A Sensible Approach To Breaking the Reserved List

[dontbiteitholmes]

Okay, so we all know the argument and most of us agree the reserve list needs to go. The Legacy game is getting too expensive. Not too expensive for me, or maybe you, but the new blood kids who come in and keep the format alive. The kids that don't have the cards yet. If they don't have the cards I can't play against them. This means less fun for me and for them. On top of that WoTC is making no money off the reserved list. This is a problem. WoTC wants to make money, new kids want to play Legacy, and established Legacy players want the new players to play so that we can have the format health we've wanted since day one. Everyone wants something and it seems like no one is getting it with the reserved list and the way things are. We know the reserved list needs to go but all the so called "answers" for how to do it I've heard so far have one thing in common, they all either ruin the value of existing cards (the "new kid" masturbatory fantasy where everyone who already has the cards deserves nothing and they get everything for cheap), or they make the cards too hard to get, or they don't making WoTC any money. Clearly any reasonable solution to the problem fixes the supply issues without completely destroying the value of existing cards and makes the company money at the same time.

So we can establish that our solution must...

1: Make old cards available to newer players.

2: Maintain the value of old cards.

3: Make WotC money. People will complain at this last point but hear me out. WotC puts in an amount of work to keeping the game enjoyable that seems to go unappreciated a lot of the time. When you look at how far Magic has come since Urza's block or hell, even Mirrodin block, you have to give WotC props. They manage to keep the game fresh time after time. I've been playing MtG since Revised off and on and the game is constantly improving, which is why I still play. Not to mention for WoTC to even consider a proposal as serious they would have to make money since they would be devoting time and resources to it. Part of the problem with Eternal formats as they exist is that WotC doesn't make money. Why should a company actively promote a format where 90% of the cards are in the secondary market? It just doesn't make business sense. That's the beauty of my plan, it allows WotC to resume making money off Eternal formats which translates into more support and better prizes in the end which means everyone wins.

THE PLAN

1: First off announce the reprint policy is being repealed. Replacing it is a policy that after an initial period (which I will explain in a second) none of the cards on the reprint list will EVER be reprinted again with their original artwork.

2: Announce that starting next year there will be an additional set released once a year. This set will feature a mix of old and new cards but none of the cards in the set will be legal in Standard or Extended (unless they are already in print in a set that is legal of course). This will be similar to the online "Master" sets except for featuring new cards never seen before.

3: The "Master" sets will be draftable as a stand alone. They will contain Legacy staples, EDH cards, new Eternal/casual/EDH cards, basically everything that doesn't "fit" into the Standard/Extended equation but would be acceptable elsewhere. So insert fun EDH generals here, insert reprints of fetchlands here, insert things that they don't want in Standard here (example reprint of Propaganda that say "you or Planeswalkers you control").

4: This "Master" set is maybe a little larger then the first set of a block. It has commons, uncommons, rares, and Mythics as well as a new rarity, lets say "Super-Mythic". So every pack has it's common/uncommon/rare like a normal pack, but in the foil slot you have an astronomically low chance of getting a non-foil "Super-Mythic", insert Dual Land/power/reserved reprints here. Super low chance of this, maybe one in four/six boxes average if that. This is the new method of distributing "reserved list" cards. Of course if you were to open a random Super Mythic it wouldn't have the same chance of being say a Moat or Mox Emerald as it would have of being say a Mox Diamond, you carefully ration out the cards to keep supply/demand at reasonable and sustainable levels.

5: Now, what to do with the reserved list cards already on the market? Easy, announce that for the grace period of one year anyone can send in a reserved list card in any condition to receive a special foil edition of the same card. So say I have a Plateau that has Sunkist spilled on it, or near mint doesn't matter. I send in my Plateau and WotC sends me back a brand new foiled out Plateau. After the grace period of one year, the cards on the reserved list will never be distributed again as foils except as prize support. So WotC exchanges cards, then locks the rest in their vault and only releases them as prizes for high profile tournaments (example top 8 at a Legacy GP get one each foil dual 1st place gets full set, this means after the initial exchange period roughly 4-6 playsets of foil duals are released a year, at the one-two Vintage events a year top 8 draft a foil P9 and winner gets a set (so 2-3 foil sets of power a year), meaning the foils will always be highly valuable, meaning people who have duals/power now are rewarded for trading in as they will have something valuable and extremely rare thus preserving value on existing collections) Of course the people who don't trade in still have value in their cards as new reprints from the master set will ALWAYS be in white border and with new art and symbol (explained below), so beta duals will still be rare and valuable and even revised as the old art will be more pimp then new art and some people dislike playing with foils so there will always be a bigger market for the old versions (also see symbol below as reason the old cards will be worth more than reprints).

6: At the end of the year grace period release the first "Master" set. New cards that would be cool in Eternal but broken in Standard, some reprints of older cards they just don't want reprinted in Standard, then at Super-Mythic the cards that were traded in to WotC for foils. When WotC runs out of traded in cards they break out the printer. All new reprints are white border, with new art and a green/red/whatever color rarity symbol. Something that has never been used before as a rarity color that stands out from across the room and says "This is a reprint meant to be played with, not collected" similar to the purple symbol on time shifted cards. The point of reprinting the cards is to make them available to new players to actually play with, not to give everyone instant "OMG SUPER PIMP FOIL BLACK BORDER DUAL LANDS IN $50 A BOX SET."

There you have it. Reprint list cards enter circulation again, WotC makes money on Eternal and has a new venue to release Eternal only cards, Eternal players get a new set to draft, kids open virtual $100 bills in packs from time to time and get super stoked, we get foil dual lands/power, people who already have the cards are not punished financially for having a $5000 collection of Vintage cards and instead rewarded, Eternal formats become more popular and more accessible, Standard kids never have to buy a pack of this if they don't want to and miss nothing. I see it as a win-win-win.

Discuss...

[dontbiteitholmes]

I know that's a lot to read, if anyone has any questions on specifics I'd be happy to elaborate. I didn't want to write a book. I'm taking exams this week in school so this was rather brief. This is something I've been kicking around in my head for a while, but I took this semester off from Magic to focus on school and seeing prices on my return has given me the kick start to finally sit down and put this on paper. I'm considering writing this into an article and submitting it to a Magic website as this is an important community issue to Eternal players and there needs to be a groundwork for what we are asking of WotC. It's just a shame if they don't break the reprint policy. I've been playing Magic since I was a kid and I've had a lot of fun with the game and I'd like to see the next generation of future nerds be able to play Legacy as I think it is the most fun format and I've been hooked since the first time I played when it was still 1.5. I plan on going into software design when I graduate and moving into the game design field and I think Magic as a game has had a large influence on how I think about games, both from a design and implementation level. Legacy is such a big part of why I stuck with Magic I'd hate to see the format cease to exist because of a foolish and short sighted policy entered into many many years ago.

[kinda]

Yeah, wizard's isn't breaking the reserved list. They don't profit from those cards anymore and breaking the list would hurt their image...so it's a lose-lose for them. They're just gonna keep printing legacy cards like mental misstep and green sun's zenith and mox opal etc. to try and entice legacy players to buy product and profit that way. What they really want though is for legacy players to start putting together standard decks...that's their best way to profit from legacy.

Edit: Oh completely forgot to address the whole thing about the cards will still decrease in value in your plan. Also, the prices of the cards will either remain high or go low and really annoy collectors. Relics diamond is still $30ish which is close to stronghold diamonds. Which is less than they were before reprints...but still high.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Yeah, wizard's isn't breaking the reserved list. They don't profit from those cards anymore and breaking the list would hurt their image...so it's a lose-lose for them. They're just gonna keep printing legacy cards like mental misstep and green sun's zenith and mox opal etc. to try and entice legacy players to buy product and profit that way. What they really want though is for legacy players to start putting together standard decks...that's their best way to profit from legacy.

