You're going to be able to tell which is a god pack by the foils warping the pack

The real answer is that this isn't for players, casuals, nor collectors at all. This is a viral marketing push aimed at content creators who stream pack openings and can now neatly package their god pack pulls into a TikTok or YouTube Short. They called out as much in the article and framed it as though we're all watching these pack opening streams as keenly as they are. They seem to think we primarily interface with their game through the lens of "product" rather than as a game engine, which just reeks of marketing having their fingerprints all over this decision.

As one of those competitively minded players, MTG needs to have structure deck products in the way Yugioh does or they really are going to lose all their competitive players. MTG really is way too expensive to play basically any format, meanwhile in Yugioh, you can get all kinds of absurd structure deck products and end up with huge stacks of meta staple cards so you can have multiple decks built. Also MTGA is way too goddamn expensive.

god packs are exciting in other games, but in MtG where a "god pack" is about $40 worth of rares... it's not very compelling as a chase.

I think it's a halfhearted attempt at narrowing the delta between regular and collector boxes. I agree that it just kind of fails to do much of anything. All it's achieved is annoy everyone involved except the people that sit on sealed product.

Between the MSRP decoupling/removal, the product fatigue, and burning everyone out of paper standard, it feels like they're just increasing the split between people cracking a box for fun and stores cracking cases of collector boxes to sell singles at initial hype prices. Truly gone are the days of a friend group splitting a case to have a standard testing group.

Personally, as a lapsed competitive player, I've been priced out of buying collector boxes since UB entered standard. I was previously buying 2-3 a year as an occasional commander player and collector.

I think its likely for print run reasons, from what I can tell the tcg boom has made card printers go full capacity all the time, so they need to make room with the print time they have available.

WotC: "We put all the good shit in one random pack! Buy more packs to now maybe get it!"
Scalpers: "So we just buy everything and double the cost as usual? Cool."

So I think you're not getting why WOTC cutting 3 cards from a pack is desirable for them, and it has nothing to do with foil commons / uncommons on the secondary market place. It's scale.

They print millions of cards. They're decreasing collector pack size by 20%. That's HUGE.

Yes individual cards are ultimately extremely cheap to produce for them, it's still millions of cards - at a time where printer attention is getting more expensive because costs are going up and they're backlogged. So being able to effectively shrink a print run by 20% OR by effectively doing the same size print run and getting 20% more packs for the same size? That is materially meaningful.

8:15 I don't think it is bc they don't care about the secondary market. From a business perspective, they are reducing the amount of materials and labor needed by around 20%. Also, I am assuming foil cards are more expensive to print (without mattering rarity) due to the foil treatment. So they are effectively offering less product for the same price

I'm a competitive player, and I'm far removed from anyone who would buy a collector booster, let alone a box or a case.

I don't think they've added actual value to the packs, but it does feel like the kind of change that will motivate gambling-oriented players to open more one-off packs "just in case they hit."

And the "celebrate the moment" aspect makes a self-continuing cycle. Seeing someone "win big" encourages everyone else to try for it, and encourages the person who won to chase another win.

There are players I know who crack a pack, then turn and trade it all in to the store to help afford another pack to crack.

What WotC SHOULD be doing

• Make just one non-draftable booster…just called booster pack (5 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare, a foil slot, a wild slot, a collector slot, and land or token) The collector slot is where you could get something that used to be found in collector boosters (foils, extended art, alt art, showcase…)

• For each in-universe set, make WPN organized play kits only WPN stores can buy that come with 24 “draft” boosters to do 8-player draft pods or sealed events (10 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare, no foils, no alt-frames, not even tokens). The packs could just be in clear plastic wrap with a backer card like how they mail promos to stores. Make it economical. Like $75 a kit. The kits are used to run the event, the normal retail “booster packs” from the store’s supply are used for prize support.

• Cull every other SKU except commander decks. Dump bundles, gift bundles, scene boxes, beginner boxes, jumpstart, even prerelease kits. They can’t keep up with production. Just focus on printing as many “booster packs” as possible. Put all printing capacity into boosters, commander decks, and organized play kits/promos.

YOU DID IT! makes for a better Little Troubles card in my humble opinion.

The only game I’ve played that had a form of god pack was Cardfight Vanguard. That game would include packs of All-Parallel Rarity cards focused on a specific archetype.

If you opened an SP Pack, you were likely to PLAY with several, if not all, of the cards in it in the same deck. Every time I hear about god packs in another game, I get disappointed because there’s no theme. Its just stuff that’s vaguely rare.

(Its a shame to be outdone by Bushiroad of all companies)

"WOTC doesn't care about the secondary market"

How's that black lotus reprint coming?

Saying removing cards from packs isnt shrinkflation is insane. That's literally cutting the amount of cards they need to print while selling for the exact same price. How is that NOT shrinkflation?!

26:00 I remember seeing wild plays during Thunder Junction draft, it was a lot of fun

The anouncement noted that unboxing/opening videos skip over commons. My guess is that some yellow-energy corpo thinks that making god packs will result in splashy opening videos which will result in sales. My understanding is that those videos for recent mtg packs are a niche in a niche in a niche, so I don't expect it to work well.

It's going to be interesting seeing what, if any, new regulations come to TCGs in the future. As you mentioned, the EU has different rules to a lot of places.

As an example, I live in The Netherlands and due to our local regulations surrounding digital gambling, Pokémon TCG Pokémon is not available to download here.

11:24 I play Riftbound and I’m not a rarity person but for my Legend card I’m definitely rocking the Over number or Signature. But for the rest of my deck if I so happen to have Holo foil I’ll slap it in. I’ve only played magic online but if I played in person my commander would be the flex rarity card everything else is just regular rarity.

I fall firmly into that bucket you're describing of being a casual player who likes to chase shiny cards, and you're dead on. I already haven't been buying packs for quite a while, and this has made the proposition even less appealing. Since I want cards for both their playability and shiny-factor, I tend to seek out very specific printings of cards. Opening boosters in this era of booster fun is already miserable. Even if I did pull something I was looking for, with so many treatments, it's entirely likely I just pull a version I didn't want. So adding the Japanese showcases to regular boosters actually makes these boosters less appealing. It's clogging things up and making the chances of me finding the version I want less likely.