Wastes was given no basic land type due to fundamentally changing how some stuff works, like Coalition Victory. I agree it wouldn't be good design, though.Originally Posted by Fox
Conspiracy theories?IIRC, the main sources of those spoilers are either translation teams (who don't give a fuck) or distributors from various countries, e.g. Japan or a country from South America.
Last edited by Julian23; 12-27-2016 at 06:55 AM. Reason: ops, edited your quote of my post instead of my post.
Yeah, like the New Phyrexia godbook incident, the Kozilek Judge community leak, the second Modern Masters leak by vendors, etc.
WotC has a serious problem with NDAs and leaks affecting the secondary market and obviously there are leaks in several departments, but instead of stopping the bullshit and manipulatiom, they suspend players/judges lol
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not printing good replacements for duals is just stupid, i mean, you can make money giving new life to a format that is having issues just printing lands with a new supertype, but instead, you are happy because gremlins are back....
Ice Age is probably the most [delightfully] hateful set card-for-card, but that entire fixed block is generally adhering to the rule of 3-5cmc wherein we first see snow hate (for lands); and while Coldsnap pushes the power level of the block, we're still seeing this reversion to 95-96 power level norms. I'm not sure that R&D would really want to advance the power level of Snow cards (and their hate) to competitive cmcs since decks that would care about snow aren't really playing the same game. While the eternal crowd is all for complexity, going beyond snow duals (which by themselves are enough to theoretically affect a format) would seem to be antithetical to WotC's general push towards oversimplification.
As something of an aside, the whole way R&D approached the snow mechanic in Coldsnap was fairly poor to begin with. There's some pretty large flavor fails when you see the art on some of Coldsnap's Snow Creatures and then you look at a guy made of ice who is telling you to tap snow-covered lands (Karplusan Giant) and inexplicably didn't get an errata'd Snow supertype. That giant versus a card like Chilling Shade is actually a pretty good example how R&D dug themselves into a creative hole in their search for simplicity - individual cards stopped instructing you that they care about snow lands, and this 'snow mana' took on a life of its own. With that new approach to templating the snow mechanic became truly parasitic, and I don't know that there's necessarily a healthy way forward with a snow matters set.
You guys, Wizards is not going to jump through legal hoops just to create a renaissance for a format that allows people to play with the same cards for a decade. If I were Wizards, I would probably do things to make legacy worse, so people don't even ask for dual lands and GPs anymore. Printing Eldrazi was a smart step in that direction, but I think they could go further.
Labor laws are an actual thing though. AFAIK there's no law that explicitly protects the value of a collectible item. WotC sold 99% of the RL cards in $4 randomized packs anyway, so wouldn't the real issue have to be taken up with resellers? Even then I don't think the market price of something is any kind of guarantee of value. I'm not a lawyer though, so maybe I'm wrong or just don't know what terms to be asking Google about.
As for semi-functional reprints and new printings, it's not that I don't appreciate them, but they really don't "address the reserved list" because they don't actually do anything for scarcity issues. Not to mention all the nasty side effects that come with them - buyouts/gouging, hoarders, and counterfeits. Unless they print something that's just flat-out better than card X, or something so good it invalidates entire archetypes, those old cards are still going to be gatekeepers to most of the format. I actually like Eldrazi because it does give people a great, affordable point of entry. Still, I think it's too early to tell if it's going to have any real impact on prices for things like duals. They seem to be dropping a bit, but that's just as likely due to SCG basically dropping the format.
If they really wanted to keep the RL around AND keep the "spirit" of it intact, they could just ban everything on it and print not-quite-functional reprints. Non-sanctioned formats and actual collectors would probably keep the price of the original black-bordered sets pretty stable, and might not even hurt retailers too badly if it generated enough additional interest in eternal formats. Seems like most of the money is in Modern/Standard singles now anyway.
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."
Maybe not, but there is a legal concept called "promissory estoppel." If someone makes a promise, that alone is usually not enforceable. But, if you change your position based on that promise, and the other person reneges, you may be able to hold them accountable. On top of that, I'm sure SOME State in the Union has a deceptive trade practice law that might apply to a corporation who makes a promise about the supply of a good specifically to prop up the price of that good and then breaks the promise.