Just out of curiosity, did you read what I posted? Legacy players aren't buying packs to get Mental Misstep/Zeniths unless they already draft or play T2. There was a good 5 years that I played Legacy and never bought a pack of cards. Why bother? I can spend $30 and get a card or playset of cards I need, or I can open packs and hope I get stuff that I can trade then waste X amount of time trading them. If Wizards never breaks the reserved list they are just screwing themselves out of money since they make roughly $0 every time someone buys a dual land or Mox.

[kinda]

Yes, that is the case for a lot of legacy players...and wizards doesn't like that. And it is working to some extent...I know people who wanted to go to a new phyrexia prerelease to grab mental missteps.

Edit: Wizards would absolutely make money in the short term printing new duals...but they would make a lot more money if they got legacy players into standard.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Yes, that is the case for a lot of legacy players...and wizards doesn't like that. And it is working to some extent...I know people who wanted to go to a new phyrexia prerelease to grab mental missteps.

Edit: Wizards would absolutely make money in the short term printing new duals like candy...but they would make a lot more money if they got legacy players into standard.

Once again I have to ask, did you read what I wrote beyond the title? I kind of address that many times over. 90% of my idea involves WotC making money, breaking the reserved list, and totally not printing dual lands like candy. Legacy players aren't going to move to Standard, at least not all of them. I only play Standard once every 5 blocks average and only when a deck jumps out at me that I like. If there was no Legacy I would have quit Magic a LONNNNGGGG time ago and never looked back. The print dual lands like candy idea or release them as promos is stupid for 100 different reasons which is why I took an hour to write out my thoughts on the matter.

[kinda]

I addressed these issues. Breaking the reserved list hurts wizards' rep...printing a limited number of cards such as with the vault promos doesn't fix the problem and still angers collectors...and wizard's wants to maximize their profit which somtimes means passing on opportunities if they have a high opportunity cost.

[dontbiteitholmes]

I addressed these issues. Breaking the reserved list hurts wizards' rep...printing a limited number of cards such as with the vault promos doesn't fix the problem and still angers collectors...and wizard's wants to maximize their profit which somtimes means passing on opportunities if they have a high opportunity cost.

Okay, so I'll take that as "No, I didn't read past the title." I address all of that and I don't think they should be printed in FTV type promos under any circumstances. Most of what you are saying I agree with, but then you start talking about terrible ideas that I don't endorse as if I do endorse them. The entire reason I made this topic was to put a sensible approach out as a counterargument to the talk about releasing promo reprints, which obviously would be sold out in 5 minutes and make WotC look foolish and fail to properly and evenly distribute the cards to the people who are actually going to play with them. Basically that idea sucks, we both agree, now you should read mine before you reply again.

[GexxX]

Edit: Wizards would absolutely make money in the short term printing new duals...but they would make a lot more money if they got legacy players into standard.

And what if no legacy player wants to play T2? They lose money, cuz no one buys reprints -> it's a loss... no matter if short or long term!

I like the concept mentioned above! I'd still let the exchange of old cards vs. foil ones be with the OLD artwork AND Design. That makes them even more pimp! Think about a foil Mox Pearl. Isn't that sexy? ;)

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I addressed these issues. Breaking the reserved list hurts wizards' rep...

How does a reputation for refusing to reprint an arbitrary list of cards from the early to mid 90's help Wizards in any way?

[dontbiteitholmes]

And what if no legacy player wants to play T2? They lose money, cuz no one buys reprints -> it's a loss... no matter if short or long term!

I like the concept mentioned above! I'd still let the exchange of old cards vs. foil ones be with the OLD artwork AND Design. That makes them even more pimp! Think about a foil Mox Pearl. Isn't that sexy? ;)

Yes, I don't know if it properly conveyed but I meant that the foil replacements would be with the original artwork. At the same time they announce the "trade-in" they also announce that after the trade in is done the old art is retired as far as cards in regular circulation (IE they never print cards to put in packs or sets with old artwork, all new reprints have new artwork and new rarity color). They never distribute foil versions of the high dollar cards again except as prizes for top 8ing high profile events example Eternal GPs or World Champs or maybe as special judge promos for very active HIGH level judges (I mean high as in judges at Worlds for example the point being never ever ever overdo it with printing foil reprints, super extra conservative numbers). As to whether those foils given out as high level prizes are identical to the trade in artwork I don't think it much matters, I could go either way, they would be entering the market at such a super low number it wouldn't make much of a difference either way. Main points being #1 after the initial trade in, super duper low numbers of foil reserved cards enter the pool and only as VERY special prizes to keep value up and #2 original artwork is retired for cards in regular circulation, so every new reprint after they burn through the old trade-in stock has new artwork and an oddly colored rarity symbol.

[kinda]

@don't: I appreciate your 5 year plan, but I just don't see how socializing the reserve list will work out. Could you please clarify your desired end results. What is a reasonable price of a magic card? More plateaus will make them cost less...how low can you go before collectors complain? What are a bunch of standard players going to do with a couple of old cards they can't play? How is this participating in this plan more cost effective than just buying the cards?

@Gexxx: Well getting legacy players to draft by printing new staples is a win-win for wizards so they might as well try it.

[lordofthepit]

How much does it cost Wizards to produce new "redemption" foils? How much would it cost to commission artists to do new artwork? Would they have to reproduce crap cards like Island of Wak-Wak that are on the reserved list?

It's a reasonable start, but there are logistical hurdles.

[Gheizen64]

The important thing to note here is that you don't have to flood the market. What most people assume, is that WotC would flood the market and make people go play legacy because it's more fun. In reality, they'd probably do a "Zendikar" move along the years and keep the prices stable or make them go slightly down, with the difference that more people would buy booster/draft in hope to pull out imba cards, and we'd get a new supply of cards to save the format, or at least slow down considerably his death and avoid going "vintage's way".

[sco0ter]

4: This "Master" set is maybe a little larger then the first set of a block. It has commons, uncommons, rares, and Mythics as well as a new rarity, lets say "Super-Mythic". So every pack has it's common/uncommon/rare like a normal pack, but in the foil slot you have an astronomically low chance of getting a non-foil "Super-Mythic", insert Dual Land/power/reserved reprints here. Super low chance of this, maybe one in four/six boxes average if that. This is the new method of distributing "reserved list" cards. Of course if you were to open a random Super Mythic it wouldn't have the same chance of being say a Moat or Mox Emerald as it would have of being say a Mox Diamond, you carefully ration out the cards to keep supply/demand at reasonable and sustainable levels.


Yet another rarity? Printing the already very rare cards like Moat in the Super Mystic slot, while printing thing like Lightning Bolt in the Common slot is contra-productive in terms of solving the problem of the scarcity and lowering the price of those cards.
Who wants to buy 6 Boxes to get a Moat in the end while having 500 Counterspells?




5: Now, what to do with the reserved list cards already on the market? Easy, announce that for the grace period of one year anyone can send in a reserved list card in any condition to receive a special foil edition of the same card. So say I have a Plateau that has Sunkist spilled on it, or near mint doesn't matter. I send in my Plateau and WotC sends me back a brand new foiled out Plateau. After the grace period of one year, the cards on the reserved list will never be distributed again as foils except as prize support. So WotC exchanges cards, then locks the rest in their vault and only releases them as prizes for high profile tournaments (example top 8 at a Legacy GP get one each foil dual 1st place gets full set, this means after the initial exchange period roughly 4-6 playsets of foil duals are released a year, at the one-two Vintage events a year top 8 draft a foil P9 and winner gets a set (so 2-3 foil sets of power a year), meaning the foils will always be highly valuable, meaning people who have duals/power now are rewarded for trading in as they will have something valuable and extremely rare thus preserving value on existing collections) Of course the people who don't trade in still have value in their cards as new reprints from the master set will ALWAYS be in white border and with new art and symbol (explained below), so beta duals will still be rare and valuable and even revised as the old art will be more pimp then new art and some people dislike playing with foils so there will always be a bigger market for the old versions (also see symbol below as reason the old cards will be worth more than reprints).


