How Much Is Too Much For Double Masters? | Dies To Removal 46 | Magic The Gathering Podcast 

Usullay if RU-vidrs say they'll upload a video at a specific day, they'll always be late but Prof's team managed to get it out BEFORE that day

I started playing Magic around 2013. Back then, you'd have a 3-sets block and a core set every year, each of one being in $4 packs/$100 boxes. And that's pretty much all Magic was. You had some semi-premium products like Duel Decks, Fat Packs, Gift Boxes, and even fewer premium products like From the Vault and the newly released Commander decks. As a student back then, I had limited money, but Magic was affordable. It was eating my whole "fun" budget because I was so into it and drafting every week, but I was able to somewhat keep up with Standard . Nowadays though? I've lost count how many sets come out every year, a couple of which are priced between 2 and 4 times higher than regular boosters and game-warping. Premium products aren't just Secret Lairs and Collector Boosters, sets like 2X2 and MH2 start in that price range too. New set isn't even out yet and I'm supposed to hype up and save for the next one... when am I supposed to, you know, play the game? Enjoy the new plane, the new mechanics, draft to my heart's content, brew around the block's themes? That's the thing, I can't, there's not enough time nor money for that. If you want to build around a plane's theme (e.g. blood tokens), nearly all the relevant cards are in a single set instead of spread across a block, so you need to buy more of that set - and faster, because the next set is coming. Finally built a nice Modern deck? How about we introduce 15 new rare/mythic staples in a premium booster, that either invalidate your deck or are required to be relevant? I may have a good job now, and could easily afford my 2013 habit multiple times over. But at the current rate? It's much more expensive for much less fun, it's basically burning money. Just because I technically have the money for it doesn't make Magic any more affordable.

I think the argument for having multiple sets on a plane was great and the example of a second kamigwa set doing better than new capena is perfect I think

I want MSRP back!!

The question you're going to have to answer is "How much is too much for a single card?" Wrenn and Six from Modern Horizons is going for a $75-80 right now, and that's down from $100+ earlier this year. Double Masters pre-sales look to be $80-90, but will probably be about the same because why wouldn't they be? Enough cards like that in the set and it's good value to buy singles (or rip packs and sell them). Even at $17/pack. They're being careful with price and volume not to majorly disrupt the singles market. The pack price is a symptom, not the underlying cause. If anything, it's a lightning rod. Us old-schoolers remember the dread when Mythics were announced, and then when we saw their willingness to put format all-stars there. Now no one wastes breath on it. The Meathook Massacre is just going to be a $50 card while relevant in Standard. After rotation, if it never finds more use it will decline and no one cards about reprints. If it finds more use it will go up and we'll cheer a $50 reprint as a bargain. Whatever set that happens in and what price-per-pack, that's just math. We spent 2 years wanting a reprint of Dockside Extortionist. Now they have, but at Mythic, because the price justifies it. Maybe we need to stop telling them to do reprints and start telling ourselves that $60 cardboard is ridiculous and not worth buying.

Yes! Normalize proxies! And encourage people to make/add their own art. Players should be encouraged to reskin their deck to match whatever theme they like!

Blake has said at least once on the official MTG stream that they do have economists looking at the secondary market

Vince is getting real good at sending prof's soul to the shadow realm; those last several minutes were great, and the ending was chef's kiss

I essentially stopped buying and playing magic in 2019. It had become clear to me that Wizards was going into ultra-aggressive product-launching tactics that were simply not worth engaging with (permanent hype train choo-choo). I'm not from the US, and in my country Magic is a hobby that was already difficult to follow when there wasn't an absurd number of releases. With Secret Laris, Extra Sets, collector's editions, endless commander decks a year... and many of these crappy products (both physically and conceptually), I just decided to spend my time and money elsewhere.

Everyone quickly forgot 2XM the first time… THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED. Once wizards released another batch to Amazon the price went back to basically what it originally was for a while and then it was all gone.