Given how these things work, I think WotC has to assume that SOMEONE will try to send demand letters / file a lawsuit if they break the reserve list. 99.99% of people would be fine or happy with that change, but the small percent that is not would smell opportunity. And, that ignores what kind of non-litigation confidence effect it might have, which is hard to know in advance.
No matter how many times we post the link, people still refuse to read the definition and keep talking about "Snow Duals." I've given up
You're both thinking too myopically. Wizards can do three things:
1) Print cards that are situationally better or worse from RL cards:
2) Print cards with drawbacks that are so insignificant that a deck can exist making them literally irrelevant; or
3) Print cards mutually exclusive to RL cards.
Wizards is absolutely able to print cards that compete with original power cards without being strictly better OR strictly worse. Look at counterspells. There was a time in Vintage when Mana Drain and Force of Will were the last word on countermagic, bar none. Then we got a flowering of countermagic that is conditionally better and conditionally worse than them. Flusterstorm. Steel Sabotage. Spell Pierce. And so on, and so on. Now, they all see play in rotation depending on the metagame.
There is no reason why lands cannot do the same. Take a Revised Dual and slap some rules text on it that is sometimes a good thing, and sometimes a bad thing. "When this ETB, each player Scrys 1." "When you tap this for mana, each player gains 1 life / loses 1 life." "If you have zero cards in hand, you cannot tap this. If you have five cards in hand, this taps for 2 mana." "This ETB tapped unless it ETB from your library. If it does ETB from your library, gain 2 life." Whatever. You get the idea.
Or, if you really must put SOME literal drawback on a card, make it so insignificant that it literally does not matter (ala Reveberate / Fork). Give a dual land only a single basic land type. In a land of fetches, that hardly matters in most decks.
Or, if you want to go somewhere entirely different, just design decks that are mutually exclusive with duals entirely. This is what Eldrazi (and, to a lesser extent, Cavern of Souls) did. You have cards that are potentially as powerful as RL cards, but do not play nicely with them. Print a City of Brass variant that says "When you tap this, sacrifice all lands you control with more than one basic land type" or whatever.
There are ENDLESS ways they can address the Reserve List without breaking it within these three categories.
Well, no, new printings do not let people own old cards. I agree. But, it depends on what you goal is. If your goal is to give everyone a playset of Legacy playables as the format exists in 2010, then, no, by definition new printings cannot do that. If you goal is to give everyone a legitimate opportunity to play the Legacy format and choose from a variety of decks at a more reasonable price, that CAN be accomplished. I see the goal as being the latter.
This is our goal. But why would it be Wizards' goal?
There is some nostalgia from people who want to see them return to Dominaria. Instead of making a new Eternal Masters, they could make a new expansion centered around snow, storywise an extension of the Ice Age arc, and announce well in advance it won't be legal for standard or modern. They could even direct it towards eternal. Hell, print some mythic land that taps for 2 that can only be used to cast or activate artifacts, and you'd have a good addition to vintage. Restrict Workshop but give them a new tool, makes the format cheaper and more accessible.
Well, first, because cash money.
Their player base is a hodgepodge of people looking for different things. They can make money off of whatever they print, sure, but they make the most money when they service multiple groups. Legacy / Vintage players do not buy packs; they will pick up the playable singles at most out of new sets. But, we might by sets heavy in staple reprints we need to round out our older collection. At least, I do. (NOTE: This is not an argument against the Reserve List. New Legacy cards tap into the same market without violating the List.)
Apart from that, the older formats do serve a role in being the Porches and Bugattis of our littler nerdom. Stuff other people will watch with interest and perhaps even aspire to even if they don't buy in. They don't want those formats to die entirely, and tossing them a bone to keep them alive now and then helps Wizards trot them out in the cage to show off in the Circus now and then.
There's a less cynical reason, too, and that is that I believe most of the people in charge over at WotC actually do love this game dearly and want to see it grow. They do not have to reprint old cards or design around the RL, but they do, and that's awesome.
They do! It's called Commander and Conspiracy, and it's glorious and amazing.