So where is my advantage, if I send/trade my original duals for foil version? I'd rather keep my original.
And where is the benefit for WotC? It is easier for them to just spend money prizes instead to collect/trade duals and give them away as prizes.
I believe, this idea is logistically unmangeable (e.g. who pays porto and insurance for shipment?) und uneconomical.

As long as they make enough money off Standard, there is no need to do anything (from a business perspective).

Furthermore they would become implausible, if they NOW break the reserve list, just because they announced last year, they wouldn't reprint any of those cards, not even as promo foil starting in 2011.

[dontbiteitholmes]

@don't: I appreciate your 5 year plan, but I just don't see how socializing the reserve list will work out. Could you please clarify your desired end results. What is a reasonable price of a magic card? More plateaus will make them cost less...how low can you go before collectors complain? What are a bunch of standard players going to do with a couple of old cards they can't play? How is this participating in this plan more cost effective than just buying the cards?

@Gexxx: Well getting legacy players to draft by printing new staples is a win-win for wizards so they might as well try it.

OK, you either still haven't read my first post or you have a chronic misunderstanding of my main point. Are you a native English speaker? People who have Plateaus now would have the option of trading them in for foil Plateaus that would basically never be available again after a year of trade-in. Same with every other reserved list card. So the people who own these cards have locked in the value in that they have something unique, foil reserved list cards. Then the people who keep their cards or open the first couple sets would pull the cards that were traded in with the original artwork similar to Zendikar "treasures". After that no one will ever open duals/power/Moats/Candelabras with the original artwork again. Every new card will have new artwork and an oddly colored symbol for rarity similar to Time Spiral as well as a white border. So the collectors aren't going to complain because they will have the collectible version of either an original dual land or a foil dual land, while everyone else is opening dual lands with new artwork and green (or red or orange whatever as long as it stands out as odd) colored rarity symbols and white border. So similar to how Beta Psionic Blast is worth 20x what Time Spiral Psionic Blast is worth, now imagine if the Time Spiral version was white border and had different artwork...

As Legacy would become more accessible the demand for duals and such would continue to go up, since WotC would be releasing the cards in packs they can monitor the prices and adjust on the fly to prevent saturating the market and be fairly conservative with distribution. Since demand for dual lands and such is going up, demand for "pimp" versions is also going up. So compare it to say, Korean cards. The supply of Korean cards is very low and as such the price is extremely high. The only difference besides price between Korean and any other version is rarity and "pimpness" they all play the same in a game of Magic. Yet people are still willing to pay out the anus for Korean cards just because they are rare and pimp. People will always want the original duals or foils and such because they are iconic and it feels a little lamer to be playing with cards that are obviously not meant to be collectible. I'd estimate a foil dual after a hand full of years under my plan would be worth considerably more then if you just kept it now and WotC did nothing and kept the reserved list. So that's the point, you don't lose for owning the cards you have now, you win. Just as Korean cards are easily worth 3-100x as much as their English counterparts, Foil dual lands and original dual lands would increase in price considerably as people got into the format at a reasonable price then wanted to upgrade to "pimp" their decks not to mention every collector in the world would be chasing a playset of foil duals.

There would not be enough foil duals and original art duals to meet collector demand, and the price would skyrocket. That would be fine though because there would be a new crop of duals waiting in the wings to serve the player who was only interested in playing a normal game of Magic and not paying $1000 for a land base, which is where the format is headed if we keep ignoring this problem. Except people aren't going to play Legacy at that point, they or either going to play another format or quit. There won't be enough players to support events and the format will die on the vine. Everyone not interested in Standard will walk away and WotC will lose potential customers forever. Instead they could embrace the format and take control of their own product and make the money they should already be making selling more packs to the Eternal/EDH/Casual players which they have already recently identified as a goal. Except I think they should be in yearly sets instead of in precon decks, that way they can release reprints of reserved cards, as well as all the good new stuff they want to hit us with that doesn't fir their vision of T2/ext, and reprint non-reserved cards that aren't fit for Standard (Force of Will, Wasteland) in a fair and structured manner. Printing cards like these in precons or promos is crap. With precons you risk the "Rat's Nest" effect where the only precon anyone wants sells out in 5 mins and you can never find it for retail or they overprint and it crashes the value. I mean, we can all imagine what would happen if FTV:ForceOfWill came out tomorrow. If instead FoW came out at Jace rarity in a set that sees a smaller print run then any regular set and Standard kids didn't buy it would be a lot better for everyone involved.


How much does it cost Wizards to produce new "redemption" foils? How much would it cost to commission artists to do new artwork? Would they have to reproduce crap cards like Island of Wak-Wak that are on the reserved list?

It's a reasonable start, but there are logistical hurdles.

Every Magic set has over 150 cards, they produce four sets a year, and every set has roughly 90% new artwork if not more. I don't see art as a problem. They have done hundreds of new artworks on cards that they ended up giving away for free in player rewards and they have commissioned hundreds of pieces of artwork that never appeared on cards. Foils cost pennies, there is one in every pack and they give thousands of foil cards away a year. No one is going to cry if they don't bother with the complete shit cards, but it would be a solid PR move to include the entire reserved list and have people end up with pimped out Island of Wak-Waks. People would be happy with that so that's the route I think they should take if they were to follow my plan but that's really more of a PR move than anything IMO.

I don't see any of that as logistical hurdles. WotC already has a massive distribution network evidenced by "Player Rewards" and mailing out completed sets of MTGO cards. There is nothing in my plan they have not already shown they can completely handle. Not to mention who cares if they are commissioning new artwork if it's going to end up selling thousands of packs a year to casual and eternal players who wouldn't usually buy packs. They end up in the black, that's all that matters.


The important thing to note here is that you don't have to flood the market. What most people assume, is that WotC would flood the market and make people go play legacy because it's more fun. In reality, they'd probably do a "Zendikar" move along the years and keep the prices stable or make them go slightly down, with the difference that more people would buy booster/draft in hope to pull out imba cards, and we'd get a new supply of cards to save the format, or at least slow down considerably his death and avoid going "vintage's way".

*Ding Ding Ding*
We have a winner. The point here is not to completely crash the market and make Legacy dirt cheap so everyone plays it. You steadily release new reserved cards as the market becomes unsustainable. If we do nothing Legacy approaches impossible to play levels of cost and we are left with Vintage. You have to remember that if they never reprint duals and such the supply steadily drops. There are less dual lands in circulation today then there were a month ago and next month there will be even less. They get tore up by little kids, left in hot humid attics till they turn to yellow dust, flooded in basements, accidentally thrown out with old Christmas decorations, lost in the mail never to be seen again... I've lost a Tropical Island and a Savannah that my mother threw away years ago when she cleaned the old closet years after I moved out, they are now in a landfill. Supply is not meeting demand right now and the SCG tournament scene is not going to be able to sustain itself too many more years at this pace. Don't forget that years ago SCG was running Vintage tournaments.


Yet another rarity? Printing the already very rare cards like Moat in the Super Mystic slot, while printing thing like Lightning Bolt in the Common slot is contra-productive in terms of solving the problem of the scarcity and lowering the price of those cards.
Who wants to buy 6 Boxes to get a Moat in the end while having 500 Counterspells?

