Speaking of Rune Ear Hierophants, I haven't posted an Arena deck in a while
Cave of Terrors
Champion: Kagalichu
10 x Wild Shard
7 x Blood Shard
4 x Shard of Ancients
4 x Monsagi Lily Pad
4 x Cottontail Explorer (Gloves: Skyguard)
4 x Rune Ear Hierophant (Spellshield/Return troop from crypt)
2 x Sora (Weapon: Draw card, gain 3 health)
3 x Succulent Cluckadon
4 x Bog Walker (Chest: +1/+1 when it dies; Boots: Crush)
3 x Necrophet (Head: -1 cost per different threshold)
2 x Chomposaur
3 x Primordial Caves
4 x Call the Grave (Trinket: Return all copies)
4 x Reap
2 x Rotten Rancor
Fun Combos
Primordial Caves + Bog Walker/Necrophet = Recurring threats that give you Cave counters
Primordial Caves + Call the Grave = Target the right troop and you can get all ten Cave counters at once
Primordial Caves + Rune Ear Hierophant = Hit your opponent and get some free Cave counters
Rotten Rancor + Chomposaur = Kill a troop, destroy an artifact/constant, and get a 4/4 for a single card
Cottontail Explorer/Kagalichu + Call the Grave/Rotten Rancor/Rune Ear Hierophant = Stock your crypt
Reap + Call the Grave = Kill your opponent's troop, then play it yourself
And if I can just manage to move some of the Collector AAs, I'll buy a Freak of Nature or two for extra fun. I haven't had nearly as much luck with the more recent ones. Though I have an idea for some AH arbitrage that I may be able to exploit...
Edit: Cards on my shortlist for substitution in: Wrathwood Master Moss, Vampire King, Xentoth's Inquisitor. I'm not 100% convinced the Succulent Cluckadons are good enough in arena (as opposed to Devonshire Keep) to be worth their slot.
Yeah, but in play random opponent you don't have that problem!
In other news gold prices continue to drop. Life getting rougher for F2P.
I suspect that shift is caused by the Evo Gauntlet increasing demand for packs from F2P players. It's such an amazing deal for them that it probably balances out.
Thank God someone published an article saying to run Rune Ear with flight/rhinos. I don't have to concede turn 2/3 now!
If you read his reserves recommendations, at least half the matchups tell you to swap to Spellshield/Rhinos
The spellshield variant suuuuuucks to play against. Extinction is about all I have to deal with that, and I've only got 3 of those in my spider deck. Exarch of the egg can help, but usually they have ways to get around that. Rune Ear is a card I absolutely hate to see my opponent drop.
Thank God someone published an article saying to run Rune Ear with flight/rhinos. I don't have to concede turn 2/3 now!
If you read his reserves recommendations, at least half the matchups tell you to swap to Spellshield/Rhinos
The spellshield variant suuuuuucks to play against. Extinction is about all I have to deal with that, and I've only got 3 of those in my spider deck. Exarch of the egg can help, but usually they have ways to get around that. Rune Ear is a card I absolutely hate to see my opponent drop.
I'm hoping they ban the Spellshield gem. I've never liked that mechanic to begin with.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Thank God someone published an article saying to run Rune Ear with flight/rhinos. I don't have to concede turn 2/3 now!
If you read his reserves recommendations, at least half the matchups tell you to swap to Spellshield/Rhinos
The spellshield variant suuuuuucks to play against. Extinction is about all I have to deal with that, and I've only got 3 of those in my spider deck. Exarch of the egg can help, but usually they have ways to get around that. Rune Ear is a card I absolutely hate to see my opponent drop.
Thank God someone published an article saying to run Rune Ear with flight/rhinos. I don't have to concede turn 2/3 now!
If you read his reserves recommendations, at least half the matchups tell you to swap to Spellshield/Rhinos
The spellshield variant suuuuuucks to play against. Extinction is about all I have to deal with that, and I've only got 3 of those in my spider deck. Exarch of the egg can help, but usually they have ways to get around that. Rune Ear is a card I absolutely hate to see my opponent drop.
Imagine how you'd feel if you had 0 extinctions!
I can't even imagine that, since my Kickstarter tier started me off with 3.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
You guys who played magic, weren't board clears much cheaper there? Like wrath of god was never a ten dollar card. Right?
You guys who played magic, weren't board clears much cheaper there? Like wrath of god was never a ten dollar card. Right?
Wrath of god was also a card that was available starting in the very first set and several sets onward, so it isn't as great an example. There have definitely been expensive sweepers. The problem at the moment is how irreplaceable extinction is in a meta where tons of clutch cards can be gemmed for spellshield.
What is this I don't even.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
edited May 2016
Ah. Its a card I'm familiar with. I only really played Magic a ton during 3rd Edition. So I guess my analogies to magic will not be very useful. I felt like there was always something cheap that could hit everything. Like pestilence or something.
Yeah the only way for a lot of sapphire/blood decks to deal with spellshield stuff is Extinction. Or Yesterday, but that costs a lot more and they get to replay them.
I really enjoyed playing Esper Dragons in magic a year ago or so, so the more board wipes and counters we get the better I say.
Yeah the only way for a lot of sapphire/blood decks to deal with spellshield stuff is Extinction. Or Yesterday, but that costs a lot more and they get to replay them.
