MTG, the Corona-Virus Pandemic, and future events.

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Post by user_938036 » 3 years ago

Card Slinger J wrote:
3 years ago
user_938036 wrote:
3 years ago
As for the low EV of standard you speak of I am forced to question what you even mean. Do you mean on release weekend? 1 week out? 2 weeks? 2 months? 5 months? 1 year?
About a year since people like to buy out sealed booster boxes of Standard sets in order to wait for the EV to spike so they can try to break even by flipping them on the Secondary Market.

Expected Value is the total value of cards in a set overall not by opening booster packs. It's dependent on what cards are highly valued in a specific set.
So we are on the same page. EV refers to the total value of all the cards in the set multiplied by their rarity(your chance to get one in a pack) and added together. You calculate the EV of a pack the same way you calculate the EV for a box. The only real difference is that you are more likely to actually hit the EV of a box because variance and sample size. Thus Expected Value, the Value you can Expect from a pack/box.

With that out of the way lets take a look at the EV of every set since Kaladesh 1 yearish after its release(I couldn't find exact release days easily so I just chose a random day in the month they were released.)

Kaladesh $3.10 Aether Revolt $3.16 Amonkhet $2.97 Hour $2.89 Ixalan $3.62 Rivals $3.25
Dominaria $2.97 Guilds $3.23 Allegiance $3.22 War $3.17 Eldraine NA Theros NA Ikoria NA

As we can see Dominaria is still awful not breaking $3 with most of the sets you claimed as bad breaking $3 easily; it only out preforms Hour of Devestation.

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Post by Card Slinger J » 3 years ago

Probably a bit early to say though I'm expecting Zendikar Rising to be an At Home / Remote Play Pre-Release instead of In-Store just like Core 2021 and Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths was supposedly. Even If Wizards of the Coast decides to lift In-Store Play Suspension in September it will still be too late to save the Zendikar Rising Pre-Release for In-Store Play at Local Game Stores. Local Game Stores will miss at least two Pre-Releases and this is a pretty big deal because Pre-Releases are a HUGE way for stores to accumulate money. So there's something in marketing called "Customer Acquisition Cost" a.k.a. CAC, so how much money does it cost for me to acquire a client or customer? Well in Pre-Release terms this is a free way for Local Game Stores to acquire customers while some of them may be even long-time customers.

That's why in a Pre-Release there's a lot more people and some of these people you've never seen before whether If they've played in FNM, Commander Night on Tuesdays, or Modern, because a) these people or maybe more casual, maybe they don't have a Paper Standard deck to take to FNM Standard or maybe they don't like drafting but there's more casuals on Pre-Release so you should have the most players than you will ever have at your store for Paper Magic given how it's a Casual Event. You don't need to have a pre-made deck in order to enter after all In-Store Play was previously re-instated on June 1st and by the end of the month the situation was drastically different, so different that Wizards of the Coast felt that it was best to suspend In-Store Play again which of course shut out all the Casual Players who wanted to play EDH / Commander at their LGS.

They're monitoring the situation with COVID-19 and they said they'll make monthly updates more until then they're going to support Remote Play so we're back to Remote FNM events. Over the course of the pandemic so many of our lives has mitigated or migrated to the Internet. If the MTG Community can do the same then there are many meaningful experiences. So it's kind of as If they took semi-toxic MTG players that are naturally toxic and you put them online. What do you think is going to happen? Likewise for instance someone would never say In-Person in America that he / she doesn't enjoy America and America discusses Caucasians. They wouldn't say this to another player right? But online they would all the time because it gives them a false sense of security.

Wizards of the Coast also wants us to know that they're currently working on additional tools and resources a.k.a. Arena / MTGO to refine the Remote Play experience. So what does this mean for the Local Game Store? Missing one In-Store Play Pre-Release is pretty devastating even though it is a "Core Set" Pre-Release and honestly Core Sets are not the most powerful sets nor are they the most popular sets and it is a somewhere Pre-Release. There's a lot of reasons why Core 2021 still hurts right? Those are still really great customers and it sucks that they're not going to do it anymore but at the same time it's understandable and it's not like a giant loss okay. Core 2021 is bad but it's not a very popular set, it wasn't going to have that many people anyway. Granted it does offer some goodies for EDH / Commander players at times.