Ummm, that doesn't make sense. More cards = lower price, the end. It doesn't matter that there's not a bomb ass power rare in every box, that's the little kid approach of standing on top of a skyscraper and throwing free money at everyone until money is worthless. If they only printed one Moat for every 200 boxes and they print 20000 boxes, that's still 100 more Moats in the world. They'd need to be conservative in distributing these but they could steadily do it over a number of years to keep things balanced out.



So where is my advantage, if I send/trade my original duals for foil version? I'd rather keep my original.
And where is the benefit for WotC? It is easier for them to just spend money prizes instead to collect/trade duals and give them away as prizes.
I believe, this idea is logistically unmangeable (e.g. who pays porto and insurance for shipment?) und uneconomical.

As long as they make enough money off Standard, there is no need to do anything (from a business perspective).

Furthermore they would become implausible, if they NOW break the reserve list, just because they announced last year, they wouldn't reprint any of those cards, not even as promo foil starting in 2011.

Your originals would still be worth more then the reprints. The new reprints would be white border and have a off color symbol on them. People would want your original duals and foil duals for the same reason beta duals are worth a lot, they look cooler. WotC should never ever print duals or whatever that look as good as the original for collectible reasons. "It is easier for them to just spend money prizes instead to collect/trade duals and give them away as prizes." I don't understand what this means. Are you trying to say if WotC wants to give out duals as prizes they should buy them off people cash like they currently do because that is easier for them then following my plan or are you saying they should just give out cash prizes? Either way my idea has little to do with prizes, I was just saying IF they do give out foil duals beyond the initial trade-in they should ONLY be as high level prizes.

"As long as they make enough money off Standard, there is no need to do anything (from a business perspective)." - I hope to God you never say this in a business meeting. That's like saying "Hey guys, we make enough money off retail store sales, no need to sell our product on the internet..." Why the hell should WotC be turning down any profit especially if it comes with a chance to cover a hole they were dug in to by a hand full of people who don't even work there anymore.

Who cares what they said a year ago. Look at the results of a recent poll on this site. Over 80% of people said break the reserved list. That might not mean much on other sites, but on here I'm willing to bet if you take out the people who voted who don't have dual lands it would still win by a landslide. The reserve list has changed before on account of the player base speaking up. Commons were taken off the list because people said they wanted to see the commons reprinted. WotC exists to keep the players happy and make money. If they can do both at the same time more power to them. If you don't want foil duals yours would still be valuable since they would never reprint dual lands with original art or without a miscolored rarity symbol. If you decided to cash out the price for duals would be sustained because people would be frantic to trade up for foils before the year was up.

[perm]

I don't understand the concerns about people losing their card values. Since when have people been entitled to keep their card pricetag, which is determined by the secondary market? Prices drop as soon as standard rotates, and this really isn't any different.

[dontbiteitholmes]

I don't understand the concerns about people losing their card values. Since when have people been entitled to keep their card pricetag, which is determined by the secondary market? Prices drop as soon as standard rotates, and this really isn't any different.

It's different in that people were explicitly promised that WotC would retain the value of the cards on the reserved list by not printing them again. I'm taking that one step further and saying that if they retain the value by any means it's the same difference regardless of whether the cards are reprinted or not.

[perm]

It's different in that people were explicitly promised that WotC would retain the value of the cards on the reserved list by not printing them again. I'm taking that one step further and saying that if they retain the value by any means it's the same difference regardless of whether the cards are reprinted or not.

Ok, WotC didn't sign any contract with anyone. It's sorta mean to go back on their word, but they have to make a utilitarian decision. Do they keep their heads bowed to a small group of collectors/sellers that feel the mtg community owes them something? Or do they try to satisfy the much larger group of people trying to play and enjoy the game?

[dontbiteitholmes]

Ok, WotC didn't sign any contract with anyone. It's sorta mean to go back on their word, but they have to make a utilitarian decision. Do they keep their heads bowed to a small group of collectors/sellers that feel the mtg community owes them something? Or do they try to satisfy the much larger group of people trying to play and enjoy the game?

That's why I think my idea is solid. It keeps the people who already had the cards happy by keeping the value and it keeps new players happy by reprinting cards that are prohibitively expensive to play Legacy. MtG is a collectible card game. It's as much collectible as it is a card game and one part doesn't work as well without the other. WotC would be ill advised to invalidate the collections of people who devoted a large part of their budgets to collecting sets of dual lands and power. You have to realize if they just turned around tomorrow and casually said, "Fuck it, Reprint everything, no mercy," some stores and collectors would completely lose their lively hoods. I don't care if you think it's lame that some people tied themselves so tightly to a card game that it might ruin them financially, that's the reality of the situation. Imagine if dual lands and power dropped 20% right now what would happen to SCG's bottom line... That's why any plan that involves breaking the reprint policy has to somehow retain value of existing cards. WotC made a promise to people and people have made financial decisions based on that promise. You can work with that, but you can't just just turn your back and say that's their problem for being nerds or w/e.

[alderon666]

I fail to see how reprinting staples or any 200 dollar or less card hurts collectots in any way.

I'm against reprinting shit like Black Lotus or Moxes. But stuff like duals or Force of Will don't stand as something collector's really prize. The reserved list basically is a pointless promise that will keep the game from moving forward.

[Sims]

As much as I would like to see it happen, it won't. As I recall, when they had their summit meeting at WotC headquarters to discuss the future of the reserve list, all of the players and business people said "get rid of it" but the second group (the collector's) said "lawsuit."

Now, we can argue til we're blue in the face about if the collector's would have a legal leg to stand on, but obviously Hasboro's lawyers felt that there was a shot the collector's would win, otherwise the reserve list wouldn't have been solidified and you wouldn't have had people like MaRo and Forsythe saying "it sucks, but it's here to stay. we're not happy about it, but we can't say any more." That's typically due to a legal move.

[Gui]

Which leads to a more sensible approach: Hasbro getting more useful Lawyers. ><

[socialite]

Talk about beating a dead horse.


As much as I would like to see it happen, it won't. As I recall, when they had their summit meeting at WotC headquarters to discuss the future of the reserve list, all of the players and business people said "get rid of it" but the second group (the collector's) said "lawsuit."

Lawsuit is one reason albeit one that hasn't actually been proved AFAIK.

From my perspective WoTC doesn't stand to make much money off of supporting eternal formats. Once people realize they can heavily invest into a format for lifetime playability the appeal of a format like Standard drops significantly.

IMHO I’m perfectly fine with the reserve list staying. Standard is what drives this game and the company that produces it. If you want to see MTG tank then argue all you want for reprints.

In regards to purchasing cards for eternal formats; I put in my effort and continue to do so. I am fortunate enough to have an ever expanding collection to which I develop at a financial pace that meets my means. Quite frankly I don’t see why my hard effort should be depreciated for a bunch of crying babbbbies with zero patience.

WoTC understands this line of thinking and that is why I believe they held the course regarding the reserve list.

[Occam]

As much as I would like to see it happen, it won't. As I recall, when they had their summit meeting at WotC headquarters to discuss the future of the reserve list, all of the players and business people said "get rid of it" but the second group (the collector's) said "lawsuit."

Now, we can argue til we're blue in the face about if the collector's would have a legal leg to stand on, but obviously Hasboro's lawyers felt that there was a shot the collector's would win, otherwise the reserve list wouldn't have been solidified and you wouldn't have had people like MaRo and Forsythe saying "it sucks, but it's here to stay. we're not happy about it, but we can't say any more." That's typically due to a legal move.

Not that I'm doubting you or whatever, but was this ever proven?