Commander sets only offer a few new niche cards. I'm talking about something filled with either reprints or cards specifically tailored to stuff holes in the eternal formats. Plus a nostalgic setting like Time Spiral or Coldsnap.
Would be sweet, but I think the best we can hope for are the 2 - 4 eternal direct printings we get in products like Commander and Conspiracy each year. Time Spiral was an amazing set -- absolutely bonkers for old farts who played in the 1990s -- but I heard it had a lot of problems with the community as a whole. It seems safer for them to print directly for eternal more slowly and in products with slightly broader audiences. Remember, while we eternal players are a market they need to tap, we're smaller than their other markets. There's a point of diminishing returns in printing cards for us.
Wizards doesn't give two shits about Eternal. Hence the dwindling support. But neither do they really care about Modern anymore aside from milking it. People are already trying to making Frontier a thing because Modern is too expensive - a format intentionally built because they can support it with reprints.
If we have a closer look, things that make Wizards actually money are Casual (aka kitchen table players; this includes Commander), Limited and Standard.
Thing is, duals are staples for Commander. If they printed new duals in some form, they could make a killing, but not because of Eternal players, but the casual crowd. They could easily print some Commander-related duals that play the same like the real thing for non-Commander players. It would be a win-win situation for pretty much everybody (except speculators, but fuck them in particular).
I have a hard time not being cynical about that format honestly.People are already trying to making Frontier a thing because Modern is too expensive - a format intentionally built because they can support it with reprints..
The people that think that solves the problem of modern being "too expensive" are either naive/foolish or trying to make a buck off all the excess Dig Through Times and Collected Companies they have.
If you ask me, the format is DoA. The moment it would take off, speculators would buy out everything that could potentially see play, making the entire price thing mood.
I had to look up what Frontier is. Basically, it's more or less what extended would look like at the moment if it were still a thing. Lame lame lame.
Not even that; it's like Modern 2.0, starting even later in time. Though, some people want it to be double standard / extended. Of course, we know what a minority these people are, since extended died for lack of interest.
Still, you will always have people who started playing in the last few years pining for a format where they can play the cards they own without shelling out more dollas. As a casual format, let em have their fun.
Surprised no one dug this up yet.
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post...ith-island-and
tinyhideoutbouquet-universe asked: For instance, would a land with Island and Mountain land types and "{T}: Roll the planar die" be considered a functional reprint of Volcanic Island?
MaRo: No. It has additional mechanical text.
"I made a Redguard that looks like Kimbo Slice. He wrecks peoples' shit. And dragons." - Bignasty197
Simply because the Fork/Reveberate example was even more ridiculous when they adressed it
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Well, there are two different things going on here.
(1) What the Reprint Policy / Reserve List Actually Says
This is strictly limited to not printing "functional reprints" which, as we've discussed, is well-defined. MARO's tweet is absolutely correct insofar as adding any rules text whatsoever takes it out of this definition as a technical matter.
(2) The Spirit of the Reserve List / Fever Dreams
Back in the case of Reverberate, and even when they did premium versions of cards before that loophole closed, someone whined to WotC or threatened them. Said whine or threat was probably something along the lines of:
"Hey, I know you didn't TECHNICALLY violate your policy, but you came right up to the edge without going over. The whole point of the policy is to avoid crashing the value of older cards by not reprinting them. If you reprint cards that are essentially functional reprints -- the changes you made literally mean nothing in a context that supports the value of this card -- then you're still injuring us. You're violating the 'spirit' of the RL, and undermining its purpose, even without blatantly violating it's text."
At the time, WotC appears to have responded by taking this warning to heart and pulling back from Reverberate-style reprints. Some discussion of the "spirit" of the Reserve List followed.
However, it has not come up much since. I suspect that the argument about violation of the spirit of the list has been eroded pretty badly in the last few years, since Wizards has shown that reprints and new cards have very little if any obvious impact on the cost of older cards, at least in the long term. It has eroded to the point where they're comfortable printing a colorshifted Imperial Recruit, for crying out loud. It may be safe to ignore the "spirit" of the RL in our discussions for the time being.
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