The reason Wizards of the Coast got rid of Core Sets (remember when MTG Origins was supposed to be the final Core Set ever?) is because they don't sell well. Losing money on Core Sets is fine for Local Game Stores when it comes to Pre-Releases but as long as they don't lose money on Zendikar Rising and If there's Fetchlands in it (highly doubtful) then you've just missed a HUGE opportunity to bring returning players, maybe they quit Paper Magic and are wanting to play again. Zendikar Rising should they do it correctly could be as big for the game as Return to Ravnica. Zendikar is a very popular plane, you throw in the Fetchlands of Original Zendikar / Khans of Tarkir and "BAM!" just like that you could have a Pre-Release of over 200 people. Realistically I don't see this happening knowing Wizards of the Coast's current stance on the Fetchlands.

But given the current situation with the global pandemic we know that Pre-Releases are At Home / Remote Play now. So all those potential customers that would be at a Local Game Store buying things while they take breaks from playing and or being "Hey this is a great store!" "I didn't know you had this comic / anime statue / board game!" got screwed over. It's not just as simple as there's only a few MTG events that really draw people out and In-Store Play Pre-Release is definitely the number one event when it comes to Paper Magic. Everyone and their grandmother is coming out for Pre-Release and some people who quit MTG, some people have heard about the Fetchlands being back in Standard (not gonna happen but keep dreaming) you have a lot of returning players who haven't played Paper Magic for a long time coming back to these events.

These are lifelong customers that you can make more and more money on and these events are just not happening. So losing In-Store Play for Zendikar Rising Pre-Releases is going to destroy a large majority of Local Game Stores. You can eat losing Core 2021 because Core Sets aren't that popular anyway and Summer sets aren't popular. You cannot eat Zendikar Rising down the road, you don't have this Pre-Release where you're expecting 100-200 people maybe 50% of them being new people and maybe 20% of those people come back to buy some more Paper Magic cards or "There's a Pokémon plush that my significant other would like or my kids would love" or "There's some anime things that they would enjoy". It's not as simple from a marketing perspective as it's really difficult and very expensive to acquire customers.

To get a customer in your door is very expensive and In-Store Play Pre-Releases were a fantastic way to do it for no money. These are ideal customers, these are people who live around the area, you are their Local Game Store (LGS). It's kind of a huge powwow community event to really help people and obviously help the game store. When you talk about this and you look at it this way, Zendikar Rising having to be hosted At Home / Remote Play instead of In-Store Play is a massive hit on these Local Game Stores. I don't think they can survive financially. A Local Game Store can survive not having Core 2021 In-Store Play Pre-Release events because long-term hey maybe 50 people will show up and maybe out of those 50 people 10 people were new so we lost 10 new clients and lost the revenue we had on that day / night right? Which isn't that bad...

However the lifetime revenue, the customer lifetime revenue, our lifetime value is what's most important to these stores. If a store in Zendikar Rising can bring a hundred new customers or let's say 50 new customers and half of those customers are impressed by the store and they come back then that's the definition of a community. A returning customer is a lot easier to deal with than a new customer. So the amount of money it costs to make a returning customer buy again or to advertise is probably 10% of what it costs to acquire a new customer. Companies like Blue Apron lose money acquiring new customers especially the first interaction but you're hoping this customer will buy something next month or next year or spend some Holiday money with you. Taking that luxury away from people isn't right IMO.

That's why the In-Store Play Pre-Release is so important for Paper Magic because it's not for the money you make that day / night when it's for the future of your business. So let's say a customer hears about Zendikar Rising and they played in the previous Zendikar Pre-Releases when they were younger and now they have money, they're interested, they want to go. They go to Pre-Release, they have a good experience, and meet some new people and they're like "Hey I'm getting back into Paper Magic again!" They will go back to that store because it's probably the closest store to where they live. That's how people go to Pre-Release. Maybe they'll buy comics and figures for their friends, maybe buy Holiday gifts. That's why it's important. It's something that a lot of people take for granted far too often.

