Dragons of Tarkir is the first set that's going to be part of the "new Standard". If I understand correctly, KTK and FRF will rotate out of standard while DTK sticks around until the third two set blocks comes out.
A little weird if you ask me, but it's probably the only way to keep Standard from getting too shaken up from the new block format.
Everywhere I read that players think this is great and that the game will be more fun because Standard will be shaken up much more often. I don't know, but I think most people don't know what's really happening here.
Wizards is a business. They are in the business of making money (like all businesses). This shift in Standard rotations is not a product of "improving Standard" it's a product of selling more cards.
It's about selling more cards because faster block rotations make cards rotate out of standard more quickly. This means that new cards need to be used to make Standard decks and Wizards sells more cards. So it's all about profit (if you think it's not, I have some oceanfront property you'll be interested in).
What's this going to do to the secondary market? I'm not sure. I think it depends on how much available funds players have to play Magic. If they aren't spending all their "Magic money" currently, then everything will continue like business as normal but the cycle will be faster than before. I think this would create a great environment for speculating on certain cards.
What about the alternative? What if Magic players just don't have more money (or aren't willing to) to spend more on Magic? I'm not even sure what would happen for sure. I think there could be an apocalypse and people would leave magic because it would be too hard to play and be competitive. The solution if that's the case is to make the game have more equally powered cards...hmmmm. If you ask me, that's what Wizards is up to.
Anyway, I thought this was an interesting topic and I wanted to mention that the changes will certainly be relevant to the finance community. I am just hoping Wizards did their market research on this before they went off and decided to make a bunch of changes. I know Wizards is great about listening to players but they are awful (in my experience) about making decisions (and you don't get credit for doing something stupid then changing it to the thing you should have chose in the first place when players are upset at your decision).
I think it will just result in faster cycles and people spending 30% more to be competetive in Standard. Hopefully it will improve the popularity of Modern a little. Having less cards might be detrimental to Standard Pauper
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