I really enjoyed playing Esper Dragons in magic a year ago or so, so the more board wipes and counters we get the better I say.
And yeah the spellshield gem is bullshit.
Mass polymorph would help in blue except that it's like twenty bucks too.
All of which conveys how powerful spellshield gems are.
Yeah the only way for a lot of sapphire/blood decks to deal with spellshield stuff is Extinction. Or Yesterday, but that costs a lot more and they get to replay them.
I really enjoyed playing Esper Dragons in magic a year ago or so, so the more board wipes and counters we get the better I say.
And yeah the spellshield gem is bullshit.
Mass polymorph would help in blue except that it's like twenty bucks too.
All of which conveys how powerful spellshield gems are.
Also Countermagic and Inquisition
and exarch and killipede
and zygmunt's game and heat wave and electrofry in red
and cheesesmythe in green
and living totem in white
there's a white wrath too but it's admittedly not great
most of those already see play independently of heirophant, and the majority can answer it even on the draw - the spellshield gem is probably too good (especially as a minor gem) and isn't great design in general but the idea that Extinction is the only answer in the format just isn't accurate. And countermagic and inquisition are basically free (they're pre-emptive, sure, but...your opponent is running green. What ELSE did you think he was gonna do on turn 3? holding a counterspell open on 3 is awkward but you want to inquisition the turn before your opponent gets the mana to play their most dangerous threat anyway - better for you that that happens on turn 2 when they still have other good targets in-hand than when you're playing against something like wintermoon and have to hold it until turn 5.), and exarch, zygmunt's, heat wave, cheesesmythe, and yesterday are all near or under $2.
Well the vast majority of Rune Ear decks also run countermagic to protect their Hierophants. Inquisition can grab it, but against winter moon you almost just wasted a card and a turn doing that, and against the other stuff showing up most often (That damn ruby sapphire aggro deck) Inquisition doesn't do too much to help you. Exarch is useful, killipede isn't, if we're talking about protecting ourselves from Rune Ear. Are there any decks that living totem is good in? Cheesesmythe shows up but again, in decks also running Hierophant.
Mass polymorph is awfully expensive. The problem with rune ear is it's so cheap and grows. It's useful no matter when you play it, it's the definition of a bomb. And in Winter moon, they can bring it back if you do manage to kill it! It doesn't reset either, so they can draw the already buffed up one again. If they have counterspell, they can generally hold it up to defeat your counterspell and play it anyway. It's a ridiculously strong card and with spellshield, maybe the strongest rare in the set.
Ok, can I get a short description of all the different PvP modes/drafts/whatevers? Like just bullet points.
I feel like there's 700 draft types
Er, Drafting you can do single elimination or swiss. You have to sit there until you are eliminated or the game is over. You can also do Sealed Gauntlet (Open 6 boosters, build a deck, play against others when you have time to queue up for a match) or Sealed Evo Gauntlet (Open 2 boosters, build a deck, wins get you more boosters added to the pile of cards to build your deck.) There's also a constructed gauntlet, for playing with the deck you made out of your collection. You can also play head to head, which rewards 1 booster with constructed decks.
Well the vast majority of Rune Ear decks also run countermagic to protect their Hierophants. Inquisition can grab it, but against winter moon you almost just wasted a card and a turn doing that, and against the other stuff showing up most often (That damn ruby sapphire aggro deck) Inquisition doesn't do too much to help you. Exarch is useful, killipede isn't, if we're talking about protecting ourselves from Rune Ear. Are there any decks that living totem is good in? Cheesesmythe shows up but again, in decks also running Hierophant.
Mass polymorph is awfully expensive. The problem with rune ear is it's so cheap and grows. It's useful no matter when you play it, it's the definition of a bomb. And in Winter moon, they can bring it back if you do manage to kill it! It doesn't reset either, so they can draw the already buffed up one again. If they have counterspell, they can generally hold it up to defeat your counterspell and play it anyway. It's a ridiculously strong card and with spellshield, maybe the strongest rare in the set.
the black/white deck is still running around some and runs living totems, and it's pretty trivial to board inquisitions out/in based on your matchup.
It's true that they can cover the heirophant with countermagic, but that's not really the point - the assertion was that you can't answer heirophants without an extinction. Countermagic stops extinction, too, and frankly any time you list answers and the response is 'but they can answer your answer!' the goalposts are shifting; the point was to provide a one-card answer to heirophant, not one for heirophant+countermagic - presumably if the opponent gets to spend 2 cards and 6 mana to try and stick their heirophant, then I also get 2 cards and 6 mana to answer it, otherwise we're comparing apples and oranges (in which case the response is just 'any two of the listed answers'). And landing heirophant with countermagic backup is a turn 5/6 play, not a turn 3 play that's prompting the turn 3 concedes being talked about.
It's almost certainly the strongest rare in the set - it's probably the strongest card in the set. But it's answerable by more than just extinction and if a player is automatically conceding the moment one hits the table that response being driven by tilt more than by the actual power level of the card.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
I don't actually concede on turn 2 when the rune ear comes out, but I might as well. I don't have anything that can win against it. A naked rune ear isn't actually a problem, so really Z's Game, Electrofry, and Heat Wave are not good solutions. Killapede is more expensive than extinction which is unaffordable. Living totem is also quite expensive. Mass poly exarch and cheesesmythe are also getting towards expensive.