As someone who works in printing I can confirm... rare ink is much more expensive :) It's oddly warmer too

One other point on single block sets. Newer mechanics are under-printed now as well. There just arnt simply enough cards in comparison to multi block sets to give enough flavour overall.

"we've jacked up prices and made more profit selling to distributors, the new product is successful" enough will never be enough

I remember Richard Garfield had said that he didn't think a card should cost more than $20, and I'm gonna interpret that as mechanically unique. I'm fine with their being a hierarchy of costs and demand for Magic, you don't have to make it all direct from wotc print to order flat price. But this whole notion of reprint equity and an economist just kills enthusiasm to get cards when they're so prohibitively expensive. I don't even think pure reprint sets should be priced at a premium. I guess if you wanna put bling alts in the normal product but imagine a world where a masters set is just $150 a box. I don't know if MSRP would even do it. My store said that distributor price per box is 220 and if they sold it at the same margin as anything else it would be pushing 400. It's a race to the bottom. But it's all wotc and their absurd prices. Cost of ink indeed. Halcyon days when fetch lands were printed in a sub $100 standard set box. When it seems like a more reasonable ask to buy the HH Warhammer box than a new box of mtg, theres a problem.

I want Triple™ Masters™ to be 3 Packs in a box for $400, Quadruple™ Masters™ to be 2 packs in a box for $500 and finally the Creme de la creme, the Magnum Opus, the Quintuple™ Masters™ for a single pack, 4 boxes deep of packaging to make it seem bigger for the low low price of $600 a "box"

Dear Professor, I am having a fantastic time watching this just days before they release the 30th anniversary 4 packs for $1100 and having a good ol chuckle.... whilst trying not to cry

I've come to the realization that I don't need any more cards. Thanks, Double Masters. I built a Commander deck today from cards I already have. If I need a specific, I buy singles. I do enjoy cracking packs, but not at the prices Wizards has gouged us to. Keep making videos and preaching the truth. Wizards IS bullplop.

Just gotta say... The Prof. in the normal chair (instead of in a "Streamer Cam") for these is kinda perfect.

Im gonna keep saying it. Whats the point of making reprint sets if no one can buy the reprints?

You can be an old man yelling at clouds and be right. I agree with Dr Richard Garfield when he said that no card should be more than $20.

I just want to chime in here about the "Streets of New Capenna vs Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty" thing: The game store I work at sold out repeatedly of Kamigawa products, to the point that only stopped ordering more in May. Streets of New Capenna has sold about 3 Set Booster Boxes, and we still have a stack of prerelease kits nobody wants. Neon Dynasty would've unquestionably sold better if they'd made another set for it.

the one block sets feel like watching a trailer for a movie that you really really wish you could see, but then the movie never comes out

That Liliana in the 2X2 set should have been of the Veil, even the art would be good for that.

I am here to say that pauper is getting more and more attention in Czech Republic. One of our LGS has regular pauper event (once every 2 weeks). Most people playing pauper here are those who tried getting into modern, but the format is unheatlhy right now and so hostile to new players. The very same reason why I started playing pauper and I can't be happier. I am trying new strategies, brewing decks and I still have fairly good chance to win some games. And it is all very affordable, usually 50 bucks and you have whole deck. So prof. I am here with you!

I've gotten into proxies, Damn Wotc's Reprint Equity! The quality of proxies has gotten so good that many are indistinguishable from the real thing.

I have to say, I was researching a cascade commander and came across the RG Cascade Pauper deck video you did long ago Prof. I built that deck and now I’ve been binge watching all the old Pauper deck videos. Keep fighting the battle Prof! More Pauper Deck videos!

The one family you were missing was Brokers, but yeah, we weren't there long enough to really get to know the families

Just saying as someone who has been playing since 2014, I sold my entire collection 2 years ago, and have exclusively used all proxies, and it is wonderful. Affordable, fun, and I can play whatever i want. I would highly recommend it to anyone. Especially if you don't plan on playing in tournaments, go for it. No reason not to, unless you just want to have the real cards just because.

