I fear that WOTC/Hasbro has glommed onto the “ collectible”
aspect of the collectable card game aspect while downplaying the “game” aspect
of it. The introduction of Set Boosters and Collector Boosters do little to
enhance gameplay, but instead target the collector market and, while collecting
has always been part and parcel of the Magic universe, it was subsidiary
to gameplay: “How will this card improve
my deck?” While early sets of Magic did, on occasion, include multiple
tyles of the same card, the various season illustrations on Urza’s Tower for
example, they were few and far between, with most players happy to have 4 to
put into their deck, without worrying about getting all the variants. From what
I can tell, WOTC’s current marketing plan, with
the introduction of Alchemy focuses
on moving actual play online, as I have had a number of customers comment,
while promoting the collectible aspect of the game with a number of variants of
each card available with each release. Set boosters and Collector boosters are
specifically designed for this market, which, according to WOTC is large enough
to drive demand for the two additional varieties of card sets within
the past two years to what is essentially a segment of the Magic
target market. Add in, by my count, 45 Secret Lair releases in the past
year and the Magic market has seen a lot of product flooding into the
market within a short period of time.
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