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Thread: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bardo View Post
    FoW
    Force isn't on the reserve list.
    But it does bring up the issue of cards that might as well be on the reserve list. For example, does anyone here honestly believe that Force or Wasteland will be in another set? What about newer cards like Jace, Snapcaster, Batterskull, or Stoneforge? Granted, there's a lot more of them out there than Underground Seas, but their lack of supply will be noticeable if the format keeps expanding for one reason or another.
    Quote Originally Posted by TsumiBand View Post
    ... It feels like a bummer to spend so much time not talking about the game and more time arguing over whether Dega or Mardu is the better name for a three color deck you'll never see in Legacy.

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Well, Wasteland was at least a Judgepromo not long ago. Fow might follow one day.
    The other cards you mentioned are widely available and might be reprinted in future products, like FTV oder Precons

    The biggest issue with the reserved list are the dual lands on it, since almost every legacy deck needs 4+ of them, not just 1-2 tabernacle in a nichedeck like lands.


    Anyways, id love to see them print proxy cards with no pictures and just plain text one day that are tournament legal.
    Got tired of Legacy and you like drafts? Try my Paupercube What?

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr.C View Post
    Which is why they should have done a final revision to the List, and made it so that it was A/B/U/Antiquities/Arabian Nights plus Starter 1999 if they really wanted to.
    Woulda, shoulda, coulda. Sadly, it is what it is now. And they're not going back on their position any time soon.

    Quote Originally Posted by bilb_o View Post
    @Bardo
    Can we have a poll about this?
    Knock yourself out, though I don't know what it will accomplish since you're polling such a self-contained crowd.


    Quote Originally Posted by Pastorofmuppets View Post
    Force isn't on the reserve list.
    Gurf. :) Brainfart there.

  4. #104
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Humphrey View Post
    Anyways, id love to see them print proxy cards with no pictures and just plain text one day that are tournament legal.
    Proxies are easy, just use the flip cards from Innistrad block and make a vintage / legacy list.

  5. #105

    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pastorofmuppets View Post
    Force isn't on the reserve list.
    But it does bring up the issue of cards that might as well be on the reserve list. For example, does anyone here honestly believe that Force or Wasteland will be in another set? What about newer cards like Jace, Snapcaster, Batterskull, or Stoneforge? Granted, there's a lot more of them out there than Underground Seas, but their lack of supply will be noticeable if the format keeps expanding for one reason or another.
    I don't think wizards releases print run info anymore but to my knowledge revised has as large or a larger print run as most modern sets. The issue is more that these cards are not in curculation. For example I had two savannahs just sitting in a binder for ~10 years while I was not playign the game. I am sure there are lots of duals. like that.

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Have you seen this video?

    Decent collection

    If there are 5 guys like this and these duals got into circulation it would have a similar effect of a new print run on the market :D That's why it's important to do small amounts of reprints so that these dragons collecting and hatching on treasures will freak out and cash out their treasures thus letting the market breathe.

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by bilb_o View Post
    Have you seen this video?

    Decent collection

    If there are 5 guys like this and these duals got into circulation it would have a similar effect of a new print run on the market :D That's why it's important to do small amounts of reprints so that these dragons collecting and hatching on treasures will freak out and cash out their treasures thus letting the market breathe.
    I think he's a big dealer in Asian and sells cards there, which helps start a Legacy community there. He's not hoarding.

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by ajfennewald View Post
    For example I had two savannahs just sitting in a binder for ~10 years while I was not playign the game. I am sure there are lots of duals. like that.
    I just got back into Magic last May after a 12 year hiatus. Lots of goodies just sitting around gathering dust. 5x Tundra, 5x Trops, 3x Savannah, 3x Plateau, 1x Volcanic, 2x Badlands, 3x Mana Drain, 4x FoW, a Karakas, etc. And because I got interested in the game again, some buddies I used to play with took a look at their old collections.. One had 4x Tundra and 4x Tropicals (which he promptly sold on eBay).

    No doubt injecting a few more copies of staples into circulation is good for the format, but these kinds of anecdotal incidences are too infrequent, and too insignificant in the scheme of things to do anything. Without reprints, Legacy will forever be limited in how large it can get. Is that so terrible? Sure I wish they reprinted all the staples so everyone could play. But it's not going to happen. I still get to play Legacy at least once a week. And even if Legacy 'dies' people will still want to play it because it's an awesome format. It will always have that grassroots community, like Vintage, only a lot larger because the staples are not nearly so scarce.

