MTG thread

Well right now fetchlands are holding modern back, so I would bet they are being reprinted in the fall set since to affect price they need to have a massive print run. Though I suspect one or two will end up in the modern event deck to tide things over until then.

If you have fetches and don't need them now is probably the safest time to "get out".

Unless they were already planned, which they might have been depending on how WotC predicted the run up for Modern. It's by no means certain, but there's at least a fair shot of a fetch reprint this fall. If it isn't an entirely new land type, I think a fetch is probably the most likely reprint.

The most likely event is that fetches will make an appearance in a premium product or two before being fully reprinted in Modern Masters 2 next year.

I kinda doubt that, honestly. Unless another MM set has a larger print run, it won't do much to make modern accessible. High demand rares like Cryptic Command from MM have already surpassed their price before reprint, nevermind mythics like Tarmo. I don't see them wanting the land base for the entire format quite so expensive.

I already have mine, so it makes no difference either way how they reprint them, but I'd like to see it done in a main release even if it means losing some value. The next major block will be using the M15 card frame, so the older fetches would definitely keep a premium for people who care about that sort of thing.

Mist_sl said:

The fall set was already finalized 6 months ago. There's a full year lag time from development to print. They won't be in that set.

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Except the need for fetches has been obvious to them for years now? I bought a playset of fetches immediately when shocks were announced.

While it is possible that WotC has ignored basic common sense, I think there are enough signs that fetches are coming that it would be a pretty big shocker if both M15 and Huey didn't resolve the issue.

Now that Modern Masters exists I don't really see Wizards ever reprinting for Standard any cards as expensive as fetches. They might throw them in other premium products but I think that the chances of them being in M15 are zero and the chances they are in the next core set are only slightly above zero.

Welp.. barely missed top 8 at the Super IQ yesterday of 86 people. Went 5-2 and got 9th place, two guys I lost to were in top 8, one got 1st, other got 5-6th. GR monsters and Mono-u devotion. The GR monsters guy was just drawing absolutely perfectly in every match, it was ridiculous. He would get exactly enough mana dorks in his opening hand to power out turn 2 domri and/or turn 3 polukranos, then just draw threats from then on. He never flooded out or ran out of gas.
He said it was his first professional tournament when he won too, heh. He was just destined to win that.

Against mono-u, I admittedly kept a risky hand in game 1. I had no idea what I was playing against, and kept a one lander with thoughtseize, duress, three 2 drop removal spells and a read the bones. If I draw my 2nd land within 3 turns, I can keep pace for a couple turns with my removal until I draw my 3rd and then dig. At least, that was my thinking, but my duress whiffed since he is mainly creatures, and I never drew the 2nd land and he killed me on turn 5. I crushed him game 2, and then he got the god draw game 3 on the play.

Arbitrary_sl said:

Now that Modern Masters exists I don't really see Wizards ever reprinting for Standard any cards as expensive as fetches. They might throw them in other premium products but I think that the chances of them being in M15 are zero and the chances they are in the next core set are only slightly above zero.

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Except they weren't that expensive a month ago. Shocks were what, $30ish before the RtR reprint? Mutavault was $30 as well, and it's even higher now after a reprint. For a very long time, Zendikar fetches were right in line with that price. Onslaught ones are higher because they're so fucking old, but it's still a reprintable set. The customer base is definitely there, and with a border change the old ones will still fetch a premium (as will judge foils).

They'll come back. The shuffling issue isn't really much of an issue, in my opinion. NWO mostly applies to commons. I really think they'll come back around, sooner rather than later.

The argument that a card will not see a standard reprint because "it is too expensive" is not a good one. Especially when WotC is trying to push Modern as a format, and it was expressly designed such that WotC could reprint cards as needed. For Modern to succeed it needs to be accessible and you can barely build a budget deck these days without fetchlands. Furthermore, special sets like Conspiracy and Modern Masters are not printed in high enough numbers to significantly move the needle on fetchland prices. The only reason we have not seen fetchlands reprinted yet is because shocklands are still in standard. So yes, now is the time to sell fetchlands because unless WotC is stupid and wants to hinder Modern's growth, fetchlands will be reprinted in M15 or the next block. M15 is less likely, but there are arguments for WotC letting standard go crazy for four months.

Mist, I am curious, where did you get the numbers that a set is finalized 6 months in advance? That seems suspect because the lag time to produce a product and get it onto store shelves is not six months. Plus, I would think WotC would want to have the ability to respond to major imbalances in standard via ways other than a ban list.

Finally, a note on Mutavault's current price. The only reason it is so expensive right now is because basically every deck in standard wants to play four copies of it. Once Mutavault rotates out, it will drop to around $10, if that, because standard's playerbase dwarfs Modern's and Legacy's.

Mist_sl said:

I don't think they ever want them in Standard again. It's just too much shuffling for FNM players.

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Maro has stated fetchlands could come back to standard and been hinting that they are on the way for months. Heck, farseek was just in standard for a year.

