Wizards doesn't care about legacy. Wizards doesn't care about vintage. Proxy legacy tournaments and proxy vintage tournaments are about as much of an issue to Wizards as Proxy Yugioh tournaments.
What they do care about is people giving money to people who are making high quality proxies. Those people are also printing proxy Goyfs and proxy Snapcasters and proxy Standard cards. They have been getting better and better and in the longer term present a threat to the entire MTG business, not just the viability of Legacy and Vintage. At the same time, Wizards can't admit that there's a problem, as that itself could crash the market.
Putting some pressure here and there to scare people out of funding the high quality proxy market doesn't seem like the worst idea.
Well, yeah. This is why you really don't "poke the beast" so to speak. The North-East has been running proxy events for years and years with no problems, so why this now? Because it was being broadcast regularly on Twitch, which made it near impossible for Wizards to ignore.
If you are a WPN store, you can still do what you want, but if you are doing something that is going to displease Wizards it's probably best to not be broadcasting it.
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I highly doubt any kind of twitch streaming is the cause of this, MTG outside of large events just doesn't get enough viewers for it to be relevant, let alone people playing with proxied cards, which I haven't seen on stream.But it makes no sense for it to displease them, at the very absolute least, even if they proxy their entire decks, they are basically getting free advertisement for their game. Blackmailing stores because you want to dictate what people can or cannot do with their pieces of cardboard outside of a tournament environment is just silly.
I'd be interested in the reaction of the Eternal Extravaganza organizers. They have had great success (100+ person) with proxy Vintage, held back to back with Sanctioned Legacy (~400 person). These events have been held at a venue that sold cards (Tales of Adventure). Seems like this sort of setup is bound to draw the ire of WPN. The June EE which has already been announced is being held offsite at a bombed out mall or something so maybe they can pass it off.
How is this even remotely beneficial for Standard players?
My guess is that enforcement will be handled in the same way it is for proxies in sanctioned events. Anyone can report a store for infractions, and the penalties for breaking the rules are harsh enough that places won't risk it.
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
I was one of those kids that bought into Legacy much later than most. When I started playing Legacy, I just proxied the expensive cards and bought the cheap cards. At the time I figured there was no way I would be able to justify dropping 1-3k on a single legacy deck... Anyway lo and behold I turned out loving Legacy so much I bought my deck twice. Foiled out the deck, got Onslaught fetches to replace the KTK trash and got FBB duals. If I'd never had the opportunity to dip my toes in, I would never have gotten to the point where I am now.
On a wider point, the Melbourne Legacy scene was utter shit from about 2012 - October of last year. There would be an event every 2 months and it would be the same 6 cunts turning up each time. Now that's great and I consider those cunts my good friends, but it's not particuarly exciting or motivating is it? Then in October of last year, a new store opened that said it would be willing to have fortnightly legacy with proxies. This got us the players excited and it led to another store hosting fortnightly legacy every other week. The 1st store allows 75 proxies and the 2nd store allows 30. A huge amount in comparison to you Euros/Yanks but whatever that's not important. This led to us having weekly legacy, with NEW players coming in in droves. We had 22 players once. Twenty-fuckin-two players. Do you know how happy that made a lot of us, who'd spent many hours talking online and irl about the shitty state of our scene? Australia is fucking boring, there's fuck-all to do if you don't believe in juvenile-alcoholism and to hear that our favourite hobby/stress reliever could be under fire is just fucking bullshit. If we had no proxy legacy, there wouldn't be a fucking scene at all and the precedent this sets is going to fuck us over. Absolute fucking bullshit.
Australia sounds like an awful place... But it's where I always try to start my base of operation in Risk.
Edit: Also,
Proxies, Australian for Legacy.
Final Edit:
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That's a crab!
I believe you misunderstand. They are not going after the people who are selling high quality counterfeit cards on the Internet and announcing it loud and proud. They're not trying to make it harder for people to play counterfeits in sanctioned tournaments. And, of course, they're not preventing shady ebay sellers from trying to pass off fake cards as genuine. Nor are they addressing the root cause of the problem: the fact that cards are very expensive while being cheap and relatively easy to counterfeit.
What they're doing right now is prohibiting unsanctioned tournaments in which people play some proxies, which are not fake cards. They're typically basic lands with handwriting on them. This is almost always a completely different phenomenon from counterfeiting, and it doesn't hurt us players. It doesn't even really hurt wizards, because after some testing with proxies, those people will still need to buy the real, genuine cards in order to be able to play in sanctioned tournaments.
But yay for disproportionate response, right?
A store in my metropolitan area was going to start doing proxy Vintage. My friend bought high quality proxies online to use at that tournament.
Why wouldn't he? They were cheap, arrived quickly and were a lot more elegant than drawing on an Island.