  9. #109

    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by SpikeyMikey View Post
    This is patently false. The big stores stand to gain if something major like the duals were reprinted. The speculators are individuals. Now, some of them happen to be pretty nice people (I'm thinking of Morbid- and Jaco), but with a few notable exceptions, I couldn't possibly give a fuck less about them.

    Here's how the scenario works. You're a major company. You have to keep inventory of the product you sell because your customers don't want to keep inventory. That means that they're not going to put up with long lead times. Either you have the part in stock, or they buy somewhere else. But inventory, ANY inventory, is a waste of your money. That's money you could have invested in something useful. Instead, you've got it invested in something that's not accruing interest and in fact actually costs you money for the warehouse space and man-power necessary to manage that inventory. So the faster you move that inventory, the more liquid your position. And while not having the inventory means not making a sale, the closer to "just enough" that you can get - the less of your capital you have tied up in useless inventory - the happier you are, because you're maximizing your gains.

    You don't want to sit on cards for long periods of times. You want something to come in and move right out the door again. Ideally, the moment anything touched your dock, you'd turn around and ship it out again. This concept is known as "turns". The company I work for, we shoot for 12 turns a year. That means, ideally, every month, we've turned our entire inventory. The stuff that came in at the end of January needs to be gone by the end of February. Some things turn faster, some slower, but that's our goal. And we're a stocking supplier. If you look at JiT (Just-in-Time) companies like Dell, they try and push their turns to the sub-day level.

    I can't tell you what kind of turns Ben Bleweiss averages. But I can say with a fair degree of certainty that he measures his average turns in days. I'd be shocked if his average turn ever extended out past 2 weeks. Now there are going to be some items, mostly older things with limited play value, that are going to end up sitting for 3 months, but there are also going to be cards they're turning daily.

    Why does this matter? Say the price of duals drops a dollar a day for 40 days. The speculator, who's holding on to the cards, just lost $40/ea. on those duals. The store, who has no illusions about stockpiling (because remember, inventory is a necessary evil) the shit out of some duals, is buying and selling every day. Yes, they lose a little bit off the profit of each dual, but since they're constantly selling out of their position and buying back in at a lower price, make up the difference in profit in volume. Rather than making 20 transactions at $15, they're making 22 at $14. Voila, profit!

    Perhaps you weren't here for the original discussion, but SCG pushed hard for the repeal of the Reserved List. They stood to make a lot of money off it because Ben and Pete are intelligent businessmen.


    I understand how the concept of inventory works, but I'd like to revisit your example.
    The game store will lose some amount of value on pre-reprint cards they had during the time of the reprint. You are correct in saying that they will also be able to gain money based on selling the new reprints, and at a much greater volume. This also makes a logical assumption that the demand for legacy would be increased. I'm sure it would to some degree, but that would also have an unforeseen cost that deals more specifically with eternal formats.

    When it comes down to it all consumers (especially magic players if their constant price gripes are to be taken seriously) have some finite amount of resources. A player who wants to buy in to legacy will likely have to spend less money on standard, drafting, etc. So while the new duals will be a source of good revenue for the store, they would likely just be representing the same total money being spent just on different things.

    Legacy isn't exactly gateway magic. People buying in will be people who have a decent amount of experience with the game. So the shift to legacy would be a shift in where money is being spent at the store rather than a new source of money.

    Legacy is by far my favorite format, but I do not delude myself into thinking that the health of legacy is a large part of the health of the game itself. Standard is, and must be, the flagship. If legacy is too easy to get into, it might hurt the longevity of the game itself, as people are buying mostly old rather than new cards.

    Magic's health would be better served by legacy being not "a format anyone can play," and instead being what it currently is "a format anyone who wants to drop $500-1000 can play." This might be a little too hypothetical and esoteric as of a discussion when the original premise had to do with what course of action would result in more money for a game store.

    I would argue that greater accessibility to Legacy may not be that great of a prospect, but I don't even think a mass reprint of duals (the elephant in the room) would necessarily make the format all that much more accessible. Lets say that the price of a Tundra is now $40 instead of $100. Logically a lot more people would suddenly own Tundras and want to use them. So what happens to the price of Force, Wasteland, Onslaught fetches, Jaces, Snapcasters, etc... So a Tundra loses $40 in value, and a Jace gains $40. The premier Legacy deck doesn't become appreciably cheaper.

