Modern now in recovery!

Hi Everyone!

In an earlier article, I talked about how Wizards reprinting cards doesn't really make the popular decks more accessible. Now I'm sure the logic is that there are a lot of kitchen table players who all want the "expensive" cards but don't want to pay for them. But let's be realistic about the real driver of price for most cards, competitive play (especially when talking about Modern).

I always get a kick out of the speculation that was all over the internet about MM2. It made me laugh a little because everyone thought they could get the "good cards" for cheap and "build new decks" even though prices of non-reprinted cards went up to make the decks just as expensive.

Anyway, Today I want to talk about Pro Tour Magic Origins. I'll go a bit farther and talk about how a Standard Pro Tour impacts cards popular in the Modern format.

It's crazy to me because I don't understand the thought process to make this happen in an economy. The market for modern drops off significantly before a pro tour but picks back up right after the Pro Tour. The first assumption is that everyone is waiting for the pro tour results. My question is WHY? It's not a Modern Pro Tour, it's Standard.

Here's why. Wizards has so many people hooked on their game that people wait to see what pro players do before they decide what cards to do. First, this shows a complete lack of ability to make evaluations in the power level or playability of cards (as an economy, I'm not saying YOU can't evaluate the power level of a card). Second, this shows that a large portion (I'm not sure the percentage, but big) of the "speculation" market is people waiting for cues to make moves, that's not speculation, that's being at your computer watching the unveiling of the ipod and buying apple stock before the announcement is complete and the stock skyrockets.

Anyway, WOTC has people so stuck on their game that they are not buying the product now because they want to find out what that is currently available, is indeed good (doesn't usually happen, but Magic is a unique game.

There is one other topic I wanted to talk about a little. I used to play a lot of video games. It was fun and I enjoyed it, but it's not my thing anymore. Most, if not all, video game magazines had rating categories for games. One was replay quality, the amount of fun compared to the first time through the game that was experienced the second time playing through the game. The better the second time through, the higher the score. It says a lot about repetitiveness in games. (Aside: I hate to say it but in my opinion Konami games often had very low replay value, it turned into a lesson on hitting very, fast, very complex button sequences at a specific time and made the game the opposite of fun.)

I digress, Magic is a great game and it's one of the only game I can think of that actually has a replay value where the second and third times playing are more fun than the first. It's an amazing game that has so many levels of complexity it is impossible to "master" the game (like I did with Konami games....after playing them just once).