Couple different things here. One is that on Magic Arcana yesterday, Wizards announced that in January they are releasing all foil boxes of Alara block. The packs will be 15 cards at a presumably normal rarity distribution, and packs will have cards from Shards, Conflux, and Alara Reborn. It's super cool, except packs retail for $11.99. We'll see what cost is on them though cause hopefully stores don't actually need to charge that much.

Also, thanks to the compulsiveness of people forcing them to check the trademark office every day for trademarks filed by WotC, we now know that the next FTV product is going to be From the Vault: Relics! Presumably that means it's all artifacts. Will this finally be the "nothin' but Moxes" set we've all been waiting for?

The reserved list doesn't matter. They chose not to break the reserve list for FTV: Exiled, but they can. As such, Slive Queen has a decent shot at the sliver premium deck in November.

And yeah, the all-foil boosters are a total cash grab, but I may get a box depending on what the price is.

Sol Ring was not in exiled, though it was a judge foil. Also, according to the official WotC reserved list policy, the reserved list does NOT matter for foil promos such as the FTV series. They can't reprint non-foil versions of the cards and put them in normal booster packs, but they can do this just like how they printed judge foils of reserve list cards.

I don't recall at the moment. If you can link me to the reserved list page I can tell you

Well there ya go, answered your own question.

Black Zarak wrote:

My own comic shop won't even hold a box for me beyond this weekend because of demand (I'm still pissed about that btw Jeebus, have you no loyalty?)

We won't hold a box for ANYONE beyond this weekend. Our rules are as follows:
Preorders must be picked up the weekend the product comes out or it goes out for sale
Anything else on hold must be picked up within 24 hours.
The second rule we make exceptions for all the time for people like you, but the first we really don't. Also, we held the Planechase deck for you for weeks and you never picked it up or told me you weren't coming to get it, so I don't think Dean's going to be big on holding a box. As for the loyalty thing, you got the FTV at MSRP. Stuff like that we can definitely do. However, since even some of our bestest customers ever have left us with literally hundreds of dollars of stuff on hold that they never pick up, you gotta understand where these rules come from. (Especially when they have to write a check for thousands and thousands of dollars to pick these boxes up).

For what it's worth, I don't think we're gonna run out this weekend, and we've also taken measures to ensure we will have more coming in the next few weeks so we aren't left empty handed. You won't be able to find a box for like $90 anyway, but you'll be able to find packs and not have to pay more than the $3.99 per pack...I assume.

lordsathien wrote:

UsaSatsui wrote: Quote: This is looking more and more like Yu Gi Oh or something. This is a so-called argument I am sick and tired of seeing. I've never played the game, so I don't know if gameplay of Magic is becoming more and more like it, but I doubt it. But what irks me about the argument is it assumes that copying the things other games do successfully is automatically a bad thing. That Magic should never do anything differently from the way it's been doing things. That it should never follow another's example. Yu-Gi-Oh is (or was, not sure if it still is) a very successful and profitable game. There's nothing wrong with the concept of absorbing some of it's ideas. They may turn out to -not- be good ideas. But it's not because they were lifted from someplace else per se. Granted it's an old ability, but I'm pretty sure Morph was a direct result of seeing how YGO worked.

Really? Cause Yugioh works as a direct result of seeing Illusionary Mask, I would've gathered. In fact, Yugioh is more like Illusionary Mask than morph is like Yugioh (When a face down creature in Yugioh attacks or is attacked or does anything, you have to turn it face up, much like with Illusionary Mask. Morph creatures are able to act entirely on their own. You can kill someone with a morph and never reveal what it is throughout the entire game (Although you have to reveal it at the end to prove that it actually IS a morph creature and not a basic land because you're some cheating douchebag).
Basically, everything is stolen from Magic. In fact, most of them are just Magic with one or two rules removed (Frequently, mana costs). The only games I've seen that had any real innovation were Versus which was a really good game, and Hecatomb which had a little too much innovation for its own good (And also was pretty unbalanced making it very unfun).
Long story short, Yugioh is complete shit and Magic never has nor ever will steal anything from them.

Oh yeah, forgot about that one. Actually, Star Trek and Star Wars were both completely different than Magic in terms of gameplay. Problem is, neither game was very good, and they both required you to have all the big name cards. You can win a legitimate vintage tournament in Magic without having any power cards. Sure the only deck you can really play is fish, but you can still win without having anything more expensive than Null Rod or Force of Will. In Legacy you can win tournaments with 2 revised dual lands and nothing else over $10 (And that's a VERY competitive deck). Things like this were simply not possible in the other games, and I know it's definitely not possible in Yugioh. That's doesn't contest that Star Wars/Trek CCGs were very different in gameplay than magic, but it should further support that Magic has no reason to steal anything from them, since they were obscenely unbalanced.

That was another problem with Star Wars. The dark side was MUCH more powerful. Also, you had to have one person playing dark side and the other playing light side, so basically you just took turns winning.

I know, but we went on a tangent. I like all of the box sets and stuff they've done so far. I think they're pumping out too many too fast right now, but they've all been good so I'm fine with it. The all foil boxes are taking it a little too far I think, but it depends on what we can get them for. If stores can reasonably sell them for like $7 a pack (unlikely) it'll be fine.

Black Zarak wrote:

Wizards said MSRP is $11.99 though

I know, but we dunno what cost on the boxes is gonna be. MSRP on packs is $3.99, but we're able to charge less. Sure it's not a lot less, but it's something. Hopefully there'll be a much bigger discount on these, but it's unlikely.