    So then, one might argue, if Wizards was willing to reprint Duals, why not Force, or Jace, or anything else? I would be hard pressed to not call this type of scenario a slippery slope. If Wizards makes its reprint policy just an answer to whatever a vocal group of players think is too expensive, where does that end? If no card is "sacred" how can any card be perceived to hold any value over a long term? And if cards can't be seen as valuable in the long term, the definition of long term will keep getting shorter and the value driven lower and lower.

    Which goes full circle to my original argument which is that even the "threat" of future reprints can greatly influence card prices. If prices get too volatile, it won't be worth it for any retailer to keep a singles inventory at all (except the latest standard cards).

    So what's the answer? I stated in an earlier post that the answer is what Wizards already does. They use reprints to have modest impacts on card prices and to generate excitement for future products. I pointed out the paradigm of small print runs being able to reprint a $50 card (judge foils, FTVs). Large scale fixed products can reprint a $25 card (duel decks, commander). New set releases can also go up to maybe $25 as well. It will be interesting to see if shock lands get a reprint in a new set of a fixed product.

    I would say that what I've seen from Wizards is a great product that is constantly improving. A large change in reprint behavior would produce dubious gains, at best, all around. If you think, like I do, that Magic is on a roll right now, why shake it up?

    Backseat Critic

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by bilb_o View Post
    Have you seen this video?

    Decent collection

    If there are 5 guys like this and these duals got into circulation it would have a similar effect of a new print run on the market :D That's why it's important to do small amounts of reprints so that these dragons collecting and hatching on treasures will freak out and cash out their treasures thus letting the market breathe.
    Holly mother-truckin' sheet...That guy is sitting on a fortune.
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by lordofthepit View Post
    I think he's a big dealer in Asian and sells cards there, which helps start a Legacy community there. He's not hoarding.
    Honestly, what a relief The way he shows the Priest of Gix proxy at the end I took it as "I used to play Mono Black and proxy up Priest of Gix but look where I'm now bitches MWAHAHAHAHA!" kind of showing.

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    It's not just that they'd make money on new duals. They'd move a higher volume and therefore make higher net profits on the old ones as well.

    Of course people have a finite amount of money to spend on paperboard. But saying that a drop in prices wouldn't increase the amount of money spent on the game is just nonsensical. Let's take a quick look at two stocks from the same company. Berkshire Hathaway's A stock is worth $118,110.01 a share, right now. The B stock is worth $78.69 a share. The volume of movement on the B stock is 2,479, 826 shares traded so far today. The A stock was 316. That means $195,137,507.94 worth of B stock has traded today and $37,322,763.16 worth of A stock. If you're taking a cut of each sale, say 10%, you'd much rather be moving B stock. A stock is a better investment (more voting rights), but even if the B stock were to drop without the A stock mirroring it and your cut goes down to 5%, you're making loads of money more than you would selling A stock at 10%.

    I spend $0 annually on in print cards. I spend marginally more than that on OOP cards, only because sometimes I need to buy something obscure for a tournament that I can't borrow from someone. But I'm not interested in buying A stock. The price is too high, even if it's a more valuable commodity. But I'd buy B stock. And it's not inconceivable that I'd eventually buy enough B stock that I'd have an A stock worth of B stock (after the 50-1 split, that equates to roughly 1500 shares, give or take, based on market fluctuations). I'd have spent the same money ($118,035 vs $118,110, close enough at that price range) and have less to show for it. But because the initial buy in is smaller, I could talk myself into escalating to that range.

    It's not that I can't afford the cards. I work two jobs, I have no kids and no appreciable debt except for my car payment. I could spend 10 grand on cards this year and still keep my $43,000 convertible and the half-house I rent with a koi pond in the backyard. And it's not like I never owned cards. I used to have enough staples, outside of P9 (which I only had 1 set of at any given time) and duals (where I usually had a few extras, but not a full 2 sets), that I could build two copies of pretty much any deck I wanted to. But I gave it all away when I left San Diego, since there was no room to take it with me.