The importance is not how much money you've made that day / night when the importance is how many new people will come back to your store or even your old returning customers will have a good experience. Maybe they want to get out of quarantine to spend their Stimulus money on XYZ after being away for 5-6 months. So whatever Local Game Stores hold In-Store Play Zendikar Rising Pre-Release events later this year against Wizards of the Coast's In-Store Play Suspension are going to dominate for the next few years. Those that follow the rules are more than likely going to go bankrupt unless entry fees are paid to these LGSs via Remote Play on Arena though that didn't seem to be the case for Core 2021 or Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths this year. I bet the profits were significantly lower than what these stores would've accumulated via In-Store Play though.
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Post by robertleva » 3 years ago

@Card Slinger J You seem to have a decent grasp on the economics of the situation but I think you underestimate the amount of damage that has already been done to this "industry" of LGS stores. At the best of times, these places are low margin, month to month shops that need the pre-release cash to pay their lease until the next pre-release. A 1 year hiatus on organized was never in their business model. And when covid is gone, what will the be demand for frivolous social gatherings like these in a post-covid world? The LGS owner cannot know.

Only the biggest of these types of places will survive, and they will obviously need a substantial online footprint. The demand for paper cards can only go down over the next few years, under any circumstances.

I am personally sad about it, but the fact remains that the world has changed, and the new rules don't have room for these kinds of trivialities. Playing MTG regularly at your LGS may very well be a thing of the past for a lot of people. Big cities will have big stores that will make it but for the rest of us. RIP.
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Post by Card Slinger J » 3 years ago

@robertleva It's possible that these small LGSs could recoup their Pre-Release losses from Double Masters If there's still a demand for it though it's only wishful thinking. Unless you're paying for the VIP Edition which is $100 a booster pack you only need to pay $12 a booster pack for the regular since booster boxes are only selling for $200-300 each. Otherwise your best bet is to just purchase Double Masters singles at your LGS. The only reason why Mystery Booster seemed like a ripoff for these stores is because they had to be WPN only.

The big stores you're referring to are the ones whose business model now reflects Rudy's business with Alpha Investments, Sports N More, Card Kingdom, ChannelFireball, and Star City Games where they don't care about overhead to provide In-Store Play for people to play Paper Magic as long as they're making money off of collectors rather than players. This is one of the reasons why I feel Wizards of the Coast should expand the Reserve List knowing that In-Store Play for Paper Magic is no longer an option for players anymore.
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Post by The Fluff » 3 years ago

not sure if it's to be put here, but it's sort of related to mtg..

USPS is available again as a delivery method for cards to my country, but the price has greatly increased.. before Corona it was just 4-5 dollars. Now it's 8-9 dollars. Almost doubled..
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Post by Card Slinger J » 3 years ago

Turns out I got my assessment of Ikoria being the best selling Spring set for MTG wrong when the Hasbro reports were actually referring to Arena only not Paper Magic. How is Arena making more money than Paper Magic when the Secondary Market for card singles still remains strong? How do Local Game Stores profit off of Arena when there's no way to pay entry fees for events? What does this really mean for Casual going forward since we already know Arena is the future of Standard?
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Post by Krishnath » 3 years ago

Card Slinger J wrote:
3 years ago
Turns out I got my assessment of Ikoria being the best selling Spring set for MTG wrong when the Hasbro reports were actually referring to Arena only not Paper Magic. How is Arena making more money than Paper Magic when the Secondary Market for card singles still remains strong? How do Local Game Stores profit off of Arena when there's no way to pay entry fees for events? What does this really mean for Casual going forward since we already know Arena is the future of Standard?
WotC/Hasbro makes nothing of the secondary market.
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Post by Card Slinger J » 3 years ago

Thought I'd share this article with you all:

https://dsgcw.blogspot.com/2020/07/constraints.html
Desert Sky Games wrote:
Constraints

One of the most stressful aspects of the COVID pandemic for game stores is that it artificially amplifies constraints. Dealing with this day in and day out starts to wear on a store owner, and I start to feel like Keanu Reeves in that new Bill & Ted 3 trailer, when he says, "We've been trying to write this song and save the world our whole lives. And I'm tired, dude."

