Yesterday WotC in their live stream on Twitch (and later put up on YouTube) made an announcement that sent fanboys (like myself I’m a fanboy for sure) in an uproar, well after they recovered from the initial shock.

Let’s take a step back a little before tackling the announcement, it is related, honest.

Not long ago, and not long after Guilds of Ravnica came out WotC released what at the time would be their most expensive MtG product to date Guilds of Ravnica Mythic Edition. This was a booster box of Guilds of Ravnica boosters, but instead of 36 packs you got 24. You also got 8 masterpiece boosters, which contained 1 of 8 foil masterpieces (this time full art Planeswalkers) in them along with the other cards. You were able to pick up all this “goodness” for $250.

This special edition was only available from the Hasbro website (later as a pick up from Grand Prix’s organised by Channel Fireball) and for those living in the US. Now the Hasbro is known for being a bit flaky, and not able to handle more than 1 customer on it at a time. To say there were issues with ordering would be an understatement.

Fast forward a couple of weeks or more to this Friday/weekend, and all of a sudden as a “gift” to compensate those disappointed, and with hurt feelings in the US from the debacle that was ordering this exclusive premium product, Ultimate Box Topper boosters started to drop through letterboxes. Naturally photos of these foil full art masterpieces started to hit social media, and buzz started to build up, questions forming. WotC promised all would be revealed on Monday.
See I told you we’d get back to the point of this post. And the amazing thing is I wasn’t too bitter and twisted, or sarcastic. Oh now I realise why WotC don’t think I’m a MtG content creator. Plus I’m not the correct demographic that they want to push. They already have the bald, overweight, bearded slot filled (although my beard is way way better).

Anyway back to the announcement.

So yesterday all was revealed. Well the 40 masterpieces and their regular versions (which I think over the weekend we had seen the majority of from various postings) anyway. WotC also shared how you can get these beautiful looking cards.

Come 7th December they will be releasing Ultimate Masters, which is possibly the last Masters set for a while (they used the politician weasel words “foreseeable future“ which is their get out clause, small print).

Inside each Ultimate Masters booster box (24 boosters) will be an Ultimate Box Topper (a single masterpiece card) all for the bargain price of $336. Can you guess what caused the fanboys to be shocked? That works out to be about $14 a booster. So here in the UK we will be looking at a booster box coming in around the £300+ mark. This is their most expensive MtG product to date by a large margin.

These booster boxes will only be available from your FLGS/LGS, however in the US there will be blister packs consisting of 3 booster packs from the likes of Walmart for $35. A little cheaper option of buying packs for the chosen US citizens (damn the rest of us for not living there, we deserve being mistreated and ignored by WotC), but you don’t get the Box Topper!

Apparently the preview season of the rest of the 254 card set will be over the 2 days before Thanksgiving. Which meant nothing to everyone outside of the US. The chat asked when that was, but it took awhile for some-one on the chat to give a date, the presenters kept on repeating the information that meant diddly squat to non-US folks. This is getting to be really annoying with WotC with their US centric stuff. It’s as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist, and we should be grateful for the scraps they deem we are allowed. Anyway the days with the previews are around the 19th November. Expect more fanboy outrage at that time. When we see the rest of the set, it will tell us just how special this last (for the “foreseeable future“ ) Master set hurrah is. And also give an idea about how this expensive draft experience might be.

What was funny about the live stream was the end of the stream when they opened up a booster box of Ultimate Masters, and opened up the Ultimate Box Topper. The card was warped inside the pack! Talk about an own goal. WotC have been taking a lot of crap over recent years over card quality, and done very little about it, even failing to acknowledge it (well until a couple of articles a few months ago). They are charging a very high premium for this product, and they can’t get the card quality right?

I know I won’t be buying a booster box of this. I didn’t Iconic Masters, or 25th Anniversary Masters. I think I bought a booster or two maximum of each. And I may buy a booster from this set. But in reality I’m hoping that these reprints will drop the price of the handful of cards I’m interested in. I will then do as I did with the other sets, target buy the cards I’m interested in. It’s cheaper and I get the cards I want.

I think this set will sell well, people will be hoping to get the sweet expensive masterpieces (not great odds by the way). This short, shock and awe marketing campaign of WotC may just work in their favour. It was for once a great bit of marketing with the compensation (give them free money) Ultimate Box Toppers being sent out, generate buzz and goodwill? Win win. This short time between announcement and delivery is not giving the angry mobs too much time to swell their ranks and put people off, or those that pre-ordered time to change their minds.

You will notice I’m not complaining about the price. For me it’s expensive, for a lot of people it will be also. That’s fine. It’s the opportunity to buy if I had the money, is what I’m about. That’s why the Mythic Edition (and its compensation) along with the SDCC Planeswalkers niggled me to say the least. That US only pisses me off big time. But that is a rant for another day, because WotC are not the only ones guilty of this.

You can read the full WotC announcement with masterpiece card pictures HERE.

UPDATE: £320 is the pre-order price at my FLGS for this.