I am not a kickstarter and I didn't dump a ton of money in this game. I have played I'm going to say 20+ games against people with rune ears. None of my decks have any good counters. I have counterspells in all my blue decks. Can't stop that turn 2 rune ear. Sometimes I don't get a counterspell in time. I can link my collection to you, perhaps I am missing something, but I see no real way to tackle spell shield.
I don't actually concede on turn 2 when the rune ear comes out, but I might as well. I don't have anything that can win against it. A naked rune ear isn't actually a problem, so really Z's Game, Electrofry, and Heat Wave are not good solutions. Killapede is more expensive than extinction which is unaffordable. Living totem is also quite expensive. Mass poly exarch and cheesesmythe are also getting towards expensive.
I am not a kickstarter and I didn't dump a ton of money in this game. I have played I'm going to say 20+ games against people with rune ears. None of my decks have any good counters. I have counterspells in all my blue decks. Can't stop that turn 2 rune ear. Sometimes I don't get a counterspell in time. I can link my collection to you, perhaps I am missing something, but I see no real way to tackle spell shield.
I mean, I know it's not the answer anyone ever wants to hear, but the reality is that cards become expensive because they're good and if even cards priced between 150-300 plat are out of your price range you are going to need to adjust your expectations when playing constructed. That price point basically puts every playable rare off-limits. If spending money on the game isn't an option, I'd recommend farming pve/arena for gold to assemble some in-game currency. Alternately, I think there's a pauper (commons/uncommons only) league that's reasonably popular if you're dead-set on playing constructed without buying anything.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
I don't need to play constructed, I can see its only for those with far more investment into the game than I have. Its not that I can't afford a 200 plat card, its that I'd rather purchase a pack and play draft with it to try and get more of a collection.
Exarch and zygmut are the only ones in that range anyways. Cheese jumped in price because someone wrote that its good on an article. I don't really feel like zygmut is a great counter anyways.
In theory, once constructed ladder comes out @38thDoe you might be able to play in the earlier brackets anyway. Hopefully full runeear decks will move up,
You guys who played magic, weren't board clears much cheaper there? Like wrath of god was never a ten dollar card. Right?
Magic had a lot of board wipes, some expensive and some not. It really depended on how it fit the format in question.
That said, Wrath was generally a solid 6 to 7 dollar card when I played. It's just been replaces by another card in recent sets, so it's kind of forgotten now.
You guys who played magic, weren't board clears much cheaper there? Like wrath of god was never a ten dollar card. Right?
Magic had a lot of board wipes, some expensive and some not. It really depended on how it fit the format in question.
That said, Wrath was generally a solid 6 to 7 dollar card when I played. It's just been replaces by another card in recent sets, so it's kind of forgotten now.
Yeah, the 5-10 range is usually where the best wrath effect in the format lives
Ironically though, as a black wrath Extinction is functionally the same card as Damnation, which is not $8 but $80. (largely because it just hasn't been reprinted in a long time)
At this point we should only draw price comparisons standard to standard though. Hex doesn't have Legacy.
On the other hand, Magic is prey to ridiculous amounts of speculation. Prices have skyrocketed in the last few years. There was a pretty clear inflection point in Zendikar block, and where beforehand sought-after cards would extremely rarely break through the 15-20 euro price barrier, right now paying forty and fifty euro for a single card is just no longer unusual.
It's the main reason I backed Hex, you know. Having someplace where I could play a Magic-like without having to mortgage a house. I put down a fifty euro pledge on the basis that it costed me less than getting two single rares I needed for my magic deck.
At this point we should only draw price comparisons standard to standard though. Hex doesn't have Legacy.
On the other hand, Magic is prey to ridiculous amounts of speculation. Prices have skyrocketed in the last few years. There was a pretty clear inflection point in Zendikar block, and where beforehand sought-after cards would extremely rarely break through the 15-20 euro price barrier, right now paying forty and fifty euro for a single card is just no longer unusual.
It's the main reason I backed Hex, you know. Having someplace where I could play a Magic-like without having to mortgage a house. I put down a fifty euro pledge on the basis that it costed me less than getting two single rares I needed for my magic deck.
Speculation is part of it, especially for some specific cards, but the main reason for the upward inflection point you're seeing on everything is that Zendikar block is when the game took off towards its current popularity - there are way more players now, and that doesn't too strongly effect new product because they also print way more of it, but for things that haven't been reprinted since then (like Damnation) the quantity printed just isn't enough to keep up with the demands of such a large player base, so prices jumped in response.
In the long term, Hex should be much more able to manage that phenomenon, since all it takes to 'reprint' a set when the player base grows is to put the packs back in the store for a while
At this point we should only draw price comparisons standard to standard though. Hex doesn't have Legacy.
On the other hand, Magic is prey to ridiculous amounts of speculation. Prices have skyrocketed in the last few years. There was a pretty clear inflection point in Zendikar block, and where beforehand sought-after cards would extremely rarely break through the 15-20 euro price barrier, right now paying forty and fifty euro for a single card is just no longer unusual.
