I’m skeptical that WotC opening a direct channel to buying singles would benefit them financially, not to mention that Wizards competing with the secondary market would sour relationships with stores who form the base infrastructure Magic organized play is built atop of.
the future is now: play pauper
A lot of money is made on buying singles. I don’t know the stats, but I would conservatively posit that half of the money spent on Magic, is in singles.
There would be no need to sour relationships. Registered Magic stores would be the only places you could buy single cards through the WoTC supply chain. *Additionally, Wizards says they don’t pay attention to the secondary market. But they absolutely do. You can see it in their pricing of pre-made decks and also in how sets are designed.
I could be way off. But, I bet cheaper rares would sell more. Therefore, at the least, lower prices could be offered through an official chain and still make about the same money. But, based on the MANY times I have overheard people talking about how they don’t have enough money for X amount of 1 single card for a deck------I bet sales would go up so much, that more money could be made, while still offering meaningfully lower prices.
Boxes and packs would still exist, for the game types which utilized those. And for the people who like to open them and hope for the best.
And I think it would be a big boost to the quality of the game. People could afford to play more deck ideas and it would probably end up meaning R&D would eventually make the game even better. Because more play testing of unconventional tactics would happen. Inspiring!
Magic sets are so large, I’m not sure they would ever do that. But that would be amazing! Some secondary sellers will already sell 4 of each common and uncommon for about $40, when sets are new. A whole set 4x for one cost would be super cool.
A few more Magic cards with artwork that I like:
Celestial Ancient
Godsire
Jokulmorder
Leviathan
Silvos
Twilight Shepherd
This is a very important legal shield to keep them from creating a gambling market – they can build in ‘collectability’ (super foils and the like) but can’t explicitly sell packs of cards with values they know about.
my favorite magic card is obzedat, ghost council
yooooooo this card looks sick
this art is amazing
i really did find it very mechanically graceful, it made me play magic full time for like a year and a half
Yeah, I’m gonna check this out!
I think Pauper is about to blow up. I guess Pauper is officially gonna be at the 4 January Channel Fireball GP events in the form of “super sunday” double up events.
I guess it is only fair that I point out my avatar is taken from the card Ghoulcaller Gisa:
a couple days ago i started looking into mtg stuff again . . . feeling tempted to somehow go back at playing.
i was never even decent at it. only played it because most of my friends also did it during the whole recess in school when we werekids. i remember worldwake being the newest set we had in the city’s game shop. we played for some two years, then the shop closed because of older folks going to college, ordering cards/boosters got too troublesome and i gues the “meta” got too stale.
mtg and mmos were very big for me during that time and it’s funny how, despite the strcuture of theses games, my clearest memories are of either playing alone or listening about it from others. even if i engaged in the essencial social aspect through lan parties, events or just going to friends’ house to play on their bed / kitchen table, it always ended feeling somehow alienating to a degree or other, like as if most connections i got from them were sometimes too mechanic. heck, i don’t know.
i forgot how complex the dynamics were between the different deck-types! there’s also something kind of addictive in looking at a card-pool online and trying to connect the dots, making them work together, finding balance, etc. there’s a game shop in the city i moved to right in front of my house. when i get home late at night from college and see all those people playing, it looks like they’re having a lot of fun. maybe they are not jerks and we could become buddies, even!
magic dot wizards says that the videogame magic duels is “the best way to start playing magic: the gathering […]”, so i’m downloading that on steam. it’s probably garbage; after all, only noobs trust websites these days . . .
anyway here’s some angel cards i think are cool
it’d be cool to get some sort of group going on jinteki.net but I’m afraid I don’t know any of the cards anymore
Am giving serious thought to buying da share z0ne’s new card game 
I came so close to doing it just to say I helped push it to 100% at 4:20PM EST.
Thank God I didn’t need to chip in to make that happen.
down to play on jinteki soon for sure! what would be the best way to organise a lil group?
I like these symmetrical artworks from the Kamigawa/Ravnica era a lot
haven’t played netrunner in a hot minute but i’m also down for jinteki
How hard is for this guy to grasp that islands can contain other geographic accidents in them?
Yes, this is also true in a world where magic is literally real. How are floating islands not an island? It’s right there in the name!
I am pretty sure this is intended as a joke. I mean, Ravnica’s city-lands were so evocative that I still dream about a nonexistent 2-D exploration-platformer in that setting, but I can still get behind their inclusion in a list of the absurdities propagated in the name of geographic variety.
