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.