Even as a person with a pretty decent collection and with something to lose, my stance has always been to support reprints. Judicious reprints. Well thought out reprints. Not oh-yeah-Karn-can-planeswalk-again-if-Venser-gives-Karn-his-heart kind of reprints. Let me preface that by saying that I don't believe that Legacy's end of the tunnel will resemble Vintage's current state in any shape nor form, and that I don't personally believe that anyone personally threatened WotC with a lawsuit (happy to be proven wrong here), I simply agree that a healthier concensus can be found between the people who are turned off by the price-related barrier to entry (and rightfully so) and the people who don't believe that their investments should suffer as a result of other parties' lack of want or ability to pay for some cards. Magic is a collectible card game, and extricating collectability from the equation is myopic from where I stand -- the reasons for this have been hashed and rehashed in the past, and I have no interest in doing so again. However, there is no promise, intrinsic or extrinsic, that cards have to retain value. Do they have to retain some value? Yes, or the collectability of the game is jeopardised. Must they maintain value or appreciate above inflation? Warren Buffet doesn't believe in a free lunch, and I tend to agree with him here.

I don't feel the need to sugarcoat the importance of the format maintaining its playability over time by introducing arguments that reprints won't devalue cards, because they will, and I'm fine with that. The prices of eternal staples are in a perpetual bubble that cannot burst due to the reserved list, which encourages armchair speculation and a "growth eternal" situation regarding prices. That's not something that I particularly like nor want to see. In the end, this is a game, with emphasis on "game" first and foremost, possessing characteristics that make it attuned towards certain kinds of investment. It's getting dangerously overheated, and on top of allowing more players into a great format, getting around the reserved list simply means that wild speculation on older cards on the reserved list is reduced, if only for the possibility of reprint. If it needs to be done for the health of the format and game, then it needs to be done -- regardless of how bitter a pill it is now; better now than in a couple years' time when prices have spiralled even further.

Before anyone gives me the Godwin's Law equivalent in a reserved article debate with regards to not having enough resources to pick up staples, I don't lack resources, and while I have more empathy for my fellow collectors than most, I'd like to see Legacy unlock its potential. Not maintain its status quo, but grow. And the only way to do that is to even the playing field somewhat in terms of cost.

[Richard Cheese]

http://i382.photobucket.com/albums/oo264/midiman56/not_this_shit_again.jpg

Because so many WoTC execs look to the Source forums for business advice...

[Vaxe]

Correct, but when a "Legacy" player buys a format card like Mental Misstep from the average Standard player, what do you think will happen to the money used to purchase said card?

The latter will spend it on more Magic product and the end result is still more profit for WotC. It's an indirect cycle, but Legacy players are indeed fueling the bottom line, just indirectly.

As have been echoed many times in the history of this discussion, the primary logic behind WotC's refusal to reprint Legacy defining cards is this:
By definition, Legacy is a format that constitutes a one time investment. Even with the printing of a set like Master's Edition, cards will be scooped up in one effort - and then be played from then on. Unless WotC keeps creating and printing new Legacy warping cards, a player will be able to acquire all the "playables" and never again have to put more money into packs.

Standard, on the other hand, is a continuously evolving format. Players have to revamp their decks every year as new sets are released, thereby consistently putting $$ into WotC. It doesn't matter if a card pales in comparison to one printed in year's past - so long as it's the "best" one in the current Standard environment. This moves packs, which is what WotC wants.




Just out of curiosity, did you read what I posted? Legacy players aren't buying packs to get Mental Misstep/Zeniths unless they already draft or play T2. There was a good 5 years that I played Legacy and never bought a pack of cards. Why bother? I can spend $30 and get a card or playset of cards I need, or I can open packs and hope I get stuff that I can trade then waste X amount of time trading them. If Wizards never breaks the reserved list they are just screwing themselves out of money since they make roughly $0 every time someone buys a dual land or Mox.

[SpikeyMikey]

http://i382.photobucket.com/albums/oo264/midiman56/not_this_shit_again.jpg

Because so many WoTC execs look to the Source forums for business advice...
AND.......


/thread

[SurFitOfTheVine]

Legacy is an expensive format. If you can't afford Legacy staples and don't want to play a cheap deck, you don't play Legacy. That simple. I'd love to play Vintage but I can't afford P9's. I'm not crying for reprints though.

[Aggro_zombies]

As much as I would like to see it happen, it won't. As I recall, when they had their summit meeting at WotC headquarters to discuss the future of the reserve list, all of the players and business people said "get rid of it" but the second group (the collector's) said "lawsuit."

Now, we can argue til we're blue in the face about if the collector's would have a legal leg to stand on, but obviously Hasboro's lawyers felt that there was a shot the collector's would win, otherwise the reserve list wouldn't have been solidified and you wouldn't have had people like MaRo and Forsythe saying "it sucks, but it's here to stay. we're not happy about it, but we can't say any more." That's typically due to a legal move.
I've seen the lawsuit argument before, but I don't see how that would work. What grounds would collectors have to sue? The Reserved List is a company policy, and Wizards maintains the right to change company policies as they see fit. It's not even a particularly harmful company policy to the vast majority of Magic's players, as the many people who only play casually, or play Standard or Limited are not affected. What could collectors argue? Wizards isn't responsible for the secondary market, so I don't see how "irreparable financial damage" due to a price collapse could be a compelling argument; the same thing would naturally happen if Magic were to go out of production or if Wizards were to go out of business. Besides, I seriously doubt Alpha, Beta, or Summer cards would fluctuate in price at all; they command a premium based solely on the sets they come from, and reprinting cards is not going to change the fact that there's only one Alpha, one Beta, one Summer, and that players value those cards highly because of their rarity.

If anything, Wizards strengthened the Reserved List to maintain consumer confidence. If they just went and reprinted whatever in foil versions (duals, say), there are a considerable - and growing - number of players who would be pissed when the value of their Revised duals imploded, assuming WotC printed enough of these dual lands to actually affect prices. It would hurt them in the long run to have a reputation for breaking promises, no matter how asinine those promises are; while a lot of players wouldn't notice or really care much, enough would that it would hurt the collectible aspect of the game. You could argue that that's mostly irrelevant to how most people enjoy the game, but that's clearly not how WotC sees it.

In short, talking about the "correct" and "incorrect" ways to break the Reserved List is a waste. It's like argue about what technology we should ask the aliens for when they show up in orbit one day and offer to give us any one green technology other than cold fusion. You're better off figuring out how to work with what we've got than figuring out what to do in a situation with a vanishingly small probability of actually occurring.

[Vaxe]

I agree with you, albeit I must admit the price of Legacy has grown to be a bit ridiculous as of late.

I sold my entire collection last month (playsets of all 10 RV duals, sets of FoW, sets of Waste, minimum playset each of all the staples - basically enough cards to make any deck in Legacy for you and your entire playgroup) -- and took the cash and bought an AUDI A4. Paid in full.

Guess how much this collection initially cost me? Less than 3k, not factoring inflation (accumulated since Odyssey block).




Legacy is an expensive format. If you can't afford Legacy staples and don't want to play a cheap deck, you don't play Legacy. That simple. I'd love to play Vintage but I can't afford P9's. I'm not crying for reprints though.

[Mr.C]

I like my idea.

Reserve list becomes cards only printed in English. Reasoning: Duals and the like have already been reprinted. English Revised came out in 1994; French/German/Italian, in 1995. See, duals were already reprinted.

Happy collectors, happy players. Then ban whatever is necessary (not much, really, in addition to the current banned list).

[Humphrey]

Since prices are affected by the look of the cards (more fancy, higher price) the could just reprint ugly whiteborder versions of the cards. That way the original ones would keep a hight value and there will be enough cards to keep the format alive.

But honestly, I think the biggest problem here are the players willing to pay hundreds of dollars for papercards

[clavio]

As much as I would like to see it happen, it won't. As I recall, when they had their summit meeting at WotC headquarters to discuss the future of the reserve list, all of the players and business people said "get rid of it" but the second group (the collector's) said "lawsuit."

How do random ass collectors afford better lawyers than Hasbro?

