I think all of this has to do with priorities. I have a couple of legacy decks built as well and if I ever felt the need to sell them in order to finance a house or pay for my kids braces then I will. I only get to play with the cards 1-2 times a month and to be honest that is enough for me at this time in my life. I know full well that my kids won't be small forever and that when they become old enough and think I'm boring as shit then I'll need to find a hobby. Thankfully I already have one.
After I moved to a rural area I basically created my own legacy scene at my LGS. Before no one was playing it but I asked the members if it was possible. Now I loan out all of my decks and I have gotten all of the modern players interested in building their own. They understand the uphill battle but I am more than willing to lend them decks and cards until they can get there. Several of them have started buying Forces and duals.
Also as a father of two who doesn't have too much spare time for MTG, I relish the opportunities I can play. Perhaps it would make sense to sell my collection and spend that time drafting instead. However, I look forward to the day in which I can teach my children how to play with the cards I have carefully collected over the years. Maybe they won't be interested but it's worth a shot.
Different locations make for different experiences. It's not all bad.
mise 'miz v alter. of might as well (1997) 1: to win when you don't deserve to 2: to top-deck the "tings" you need 3: to be rewarded by an opponent's bad luck 4: to coin a phrase that spreads through the tournament scene like wildfire 5: to fling a monkey 6: to split firewood using a sharp instrument 7: To burn
I think somebody may have been peddling fake cards.
In seriousness, the big difference here is that you don't need 9 blue duals to play a competitive deck. Vintage never really had viable budget options, except maybe Dredge.
The RL is a big problem for Legacy, but not to the extent that it was for Vintage. If nothing else, Legacy will dwindle much, much more slowly I think.
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
I have not posted on the Source in a long time, but as many of you know, I've had a lot of investment in Modern over the years. But despite this investment, I totally agree with Dice here. Most Modern players would have gleefully played Legacy back when Modern was first announced. They just wanted a supported, non-rotating format which was relatively accessible and widely played at all tournament levels. If that had been Legacy, we would have been happy. Now that Modern is here, however, I don't believe many of those players would accept a shift to Legacy. Nor do I believe newer players interested in non-rotating sets will drift to Legacy when Modern is so prominent. Modern is currently the non-rotating way of the future just because of its sheer momentum, other pros and cons aside. As SCG, Wizards, Hareruya, CF, and other major tournament providers and product/content vendors have attested to, it is Modern that always draws the views, crowds, clicks, and conversation.
That said, I think Modern, Legacy, Vintage, and maybe even EDH/Pauper are imperiled by the direction suggested by Arena. We know that Wizards' staff have hinted at newer non-rotating formats, especially ones they have more market and metagame control over. Arena would be a clean starting point to that, as is already suggested by one of the FAQ entries on the Arena site. Sadly, Arena being a clean starting point for a new format would be a messy declining point for lots of other things: Modern, Legacy, non-rotating/eternal formats generally, MTGO, secondary market influence, etc. This isn't to say these things will abruptly go extinct. Rather, they will gradually fade away simultaneously, as most of them are connected in some way. This may be a good long-term business move for Hasbro and Wizards, but it will hurt players like those on this forum and others (i.e. knowledgeable, enfranchised Magic veterans).
All of this is independent of the relatively trivial Modern vs. Legacy debate. This is a more existential threat to the Magic reality most of us know. And again, I'm not saying this is going to be some instant apocalypse that happens over night. This is just another slip down a slope that leads to major changes for all players like us.
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Are you talking about this?
Q. What happens when my cards rotate out of Standard?
A. The focus of MTG Arena will be on Standard card sets. We're working on fun ways for players to play with cards once they rotate out of Standard. We'll talk more about this later in the year.
I think this is more about trying not to bite off more than they can chew with Arena. They are trying a whole new economy, still working with a complex rules engine, trying to shed their reputation as a terrible digital company, etc. etc. Their goal seems to be to get some momentum behind Arena by hitting the ground running with what they can control, while they know they still have revenue streams from enfranchised players coming in via the paper and MTGO markets. They just need a minimum viable product for launch and Standard is plenty for that.
I don't think there's any conclusions worth drawing today. Honestly, if they wanted to make the most money they would stop printing paper cards and just hope to become a video game company.
The whole thing looks like a disaster in the making. They're trying to rip off Hearthstone, but have no idea what the hell they're doing. The current business model looks abyssal if you're planning to play Constructed on Arena and the secrecy behind the numbers for the Vault/wild cards should be a clear warning sign. Whenever WotC tries to hide that kind of stuff, expect it to be FUBAR.
When one reads a quote like that, there are far more negative conclusions we can draw than positive ones. Modern (let alone Legacy/Vintage/EDH/etc.) discussion is conspicuously absent from all the Wizards-generated Arena content. That really worries me. It is especially worrisome in light of quotes like the one in the FAQ. Arena is clearly Wizards' big play, and we should not be happy that existing non-rotating formats are conspicuously absent from that discussion. Standard certainly isn't. We see that word "Standard" in all kinds of Arena press. The other formats, however, are missing. It also seems very unlikely that Wizards will want to maintain and fund two products that do effectively the same thing. Their track record with that has been terrible, as we've seen many digital MTG games fall by the wayside.