It's the main reason I backed Hex, you know. Having someplace where I could play a Magic-like without having to mortgage a house. I put down a fifty euro pledge on the basis that it costed me less than getting two single rares I needed for my magic deck.
Speculation is part of it, especially for some specific cards, but the main reason for the upward inflection point you're seeing on everything is that Zendikar block is when the game took off towards its current popularity - there are way more players now, and that doesn't too strongly effect new product because they also print way more of it, but for things that haven't been reprinted since then (like Damnation) the quantity printed just isn't enough to keep up with the demands of such a large player base, so prices jumped in response.
In the long term, Hex should be much more able to manage that phenomenon, since all it takes to 'reprint' a set when the player base grows is to put the packs back in the store for a while
At this point we should only draw price comparisons standard to standard though. Hex doesn't have Legacy.
On the other hand, Magic is prey to ridiculous amounts of speculation. Prices have skyrocketed in the last few years. There was a pretty clear inflection point in Zendikar block, and where beforehand sought-after cards would extremely rarely break through the 15-20 euro price barrier, right now paying forty and fifty euro for a single card is just no longer unusual.
It's the main reason I backed Hex, you know. Having someplace where I could play a Magic-like without having to mortgage a house. I put down a fifty euro pledge on the basis that it costed me less than getting two single rares I needed for my magic deck.
Speculation is part of it, especially for some specific cards, but the main reason for the upward inflection point you're seeing on everything is that Zendikar block is when the game took off towards its current popularity - there are way more players now, and that doesn't too strongly effect new product because they also print way more of it, but for things that haven't been reprinted since then (like Damnation) the quantity printed just isn't enough to keep up with the demands of such a large player base, so prices jumped in response.
In the long term, Hex should be much more able to manage that phenomenon, since all it takes to 'reprint' a set when the player base grows is to put the packs back in the store for a while
Except they've said they won't do that.
So did magic, but they do it regularly, usually via throwback drafts.
There's no meaningful difference between 'this weekend you can pay to draft old sets' and 'this weekend you can pay to buy old packs' except that the time it takes to draft gives them more granular control over how much product gets added to the market.
Edit: I guess I should specify that I'm referring to magic online here, whereas paper magic has no ability to do things like that without physically reprinting product - one of the reasons that a number of cards have such a price disparity between what they cost in paper and what they cost on mtgo.
At this point we should only draw price comparisons standard to standard though. Hex doesn't have Legacy.
On the other hand, Magic is prey to ridiculous amounts of speculation. Prices have skyrocketed in the last few years. There was a pretty clear inflection point in Zendikar block, and where beforehand sought-after cards would extremely rarely break through the 15-20 euro price barrier, right now paying forty and fifty euro for a single card is just no longer unusual.
It's the main reason I backed Hex, you know. Having someplace where I could play a Magic-like without having to mortgage a house. I put down a fifty euro pledge on the basis that it costed me less than getting two single rares I needed for my magic deck.
Speculation is part of it, especially for some specific cards, but the main reason for the upward inflection point you're seeing on everything is that Zendikar block is when the game took off towards its current popularity - there are way more players now, and that doesn't too strongly effect new product because they also print way more of it, but for things that haven't been reprinted since then (like Damnation) the quantity printed just isn't enough to keep up with the demands of such a large player base, so prices jumped in response.
In the long term, Hex should be much more able to manage that phenomenon, since all it takes to 'reprint' a set when the player base grows is to put the packs back in the store for a while
Except they've said they won't do that.
So did magic, but they do it regularly, usually via throwback drafts.
There's no meaningful difference between 'this weekend you can pay to draft old sets' and 'this weekend you can pay to buy old packs' except that the time it takes to draft gives them more granular control over how much product gets added to the market.
Edit: I guess I should specify that I'm referring to magic online here, whereas paper magic has no ability to do things like that without physically reprinting product - one of the reasons that a number of cards have such a price disparity between what they cost in paper and what they cost on mtgo.
Just because Wizards doesn't stick to their word, doesn't mean Hex won't.
At this point we should only draw price comparisons standard to standard though. Hex doesn't have Legacy.
On the other hand, Magic is prey to ridiculous amounts of speculation. Prices have skyrocketed in the last few years. There was a pretty clear inflection point in Zendikar block, and where beforehand sought-after cards would extremely rarely break through the 15-20 euro price barrier, right now paying forty and fifty euro for a single card is just no longer unusual.
It's the main reason I backed Hex, you know. Having someplace where I could play a Magic-like without having to mortgage a house. I put down a fifty euro pledge on the basis that it costed me less than getting two single rares I needed for my magic deck.
Speculation is part of it, especially for some specific cards, but the main reason for the upward inflection point you're seeing on everything is that Zendikar block is when the game took off towards its current popularity - there are way more players now, and that doesn't too strongly effect new product because they also print way more of it, but for things that haven't been reprinted since then (like Damnation) the quantity printed just isn't enough to keep up with the demands of such a large player base, so prices jumped in response.