[kinda]

Who said they would have better lawyers? Hasbro doesn't want an injunction filed against them at all for a bunch of reasons...especially when the issue is about them wanting to go back on their word for what would look like to make an extra buck.

[Aggro_zombies]

Who said they would have better lawyers? Hasbro doesn't want an injunction filed against them at all for a bunch of reasons...especially when the issue is about them wanting to go back on their word for what would look like to make an extra buck.
Again, how does this actually work? What grounds would the collectors sue on that would not get immediately tossed out of court?

[perm]

If anyone thinks people would even try to file a lawsuit against Hasbro for secondary market changes they don't like, I have some seriously high quality snake oil to sell you.

[kinda]

Granted I know nothing about law...but maybe lying to consumers is enough to get their case heard? It's usually considered bad when publicly traded companies do that. Obviously Hasbro felt as though there would be repercussions...anyone know what they were specifically?

[GGoober]

The only problem I see with WotC supporting eternal formats is cannibalizing limited/block/standard formats. I'm pretty sure that aside from Reserved List policy being a hindrance, there's not much in the way to go out and support eternal formats. But there's a reason why this hasn't picked up as much as MTGO has (e.g. Master Sets etc). I think that WotC primarily puts their costs/time on developing new sets and a lot of thought/resource are spent on R&D in upcoming sets. To have eternal formats being more popular only seeks to cannibalize on the efforts made towards developing these new sets. It's sad, but I guess that can't really let us have the best of both worlds. Sometimes I feel that Starcraft II and Diablo 3 are taking way too long because they are also afraid that these new games might cannibalize on their own products for WoW etc, but to put what Blizzard has mentioned: "We rather cannibalize our own customer base than have them switch to other games from other companies". I think WotC may need to give that a little more thought for Eternal formats (although they are not as worried about their playerbase switching to something like Raw Deal, Yugioh and pokemon lol).

[Aggro_zombies]

The only problem I see with WotC supporting eternal formats is cannibalizing limited/block/standard formats. I'm pretty sure that aside from Reserved List policy being a hindrance, there's not much in the way to go out and support eternal formats. But there's a reason why this hasn't picked up as much as MTGO has (e.g. Master Sets etc). I think that WotC primarily puts their costs/time on developing new sets and a lot of thought/resource are spent on R&D in upcoming sets. To have eternal formats being more popular only seeks to cannibalize on the efforts made towards developing these new sets. It's sad, but I guess that can't really let us have the best of both worlds. Sometimes I feel that Starcraft II and Diablo 3 are taking way too long because they are also afraid that these new games might cannibalize on their own products for WoW etc, but to put what Blizzard has mentioned: "We rather cannibalize our own customer base than have them switch to other games from other companies". I think WotC may need to give that a little more thought for Eternal formats (although they are not as worried about their playerbase switching to something like Raw Deal, Yugioh and pokemon lol).
"Cannibalize" in what way? The model Wizards has stated it uses when looking at player progression is that the first tournament constructed format the vast majority of people get into is Standard. These people play Standard for several years and then burn out on it because of the cost and time associated with keeping up-to-date with the format. However, as many of these people want to continue to play competitively on some level, they progress to more stable formats where decks remain good for longer. The first step was supposed to be Extended, but that format was (and is) awful on many levels, so players were skipping straight to Legacy. Wizards changed Extended to Big Standard precisely because they didn't want players making the jump straight into Eternal, although whether because of concerns over cost or long-term viability is up in the air.

Furthermore, it's been stated that Wizards doesn't test upcoming sets for Eternal. Hell, they barely even test them for Extended.

EDIT:
Granted I know nothing about law...but maybe lying to consumers is enough to get their case heard? It's usually considered bad when publicly traded companies do that. Obviously Hasbro felt as though there would be repercussions...anyone know what they were specifically?
Changing a company policy you reserve the right to change does not equal lying to people in a lawsuit-conducive way. Wizards never said the Reserved List would cure cancer, or made whatever other extraordinary and unverifiable claims.

My guess is that they don't want to be seen as a company that reneges on promises. Most people think about the Reserved List in terms of a binding promise, even though it's not; removing it, even without reprinting cards on it, would presumably leave a bad taste in enough players' mouths that Wizards decided it wasn't worth it. And actually reprinting cards on it, especially high-value ones, opens another huge can of worms that could legitimately be a problem for them.

EDIT 2: To be perfectly honest, the actual best course of action for Wizards may simply be to do nothing.

[clavio]

EDIT 2: To be perfectly honest, the actual best course of action for Wizards may simply be to do nothing.


Why is that?

[SpikeyMikey]

Why is that?

Because then everyone moves to EDH and Legacy dies the way T1 did and it's another 5 years before we have to have this discussion again.

[Aggro_zombies]

Why is that?
Because it's the one course of action least likely to cause meaningful player backlash. That would be my guess, anyway - Wizards has done market research and I haven't, but going off of discussions on these boards and IRL, I'd say that not doing anything is probably the safest course of action.

EDIT: Here's what they could do, and what might happen if they do it:

Abolish Reserved List, Reprint Nothing: This does nothing other than fuel speculation. However, a card not on the Reserved List is not automatically going to be reprinted. From the list itself (http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/products/reprintpolicy): "The exclusion of any particular card from the reserved list doesn't indicate that there are any plans to reprint that card."

Abolish Reserved List, Reprint Duals: Presumably, to get this to actually reduce prices, there would have to be a large print run of non-foil duals (so nothing like FtV, which has a small print run and has a very bendy foiling process). This doesn't solve prices for expensive cards not on the Reserved List (Force, Waste, Goyf, etc.) but does have the advantage of bringing down prices on the most expensive class of cards in most decks. Furthermore, if the cards are in a box set, there is a risk that the sets will be marked up significantly by most online sellers; putting the cards in a Masters Edition-style paper release prevents markup but also makes it harder to get duals. On the other hand, it will likely move a lot of product, so...
Backlash caused by: Player entitlement. Prices for Revised versions will be impacted, as demand for them will sink with the wide availability of new duals - and if those duals are black-bordered, and in the old frame, demand will be hit very hard. However, there is a widespread sense of, "Because I had to scrimp and save and search for deals in order to afford my duals, everyone should have to," which will only grow as more and more people buy duals at high prices. Even for people who don't explicitly think this and/or who support reprints, there's still a real feel-bad moment knowing that duals you have purchased at $50 each can now be had on ebay for $30 each, and that you will likely not make your money back when you cash out. The idea here, though, is that there's an emotional backlash to what is perceived as players getting things easily, and it is more intense for those who had to work harder; it's one reason why people with inherited wealth are looked at differently than those who earned their wealth, for example.

Ban Reserved List-Only Cards, Reprint Non-Reserved List Cards: This removes the highest-priced cards from the format and increases supply of the remainder, thus dropping cost across the board for most decks. If we assume that anything currently worth more than $40 each or so gets reprinted, the average cost of most decks drops significantly.
Backlash caused by: Entitlement for reprints (as above), and anger over invalidation of investment. People who spend hundreds on sets of duals want to be able to play them, and being told they can't will make a lot of people angry, especially those who have bought duals in the past year or two at greatly increased prices. Furthermore, banning the duals will probably cause the prices of Revised versions to start dropping, as Vintage is not a major driver of sales and people don't need many duals for EDH. This will further anger players who bought duals at high prices and are then either forced to sell them at a loss or hold on to them while not using them.

