Modern Masters 2015 was announced yesterday, and the news is troubling.
Like the last Modern Masters, this set will be a limited release. This is good for folks that like exclusives, and pretty bad for everyone else. The MSRP per pack has also climbed, from $6.99 to 9.99, driving the price of the box up. This is to increase the bottom line for stores, which would be fine if many stores weren't charging 15-25 dollars a pack for the last MMA. At these prices, MMA packs can still be had, if not boxes. The reason? No one wants to pay these prices. Feels pretty bad to put down $20 for a pack to treat yo' self and open your 43rd Auriok Salvagers.
I think that's the problem with these sets.
WotC wants all the money for the cards, but they have to put relatively low-quality cards in the set to make for a balanced limited environment. Want me to pay 20 dollars for a random booster pack? Then take a leaf out of Yu-Gi-Oh's book (never thought I'd type that). YGO often has collector's tins that include a promo or two, and a pile of packs. Sometimes, this promo is good, sometimes it's bad, but getting an alternate finish card, a collectable tin, and often packs that are out of circulation is not a bad pickup for about 20 bucks. WotC could do the same thing- print a set full of powerful/desireable reprints, disregard the limited environment. Pick your mythics wisely, including some fan-favourites, but print the foil mythics with alternate art.
Think- how much more M15 would have sold if, like the Priceless Treasures promotion for Zendikar, you had a chance to open an SDCC style planeswalker instead of the standard foil? Keep the standard foils, as some prefer them, but if every so often someone opened a really cool alternate art/style/finish version of a powerful/popular card? Money made. Look up the price of a first-run box of Zendikar. See what I mean?
Building a set not for limited, but to increase the supply of Modern "staples," might be the way to go. To drive demand, print alternate art foils. Maybe one "guaranteed" per booster box, like in hockey card sets. People won't buy them to play sealed, but they'll be collectable/desireable enough pickups that WotC could get away with a $10 MSRP. Build a set with the goal of making Modern more accessable in mind, print 4x as much as MMA (evidence suggests that there was about 3 times as much demand for MMA 2013 as there was supply), market it toward collectors. Alternate art promos will offset the financial impact of reprints on collectors, people trying to buy into Modern will be able to obtain sets of cards without a bank loan, and WotC makes money. Everyone wins but limited players, but Conspiracy 2 can't be far off.
What do you guys think?
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