice because being one community is important" then said "we won't sell product to you because your country is not important."

It's limited availability not because X number of cards will be printed (though, no matter how many pre-orders are received, I have a problem believing anything near the number of copies that would result from a standard release will hit the market) but because they are setting themselves up as the only point of sale, then essentially refusing to sell to 2/3d of the world.

They're a corporation that makes money by selling cards and expanding the player base. I want to believe that if they could sell the cards in a country that had a market for Magic cards, they would do it.

[Wallycaine]

People are ridiculously overstating what limited availability is if each person can order 10-30 of the things. It's nothing at all like the previous circumstances.

I wasn't referring to number of cards printed, I was talking about those people who happen to be in a country to which WotC refuses to support. Essentially, WotC said "we ban Invoke Prejudice because being one community is important" then said "we won't sell product to you because your country is not important."

It's limited availability not because X number of cards will be printed (though, no matter how many pre-orders are received, I have a problem believing anything near the number of copies that would result from a standard release will hit the market) but because they are setting themselves up as the only point of sale, then essentially refusing to sell to 2/3d of the world.

They're a corporation that makes money by selling cards and expanding the player base. I want to believe that if they could sell the cards in a country that had a market for Magic cards, they would do it.

They have, in fact, said as much on multiple occasions. The countries that they can ship secret lairs to currently represents their current ability to do so, and they're still working on expanding that as time goes on. They actively want to sell people cards, it's not a matter of them thumbing their nose at you.

Edit: Oh, and to answer the question in the title, I put down "they don't bother me", but that's not entirely true. The playerbase reaction bothers me, but that's obviously not one of the listed options.

[pokken]

The current list of places you can order from that I can find:

United States
Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Japan, Macao, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam.
Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.

There's quite a list of notable exclusions (ones I can think of offhand - Thailand, Malaysia, Brazil, the Philippines).

I wonder if there is a way they could find a gamestore or two in each region to partner with? Like if anyone in the vicinity of Japan could order SL's care of Hareuya or something?

I dunno. I still see tons of good potentially coming from the direct model in terms of reduced waste and increased fairness to players. Definitely happy to keep an open mind abou tit.

The current model of Masters sets and FTVs and have really burned me out on the gamestore driven markets.

[Treamayne]

They actively want to sell people cards, it's not a matter of them thumbing their nose at you

Empirical evidence says otherwise. If they actively wanted to sell people cards, why did they stop selling commander product on MTGO after C14 (IIRC)? Along with many other products they support but do not sell. There are Commander cards and Conspiracy cards, and Ikoria Commander cards, but you couldn't actually buy any of those products. MTGO had all of the dual decks, until it didn't. Randomly stopped offering it after Jace vs. Vraska (without even announcing the change - tried to find Speed vs Cunning checks posts and blogs, sent emails and queries. Finally found an ORC that admitted dual decks were no longer being released for MTGO).

I can understand if a mechanic can't be accomplished digitally, but these were all reprint product (Dual Decks) or official Commander Product that they just decided not to sell (even with all applicable cards in the client and "available").

"We'll still make the cards available, but they'll only be random drops in prize packs - because money."

With some notable exceptions (assist in BBD) the cards were all coded into the client, they are present, they work. But Wizards doesn't want to sell product, they want to sell drafts and tournaments. They repeatedly thumb their noses at casual players - and this is just them finally doing something similar in the paper game.

[RxPhantom]

To succinctly answer the question posed in the thread: what I hate most about this product is how it's left me disenchanted with Magic itself. I'm taking a break. I'll be back sometime. Maybe.

[darrenhabib]

I live outside of the United States. If I wanted any of these to play in my decks would I be able to purchase them?
Of course, just like I buy all my other cards as singles, I'd look for these on the secondary market. Will they be priced to a point that I'm ripped off?
Supply and Demand. The bread and butter of economy.
Honestly when it comes to the actual game play these cards will be pretty limited in demand. So initially there will be a feeding frenzy or whatever, but once it all dies down, there are not going to be a lot of players wanting these cards for decks and this ultimately is what is going to drive their final pricing in a year from now.
Sure there are the whole collectors who "must have them", but Wizards have flooded their customers with "unique" products and so there is just no shine to them at all.


Wizards have been selling packaged unique mechanic cards for ages now with pre-cons. So this type of product isn't new on that front.
Really the only difference is that rather than distributing to games stores, they are just selling directly.
Now personally I think Wizards have shot themselves in the head with a shot gun, partaking in the demise of local game stores, who are one of the main drivers of introducing new players to the game.
That is long term lost revenue for the sake of a plumped up quartering.