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You said it, Ted "Theodore" Logan. I'm tired, dude. Tired of every business component taking more work than it should. Tired of getting chewed out by every deadbeat who thinks we should price-match limited edition product pre-orders against the smallest store in town who pre-sold-out their one case of boosters in an hour at a nickel over cost. Tired of having arrival traffic down 90% because people call to check pinpoint stock on Nintendo Switches and virtually nothing downstream of that. And tired of the vocal minority who think we're political puppets or worse for keeping the game room closed and requiring facemasks.

But I think the amplification of constraints is the most difficult thing, because it forms a vicious circle of interdependency. Here, maybe showing you the moving parts will make this clearer.

The best Dungeons & Dragons product slate ever is on store shelves today. Right now. We have the best new sourcebooks: Theros, Eberron, and Wildemount, with limited edition covers for two of them. We have a staggering variety of dice in every color and material and in every price range. We have the best miniatures the game has ever had in the WizKids Nolzur's Marvelous line, far higher quality at a lower inflation-adjusted price than even the classic Ral Partha pewters. We have maps, dice trays, dice towers, character folios, and more. And now we have Warlock Tiles, head-and-shoulders the finest immersive terrain components D&D has ever seen.

Despite all of the above, we've seen only a fraction of the sales we'd usually get in the category. Many of our regular players have been in, and their purchasing makes up essentially all the sales we've gotten of this merch. But a majority of D&D players disappeared with COVID. We don't know what this means. In-store play is, of course, not happening, and I wonder whether it will ever be back. Zoom/Skype style play seems to be thriving. Tangible game elements become somewhat less important then. I've long speculated that the "giant table-sized iPad" appliance might virtualize much of the RPG experience, but we might reach the same effective outcome because of remote play instead of digitally-augmented in-person play. I think there will be a COVID vaccine eventually or it will burn through and be subject to herd immunity, and people will come back to the table to have wonderful times adventuring together. How long before that? A year? Three years?

So since we placed orders well before the pandemic for current D&D stock, and indeed already owned the bulk of our D&D inventory well in advance of that, we now have a huge amount of somewhat illiquid merchandise, that doesn't ship that well and isn't fast-moving like video games or Magic singles, and that even generous bundle specials only modestly move the needle on. It's not a simple case of $N worth of D&D being on the shelf, where we could liquidate it and have $N. It's the frozen turn rate. We should have $N multiplied many times over as the product comes in, sells, is replaced, sells again, and so on. It's difficult to articulate just how great the scale of this can get to an outside observer.

That same effect is happening in board games as well. We saw reasonable throughput on board games on our way into the lockdown and shortly after re-opening, and board games are a commodity category for DSG anyway. That means we stock greatest hits and new hotness, and discount it all, in order to push for market share and establish a competitive position against other local stores, without risking our real meal tickets, Magic singles and video games. But now that we're kinda sorta reopened, and people are mostly back to work, the public has all the board games it needs, and is buying far fewer of them from us, even with price tags well below Amazon. They just finished a plate of steak and lobster. They don't need seconds. So it stacks up.

With the two main general tabletop categories slowing down sales, we see them overflowing their racks. And we can't get more of the kind of racks we use right now because restocks from China are still pending transoceanic shipment. So even though we're the biggest game store in the Valley, we actually don't have enough room for all our merchandise right now. Even with a giant empty floor where the game room used to be. We should use game tables to display merch, perhaps, but (1) that's awful looking, (2) it has to be taken back apart anyway once we can reopen the game room, and (3) we're buying some really nice upgraded tables so we're currently selling off the existing ones.

Less room up front and lower sales of general tabletop means we need to lean harder on singles sales, where space isn't as big of an issue. But we're also constrained on labor! Fast and furious sales via TCGPlayer since the first stimulus landed have resulted in our million-card inventory being whittled down to, as of this writing, about 450,000 cards. We're still buying every single day, for cash or credit, and it's not enough. We have at least 300k cards in the back office right now in various stages of processing that are not entered into TCGPlayer. We're losing sales every day from people who ask for cards we know we have in the next "waves" to process, but aren't done yet, and are cost-ineffective to deep dive for on an ad-hoc basis. Our existing back-office staff are running at red-line, they have almost zero slow time on the clock.

