rokapoke said:
How does this lower costs? It doesn't. It increases revenue because a lot of people will just buy more cards to acquire all their playsets. It just dumps on the consumer, that's all.
Actually, the effect is more subtle than that.
Think of it this way - If a set has 120 rares (10th Ed or Timeshifted), then any given rare will appear once in every 120 packs (on average). With 15 "Mythic" rares and a Mythic rare appearing 1 in 8 packs, each Mythic rare appears once in every 120 packs. The normal rares appear one in every 60 packs.
On the surface, the Mythic rare is simply akin to the same rarity as a rare in 10th edition, then, which means that they are trying to stretch an expansion to what a core set would sell (if people were trying to get a set, at any rate).
But the actual affect, again, is more subtle - people won't necessarily buy that because there are only 15 of them and the odds of getting one are significantly lower than getting one of the other rares. By the time I get one of each of the Mythic, I will have 2 each of the rares. By the time I get a full playset, I will have twice as many of the others.
So, what is going to happen? Look at YuGiOh to see. A pack of cards costs around $4.00, right (I actually haven't bought packs in a while, so it might be more). The expected value of the card you pull is going to be less than this (it it weren't, there would be no secondary market), say $3.00. Which means that if you were to buy 100 packs at $4.00 each, on average you could sell the rares for $300 as singletons.
But now, there will be a "glut" on 53 of thos 68 "rare" cards, which means that their value will decrease accordingly. To compensate, the value of the mystic rares will increase by 8 times the amount that the normal rares decrease (because they are found 1 in 8 packs). But if WotC correctly predicts the "chase" rares and makes them a mystic rare, then what would have been a $20 card could become a $160 card, simply because there aren't nearly as many available.
And the impact of this is perceived value. Right now, even the best Magic cards currenly available in packs rarely break the $20 mark. On the other hand, the last 2 YuGiOh packs each had at least one card that sells regularly for over $100.
Even though the odds of pulling that card offsets the value, there is still more perceived value. WotC is hoping that this will translate to more people getting into Magic. It's basically the same reason people play the lottery, even though mathimatically it is a bad investment.