Spoke to a player in Brazil who said that most of his playgroup plays pauper because they can't afford playing something else. He took a lot of pride in his deck and claimed it can still hold its own against far more expensive commander decks.

I encourage proxies. I own most of the cards I use, the overwhelming majority actually, but honestly I don't care. Get a color printed copy and slide it in front of a basic land. The FED Ex next to my house will print solid color copies 12 cards per sheet for less than a dollar a sheet. As stuff keeps getting more expensive I'm just going to lean heavier and heavier on proxies.

38:00 to be honest Food Chain looks like a scrap art they didn't use for Hungering Hydra. It's literally the same hydra made by the same artist...

I've had the same shift in perspective on proxies, I used to only get the odd cool full art alters printed, like for my commander. Now I'm like; I could move my one Dockside between each of my decks with red, or I could just print proxies.

Honestly, I'd play a Tolarian 40/60-card-deck singleton format that consists of affordable cards exclusively but isn't limited by rarity. Like if there's a fun 5-cent Rare I'd love it if it could be played. There'd be a Limited list curated by a team supervised by Brian and would be updated every few months to add new cards, tweak the balance and shake up the meta.

Except for prereleases, I am now proxying all the cards I want. I've got a cube of real cards, but if I want to play Vintage or Modern I'll just hit Ctrl P like the Prof says. I agree with Vince's point about this.

So agree about the new sets discussion. The speed in which new planes are presented to us is insane! I also feel sorry for the world designers, because they do a great job and these beautiful places are so quickly forgotten 😢

Remodeling my new house and binging DtR. Love you guys.

“They’re previewing Dominaria United on a livestream right now.” *The fact that I wasn’t sure if this was a joke really says something…* Was it a joke???

“I love the set but I don’t love the price” sums up how everyone I know feels about this. I know it’s a (true) meme that hurr durr corporations don’t care, but it really does hurt with gas prices skyrocketing, jobs not paying enough I will never buy a pack from this set. It’s even dubious that I would buy singles because of the scarcity barely impacting the price. I’ll just keep proxying.

Great video Brian and Vince! I wanted to let you know that my local game store is running Double Masters 2022 drafts for $30(USD), so that more people can draft. To lower the price, the prizes will be from the current standard set and not Double Masters packs. I appreciate them doing this and tell you this as an example of some local game stores focusing more on ability to play and draft rather than making money. Keep up the good work and I look forward to the next video!

Yep, I've hopped on the proxy train just a couple of months ago. Unless the reprints in 2X2 cause singles to significantly drop to a reasonable price point, I can't see myself getting much of this set. I'll take my Eldrazis and proxy the rest.

I am convinced that if you averaged the speed at which the Prof and Vince speak you would have the perfect speaking speed.

Professor, would you be willing to do a video on the best marketplaces/distributors for proxies? I think it would be meaningful for you to bring more awareness to what options people have.

Thx Professor and to your co-host Vince. I enjoyed the entire show. Can your production team apply a volume equalizer, I found a huge difference between both the audio output of each host making one voice louder than the other. Thanks! Can you guys find out more info behind the market value of magic cards? The kind that readily explains the forces behind the value of cards other than a global pandemic every 100 years. Thanks again!!

The portion where you discussed why we should spend more time fleshing out a plane is easily one of the top 3 problems I have had with Magic in the last few years. Personally, I believe that the more time we spend on a plane, the cooler the story and characters are. As a result, the cards are more flavorful and impactful, which makes the set more powerful and desirable, which increases sales and rewards both Hasbro with money and the playerbase with fun, playable cards. I don't understand how people keep rewarding this business model where WotC dumps all of their effort into marketing for something that even during spoiler season, we have absolutely no idea what is truly in this set, buy it in bulk, talk about how good it is, and then the cards fall out of favor or the spotlight anyway. OG Zendikar block through Theros block was an era of raw power, flavor and story telling that I haven't gotten to enjoy in this game for so long now, that I genuinely think it's not just me getting older, but the game getting worse from the angle of these variables that has caused the game to feel somewhat stagnant. You can't possibly squeeze everything that makes a good portion of magic cards into a 250 card set. We NEED 3 set blocks again.