So why not add more labor? Ah, but how are we going to pay for it? Sales are coming up shallow in D&D and board games, so we don't have "overflow" revenue available to shift toward Magic labor, which is designed to cover its own normal/ordinary pace of intake and sales, and instead is overwhelmed right now. It's fairly common for a game store with large business components to take from some and give unto others, resource-wise, in an internally Marxist fashion of sorts. But when there isn't any surplus elsewhere, and every department is subsidizing every other, there's no wealth to redistribute. (There's probably a greater political lesson to be taught here, but I'm staying well clear of that.)

Thus, we have a dire shortage of Magic singles, our highest-volume category, which we actually do own but can't get processed into the system fast enough, for which we badly need labor, which we could afford if every product category were performing even at average levels, but the two general tabletop categories are both running very thin right now, constraining all parts of this resource chain. And thus it is that Griffin and I spend significant parts of our working days plugging in labor wherever it fits, so as to give both front-of-house and back-of-house staff as much unobstructed throughput as possible. And it's still not enough.

I'm tired, dude.
Amen brother.
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Post by motleyslayer » 3 years ago

I myself will probably be playing paper Magic for the first time since the lockdown started next Friday, assuming everything goes according to plan for myself and my buddy who will be driving. I'm pretty excited to meet the new owners for that store, as the store changed owners back in January, so this nonsense was probably brutal on them

I don't even wanna know just how bad everything has been on them but I plan on spending a bit of money there to help them

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Post by Card Slinger J » 3 years ago

Not sure If anyone's heard about this yet however there were some YouTube videos recently of a group of doctors in front of the U.S. Supreme Court including Stella Immanuel claiming that she had cured COVID-19 in 350 patients at her clinic using a combination of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc and that public health measures such as wearing face masks and social distancing were no longer necessary. Apparently the antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine had previously had its emergency use authorization for COVID-19 removed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which said it had not been proven to be an effective treatment for the virus. Even If it hadn't been proven yet that still doesn't give them the right to silence these doctors from getting the information out there to test whether or not If it is an effective treatment against COVID-19.

These big pharmaceutical companies only want to prolong this pandemic as much as possible so they can turn a profit off of a sick society. It does make you wonder just how expensive a future cure / vaccine for COVID-19 really is for these companies to maliciously prolong this pandemic to their own benefit. They're even turning it into some sick competition where the first country to find a cure / vaccine for COVID-19 will be rewarded a Noble Peace Prize even though peoples' lives are at stake. By the time they find a cure / vaccine for COVID-19 over half of the worlds entire population will probably already be wiped out from existence as they won't have as many patients left to show for it. Since when has self engineered genocide been a viable alternative to war? It's not unless you're a rich billionaire who has ties to the World Health Organization (WHO) by paying them to promote germ warfare.
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Post by robertleva » 3 years ago

Card Slinger J wrote:
3 years ago
Not sure If anyone's heard about this yet however there were some YouTube videos recently of a group of doctors in front of the U.S. Supreme Court including Stella Immanuel claiming that she had cured COVID-19 in 350 patients at her clinic using a combination of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc and that public health measures such as wearing face masks and social distancing were no longer necessary. Apparently the antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine had previously had its emergency use authorization for COVID-19 removed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which said it had not been proven to be an effective treatment for the virus. Even If it hadn't been proven yet that still doesn't give them the right to silence these doctors from getting the information out there to test whether or not If it is an effective treatment against COVID-19.

These big pharmaceutical companies only want to prolong this pandemic as much as possible so they can turn a profit off of a sick society. It does make you wonder just how expensive a future cure / vaccine for COVID-19 really is for these companies to maliciously prolong this pandemic to their own benefit. They're even turning it into some sick competition where the first country to find a cure / vaccine for COVID-19 will be rewarded a Noble Peace Prize even though peoples' lives are at stake. By the time they find a cure / vaccine for COVID-19 over half of the worlds entire population will probably already be wiped out from existence as they won't have as many patients left to show for it. Since when has self engineered genocide been a viable alternative to war? It's not unless you're a rich billionaire who has ties to the World Health Organization (WHO) by paying them to promote germ warfare.
You are right about them needing to prolong it but it has nothing to do with profits for big pharm. It has everything to do with power and control and removal of our civil liberties.
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Post by The Fluff » 3 years ago

not good... announced today. A strict community quarantine will be implemented again on our country starting tomorrow. Will last until Aug 18.

