Has anyone seen Rudy’s videos lately? He’s not happy with wotc. I don’t blame him honestly
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It’s the first time Rudy edits his videos! Love the drama even though I am vested in MTG. Not reserved list cards but promos like Heroes of the Realm and Garfield Events.
It’s not just him, most content creators and players specially are pretty upset at WOTC for their predatory practices creating limited product time after time and not taking measures against scalpers, not to mention creating artificial scarcity, look at the 30th promo for Loyal Retainers, most stores only got 1-2 due to “logistic” issues, and that’s it, no “we’ll print some more soon”, the card shot from $20 to $100 once the news got out, these were supposed to be so that players could collect them from 1993 until 2022, how much you want to bet these “logistic” issues will happen again for the 30th anniversary Japanese Tarmogoyf? The people running the show are a joke.
WOTC and Magic are definitely full of shit but so is the BofA article. Here’s an article digging into what the BofA article actually says, past just reading the headline: Should You Be Worried About the Bank of America Stock Forecast for Hasbro?
I definitely think that Magic is headed in the wrong direction but the evidence for that is moreso the amount of sets and unique cards they print every year, as well as obvious and relentless moneygrabs like Secret Lair and the 30th anniversary $999 package.
They also gutted the competitive play system that was in place for like 25 years and went all in on digital, really ignoring a lot of what we like about physical card games. The BofA article never mentions the digital platform once.
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I agree with BoA’s conclusion, but not their reasoning. It’s very clear from reading the report that the analyst doesn’t understand what drives the MTG market. Comparing it to Pokemon is hilarious and totally irrelevant – particularly because he compared it to the Pokemon franchise generally, and not the TCG. But even on the TCG side, Pokemon has a totally different consumer base than MTG.
But when the BoA analyst floats the idea that FaB is a legitimate competitor to MTG, though, that’s when he loses all credibility. At least when he’s comparing Pokemon or YGO to MTG, he’s comparing hugely popular franchises that are nominally from the same genre. But if he took 30 seconds to compare the volume of FaB sold on TCGPlayer/eBay with the volume of MTG sold, he would’ve noticed that FaB is puny. Or look at the # of subreddit subscribers. The main MTG subreddit has 585k members. Whereas the main FaB subreddit has 12k lmao. FaB and MTG aren’t in the same universe.
Ultimately, WotC is doing a number of things very poorly right now. And to that extent, the analyst is correct. But the implication that MTG is in some deep decline or dying (let alone for the reasons that the analyst mentions) is totally unfounded.
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Interesting acronym for Bank of America… BofA deez?
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It’s actually their official acronym 
iOS abbreviates it as that for the app too. Someone didn’t listen to the people who actually use the internet on the team I guess…
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Lots of good points here, but from a player’s standpoint, “Overprinting cards” is not actually what is happening. No.
WotC is creating too many products. YES. 1+ Secret Lairs (collectors boxes) per week, with often overpriced cards in them! Special anniversary boosters that no one can buy. Hasbro is milking MtG, but NOT in the way this article suggests.
I’ve seen MORE PLAYERS at casual events the last few cycles than before covid. THAT is a hugely positive sign (I hope). WotC IS also printing more volume than they did at some points, but that is actually good for the player base and the game. They’ve not been catering to players for a while, so I’m hopeful that this signals a return to fundamentals for a game that literally has “Gathering” in it’s name.
Unlike PkMn, which the writer ignorantly compares MtG to, it’s not the collectors that impact the franchise. It’s the players. Catering to them is what WotC had NOT been doing for a while, but seems to be doing more over the last few quarters. People have been excited for pre-release. People have been excited for new sets. And they’ve been showing up to play. Does that save Hasbro/WotC on it’s own? No. But if they did a deep dive of their own, and their marcom didn’t suck, they’d realize they’ve at least done a few things right.
I also find it humorous when BofA talks about market/brand “deep dive” because they have routinely neglected their own customers, just like WotC… Sure. 
BofA is qualified to evaluate market perception.
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Looks like WOTC has reached out to non-MTG content creators (Leonheart, etc.) to promote their 30th-anniversary product…
This is the popular Yu-Gi-Oh YouTuber Ruxin34.
Yeah, sorry. Leonheart commented in the video that he received and declined the offer from WOTC as well. Forgot to mention that part, but yeah not really sure what to think about the whole situation. It’s just weird.
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I’m not too surprised that Hasbro reached out to the non-MTG community for advertisement purposes. I’m guessing that they would have done that even if it was a good product. Looks a bit desperate on their part, though 
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The thing is that they haven’t done this before. The closest thing they’ve done is promoting the product within the MTG community using non-MTG celebrities. But (to my knowledge) they’ve never actually directly tried to promote an MTG product to non-MTG TCG communities. It’s pretty clear that they’re trying to capture speculative demand from the overall TCG world.
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Yep, I agree. At the end of the day, Hasbro cares about its sell-through rate rather than who is purchasing their products.
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Its always fun to find out your fellow tcg enjoyers are missing 
he plays digimon and neither of us are in magic, but had to keep him up to date lol
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So did it sell out in 30 minutes or did Hasbro just turn of sales in order to save face?
Poll maybe :)?
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Sold out.
People will whine and complain about this ruining MTG, or that it’s predatory or whatever but if people believe there is money to be made they will undermine any shred of conviction they have and convince themselves it’s ok to buy something like this because ‘Oh well I am only buying 1 or 2, and I can sell it later’.
Then on top of that you have the sort of person who actually loves this type of product and just buys it anyway, without caring what the general reception to it is.
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Forced inclusion, R.I.P Magic, a bit like the comic book market.
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That is one way of looking at it. All the power to people who bought it because the like it.
Still fun to speculate though.