Scott Moore of Galaxy Comics in
I just read Mr. Barnett's rant on WoTC's new Magic: the Gathering changes. I didn't mind the rant itself. I rant on silly things myself quite often. The thing I noticed, though was the misinformation he seems to have received. First, maybe this is nitpicky and maybe it's not, but the new rares are called "Mythic," not "Mystic." Second, and more importantly, WoTC is putting out the same number of sets each year with less cards per set, not more sets each year. The last four years have had four sets per year and every alternate year since Ice Age has had four sets per year. There's pretty much a precedent of four sets per year. The difference now is we get about 200 LESS cards per year given the same number of sets. I'm still not sure how I feel about that. I guess I'll have to wait ’til Shards of Alara and see what happens.
As far as the basic lands go, what does it matter? So they replace a common with a land. First, not everyone that plays Magic plays at Walt's and maybe they don't all have access to an infinite amount of land. Second, I'm sure Walt's, like my store and every other gaming store, has boxes and boxes of commons sitting around. Getting one less common per pack is going to be unnoticed. If it cuts my common boxes down by 9% then great!
Also, I fully believe (though I don't work for Wizards so I don't have "proof"), that there are different levels of rarity already. Historically, WotC printed cards on 121 card sheets. Unless that's changed for some strange reason, then there are already "filler" rares in each set. And commons and uncommons, of course. Planar Chaos has 40 rares: three of each on a sheet, hypothetically, plus one. Future Sight and Morningtide: two of each rare plus one. But sets like Time Spiral, Lorwyn and Shadowmoor have 80 rares. That's one of each with 41 cards left over. It would not be an outrageous assumption that they double print half the rares in the set. Look at Shards of Alara: 53 rares, 15 Mythic rares. In Mark Rosewater's article he states that Mythic rares are twice as rare as "normal" rares. Hmm... 53 rares, two per sheet, that's 106... plus 15 Mythics at one per sheet... 121! Amazing! Mythic rares have been around forever, they just didn't have a different color expansion symbol.
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