Currently WOTC does not allow any proxies at sanctioned events. If a store wants to allow proxies, they lose all the incentives that WOTC offers for sanctioned events (price support, marketing support, players earning points, the ability to win a trip to a pro tour etc).
Reserve list cards (duals, power 9 etc) have an absurd price tag because WOTC can never reprint them. As a result, vintage is dead and legacy is at death’s door.
If WOTC institutes a policy saying that reserved list cards and only reserve list cards can be proxied (if wotc insists, they could mandate that all proxies only be done with a sharpie on basic lands only) at sanctioned events, would you be upset?
If you are a legacy player, this would ensure that Legacy could thrive once again. Its the best format in magic but is dying only due to the reserve list.
If you are a collector, your duals are still valuable, in fact they are likely to gain value faster due to a resurgence in interest in legacy. More legacy players and events mean more people who want to buy into the real cards.
Vintage used to be much much more popular, it only became niche once the power 9 prices rose so much that the format was no longer accessible.
Legacy used to be the most popular format, but the surge in the price of duals is turning it more and more niche.
And people wont stop wanting dual lands or power 9 just because they can proxy them with a sharpie on a basic land at sanctioned events. They will still want the actual cards for bling value or to make their deck look better etc. The more paper legacy and paper vintage events there are, the more players will play those formats and the more the prices of legacy and vintage staples will rise. This is a good thing if you are a collector. Your collection will grow more valuable.
I'm 100% on board with allowing proxies for sanctioned events.
When we play casual, i'm ok with sharpie, but i'd rather not have to decipher a scribble in a tournament that mattered.
Years ago, i posted here that WOTC could easily institute a proxy system where each proxy would cost $1.
The proxy would be on a regular magic back, but would only have block letters AND have a date for the tournament on it.
The date would ensure you wouldn't be able to use it at the next event. This proxy policy would allow you to change your deck for any event for $75.
As you register your deck, you go to the "proxy" station and "order" your cards for $1 each.
Whatever the cost is for having someone do this could be deducted from the $1 per card.
WOTC could supply the printer, templates and magic backs and whatever percentage is left over from the $1 per card, that's their profit.
It's an ignored cash reserve that WOTC could tap, but this policy would "some percentage greater than zero" hurt vendors at the events.
I was a commercial artist (25years) in the printing field so this seems rather easy for me to implement.
i regularly print my proxies on foil cards that i've erased.
The same armchair legal arguments that say the reserved list can't be broken also say they can't allow proxies.
The real reason that Wizards would change their reserved list policy is because of Commander. Legacy and Vintage are irrelevant in paper from their perspective, so the question becomes whether or not Commander players would approve of playtest cards (proxies already have a definition as a replacement "card" given when a card is damaged enough in tournament play), and the answer might surprise you.
I think you are overvaluing the appeal of Eternal formats, if they truly were popular then Magic Online would show it. Duals would likely still go up in the hypothetical playtest card environment though, because they would be going to Commander players instead.
It was more an indictment of the legal reasoning: the reserve list exists to preserve card values and be a trading card game, so allowing players reprint their own cards allows for functional reprints which therefore tanks prices.
Or you could argue that the reserve list only functions if wizards enforces their copyrights and by allowing proxies they aren't therefore...
The faster Legacy and Vintage die, the better for WotC.
These formats don't generate any revenue so they couldn't care less.
In terms of Commander, I'm a bit surprised that people don't riot about stuff like Gaea's Cradle, but I guess the player base is too casual to care.
I would ask another question:
Do Legacy/Vintage events even need to be sanctioned to begin with?
Most players who play these formats don't give a shit and neither do WotC.
The only alternative for sanctioned events is to introduce a format without the reserved list.
One could argue to just give the formats completely to the community, but community managed formats tend to fracture and perish rather fast.
I'm fully invested in Legacy, and because of that fact—not in spite of it—I want proxies to be legal.
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The bigger the player base the more valuable your cards
To take the sting away from opening a box with nothing but dollar rares.
And people are buying it, they care in that regard. They don't care enough to really takr a serious look at the banned list, or to support it in a meaningful way.
Haven't they pretty much admitted to not testing for it anymore?
As long as the majority of the playerbase continues to guzzle what WOTC is babybirding to us, what incentive do they have to listen to any demands that may cost them money?
You want change, you need to figure out how to organize a significant enough boycott of product to hurt Wizards' and Hasbro's bottom line. Sadly, I don't see that happening any time soon.
This is a pretty cool idea. A tournament organizer in the Northwest did something similar years ago for proxy Vintage events (unsanctioned, of course). Players would get 10 free proxies with their entry fee, but they could buy additional proxies for $1 each. This was a good system because it incentivized buying cards but allowed even people with no Vintage cards to compete if they wanted to. I don't recall anyone ever playing a fully proxied deck, but several people did buy proxies beyond the initial 10.
I agree that Commander is driving a lot of WOTC's decision-making, but aren't Commander players the ones buying the Mystery Booster "playtest" cards? If they're fine with those eyesores, then a proxied Gaea's Cradle or Gilded Drake should be OK.
I think your second point is a faulty comparison. Eternal formats can be massively popular in paper and not massively popular online. For example, I'm very involved in Legacy but don't play online. Some people in the Seattle scene do play online, but many (maybe even a majority) do not. There are numerous reasons for that, but the simplest is that the experiences are vastly different.
I'm seeing a lot of answers that are "yes those players will buy it but..."
While the experience may be different, those who want to show that Legacy has relevance have no choice to embrace Magic Online because of the advantage of no reserved list applying along with far more reasonable prices, along with there being actual relevant support.
The smart Vintage players gave in to that reality, if the Legacy players want to be able to play relevant Legacy they had better do the same. (Really, all competitive formats face this reality, it will just take longer for Pioneer because it is not on Arena yet.)
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