I guess mtg play will still be gone for awhile here...
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Post by 5colorsrainbow » 3 years ago

Card Slinger J wrote:
3 years ago
Not sure If anyone's heard about this yet however there were some YouTube videos recently of a group of doctors in front of the U.S. Supreme Court including Stella Immanuel claiming that she had cured COVID-19 in 350 patients at her clinic using a combination of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc and that public health measures such as wearing face masks and social distancing were no longer necessary. Apparently the antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine had previously had its emergency use authorization for COVID-19 removed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which said it had not been proven to be an effective treatment for the virus. Even If it hadn't been proven yet that still doesn't give them the right to silence these doctors from getting the information out there to test whether or not If it is an effective treatment against COVID-19.

These big pharmaceutical companies only want to prolong this pandemic as much as possible so they can turn a profit off of a sick society. It does make you wonder just how expensive a future cure / vaccine for COVID-19 really is for these companies to maliciously prolong this pandemic to their own benefit. They're even turning it into some sick competition where the first country to find a cure / vaccine for COVID-19 will be rewarded a Noble Peace Prize even though peoples' lives are at stake. By the time they find a cure / vaccine for COVID-19 over half of the worlds entire population will probably already be wiped out from existence as they won't have as many patients left to show for it. Since when has self engineered genocide been a viable alternative to war? It's not unless you're a rich billionaire who has ties to the World Health Organization (WHO) by paying them to promote germ warfare.
This is the doctor who stays demons/witch %$#% you in your sleep, and thats why you get genital warts, western medicine has alien DND and the government is using it to make mind controlling vaccine that will stop people from being religious right?

Is that someone you find credible as a doctor?
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Post by The Fluff » 3 years ago

This is the doctor who stays demons/witch %$#% you in your sleep, and thats why you get gentile warts, western medicine has alien DND and the government is using it to make mind controlling vaccine that will stop people from being religious right?

Is that someone you find credible as a doctor?
this is the first time I heard of this doctor.. but wtf, she believed in all those things?!!

crazy..
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Post by Krishnath » 3 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
3 years ago
This is the doctor who stays demons/witch %$#% you in your sleep, and thats why you get gentile warts, western medicine has alien DND and the government is using it to make mind controlling vaccine that will stop people from being religious right?

Is that someone you find credible as a doctor?
this is the first time I heard of this doctor.. but wtf, she believed in all those things?!!

crazy..
Believes, not believed. They are a major and well known conspiracy nut.
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Post by motleyslayer » 3 years ago

this thread is getting quite off topic again. As I have repeatedly asked for it to stay on topic of how the Pandemic will impact MtG specifically and not have outside conversation on it multiple times but it keeps going off topic, I will be locking this thread for at least a bit

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Post by motleyslayer » 3 years ago

as this thread has had a few days to cool off, I will be unlocking it as I can see there being useful further discussion on the topic. One thing I do need to advise of is to keep politics out of the discussion. Please read this post on discussion of politics on MTG Nexus. I will copy it here as well
feyd_ruin wrote:There's been a few political threads, etc, so I'm posting this to be more clear:
Political discussions, heated topics, major world issues, and debate don't go here.

I know a lot of these issues are close to heart to some people, but a magic the gathering community just isn't the place for that. The Break Room is for off topic banter, relaxing with the rest of the community, and random discussions, not for major debate on world issues.