In the long term, Hex should be much more able to manage that phenomenon, since all it takes to 'reprint' a set when the player base grows is to put the packs back in the store for a while
I dunno, I don't think it's just that. The prices have gone way up even in cards that are being printed currently. A type of rare that would have cost 8 dollars in old standard costs 14 now. The deck defining cards that would have cost 20 dollars back in the day (25 maximum being generally the cutoff point for Standard cards) now seem to easily hit 40. And this despite the fact that if anything packs are cheaper than ever now - you couldn't find a pack near me for under 4.50 euro no matter how much you looked when I played, now they cost 3.50 tops.
Of course, the existence of Mythic cards inflating the rarity of some of these cards can't be helping, but still. The price jump in Standard decks is very noticeable when, like me, you left the game some time ago and poked in back a few years later. Maybe people just buy less packs now, so there's less product in the market compared to the amount of people needing it? I don't know. But magic has gotten way the hell more expensive even at a Standard level. Hence why I wanted to give Hex a chance.
At this point we should only draw price comparisons standard to standard though. Hex doesn't have Legacy.
On the other hand, Magic is prey to ridiculous amounts of speculation. Prices have skyrocketed in the last few years. There was a pretty clear inflection point in Zendikar block, and where beforehand sought-after cards would extremely rarely break through the 15-20 euro price barrier, right now paying forty and fifty euro for a single card is just no longer unusual.
It's the main reason I backed Hex, you know. Having someplace where I could play a Magic-like without having to mortgage a house. I put down a fifty euro pledge on the basis that it costed me less than getting two single rares I needed for my magic deck.
Speculation is part of it, especially for some specific cards, but the main reason for the upward inflection point you're seeing on everything is that Zendikar block is when the game took off towards its current popularity - there are way more players now, and that doesn't too strongly effect new product because they also print way more of it, but for things that haven't been reprinted since then (like Damnation) the quantity printed just isn't enough to keep up with the demands of such a large player base, so prices jumped in response.
In the long term, Hex should be much more able to manage that phenomenon, since all it takes to 'reprint' a set when the player base grows is to put the packs back in the store for a while
I dunno, I don't think it's just that. The prices have gone way up even in cards that are being printed currently. A type of rare that would have cost 8 dollars in old standard costs 14 now. The deck defining cards that would have cost 20 dollars back in the day (25 maximum being generally the cutoff point for Standard cards) now seem to easily hit 40. And this despite the fact that if anything packs are cheaper than ever now - you couldn't find a pack near me for under 4.50 euro no matter how much you looked when I played, now they cost 3.50 tops.
Of course, the existence of Mythic cards inflating the rarity of some of these cards can't be helping, but still. The price jump in Standard decks is very noticeable when, like me, you left the game some time ago and poked in back a few years later. Maybe people just buy less packs now, so there's less product in the market compared to the amount of people needing it? I don't know. But magic has gotten way the hell more expensive even at a Standard level. Hence why I wanted to give Hex a chance.
mythics are significant part of it - the price of in-print sets stays pretty steady (if you care to do the math, for any in-print set that doesn't have something unusual going on with it the card prices almost invariably work out such that the expected value of the cards in a box is roughly the market price of a box, +/- 10% or so. Cards that rise above a certain price basically start pushing the price of other cards in the set down to compensate - that's why, for example, most of the rares and a lot of the mythics in Primal Dawn have relatively low prices compared to other sets; Heirophant and Infinitrix are soaking up the set's value 'budget' and not leaving room for much else) but with the advent of mythics more of that value is concentrated into specific cards, and when those cards make their way into decks as 4-ofs it makes the price of decks go up even though the average value of cards in a pack stays the same.
The rest is mostly liquidity effects - there's a bigger player base, and when a set first releases they all want the playable cards now, so prices spike for the first couple months before settling back down to 'normal'. You see it a lot with good removal effects like Hero's Downfall and Declaration in Stone; the sustainable price of those cards is usually only $5-6, but when the set is new and they're 4-ofs in decks, everyone wants to buy them and nobody has them to sell (because most of the product is still in the hands of distributors, not players), so the price spikes to ~$15 until all the competitive players have their playsets and it falls back off.
At this point we should only draw price comparisons standard to standard though. Hex doesn't have Legacy.
On the other hand, Magic is prey to ridiculous amounts of speculation. Prices have skyrocketed in the last few years. There was a pretty clear inflection point in Zendikar block, and where beforehand sought-after cards would extremely rarely break through the 15-20 euro price barrier, right now paying forty and fifty euro for a single card is just no longer unusual.
It's the main reason I backed Hex, you know. Having someplace where I could play a Magic-like without having to mortgage a house. I put down a fifty euro pledge on the basis that it costed me less than getting two single rares I needed for my magic deck.
Speculation is part of it, especially for some specific cards, but the main reason for the upward inflection point you're seeing on everything is that Zendikar block is when the game took off towards its current popularity - there are way more players now, and that doesn't too strongly effect new product because they also print way more of it, but for things that haven't been reprinted since then (like Damnation) the quantity printed just isn't enough to keep up with the demands of such a large player base, so prices jumped in response.
In the long term, Hex should be much more able to manage that phenomenon, since all it takes to 'reprint' a set when the player base grows is to put the packs back in the store for a while
Except they've said they won't do that.
So did magic, but they do it regularly, usually via throwback drafts.
There's no meaningful difference between 'this weekend you can pay to draft old sets' and 'this weekend you can pay to buy old packs' except that the time it takes to draft gives them more granular control over how much product gets added to the market.
