Wishing Best of Luck to LGS
Spiderman prerelease is looming and I can safely say this is the bleakest week-before-prerelease in the entire 8 years of me playing Magic. Stores are having difficulty selling prerelease with the price so high, insipid cards, and incoherent draft environment. Some LGS literally have zero buyer that they have to cancel the prerelease event and scramble to host something else. Chatting to owners is depressing. They're hoping just to sell enough to cover the upfront cost and stay within WPN good grace, and while regulars may wish to support the stores, throwing that much money on an abysmal product in this economy is...asking a lot. Universes Beyond prices have always and continue to be staggeringly astonishing.
Terrible time to be an LGS catering to Magic.
Of course, this may end up a turnabout. Maybe Spiderman will turn out as the biggest underdog set in the game. Maybe something will make splash and people will rush to buy.
I don't think that's realistic. This set has always been somewhat doomed from the start, being the successor of Aftermath and Assassin's Creed's burdened legacy. Who knows selling half the pack at twice the price is a bad idea? And so the clearly-collectible-set was quickly retooled into a bigger one... and they needed a set for Standard? Oh boy, what a mess. I certainly don't envy the designers, they're dealt real bad cards to work with here.
WoTC's bottom line is not what I care about. For all I know, there are plenty of people who would gladly buy whatever slop they could produce. We'll probably get another announcement of record-breaking sales (after Final Fantasy? Ha. Who are we fooling?). They could and should probably tank, but the LGS are bearing the biggest brunt here. Yeah, I can hear some people say. They are businesses. They should choose better brands. They should diversify. But many people are doing these for the love, and they provide for the community. They're not just storefronts. They provide shelter, social space, sometimes even educational service. It's hard enough to establish a new hobby shop in this day and age, and I don't want the ones around me shuttered.
This is how desperate the landscape looks like: some owners are ready to sell at a loss, pricing the prerelease at normal (non-UB) prerelease prices just to get their stocks moving. And still people are not biting. I haven't seen anything like this before. Even in the worst of the worst sets, in boring Core Set prereleases, people would usually attend just to jam a couple games with friends. How can you not sell a prerelease?
Such a shame, because honestly, the promotional materials for Spiderman are pretty good. I saw their New Player's Guide booklet yesterday and it was well-written and laid out nicely. Imagine if the events are something you could bring a friend to. I'm not bringing a friend into a set I know is horribly overpriced (even at vastly reduced price), and even if my friend is the biggest possible fan of Spiderman I would just tell him to spend the money on some other merch. If they want to learn how to play Magic, we can do so with better sets. If they want Spiderman likeness slapped onto the cards, we can do that too.
Speaking of?
I wish Through the Omenpath is available on paper. The whole situation is ridiculous. Of all the concessions, I don't think typeline and keyword alias would do us good.
I know, I know. Boo, Negative Nancy. There are plenty of people who would gladly buy whatever slop they could produce. We'll probably get another announcement of record-breaking sales. Or you know, we can weather this another two months, then we're zipping to ATLA and hoping the LGS are still intact by then.