There are many other places on the net where you can have such discussions: Reddit, Kialo, and Qwarul are quite popular for this. These sites host platforms built specifically for this purpose, and are better suited for such discussions.
Other than that, please feel free to discuss everything else on how mtg will be impacted by the pandemic

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The Fluff
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Post by The Fluff » 3 years ago

finally able to order online. The crash through of my mono red prowess was proxied for months. Now, could finally complete it with real cards. But due to the effect of corona.. it will now take a month and 2 weeks for the order to arrive, instead of just 2-3 weeks. That's fine, I can wait. :)
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Post by motleyslayer » 3 years ago

ordering cards online has been a nightmare for me since this pandemic started. Even ordering from Face to Face Games here in Canada (normally takes 2-4 days to get my order) can take 15ish days to get my order.

I ordered from Channel Fireball on May 30th and I'm still waiting on the order. Most of it has been because of them shutting their warehouse down early on and lately it's been because of Canada Post taking so long (took them 3 weeks to realize they had it at their warehouse)

While it is frustrating, I understand places not wanting to operate at 100% right now

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Post by The Fluff » 3 years ago

Several places are indeed not 100% right now. But still glad I could finally have a real Kaheera + companion token.. instead of proxied ones on my cat deck. Also happy that our local post office is open, so I could get the cards when they arrive.

Gathering cards on my Starcity Games cart again for another order... gonna order once the new zendikar set is released. Hopefully, there will be some useful dogs in the set.
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want to play a uw control deck in modern, but don't have Jace or snapcaster? please come visit us at the Emeria thread

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Post by motleyslayer » 3 years ago

I'm probably just gonna hold off on ordering for a while, at least until mail starts arriving faster.

Good thing about the way it's going in Canada is that stores are starting to allow people to play inside more now, so I'll have an excuse to go to more stores that may have better inventories

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Post by The Fluff » 3 years ago

different here.. new quarantine declared, to last until Aug 18. When we checked, almost all stores in the mall are forced to close. Only the grocery is open.

I hope our lgs named "Courtside" does not bite the dust from this. They have been my reliable source of mtg cards, boxes, ultra pro, and kancolle cards for some years now.
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Post by motleyslayer » 3 years ago

right now in Canada, there are a few rules that I'm not 100% sure on. Pretty sure restaurants and stores are allowed to have up to 50 people inside, as long as distancing and whatnot is followed. I know dancing and buffets aren't allowed yet.

It's up to stores if they wanna allow people to play but I don't think Wizards as sanctioning events yet (correct me if I'm wrong). I know one of my main stores won't allow people playing yet because they don't think its safe yet but another store in my area is so I'll be playing there probably next Friday/the one coming up.

I know the store that hasn't decided to run events yet has started to slowly let their singles cases deplete, probably because people weren't buying much

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Post by Card Slinger J » 3 years ago

So I finally returned to one of my Local Game Stores that I normally used to go to on Saturdays after a five month quarantine that is currently now operating at 25% capacity. As far as In-Store Play restrictions go it wasn't as bad as I initially thought it'd be however the Local Game Store / Comic Book Shop by my house still has In-Store Play in lock down til September especially since there's not as much overhead. Everyone's required to wear face masks / coverings while drink refills from the fountain machine don't seem to be a problem as it is at my work place. Arrows were placed on the floor to help customers practice social distancing near the retail checkout area. The only floors that were available were upstairs and the central area where as downstairs was closed due to lack of activity where they would normally have Organized Play for Pokémon.

Buying / Selling card singles don't seem to be as much of an issue however the employees stopped displaying older MTG singles in their showcase while only displaying newer MTG cards protected with glass coverings. Didn't see any tables with plexiglass installed though there was plenty of hand sanitizer for customers to use at the store. The store used to have two computers to place orders and sell cards on their website however they condensed it to one computer while also making room for their 3D Printer for making character models and figures for D&D and other Role-Playing Games. I did manage to get a few EDH / Commander games in while selling $50 worth of cards to help support my Local Game Store (LGS). One of my friends brought over his HD flat screen TV to play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Pokémon Sword & Shield on his Nintendo Switch. I think we had at least 15-20 people that day.
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Post by motleyslayer » 3 years ago

last night was my first time playing Magic at a store since Covid started. It took a bit of getting used to with the plastic dividing players and not cutting decks and what not but it was fun. It was a 3 round night but I enjoyed seeing everyone again

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