    So here we are. I don't like trading. I'm not covering the cost of buying an appreciable Vintage or Legacy collection. I'm not going to buy cards for Standard, since I won't trade them and I don't need them for a deeper format. I'm not going to draft, because I don't play Standard and have no use for the cards I draft. There is absolutely no incentive whatsoever for me to purchase any product right now. If I could own all the staples I'd need to play Legacy for $2k, I'd probably buy back in. But I don't even think that'd get me a full 40 duals, let alone Forces, Wastes, Goyfs, Bobs, etc. And if I were playing Legacy again, I'd probably go to the odd FNM and do a little drafting. Maybe I'd even get sucked into Standard, since it would make it more worthwhile to go to SCG Opens. You're looking at that $10,000+ of discrectionary income a year that could be dumped into Magic, if the pricing was more reasonable. Because I could escalate my spending in small steps, but I'm not doing it in one gigantic step.
    Quote Originally Posted by Draener View Post
    You know who thinks it's sweet to play against 8 different decks in an 8 round tournament? People who don't like to win, or people that play combo. This is not EDH; Legacy is a competitive environment, and it should reward skill - more so than it does.
    Quote Originally Posted by Borealis View Post
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by SpikeyMikey View Post
    If I could own all the staples I'd need to play Legacy for $2k, I'd probably buy back in. But I don't even think that'd get me a full 40 duals, let alone Forces, Wastes, Goyfs, Bobs, etc.
    Whenever I see bulk sales of duals on eBay they tend to come out to ~$40/each. Including Seas, Tundras, and Trops. $40x40=$1600, so you could still come out with $400 for other staples. And that's assuming you wanted all 40 duals at once. Why not just buy the 'more useful' ones and decide on a deck and buy the cards you need for that deck, then build as you go? It sounds to me like you're interested but hesitant to pull the trigger on such a large investment, so why not buy in pieces?
    Legacy: Miracles

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    I think the Reserved list only stops wizards from printing cards with the original name, as there are many creative ways to get around the template to print basically the same card, or even better.

    For example, Wizards can't reprint the Atog cycle or the Oath cycle because they had the silly idea of putting a part of that cycle in the reserved list.

    However, they reprinted Fork in M12 with a slightly different wording. Land Cap is in the reserved list, too, and that didn't stop them to print almost the same cycle of cards in Tempest, and later in Kamigawa block.

    Right now, WotC could just print moxes if they worded them this way "T: You may add B to your mana pool". If they don't print them is because they don't want. Same with cards such as Mana Drain and FoW that aren't even on the reserved list.

    What holds Legacy back are these things: entry cost, card availability (no matter how much money you have, if nobody has LED in your area you can't put it to your deck), difficulty to switch decks if the metagame changes/your main engine gets banned.

    I would also add to that list that most players view legacy as just FoW decks that don't let you play anything vs combo decks that kill you in one turn, and now that people can play Modern without having to give a crap about those big turn offs, I think Legacy will become more of a niche market for dinosaurs that enjoy playing with old cards even as the format gets worse due to lack of care for WotC's part, or even outright sabotage.
    Please stop talking about whether Force of Will is broken or not. It obviously is, and rather than "the glue that holds vintage together" it would be better to call it "the rug under which you hide the filth until there's so much that you can no longer conceal it".

  15. #115
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Card availability is really nonsense. Anyone can purchase from eBay and unless you're looking for hard to find foils, pretty much everything is available. Same for magiccard market. Its not like you can't compete without edgar serendib efreets or foil city of traitors. Card accessibility is something completely different. If you don't have the money to acquire the cards, you can't play the game. This is how its always been in this game and it is inherent to the CCG genre. It's either that, or reprinting cards so often until it becomes a card game and loses its collectible status. Once that happens, their ability to sell boosters diminishes because the value of the contents becomes lower and thus the incentive to buy decreases. (Look at Jace / Goyf and see how those sets sold out quickly, then compare to fallen empires that nearly killed the game).

    Therefore, magic will always be a game about money cards.

  16. #116
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Card availability may be not a problem to you, but it's indeed a problem for a lot of people.

    Also, cards are not pricey just because they are rare, cards get pricey if they belong to the only deck that wins tournaments, and that's something WotC can control without having to print more copies, (or even ban anything, really, all they have to do is shifting the metagame by printing a card that fixes the issue). That's why Masticore was a money rare when it was in Standard, but nowadays it's a buck rare even though no more tournament-legal copies of it have been printed and it's harder to find it in trade binders.
    Please stop talking about whether Force of Will is broken or not. It obviously is, and rather than "the glue that holds vintage together" it would be better to call it "the rug under which you hide the filth until there's so much that you can no longer conceal it".

