Announcing Commander Play Events: Featuring Sealed and Two-Headed Giant!

[RxPhantom]

People act as if they've never seen anyone cracking open a whole booster box at their LGS. At least with this they'll be playing with the cards.

[3drinks]

Sure. If the buy-in was cheaper then we'd be talking. But you can't do commander draft with less packs. Five packs is the minimum (5*14 cards) is 70 cards and that's including the land slot which is....incredibly optimistic that you'd have the playables. A full box of 32 is I'd argue too much, but maybe a fat pack worth would work, that's like 8 packs right? Idk, 60 cards and knowing that at least a certain percent of them will be unplayable, even 8*14 = 122 cards. Bare minimum yeah, assuming half your pool is playable. So maybe a box is the sweet spot to ensure you don't get shorted on business spells. Maybe. Did the announcement say anything about adding cards to the league pool, or are you locked to those cards the whole duration? Or is the league just a one night event (I'd assume not but who knows)

[RxPhantom]

I don't know about the finer details. Leagues normally have some way to add cards to your pool. I still maintain that this would be a good alternative to just cracking all the packs in a box.

[DirkGently]

@3drinks They don't print many unplayable cards these days (in terms of limited). With 8-10 packs, sure, you're probably running some mediocre filler cards, but that's kinda how limited generally works. Box sealed (from my, again, very limited experience) feels closer to "bad standard". I really don't think there's much value from a gameplay point of view to require a full box (also afaik, depending on the set a box is either 24, 30, or 36 packs - I don't remember any box being 32).

Could be either that there's a lot of people already cracking a box, so they want to generate interest within that group, engaging them in a format that rewards them for their spending habits - or it could be that they're hoping to convince more people to buy a box who otherwise would buy more modestly. Probably a mixture of both.

[3drinks]

Oh I thought they downsized box sizes to 32 with play boosters. I'm really unsure, I don't buy sealed product and the last time I did limited was...ISD block (where I won because Olivia Voldaren is an absurd card) and M11 where I had two off color checklands and my "bombs" were Warlord's Axe and Sleep and my only removal was double Hornet Sting.