Edit: I guess I should specify that I'm referring to magic online here, whereas paper magic has no ability to do things like that without physically reprinting product - one of the reasons that a number of cards have such a price disparity between what they cost in paper and what they cost on mtgo.
Just because Wizards doesn't stick to their word, doesn't mean Hex won't.
Hex has already done flashback drafts. They are going to continue to do so, and frankly while the Crypto guys are great asserting that Cryptozooic is going to be more careful about shepherding the investment of enfranchised players than WotC is even if doing so starts to cost them money suggests that you might not be that familiar with the history of their other games.
Moreover, if the playerbase grows substantially after sets have been removed from the store, reintroducing cards into the environment is going to be important for keeping the game accessible, lest Vampire Kings hit 5,000+ plat - it has to be done and failing to do it turns customers away (it's literally why WotC started doing Modern Masters - modern was too expensive, making it inaccessible to too many customers. Solution: re-release the cards to drop their prices so more people will play Modern.). Your enfranchised players don't like it because it lowers the value of their cards and they're convinced they're losing 'money' - hence, the song and dance of pretending you're not going to do it. "Oh, we're not going to put packs back in the store. We're going to protect the long-term value of your cards! - but hey, look, something totally different: Flashback drafts! Which by total coincidence allow players to pay platinum for packs from old sets, kind of like if the packs were in the store."
The reality is that everyone in the industry has seen what a clusterfuck wotc's Reserved List turned out to be, and absolutely nobody is in a hurry to repeat that mistake.
I have no idea how flashback drafts of sets still in the store have anything to do with your point of making cards available again.
And the reserved list is a completely different topic to what we're arguing about. If your point is that they may reprint older cards in new sets, then we're in agreement. If your point is that they'll reprint entire sets, then you're almost certainly wrong.
I have no idea how flashback drafts of sets still in the store have anything to do with your point of making cards available again.
And the reserved list is a completely different topic to what we're arguing about. If your point is that they may reprint older cards in new sets, then we're in agreement. If your point is that they'll reprint entire sets, then you're almost certainly wrong.
They are going to continue doing flashback drafts, including for formats involving packs not available in the store. That's what flashback drafts are, it's what they're for, and the only reason the particular flashback draft format they used previously didn't involve out-of-print sets is that there aren't any sets out of print yet.
There is no need to reprint cards in new sets as a way of controlling the price in a digital environment. That's something paper games do because it's the only cost-effective way to do it in paper. The digital version of that tool for games with healthy limited play is to temporarily re-release the product via flashback drafts. Believing that's not going to happen on the grounds that a company that once eliminated an entire block of cards from their constructed format a year early because it was causing cash flow problems super pinky-promised they wouldn't re-release sets is naive at best.
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In other news gold prices continue to drop. Life getting rougher for F2P.
Cave of Terrors
Champion: Kagalichu
10 x Wild Shard
7 x Blood Shard
4 x Shard of Ancients
4 x Monsagi Lily Pad
4 x Cottontail Explorer (Gloves: Skyguard)
4 x Rune Ear Hierophant (Spellshield/Return troop from crypt)
2 x Sora (Weapon: Draw card, gain 3 health)
3 x Succulent Cluckadon
4 x Bog Walker (Chest: +1/+1 when it dies; Boots: Crush)
3 x Necrophet (Head: -1 cost per different threshold)
2 x Chomposaur
3 x Primordial Caves
4 x Call the Grave (Trinket: Return all copies)
4 x Reap
2 x Rotten Rancor
Fun Combos
Primordial Caves + Bog Walker/Necrophet = Recurring threats that give you Cave counters
Primordial Caves + Call the Grave = Target the right troop and you can get all ten Cave counters at once
Primordial Caves + Rune Ear Hierophant = Hit your opponent and get some free Cave counters
Rotten Rancor + Chomposaur = Kill a troop, destroy an artifact/constant, and get a 4/4 for a single card
Cottontail Explorer/Kagalichu + Call the Grave/Rotten Rancor/Rune Ear Hierophant = Stock your crypt
Reap + Call the Grave = Kill your opponent's troop, then play it yourself
And if I can just manage to move some of the Collector AAs, I'll buy a Freak of Nature or two for extra fun. I haven't had nearly as much luck with the more recent ones. Though I have an idea for some AH arbitrage that I may be able to exploit...
Edit: Cards on my shortlist for substitution in: Wrathwood Master Moss, Vampire King, Xentoth's Inquisitor. I'm not 100% convinced the Succulent Cluckadons are good enough in arena (as opposed to Devonshire Keep) to be worth their slot.
I suspect that shift is caused by the Evo Gauntlet increasing demand for packs from F2P players. It's such an amazing deal for them that it probably balances out.
The spellshield variant suuuuuucks to play against. Extinction is about all I have to deal with that, and I've only got 3 of those in my spider deck. Exarch of the egg can help, but usually they have ways to get around that. Rune Ear is a card I absolutely hate to see my opponent drop.
I'm hoping they ban the Spellshield gem. I've never liked that mechanic to begin with.
Imagine how you'd feel if you had 0 extinctions!
And that's with a much higher supply.