Reprint Non-Reserved List Cards, Do Nothing For Reserved List: While duals are the most obvious high-priced cards on the list, many of the others from the list that see play do so in only a few decks and/or in low numbers. Lion's Eye Diamond and Mox Diamond are probably the biggest exceptions here, as the former is a combo mainstay and the latter sees play in anything with Loam and some Junk builds. Cards like Moat and Tabernacle rarely get run as more than 1-2 copies per deck, and those decks are not exactly common. Furthermore, there are plenty of cards that aren't on the Reserved List but are expensive: Force, Goyf, Vial, Wasteland, Show and Tell, and so on. These cards are all eligible for reprints under Wizards' current reprinting policy.
Backlash caused by: Prices for many decks will not drop significantly; while the major cost of mono-blue decks comes from 4 Force, the main cost from multicolor blue decks comes from the mana in many cases (particularly Bant decks). Furthermore, many decks - like Junk or Zoo - which do not have many expensive cards outside of duals will not be affected and will likely make up the new price ceiling for the format. Furthermore, the one recurring theme from discussions like this one is that players take issue with the Reserved List cards more than ones that are expensive but not protected. Also, the usual entitlement issues with reprints.

Print "Tweaked Duals": These could be something like snow-covered duals, whose theoretical game play differences are large enough to make them not functional reprints (thereby circumventing that clause in the Reserved List) but whose practical game play will be virtually identical to the original duals. These lands would almost have to be snow-covered but otherwise identical as any other rider will make them obviously worse than the original duals, and therefore do nothing to solve the price issue (since they won't be competing). The correct call for manabases will likely be some mix of snow and non-snow duals, and there's always the worry about how easy you really want to make mana in Legacy, but having a widely available alternative to the regular duals which aren't embarrassing to play will help bring down costs significantly.
Backlash caused by: Aaron Forsythe mentioned in a Twitter discussion that Wizards has considered this option before and rejected it because it "felt like cheating" due to making neither reprint camp happy. The no-reprints camp will dislike them because their presence will depress prices for Revised duals and will allow players to easily assemble competitive manabases (entitlement issue), whereas the reprint camp will dislike them because they will be an obvious admission that the Reserved List is going nowhere and they will flood the format with easy mana fixing. They also won't bring down the price of Wasteland (an already expensive card that would spike in price with the flood of duals) or other expensive, non-Reserved cards. Wizards could ban the original duals to cut down on some of this problem, but that will further anger players who bought Revised duals at high prices.

Do Nothing: The format will eventually reach a stable price point wherein the barrier to entry is high enough to cool demand for staples, and the supply finally catches up with demand as players cash out at high prices. It's not clear at this time where that price point is and how long it will take us to get there, but it is likely a combination of continued levels of support from Wizards (40 GP's next year...), continued support from large retailers (SCG), format-specific factors that generate new player interest, and other long-term economic factors that impact Magic's viability as a whole.
Backlash caused by: Players unable to enter the format, or only able to enter with weak, metagame, or otherwise suboptimal decks. Backlash also caused by invested players looking to keep new blood coming, although this is less likely to be an issue in the long run as many of these players are likely to cash out before the stable price point has been reached. The advantage to Wizards here is that a lot of these are problems that will crop up down the road and can easily be fixed by marginalizing the format through reduced support; while many Legacy-only players will be angry, players who came in during Legacy's popularity spike will likely be able to make money cashing out and will therefore probably not mind as much. However, this also depends on Wizards' ability to come up with a viable alternative format that acts as a retention net for long-time players (this is essentially what Legacy is now...), which they haven't yet been able to do. Overextended (Masques and later Eternal format) may or may not be the answer.

So basically, if Wizards does nothing, they can ignore the internet message board grumbling and let players continue to play - event attendance has been great this year despite the continuing price hikes. Pretty much every other option they have will actively anger players in some way.

[DTC]

I agree and disagree with some ideas.

First off, the redempion program. The logistics alone would hurt so much profit wizards would receive to have staff working on redemptions all year and artificially inflates the cost of any copies that are left in circulation.

Second, some cards should simply be preserved from the reserved list. Dual lands are understandable. Mechanically they're too essential, and impossible to functionally reprint while not making them either better (killing their value in that way) or worse (which means they will be unaffected). For duals i think a single print run would suffice. For other reserved cards it's careful to beware. Lotus, Moxen, P9, and pre-ice age cards should definitely not be reprinted as a majority of cards from this era as they're more collectors items at this point then anything. Candelabra for example should not be reprinted. Workshop should not be reprinted. Library/Bazaar should not be reprinted.

A lot of cards on the reserved list would probably go unnoticed if reprinted (mainly the rares that are bulk anyway) so if we do a "super-mythic" - it will not only piss off the collectors who spent tons of money to get their power and vintage staples, but also piss off the guy who buys a case (assuming 1 per case example) and gets a foil version of a duplicity. The rarity simply would not do anything.


A similar approach for a white bordered anthology set with reserved cards could be:
-A poll will be conducted where each player can vote (using their DCI#) for the card they want reprinted most and reprinted least. The restriction being that the card must be from Ice Age up to Urza's Destiny (keeping the biggest collector items from being reprinted). Each end can have up to 5 votes, but can only vote for a single card once
-The 1-4 cards with the highest votes will be printed as mythic rares in an upcoming set. This will be decided by taking the number of "most" votes and subtracting the "least" votes. This gives collectors and people who advocate keeping the reserved list a chance to protect the cards they care about most from being reprinted. If 1500 people vote for gaea's cradle and show and tell to be reprinted, then 1200 vote against cradle but only 500 against show and tell...this would give cradle 300 points and show and tell 1000 points. Wizards will then consider reprinting show and tell.

Wizards can play with this as they wish, or make a disclaimer like "we reserve the right to not reprint the winning cards as seen fit." while still maintaining that cards on the reprint list won't be reprinted unless it wins polls, so even if show and tell got the most votes to be reprinted, wizards could just say "no" and it won't be reprinted, but if say Peacekeeper gets 1 vote, because it's on the reserved list they can't just decide to reprint it.


As for the rest of the set, they can ration reprintable cards among them. Make a chase rare/mythic per set (the one goyf, one force of will, one wasteland, etc) while using the opportunity to reprint popular eternal cards (Dark confidant, terravore, etc) without disrupting standard and keeping their prices level.

The set would have to be larger than their current core set / large set sizes...i'm thinking between 300-400. As the numbers alone will make the cards maintain a majority of their value (as you won't be any more likely to pull a specific chase card from a box than you would pulling it from a box of the set it comes from) so they don't suddenly plummet. If Dark Confidant is $18 now and got reprinted, it would still probably be worth $10-12, maybe even still up to $15.

These sets won't remain in print. A single print run and it's out. This isn't a standard legal set. I suppose stores can draft it during events, but many players who go to FNM for drafting may prefer the current sets/block drafts, which means there simply doesn't need to be anywhere near the supply as a standard legal set, and this will deflate any prices for a good amount of time, especially more recent cards.

What does this all accomplish?

-Reprints of key legacy staples. Reserved list is one thing, but when goyfs go for more than many older cards, dark confidant will probably be $20-25 in a year if there's no reprints, and wizards doesn't want to just reprint wastelands and force of wills in another product and kill their value entirely either.
-Gives wizards a ton of money from people buying boxes of these sets.
-collectibility. A lot of chase cards can get makeovers, reprint policy cards can get new borders/arts which some collectors like. The originals won't drop heavily due to set sizes
-Reprints other cards. Dark Depths for example is only worth a lot thanks to the combo. Another old bulk rare could shoot up as a result, and this opens up more supply so it's not as suddenly steep with the printing of a new card.
-less backlash. Wizards won't reprint every staple in one set, hell they could spread it out between 4-6 sets. This means traders don't have to worry how they'll dump their entire legacy trade binder before the reprints. Cards will still keep value.
-More circulation. Older cards are harder to find, no doubt. Reprints adds a ton more supply, and modern print runs will likely be higher than when they were during Mercadian Masques.