I've only been playing Magic since AFR and it would be really nice to be able to play some of these other formats. I'm stuck playing casual commander games unless I decide to get a bank loan to be able to afford to play something else. Pauper sounds fun, and cheap, but nobody plays it.

I used to like how wizards use to give 3 sets on a single plane. I feel that way you get more synergies and cards that work with a theme but that's just me.

My fiance and I both really miss the three block set structure. We only play at the kitchen table, so we build a lot of set themed decks that may or may not be optimized with other sets later. Having mechanics and keywords that basically vanish and don't even come back when a plane is revisted make building some themes frustrating. Not to mention just theming around the overall aesthic of a set becomes arduous when you basically build from whatever you open (neither of us want to buy singles). It's hard to build a themed/keyword deck when only a handful of cards are printed around a mechanic that very much plays into itself and you only have 7 of the 15 cards keyword cards that were printed and not even full playsets of them.

Not-so-pleasant Kenobi with the jedi mind tricks at the end. *chefs kiss*

To pricey for me. I'm sure this set will sell like crazy! But I'm out and so are some of my friends.

I've been playing since Revised. The last box I bought was War of the Spark. This MM set is great for ppl trying to get hold of older staples at a (semi-)reasonable price, but, as I own single copies of cards being rereleased & we have no problems w/ proxies, I see myself buying nothing from this set.

I loved those lands from the original double masters collectors boosters, picked up a heap on the secondary market.

I can’t even afford to draft this set in paper, and it looks great to draft! I’m all about Jund and the archetype is literally called Boomer Jund - it’s very depressing that it’s so pricy. I’m only going to buy singles and even then only a tiny amount of them.

"Just proxy, commander players don't care"..... counterpoint: my LGS just banned all proxies in store. The store hosts a "Commander League", and several players reported the store to WOTC for allowing proxies in games. WOTC threatened the store with retaliation if they did not cease. Prof and Kenobi, have you ever heard of this? I'm new to MTG this year, so idk if this is common.

I started playing MtG 1993 and still remember a friend of mine quitting MtG when Legends came out with the comment "This is just to much product".... If he had only known what the future holds.

Great vid, Prof! Thank you, your team and PK for your hard work! Cheers for somewhere far away in Latam where we can't afford to buy 2X2 😂😂💸💸

What also bothers me about double masters 2022 is no box topper for whatever reason

Mythic rarity was a mistake in the first place and continues to make most popular formats inaccessible. There is no reason for reprints sets to be that expensive (there is much lower development cost than with new cards). We should get Masters sets with no limited environment, no one can afford to draft those anw. They should be set boosters full of needed reprints, mostly rares in each pack.

dood, gratz on gettin this up ahead of schedule! =D

The glee on the Prof's face at 14:45 is giving me life today

"Do I just stare into the camera in disgust" seems like a pretty fair reaction to a lot of what Wizards has been doing lately.

When 8 of your friends are selling their collections, 4 out of which are quitting the game, you know this is a great set.

I take all your content serious and I applaud you for keeping up with the pace of magic. I have enough money to collect these sets but I don't have time and in turn I get burned out. The only reason I would want to buy double masters is because of the rarity. TY for your time and content. It means a lot to me!

Best ending to a dies to removal ever! I love you Brian and Vince! Never stop doing what you do

I started enjoying the game a lot more when I started printing cards instead of spending 3 days worth of grocery money on shitty precons. If you disagree, grow some class-solidarity and normalize proxying.

I have purchased nice proxies for EDH for the first time in 15 years of playing because I would rather spend 20 cents on cards that are way too expensive. I started thinking I would only do this with cards I already own, but then thought what is the point of that? I no longer see value in spending more than 5 bucks for a card because there are just too many new cards to keep up with.