The fact that Walking Dead are not within the Magic universe is really the main point of contention in my opinion.
I 100% believe that we will see most pop culture references printed on black bordered cards within the next 10 years, unless the backlash is so great that they decide against progressing this type of approach.
I believe we will see Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc, printed in some form in the future.
You will be able to play Darth Vadar within Commander in the future. I not trying to be controversial or outrages or anything like that, I just think that is a business decision that is inevitable given this product.
This to me is the biggest focus rather than anything to do with Walking Dead itself. The point is that pop culture in general will be part of Magic going forward.
Honestly I don't know how to feel about this in its entirety yet.
Fantasy is my favorite genre and has played an important element on why I like Magic so much in the first place. I'm not a nerd when it comes to the Magic Universe lore however, but still immerse myself in it quite a bit.
But I will say that it is still the mechanics of Magic that I enjoy the most.
If somebody plays with say a legal My Little Pony card am I that thrown by it that I will get annoyed? No we are still playing Magic in my opinion.
However I think the main issue going forward is going to be about quantity of pop culture cards printed.
If in 10 years time a Commander table has one player with a Marvel deck and another with a fully kitted Game of Thrones deck are we still playing Magic?
Honestly this is a real reality and why this is such a highly sensitive subject at the moment.
I would say that people are overreacting to a few cards, but this is the Pandora Box that has been opened, so if it's going to be talked about, then it should be now.
I will also say that the fan boy in me that likes a lot of pop culture things wants to play them within Magic, you know as gimmicky limited time thing. This is the conflict within me and why it is probably the future for everybody as I represent a lot of the way people are going to react to the printing of these cards.


Now I want to get back to Supply and Demand. If a card like Darth Vadar is in fact so good that most Commander players are going to want to have a copy, then we come back to if Wizards are selling it and only a limited number of people can buy them directly and only within the United States, then of course the rest of the world is punished.
Is this fair? I hate to say it but living in different countries has its good and bad. I guess one of the good things about being American is that you'll benefit from this.
In my country I have access to free hospitals and social services in times of need and are Covid 19 free. My point is that we are not all equal when it comes to your location within the world. It does suck that I won't be able to buy these limited products directly, but I am just saying that the world isn't always fair based on where you live.
So let's say the Star Wars Secret Lair is sold for $100 and Darth Vadar you know is going to be sold for $200 as a single, because the demand is there and it is just that good from a mechanics point of view that it will hold its price and probably will just keep going up in the future.
So as a hard-core Commander player wanting it I am going to have to buy this on the secondary market for $200 or whatever.
Is this fair? Well I also want Mox Diamond for a lot of decks and the only way to get this is by buying it as a single.
My point is that getting into Magic isn't about having a level platform in the first place. You are always going to have to pay premium prices for the cards you actually want.


These are the outcomes at the moment:

• The backlash is so severe that Wizards doesn't look for cross-promotional printing of cards in the future.
• Full steam ahead and actively seek as many licenses for any type of cross promotional products.

I'm just going to say that Wizards or more to the point Hasbro will just see that they keep selling these Secret Lairs and so are just going to actively seek out partners.
Sorry actions speak louder than words, so every bodies Reddit and Twitter rants are going to be outweighed by the fact that these things are going to sell like hotcakes.
Will Hasbro approach Disney for a cross promotional printing of cards in the future? You bet they will.
Mark Rosewater said that if the demand was there they could print the cards as Magic Universe variants.
What I predict is that once a quantity of these pop culture cards are out there that Hasbro will want to print these as alternative cards to..well make more money.
Now then having two versions of a card does introduce more problems. It fixes that fact that players can put the alternative versions into their decks for flavor correcting, but now people can run multiple copies in a single deck.
And obviously the problem is that you are playing against others who will run whatever version they want, so you'll always have lore problems depending on who you play.
The obnoxious thing is that in the future Mark will go "We've listen to you guys and we are now going to make alternative Magic Universe variants for all these cards, because its you the fans that have the final say in what we do" - in a completely hollow manner.
But ultimately this just creates more problems because they didn't future proof the same way they at least did the Godzilla cards with name variants on the cards.
It is not inconceivable that they make a specific rule around these cards with an actual white list (an online list that has them marked against each card) that original and variants are considered the same card for the purposes of deck quantities. But this is going to be hard to do because they already set the precedence with the Godzilla cards rather than anything else.
If they put the pop culture name on any Magic Universe variants cards (same format as the Godzilla cards) then of course this is obnoxious because it'll have the pop culture names on them. But I feel that this would be the best solution, if not perfect.

[NZB2323]

Maro tweeted that they could reprint these cards in the future using a different name and a different art.

[vandertroll]

This is one of the biggest immersion breaking instances I've seen in a game. They didn't even go with a high fantasy IP (it would still be annoying but more ''in canon'') secret lair. I agree with Professor's and Historian's assessments that this is probably a huge turning point for the game, a point which I will not follow. I started playing EDH because I didn't want to always keep up with all the new nonesense but this stopped happening some years ago. For me this is the final straw.

Also, save me the crap about ordering these from everywhere in the world, I live in europe and the import fees of the lairs are so steep that make these types of products a bad financial decision. If you care about the non US markets, send them to the places that gave you the ability to print dollar bills: The LGS.