The potential salvation of MTGO is that it remains profitable for Wizards despite Arena being the client of choice. Maybe it just doesn't require that much upkeep and its margins are pretty good. If that happened, we would still see MTGO as the non-rotating format client, even if Arena was all about Standard and Limited. MTGO would still soldier on and the non-rotating formats we enjoyed would stay viable for longer. This is definitely possible. But I think it's not very likely that Legacy, Modern, and other non-rotating formats currently feature prominently in Wizards' vision of Arena.
I have talked about this to many people and I think that if the reserved list was abolished and Dual lands where reprinted at the rarity of masterpeices (or slightly less rare) in masters sets, they wouldnt kill the value, but it would open up a lot of ways to get new players.
They don't even need to abolish it. They can modify it to exclude the duals. It wouldn't be the first time cards were removed from the list (Sol Ring, etc), and it wouldn't be the first time duals were given a special exemption (old extended). There are a couple reasonsxwhy this might make sense right now:
1) Massive revenues at a time when Standard is on life support and they are keener than ever to sell Legacy staples in Masters sets.
2) It's a great way to squeeze money out of Modern players who already have their Modern Staples but would buy into Legacy if they could get duals for closer to $100 than $300 each.
I am predicting WotC comes up with a dual land solution of some sort for the 25th anniversary. Admittedly I am an optimist, so there's that I guess.
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
Modern easily rivals Standard in popularity now, but WotC can't push the format as much as it's popular because they can't monetize it properly. And the current business model just isn't compatible with acquiring the cards for a Modern deck. That alone is going to cause massive problems for Arena in the near future, at latest once the first rotation kicks in. But Arena isn't allowed to fail because Hasbro pumped millions into the project to get those sweet Hearthstone bucks.
No arguing with that. WotC still stole the entire way of presentation/UI after having over 15 years to get their shit together. Just look at the garbage fire they call a UI that is MTGO V4.
They won't meddle with the reserved list. They stated that many times pretty clearly and double downed with the "spirit of the RL" crap ruling out "snow Duals" as well.
WOTC has a very comfortable position of just letting Legacy/Vintage die in favor of a more profitable Modern format, while claiming their hands are tied to do anything against that, pointing to the strawmen of "collectors" and "integrity".
The last but mayor issue is that WOTC has an unhealthy relation with the big vendors handing them insider Infos for years to fuel their profits in exchange for running their official events. WOTC will not crash the value of the stores stock of cards by suddenly abolishing the RL and printing new Duals.
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I would bet you good money all the major vendors want that list gone. It offers more money long term to sell 20 cards at 40 dollars compared to one card at 300.
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I recently met with one of the wotc employees (one of the people who designs the cards, I won't say who in case he wants to be anonymous but he didn't say this was confidential info that I couldn't repeat anywhere). He was very keen to answer questions on any aspect of what they do at wizards so I asked him about the RL.
What he said was:
- Basically every single person at WotC would gladly abolish the reserved list if they were allowed to, because:
a) Some kind of masters set or any product with RL cards in it would obviously be very popular (not only for people interested in Legacy/Vintage but also for commander players)
b) The RL restricts their ability to design new sets, for example they are simply not allowed to print basic limited fillers like '1WW 2/2 Flying First Strike' (While a lot of the cards on the reserved list are pretty weird and unique there are several straightforward cards like this that are reserved, e.g. Aeolipile).
He seemed surprisingly emphatic about the second point but I guess he's passionate about game design, employed to make new sets and everything else is a secondary concern for him.
The reason he gave for why WotC doesn't print cards on the RL is that:
a) Their legal staff (apparently different people that have been employed separately by WotC and Hasbro have looked at it) say that it would open them up to litigation
b) The last time they used the promo loophole (with Karn/Negator) somebody did actually try to sue them
I don't honestly think there is some grand conspiracy to phase out eternal formats but it seems like they are just doomed to die at some point unless the law changes.
They could print something like
and it would be functionally different. This whole "Spirit of the Reserve List" is quite frankly horseshit, unless they had to sign some secret NDA in the wake of a ligation that doesn't allow them to print cards that are somewhat similiar or better.Thundersaurus
Creature - Dinosaur
Flying, first strike
2/2
They could easily print something like
But they choose not to. But then again, would we really want Neo-Duals on cardboard that self-destructs after contact with air like the current cards do?"Commander Tundra"
Land - Plains Island
Whenever you cast your commander from your command zone, you gain 1 life.
If they would they would not have double downed the RL in regards to functional reprints and promos which were previously fine. That's literally the strawman I talked about.
It misses the important information that no one suceeded to actually file a case because there is no way to proof how the promo loophole (or an abolishment of the list itself) would damage them, which is mandatory.
Edit:
Just this. There is no legal restriction preventing them to print "snow duals" at all. They just choose to do not and justify it with the "spirit of the RL" nonsense. No one forced them to double down the RL list, but they did so themselves
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