Best intro skit! Loved it Lmfao the ending. Vince broke the prof using wotc logic 🤣

Honestly, I don't care about the prices of VIP boosters. Make them 100$ heck 200$ a booster! They're VIP like the name implies. THAT product is not for me. But the normal boosters though are not VIP and Wizards needs to stop saying the product is not for us because it contains GAME PIECES that we need and are staples everywhere.

Here we goooooooo!! More than ever, I'm targeting singles. I'm sure the packs are going to be fun to open. I could pick up some here and there, but the risk is too high for me.

I wish magic did reprints like Yu-Gi-Oh. Give us a tin every once in a while with the hottest cards of the year so that players can actually use the cards they make.

I love the intro/outrp music so much!

THIS is Magic now! *Thanks for the Content* !

I agree entirely, I don't want to spend so much money for this set

My store is doing $40 draft, everyone gets a participation 2x2 pack at the end but with no proze support. And I love their structure

I'd love to see and hear your thoughts Prof on the rarity shifts of cards, how that's gone lately and how what those shifts symbolise in Lore too

I genuinely did the same thought exercise you did with remembering the five crime families of New Capenna and was genuinely stumped on the Bant one. I could only remember Endless Detour, Ledger Shredder, and Falco Sparas.

Re: economists at WotC, LinkedIn lists only four WOTC employees claiming a PhD, none of which are economists. EDIT: even if there are no full time economists, it is entirely possible WOTC does economic analysis using external consultants on a project by project basis. EDIT 2: after some additional thought, this job would be declscribed as analytics or business intelligence, probably not economics. And there are plenty of analysts at WOTC, including a analytics dept director who has an economics background, if not a PhD

I'm on a very strict "one copy then proxy" policy (the occasional precon notwithstanding). I'm hardly buying anything from this set. Maybe Force of Negation if the price drops low enough. I have copies of nearly every other card I could want to play, so the only things I know I want are Elenda and Unearth in full art and an etched Yahenni, because I am slowly blinging out my pet Extus deck with alternate arts.

As a former LGS owner I can safely say you are off the mark about blocks. People may say they want 3 set blocks, but lack of sales were crushing the further into the block they went. The current model may not be best for a portion of the player base, but sales clearly indicated that block burnout was a thing.

This has encouraged my art skills to make proxies for sure 🙏

Prof: A colllector booster for standard cards is still more expensive than the most expensive masters set. WotC: He is right! Next masters set must be $29.99!

Battle for Zendikar was one of the best selling sets in Wotc’s entire history because of expeditions and MaRo couldn’t stop bowing his head and talking about how they messed up that entire 4 part block sequence of Zendikar/Innistrad. Somehow sales didn’t matter back then because no amount of it hides the flaws that people hated the sets.

Great video Prof! I live in Buenos Aires and Pauper is the hottest competitive format, lot of events everywhere every week. Of course MTG is pretty expensive here.

For Sensei's Diving Top, I'd say at least to me specifically, that I want that full art one. Having started playing during Champions of Kamigawa, it's a nice capstone on my "first era" of magic to own the card. It's literally the only card I'm going to go out of my way to get. Also, the newer Kamigawa might is much more recognizable for a large portion of the player base, so that works out in that regard.

I feel like the thing that needs to be talked about more with this set is how many garbage rares are in this set. We have constantly been squealing and beaming about all the quality reprints of cards that definitely needed the reprint, that I feel like the conversation of how much chaff rares have been shoved into this is being overlooked. With 120 rares and 40 mythics, it's silly to think that you have good odds of actually getting something you want, or even value. I don't think people see that when they see this box price, they see all the amazing couple dozen, and feel like it's almost like we are being tricked into thinking that the extra rare slot is going to actually make a difference.