  17. #117
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    www.ebay.com

    there I solved your availability problem.

  18. #118

    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by DrJones View Post
    Card availability may be not a problem to you, but it's indeed a problem for a lot of people.

    Also, cards are not pricey just because they are rare, cards get pricey if they belong to the only deck that wins tournaments, and that's something WotC can control without having to print more copies, (or even ban anything, really, all they have to do is shifting the metagame by printing a card that fixes the issue). That's why Masticore was a money rare when it was in Standard, but nowadays it's a buck rare even though no more tournament-legal copies of it have been printed and it's harder to find it in trade binders.
    No, objectively speaking card availability is an issue that doesn't actually exist. In the event you are someone who is without internet, a car, and outside of reasonable walking distance of a computer with internet, you might have an issue with card availability.

    But if that's the case, you're probably amish and have a deep rooted hate for Magic to begin with.

    No one in my area has tundras, but I could get a playset of them right now if I were so inclined. No one in my area has wastelands for trade, but I could go get one right now.

    It's not a problem for anyone.

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Again, it's not an issue to you, which is understandable because if that were the case, you wouldn't be on this forum. You are already legacy players, most of the issues that prevent more people from entering this format don't apply to you. And you are wrong if you think anybody can (or even wants to) use sites such as ebay.
    Please stop talking about whether Force of Will is broken or not. It obviously is, and rather than "the glue that holds vintage together" it would be better to call it "the rug under which you hide the filth until there's so much that you can no longer conceal it".

  20. #120
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    @Dr JOnes: Just because (you claim that) they don't want to use eBay, doesn't mean its not available. Also, just because you aren't willing to accept a solution, doesn't mean that your 'issue' is actually relevant. This is like complaining that your legs don't walk fast enough to get to work, when that problem already has several proven solutions (public transportation system, bike, car, live on campus/relocation, get another job, etc). Availability is really not an issue with anyone that wants to play in competitive Legacy events.

    My idea is that, in the end, its the card dealers that push the prices. Most of the time, players will only ask, let's say, around 10% or 20% more than a card's current store-price (The threshold may be different. Also, in-stock store prices only). Anything higher than that certain threshold and players will probably simply refuse to trade the card at all. The responsible party for the increase in prices are the card dealers that are intimately familiar with the game (read: SCG/ChannelFireball). Players accept those increased prices during trades, because, well, why the hell wouldn't you if you are the guy trading the card that just jumped in value? Then, because the cards are traded for so much more, the price-setting of the card-dealers is validated and the new price becomes the norm. Card dealers with less accute knowledge of the game alter their prices if they are fast enough to not-get-snipered out of their stock, and the kitchen table magic player can't help but wonder what the hell just happened with the card.

    This cycle continues, until the card hits a roof. Legacy's roof is abnormally high because the players are under the illusion that scarcity exists, simply because its an old format. The truth is, print runs of most sets by far outweigh the number of players the game has. So, unless you're collecting alpha, Edgar, some rare foreign language cards, missprints/crimped/albino, Arabian Nights/Antiquities cards or early foils (sagablock/Masquesblock/7th foils), scarcity is really NOT a factor at all.

    To add to this, I've been inside the factory that produces Magic cards and have been told by a representative that the total costs to produce, package and ship a booster pack to the end customer is 10 euro cents. The value of the cards are completely made up by those that service the players and collectors -> the card dealers. Its almost the same way contemporary art collectors make up prices (except that you don't get massive tax breaks when buying Magic).

    I have a collection worth more than most people have, and I decided to collect foils for this reason. The distribution of foil cards compared to the price of foil cards is totally out of whack. Based purely on scarcity, foil cards should be much more expensive than they currently are. With foils there's this convention among traders (and dealers) that a foil card is worth 2x / 2.5x the non-foil version, but that is a total ass-hat number. Luckily we are seeing some of this convention going away with cards like High Market and Tower of the Magistrate, or 7th foils. I can tell you, when I got a Mercadian Masques boosters box for my birthday back in the days, I didn't get a single foil out of all the entire box (nor Rishadan Port/Squee/Misdirection).

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