Wrath of god was also a card that was available starting in the very first set and several sets onward, so it isn't as great an example. There have definitely been expensive sweepers. The problem at the moment is how irreplaceable extinction is in a meta where tons of clutch cards can be gemmed for spellshield.
edit: so he makes another outdated magic analogy.
I really enjoyed playing Esper Dragons in magic a year ago or so, so the more board wipes and counters we get the better I say.
And yeah the spellshield gem is bullshit.
Mass polymorph would help in blue except that it's like twenty bucks too.
All of which conveys how powerful spellshield gems are.
Also Countermagic and Inquisition
and exarch and killipede
and zygmunt's game and heat wave and electrofry in red
and cheesesmythe in green
and living totem in white
there's a white wrath too but it's admittedly not great
most of those already see play independently of heirophant, and the majority can answer it even on the draw - the spellshield gem is probably too good (especially as a minor gem) and isn't great design in general but the idea that Extinction is the only answer in the format just isn't accurate. And countermagic and inquisition are basically free (they're pre-emptive, sure, but...your opponent is running green. What ELSE did you think he was gonna do on turn 3? holding a counterspell open on 3 is awkward but you want to inquisition the turn before your opponent gets the mana to play their most dangerous threat anyway - better for you that that happens on turn 2 when they still have other good targets in-hand than when you're playing against something like wintermoon and have to hold it until turn 5.), and exarch, zygmunt's, heat wave, cheesesmythe, and yesterday are all near or under $2.
I feel like there's 700 draft types
Mass polymorph is awfully expensive. The problem with rune ear is it's so cheap and grows. It's useful no matter when you play it, it's the definition of a bomb. And in Winter moon, they can bring it back if you do manage to kill it! It doesn't reset either, so they can draw the already buffed up one again. If they have counterspell, they can generally hold it up to defeat your counterspell and play it anyway. It's a ridiculously strong card and with spellshield, maybe the strongest rare in the set.
Er, Drafting you can do single elimination or swiss. You have to sit there until you are eliminated or the game is over. You can also do Sealed Gauntlet (Open 6 boosters, build a deck, play against others when you have time to queue up for a match) or Sealed Evo Gauntlet (Open 2 boosters, build a deck, wins get you more boosters added to the pile of cards to build your deck.) There's also a constructed gauntlet, for playing with the deck you made out of your collection. You can also play head to head, which rewards 1 booster with constructed decks.
the black/white deck is still running around some and runs living totems, and it's pretty trivial to board inquisitions out/in based on your matchup.
It's true that they can cover the heirophant with countermagic, but that's not really the point - the assertion was that you can't answer heirophants without an extinction. Countermagic stops extinction, too, and frankly any time you list answers and the response is 'but they can answer your answer!' the goalposts are shifting; the point was to provide a one-card answer to heirophant, not one for heirophant+countermagic - presumably if the opponent gets to spend 2 cards and 6 mana to try and stick their heirophant, then I also get 2 cards and 6 mana to answer it, otherwise we're comparing apples and oranges (in which case the response is just 'any two of the listed answers'). And landing heirophant with countermagic backup is a turn 5/6 play, not a turn 3 play that's prompting the turn 3 concedes being talked about.
It's almost certainly the strongest rare in the set - it's probably the strongest card in the set. But it's answerable by more than just extinction and if a player is automatically conceding the moment one hits the table that response being driven by tilt more than by the actual power level of the card.
I am not a kickstarter and I didn't dump a ton of money in this game. I have played I'm going to say 20+ games against people with rune ears. None of my decks have any good counters. I have counterspells in all my blue decks. Can't stop that turn 2 rune ear. Sometimes I don't get a counterspell in time. I can link my collection to you, perhaps I am missing something, but I see no real way to tackle spell shield.
I mean, I know it's not the answer anyone ever wants to hear, but the reality is that cards become expensive because they're good and if even cards priced between 150-300 plat are out of your price range you are going to need to adjust your expectations when playing constructed. That price point basically puts every playable rare off-limits. If spending money on the game isn't an option, I'd recommend farming pve/arena for gold to assemble some in-game currency. Alternately, I think there's a pauper (commons/uncommons only) league that's reasonably popular if you're dead-set on playing constructed without buying anything.
Exarch and zygmut are the only ones in that range anyways. Cheese jumped in price because someone wrote that its good on an article. I don't really feel like zygmut is a great counter anyways.
Magic had a lot of board wipes, some expensive and some not. It really depended on how it fit the format in question.
That said, Wrath was generally a solid 6 to 7 dollar card when I played. It's just been replaces by another card in recent sets, so it's kind of forgotten now.
Yeah, the 5-10 range is usually where the best wrath effect in the format lives
Ironically though, as a black wrath Extinction is functionally the same card as Damnation, which is not $8 but $80. (largely because it just hasn't been reprinted in a long time)
On the other hand, Magic is prey to ridiculous amounts of speculation. Prices have skyrocketed in the last few years. There was a pretty clear inflection point in Zendikar block, and where beforehand sought-after cards would extremely rarely break through the 15-20 euro price barrier, right now paying forty and fifty euro for a single card is just no longer unusual.
It's the main reason I backed Hex, you know. Having someplace where I could play a Magic-like without having to mortgage a house. I put down a fifty euro pledge on the basis that it costed me less than getting two single rares I needed for my magic deck.