While I agree that sets are getting too expensive, and reprints aren't being done right, the idea that people aren't going to buy Secret Lairs without a staple card in it is ridiculous. Among the first Secret Lairs, the Cat one with the worst reprint value was the highest sold. They have multiple Secret Lairs with nothing other than basic lands. People buy Secret Lairs without chase staples, they buy them for the art and exclusivity of them.

I like your socks, Professor. They seem quite cozy! 😊

What I do for expensive cards I use in multiple decks, is using à multiple card binder. I put a good quality print paper version (printed from work)in a sleeve on top of a land, for example of smothering tide, jeskai will, deflecting swat.. in the X decks I use the card in. I put the original one in a binder. Then when I go play to places or even events when I draw my printed card if people notice the version is print and start calling me cheap, I just pull out the original one and exchanged the paper version with the original one from the multiple card binder. At the end of the game I just sleeve them back out and in.

As soon as they announced Double Masters 2 everyone knew Dockside was going to be in that set. Doesn’t matter that it’s a commander card, Double Masters 2 is where the card was being printed.

"Let them complain. As long as the addictive ink is working, we can do anything we want.”

WotC has a number of positions on LinkedIn for “Data Analyst (tabletop)” and “business strategy” etc. You don’t need a PHD in Economics to be able to tell how to maximize sales on card board that you control the supply of and realistically can also manipulate the demand of with rares and print runs.

I agree with everything you said! I wish we could spend more time on one planet and get to know it better. Also...TOO MANY SETS!

It's funny that Vince mentioned not releasing the same day as Call of Duty as an example because that's EXACTLY what happened to Titanfall 2. EA released right in the middle of Battlefield and COD because they thought "well usually they get 2 games around this time period, they'll get our two games and skip on COD." While TTF2 wasn't a straight failure or anything, it would be a while for it to truly get eyes on it due to this horrific release date.

Dear WoTC; I got into Magic from Yu-Gi-Oh a few years ago. I enjoyed the powerful effects, diverse formats, and rich story. The game was fun because you could pick basically any idea and you could find the cards you needed to build a deck around it. As time has gone on, it seems like you've actively tried to make the game as player-unfriendly as possible - the average quality of commons and uncommons has dropped, the barriers to entry have risen, the prices have gone up, and the story has become increasingly rushed and inconsistent. The last MTG product I bought was the New Capenna prerelease, because I thought it would be fun to play with friends. I was disappointed in the experience, which is a shame because I was so excited to see something so genuinely new in the game. I don't think that the experience was worth the price of a Steam bundle. There are still plenty of Yu-Gi-Oh players out there, though, and I can get almost any Yu-Gi-Oh deck I want for around $20. If nothing changes, I might go back to Yu-Gi-Oh.

The lack of set boosters definitely drives collectors of different variants towards the collector boxes, which I'm sure have a much lower cost/unit for WOTC.

I played magic back in high-school and it was a lot of fun! I enjoyed deck building, etc. Coming from a family that was into trading cards and sports cards-even the boxes were priced in a way that for like the holidays or special occasions, I could get packs or even a booster box without destroying the bank. Fast forward to today, looking at some deck prices and even box prices-whew what a difference it is. I get that different products scratch different itches but it is really confusing. Not to mention if one were to walk into a LGS or even a retail store (walmart/target, etc) you are still getting some sticker shock. Not knowing what a commander deck is-seeing it selling msrp for like $50 when a decade ago most card game precons sold for maybe $15-20-that's crazy town.

It's never going to stop. Look at Sports cards. They have "single" packs that sell for like $3,000.00 dollars. They do lots of limited print stuff in those sets, but as long as Magic follows a similar line for collectors, it will never stop. It will only stop if there isn't anything in the set to attract a collector's interest.

I’m getting 3 draft pack bundle for 30.29 from Amazon, so I think the draft packs were supposed to be around $10.

I'm never gonna forget what that one dude said, "This product is not for you." I wonder if that guy is still there?

We made a variation of pauper too. Commons and uncommon cards with edh decks.

Brian should come with a glossary. Taking the Mick is going deep into the UK idiom pool.