There is not that much Wizards can do about this other than intimidation.
Exactly. If their bean counters were twice as smart they would have already had the RL abolished, underground sea, mishra's workshop, and bazaar of baghdad would have been expeditions, and they would somehow release some super ultra rare foil power 9 into the market. But nope let's not do that, let's make this bastard child of a format called modern that sounds sweet at first but then every card people want to play with gets banhammered out of existence. Oh and in this format we'll make some specific products for it that are super limited so that we don't maximize profits off this format in multiple ways because modern masters could be drafted too/the format WotC loves the most I would imagine as it moves the most product for them.
This new move from them regarding proxies? Huge dick move to vintage players. They are basically saying "Nice black lotus you have there. It's a shame there are virtually no tournaments you can use it in. Might I suggest magic online/the worst product in the history of products?"
Agree with that EDH theory too. Get legacy and vintage players to cash out so EDH players can scoop up them duals for their pathetic xira arien EDH deck or what have you that isn't close to good, but is quite enjoyable for that person for whatever reason. Despite the fact that EDH is the dumbest format in all of magic where crap like primeval titan is banned but sol ring isn't and the format is pure politics and a bunch of people who hate to see someone else combo off/win first other than themselves.
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Originally Posted by Vacrix
It's been my thought for some time that Wizards should license proxies. They should just charge companies for the use of card names and text. This avoids Reserve List BS, makes Hazzbro$$, and gets "cards" in the hands of players. Starcity prints tokens, it would be easy for them to pay for the rights to print proxies (with art/borders that bear no passing resemblance to real cards). Of course the big GS would probably charge a ridiculous amount for fake cards, China would counterfeit these proxies, and Wizards would find a way to loose$ in the process. And they don't care ( or have to care) about Eternal formats.
Don't know how relevant this thought is...
p. s. As someone who only plays EDH since two kids appeared, i like the conspiracy theories. I want moar EDH staples!
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The "Get Eternal players sell out to EDH players"-theory is too tinfoil hat - even more me. If they really cared more about EDH players, they would support it better than with just one product each year and oversized fatties each set.
As nice as the licensing idea is, I doubt it would work under the current wording: Reserved cards will never be printed again in a functionally identical form. That's pretty vague, but could easily interpreted that anybody is forbidden to officially reprint cards.
We just need to hold our breath until Hasboro truly shits the bed then buy a controlling share on the cheap and then appoint ourselves to all the positions, then everything will be okay! Someone here just win that crazy Powerball jackpot, then all will be right!
It would be an intetesting research project to find out how much of hasbro company stock you could buy if every legacy / vintage card was liquidated.
Maybe we could start a hostile takeover.
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Wouldn't trying to buy Wizards from Hasbro be cheaper than trying to buy a controlling share from Hasbro?
Actually Legacy and Vintage player pool with this policy will be just off hands from WotC. Simple as that - if they can't support those formats with reprints, they forbid replacement, so someone will just invest some money to create alternative DCI where proxies will be allowed - who doesn't want 10,000+ player base which could pay some minor price for "new sanctioning".
With so many Chinese counterfeit available game will stop being trade-able and became normal card game where you can mix new cards from WotC and old cards which would be proxies. Market doesn't like empty space. Paper have its durability even sleeved and protected, original old cards have already absurd prices to be played - would you use Alpha Black Lotus for tournament when each shuffling mean -100 Euro (at least) on its value ? Those times will come sooner or later with other Legacy and Vintage cards, thanks to "great" printing policy. And so strict policy about proxies won't stop it.
So they would need just to include some restriction on use that means they are not functionally identical.
One thing I could think of, though I know Wizards would never go for, would be to link your DCI # and your MTGO account. Then setup a mechanism where you can obtain usable proxies (in events that allow them, not necessarily all events) that are linked to your DCI # and an not be used by anyone else, with the restriction that the proxies have to be of cards in your MTGO account, and those cards then becomes locked on your account so you (at least) can not trade them.
set up properly, and refined it could even let Wizards make money of Legacy and Vintage, though there would be some issues that need to be resolved, likely needing to be 1 set at a time, or in specific sized blocks of cards, with no sets that are currently being physically sold/in standard being available for proxies.
Our local shop called Wizards today to clarify this. They were told that no proxies were allowed anywhere in the shop, even for casual play, and the shop's status as a WPN member would be threatened by the use of proxies in the store. This has an excellent chance of killing Legacy at our shop, and a reasonable chance of killing Modern as well.
Wizard's customer service number is 1 (800) 324-6496, 9am to 5pm Pacific Time. I called and reached a real person in under a minute, and my complaints about the proxy rule, the WPN threat, and the reserve list were all aired in under 4 minutes total call time. The person on the other end was not very helpful, but I told him I hoped he got a ton of negative calls.
Please take a minute to make a call.
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