Speculation is part of it, especially for some specific cards, but the main reason for the upward inflection point you're seeing on everything is that Zendikar block is when the game took off towards its current popularity - there are way more players now, and that doesn't too strongly effect new product because they also print way more of it, but for things that haven't been reprinted since then (like Damnation) the quantity printed just isn't enough to keep up with the demands of such a large player base, so prices jumped in response.
In the long term, Hex should be much more able to manage that phenomenon, since all it takes to 'reprint' a set when the player base grows is to put the packs back in the store for a while
Except they've said they won't do that.
So did magic, but they do it regularly, usually via throwback drafts.
There's no meaningful difference between 'this weekend you can pay to draft old sets' and 'this weekend you can pay to buy old packs' except that the time it takes to draft gives them more granular control over how much product gets added to the market.
Edit: I guess I should specify that I'm referring to magic online here, whereas paper magic has no ability to do things like that without physically reprinting product - one of the reasons that a number of cards have such a price disparity between what they cost in paper and what they cost on mtgo.
Just because Wizards doesn't stick to their word, doesn't mean Hex won't.
I dunno, I don't think it's just that. The prices have gone way up even in cards that are being printed currently. A type of rare that would have cost 8 dollars in old standard costs 14 now. The deck defining cards that would have cost 20 dollars back in the day (25 maximum being generally the cutoff point for Standard cards) now seem to easily hit 40. And this despite the fact that if anything packs are cheaper than ever now - you couldn't find a pack near me for under 4.50 euro no matter how much you looked when I played, now they cost 3.50 tops.
Of course, the existence of Mythic cards inflating the rarity of some of these cards can't be helping, but still. The price jump in Standard decks is very noticeable when, like me, you left the game some time ago and poked in back a few years later. Maybe people just buy less packs now, so there's less product in the market compared to the amount of people needing it? I don't know. But magic has gotten way the hell more expensive even at a Standard level. Hence why I wanted to give Hex a chance.
mythics are significant part of it - the price of in-print sets stays pretty steady (if you care to do the math, for any in-print set that doesn't have something unusual going on with it the card prices almost invariably work out such that the expected value of the cards in a box is roughly the market price of a box, +/- 10% or so. Cards that rise above a certain price basically start pushing the price of other cards in the set down to compensate - that's why, for example, most of the rares and a lot of the mythics in Primal Dawn have relatively low prices compared to other sets; Heirophant and Infinitrix are soaking up the set's value 'budget' and not leaving room for much else) but with the advent of mythics more of that value is concentrated into specific cards, and when those cards make their way into decks as 4-ofs it makes the price of decks go up even though the average value of cards in a pack stays the same.
The rest is mostly liquidity effects - there's a bigger player base, and when a set first releases they all want the playable cards now, so prices spike for the first couple months before settling back down to 'normal'. You see it a lot with good removal effects like Hero's Downfall and Declaration in Stone; the sustainable price of those cards is usually only $5-6, but when the set is new and they're 4-ofs in decks, everyone wants to buy them and nobody has them to sell (because most of the product is still in the hands of distributors, not players), so the price spikes to ~$15 until all the competitive players have their playsets and it falls back off.
Hex has already done flashback drafts. They are going to continue to do so, and frankly while the Crypto guys are great asserting that Cryptozooic is going to be more careful about shepherding the investment of enfranchised players than WotC is even if doing so starts to cost them money suggests that you might not be that familiar with the history of their other games.
Moreover, if the playerbase grows substantially after sets have been removed from the store, reintroducing cards into the environment is going to be important for keeping the game accessible, lest Vampire Kings hit 5,000+ plat - it has to be done and failing to do it turns customers away (it's literally why WotC started doing Modern Masters - modern was too expensive, making it inaccessible to too many customers. Solution: re-release the cards to drop their prices so more people will play Modern.). Your enfranchised players don't like it because it lowers the value of their cards and they're convinced they're losing 'money' - hence, the song and dance of pretending you're not going to do it. "Oh, we're not going to put packs back in the store. We're going to protect the long-term value of your cards! - but hey, look, something totally different: Flashback drafts! Which by total coincidence allow players to pay platinum for packs from old sets, kind of like if the packs were in the store."
The reality is that everyone in the industry has seen what a clusterfuck wotc's Reserved List turned out to be, and absolutely nobody is in a hurry to repeat that mistake.
And the reserved list is a completely different topic to what we're arguing about. If your point is that they may reprint older cards in new sets, then we're in agreement. If your point is that they'll reprint entire sets, then you're almost certainly wrong.
They are going to continue doing flashback drafts, including for formats involving packs not available in the store. That's what flashback drafts are, it's what they're for, and the only reason the particular flashback draft format they used previously didn't involve out-of-print sets is that there aren't any sets out of print yet.
There is no need to reprint cards in new sets as a way of controlling the price in a digital environment. That's something paper games do because it's the only cost-effective way to do it in paper. The digital version of that tool for games with healthy limited play is to temporarily re-release the product via flashback drafts. Believing that's not going to happen on the grounds that a company that once eliminated an entire block of cards from their constructed format a year early because it was causing cash flow problems super pinky-promised they wouldn't re-release sets is naive at best.