Magic the Gathering Should Sell White Border Set Cubes
This weekend is prerelease for the Hobbit Set. It costs $50 to enter. You get six packs of play boosters, a random foil card, and a spin down d20. (They removed stamped promos.) From that you create a 40ish card deck of the random stuff you pulled hoping you can play well enough with it. The event takes about four to five hours to complete because each person plays best of 3 and at least 3 opponents. When the prerelease is a normal set the price is closer to $35 to enter and a much better deal.
But what if you want to play the new set with your friends? Well, you can buy your own prerelease kits online which run higher with shipping. Having at least two players to run a one time game is going to cost a little over $60. You can buy a draft night kit which has 13 booster packs and 1 collector, these are a better value due to the collector booster as the prize but run about $100. You need to have all four players to make it worth running the game.
The big issue here is that these limited formats are basically a one time game. Yes, you can still re-use the cards in a custom deck later but the cost for this "casual" format rivals that of buying a full price AAA videogame.
There are the Beginners Box sets for some releases that are basically a bunch of preset jumpstart boosters that can be mixed, played, and returned to the box to do all over again. This is a great format and these box sets are like $35 total. That's because the cards are not typically standard legal and geared for a new player.
But what about long term players? What about those who want to have more advanced cards and mechanics and still want the quick gameplay of standard. You know, the format the majority of the cards are designed for.
They used to separate boosters for draft and set. The Draft Boosters were designed to work better in limited play and the Set Boosters were more for collecting. But then they came up with Collector Boosters and made a meh option called Play Boosters. Booster Booster Booster. The original game was made this way and worked well back when packs were $3 a pop and a starter kit was under $20. With inflation that's $6 a pack and $40 for a starter kit in today's money. That should be on point for loose booster packs and an entry level precon. But that's not what the market dictates.
You are now looking at closer to 9 dollars per booster pack and 70 per precon. Booster boxes for Hobbit are about 200, collectors are pushing 900. This set does not have commander precons so in order to get the cards at all you need to buy booster packs. You're going to see 10 dollar packs for a while and throwing money at booster boxes to get enough of the right cards to play is not going to work out for you. Even with the draft night and bundles you are going to pay a premium.
They claim that these Universes Beyond sets are getting more people to play the game, and maybe that was true two years ago when these were accessible, but looking at prices vs value today I can't help but feel like this only hurts the game long term.
"Oh but you can play for cheap on Arena!" Yeah, I play standard on Arena because it's nearly free, but it's not the same as being able to play in person, with real friends. That's now only for collectors, influencers, and shareholders it seems.
Like, this week I saw all these updates online about the new cards. The brand influencers who got their free product did their opening videos and showed how cool the cards were and how good this and that were. Then at GenCon they showcased a Mystery Commander Booster that had amazing stuff in it. Wizards did a little round table video with employees in this cool hobbit style house showcasing the new cards. But I watch these and can't help but feel like none of this is attainable for actual players. They show a casual opening of $800 booster boxes. They show product that will only be available on Secret Lair and will sell out and be 3x as expensive on the secondary market.
They show a game that isn't for players. That's where the Cube format comes in. You can go on sites like Cube Cobra and build a well balanced cube from a single set or specific mechanic or whatever you want for far less than buying a box of play boosters and trying to draft with them.
Imagine instead of the draft night bundles they constructed a set cube from the new set that had regular standard cards (not the jumpstart stuff). That's something you could put more rares in and charge a premium price for because of its long term replay value. A $200 cube could have $200 worth of cards in it with no issue. Include 4 sets of set-flavored sleeves. Have fun playing together with friends and not have to worry about what you pulled.
Right now to build a cube you have to buy the singles. Buying singles is great in the long term but it can take over a month for your cards to arrive in the mail from TCGPlayer and that's AFTER you figured out what cards to buy. Some won't show up. Some will be wrong. Some will be damaged. Having a shelf-ready cube available at the store to pick up after work and take home to play that night is far more valuable.
They could do budget cubes, pauper cubes, reprint cubes, all kinds of stuff. It's their game, their IP. Oh and get this, a wild concept I'm throwing out here, you could make the cube cards even cheaper by making them... white border.
Back in the day white border meant the card was a reprint from a previous set. Now everything is in black border no matter what. So why not bring back the white border for a more affordable casual tabletop play setting like cube? Then you could still go chase the more expensive sought after black border cards for your collection. White border cards would still be tournament legal, making it cheaper to create standard decks for events.
My very first 8th edition starter deck was white border. I went and bought two or three booster packs to supplement it and expand the deck. I traded cards with my friends. That's what you were supposed to do. Buying an entire booster box was out of the question back then. Now it's "let's buy a few boxes and draft". Um, ok who do you know is cool with dumping two to four hundred dollars for a one time tournament at your kitchen table in a card game with no cash prize? That's like going to Walmart with your friends and each of you buying a new console to play a Smash Bro's tournament.
I don't know what kind of money WOTC thinks folks have these days but something needs to change for this not to become like Pokemon and basically 90% collecting.