Arbitrary_sl said:

Now that Modern Masters exists I don't really see Wizards ever reprinting for Standard any cards as expensive as fetches. They might throw them in other premium products but I think that the chances of them being in M15 are zero and the chances they are in the next core set are only slightly above zero.

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Lands that everyone needs as table stakes to play are NOT cards WotC wants to be expensive. They've been clear about this and every action they've taken has suggested that they will correct it eventually. They reprinted shocks, and then repeated the reprint process in Dragon's Maze. Eventually fetches will come out in a set (MM2, Huey, or M15) and push them down to the 10-20$ range (40$ range if MM2). Aaron Forsythe alluded to a fetchland reprint incoming this past weekend on twitter.

I can see debating odds and stuff and various possibilities (including conspiracy), but stating that WotC won't put fetches into standard or odds of a huey reprint are close to 0 just seems silly. Yes we might not see them until MM2 or fall 2015, but that would be a pretty obviously poor decision and WotC has a decent track record of mostly avoiding obviously terrible decisions.

But where are you getting this information? I live in Seattle and know a few people at WotC so if you REALLY want I can go ask.

I couldn't roll my eyes any harder if I tried.

Xalara_sl said:

But where are you getting this information? I live in Seattle and know a few people at WotC so if you REALLY want I can go ask.

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Maro has been pretty clear that WotC dislikes shuffle effects because they slow down the game. However, he's also said that this won't prevent fetches from coming back to standard.

I'd personally put fetches in Conspiracy at 10%, M15 at 30%, huey at 45%, and "everything else" at 15%. The "zero" and "near zero" statements that Arbitrary was throwing around were the main eye rolling thing in this debate because pretending something is near zero just because you think it is unlikely is absurd. I know that as a novice MTG player who started in July 2012 after picking up Duels of the Planeswalkers, fetches going up in value significantly felt stupidly obvious when shocks were confirmed in RtR. I picked up my playset asap even though I didn't even play modern or legacy, and had I been playing longer I likely would have picked up a dozen playsets. I'm not some market predicting genius and many other people made the same connection.

This was obvious as a beginner 2 years before Huey was going to release, and WotC knew 3-4 years before Huey's release that they were reprinting shocks into the ground which would (basic economics) put pressure on the price of fetches. It seems very likely that they've had a plan for where fetches will return for at least a few years. MMA2 seems unlikely to me since MMA1 was an experiment and it could have failed. M15, M16, Huey, Fall 2015, and "some other product" like conspiracy are all possibilities. I, personally, think that all the advantages of Huey will outweigh the disadvantage of 2 years of shuffle effects. They'll sell stupid amounts of product, they'll fix barrier to entry issues in modern, and it will allow them to get Onslaught fetchlands into modern which they've also hinted at previously. We should find out at Pax (or earlier if conspiracy/m15) who was right and who was wrong

One thing that I did not predict, and WotC certainly did not seem to see coming as well is that blue fetches would already be $100 (sold out at SCG) to $110 (channelfireball) 7 months before Huey and we haven't even hit modern season yet. It is theoretically possible that in June we could see fetchlands hitting $150 each and people who might normally be interesting in putting together a modern deck for the PTQ season decide to sit out the season instead with such a high barrier to entry for the mana base. That is NOT something WotC wants to see and is why you see defensive tweets from Aaron Forsythe when people started tweeting images of tarn w/ a Benjamin Franklin shopped in for the picture.

Mist_sl said:

Farseek was specifically only in Standard for a year for a reason, so that it would rotate halfway through the lifespan of RTR. And it was a 4-of in green-based decks. Fetchlands would be an 8-of in nearly EVERY deck (even decks like monored would play 4 tarns and 4 mesas to thin their own lands out.) That's a lot of shuffling.

The Forsythe tweet says: "Victims of own success. We can and will reprint cards, but we can't react that quickly. Attendance # shows people can play."
To me that says "Don't expect a reprint for at least a year, and stop overreacting because clearly lots of people have the cards."

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One of Sam Stoddard's articles on Daily MTG back before Theros also mentioned that the lands in Theros were one of the last things they created (and in fact, were done by development and not design). Apparently the Scars block lands were also changed late in development. Dual lands and available mana seems to be one of the things they tinker with the most often, and finalize very late in the process.

Which says nothing about incoming fetches, but they're also not dumb. They've known they were necessary for quite a while.

Vilgan_sl said:

It is theoretically possible that in June we could see fetchlands hitting $150 each and people who might normally be interesting in putting together a modern deck for the PTQ season decide to sit out the season instead with such a high barrier to entry for the mana base. That is NOT something WotC wants to see and is why you see defensive tweets from Aaron Forsythe when people started tweeting images of tarn w/ a Benjamin Franklin shopped in for the picture.

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If fetches reach those prices, I am flipping every goddamn one of them into legacy staples like real dual lands. There are a fraction of the number of ABUR duals out there as any of the fetch lands, and they're never coming back. Hell, Tarns and Mistys already sell for more than about half of the duals do. That's just nuts.