[DragoFireheart]

Or I could just say "fuck it" and sell my cards. Why should I dump hundreds of dollars into a hobby that isn't being supported by the company that made it, the demand from the secondary market continues to drive it, and a price bubble is waiting to happen by some point? Perhaps I will hold onto them and simply sell them when the time is right.

[Mr.C]

What about restricting all reserved cards?

[evanmartyr]

With all due respect, fuck your super mythics.

And again, with all due respect, fuck your foil bullshit.

I am all about WotC printing an "Eternal" set that would allow new players to segue from draft/type 2/block into the older formats, and would even the playing field somewhat for those wanting to play multicolored decks, but this chase rare shit doesn't actually address the problem. The point of doing this would not be to maintain the old cards prices. It would be to increase supply. Prices would drop, at least somewhat. The hope is that any price drop due to increased supply would be a slight increase due to increased demand; if people who refuse to play Legacy/Vintage now could easily compete, they would be more likely to become invested in the format, and then the demand for the cooler versions of old cards would go up. But only slightly.

But making some cards, specifically staples like dual lands, "super rares" is just retarded and doesn't address the major problem most people have getting into the format. If you wanted to say Timetwisters were super mythic, fine, since no one ever needs more than one of them, but telling someone they have to open 6 boxes for each dual land is beyond absurd.

Also, if you wanted to have foils in the set, fine. But please, don't give me a set of unplayable dual lands for winning a GP or something, lol.

Finally, the reserved list is not going anywhere. WotC tried to skirt it with the Phyrexian Negator thing, and backpedaled, then said, basically in stone, that they were not ever going to abolish it. It's here to stay, forever. It sucks, but we'll just have to deal with it. So if you want "reprints" of the cards, they have to be functional, not exact, reprints, like Max Pearl instead of Mox Pearl. Fairly simple. Obviously, Max Pearl sounds like a tampon, but I figure WotC can do better since you know...it's their job.

"Zombie Bayou!"
Nonbasic Land - Zombie Forest Swamp
t: Add B or G to your mana pool.
Corrupted - Bayou (This card and Bayou count as each other for purposes of naming and deck construction)

Feel free to make the most expensive cards rare, mythics, whatever, but the whole point of doing this is to increase supply, which wouldn't be helped much by printing all the cards people actually want as hyper rare chase cards.

[mario91234]

Read through the thread. A few points

1. wizards doesn't want to spend any more money on lawyers, ever. They don't want to cause themselves problems they dont need to.

2.We've seen from format warping cards like Jace 2, that wizards does not value the integrity of the game over profit and availability to budget players. wizards isn't interested in the secondary market, just in people's wallets. they want people to not spend 400 to play the best deck and ban the card the next day. banning cards is bad reputation for them, hurts new players, the only benefit is to uphold the integrity of the game.

3. who hosts most legacy events? SCG and friends. Who would be hurt the most by reprints? them. Now, they have to spend more money to gather the "new" cards since players coming into the format would want those as opposed to the older ones. If you hurt them, you hurt legacy. They make money because of smart investments like on FOW and wasteland. hosting legacy events promotes themselves more then the game.

4. there are more standard players then legacy players. Someone in here already said that once people realize that the same price for a standard deck costs about the same as an average, non rotating deck in legacy, they will switch due to monetary logic. wizards is comfortable with standard, it guarantees them money every time a set is released. All in all, wizards would be very happy if standard was the only format available.

5. People don't have unlimited cash and won't pay for cards they dont need. Just because I can get cards from older sets, doesn't mean I should. If i play standard, I will get the cards I need for the best deck available. Why would I spend more money to get into a format I need totally different cards for? "I am comfortable playing standard, most people play standard, standard is the most popular tournament/FNM/ choice of format and the most promoted."

6. Magic Online is available. They're "reprinted" cards on the reserve list online and it is significantly cheaper for most cards. Except, wizards makes all the profit on this and controls the rules. To get in, you pay wizards; for everything. Sure, you can pay for bot credit via websites like supernova bots, but wizards got the money they spent in the first place to get the cards. Wizards is slowly focusing legacy online with ME sets and old draft sets.

TL;DR wizards has put themselves into a good place. People won't quit magic because their cards aren't worth the money put into them initially, and so they can't "get out" of the cycle. Standard is the cycle you have to break to get older cards back. It won't happen and never will. Legacy/Vintage will shrink when the prices are outrageous. Then, everyone is playing standard, what wizards wants.

[Gheizen64]

Premise: NOT THIS TOPIC AGAIN!

Please bear with it, i wanted to present this dead and then buried dead horse from another perspective

Premise 2: actually i noticed there was a post on "a sensible approach on breaking the reserved list" that actually say everything i'm saying and even better, so i guess this topic can be merged with that topic.

After the proposal of new formats sparked once again the discussion on how to solve Legacy's "problem" i noticed that more and more of people nowadays accept the reserved list as something that's here to stay. And a lot of people think that banning duals would be probably the best move to solve the problem of 1200+ decks.

Sound right ? Well it did to me, we ban duals, we play with shocklands, all is good and right, some players may bitch about it, but legacy is pretty much saved and decklist are 99% unchanged apart for the duals->shock switch...

But then i realized that this would be extremely destructive for collectors/dealers. Now, collectors/dealers aren't the main reason WotC keep the reserved list, however i guess they are a factor they consider.

Now imagine a ban on duals: duals go from 200+ for FEBB to about ~50 i guess? This would completely ruin the value of duals, much more than any kind of reprint would. And would probably enrage dealers a lot. This is a big deal since big dealers move a lot of money for WotC (i'm looking at you SCG).

So basically WotC could actually ban duals, but it would be a bad choice for them. A much better choice would be the print the much dreaded Snow duals in promo packs. Original duals stay the same price or go down slightly, but as long as they don't print 5 million packs, the prices will just stabilize slightly lower for all black borders editions, go down moderately for Revised duals (probably from 80 to 40-50), and that's it.

Forsythe (iirc) commented that such a printing of duals would feel like "cheating". However those are the alternatives:

- ban duals, enrage dealers, players are divided on the choice, however this fix the money problem
- don't ban anything, don't break reserved list, enrage players, make a lot of people quit magic with time (i'd say 4-5 years at most) because 90% of legacy players won't play anything aside from eternal and limited
- break reserved list, get fired from hasbro for breaking company policy, die as a martir. However, Forsythe or Maro or who for him isn't Jesus, so this isn't actually possible
- print "functional" snow reprint, feel like you've cheated (but no policy is broken), get 40 virgins women from players and dealers alike (PREORDER THE NEW PROMO PACKS FOR ONLY 100000!), get the best PTQ format after Standard ever (1000+ attendance at every PT? You bet they'd like that), get a valley of gold from selling promo packs

In reality, there's still another possibility that most players don't consider: print situationally better duals. This isn't actually often considered because it's hard to think about a possible example of a situationally better than duals dual (strictly isn't possible) that can be played, however such a thing is actually possible. Take for example a: "as this enter into play, target player remove a card from his graveyard. If they do, this enter into play normally, else this cipt" (not too sure this wording works, but you've got the idea). Those would be actually BETTER than original duals in legacy where everyone and their mother run fetches (and they would even nerf goyf/Tombstalker/Loam). And they wouldn't be broken in Standard, since fetches aren't available. However, the design possibilities on such duals are extremely narrow, and WotC would gain less money from this compared to what just printing promo packs would (at least i guess so).

Thx for reading this wall, i know it's bad english, bear with it, now you can finally post some nice "AWW NOT THIS SHIT AGAIN" and "deadhorse.gif" :laugh:

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

:cry:
/thread

[DarthVicious]

SeSumbhajee proclaims this all to be folly! Hang the code!

[gets shot]

[MDB]

The duals are THE long-term problem, and given their backbone-status (both trading and playing), a longer term solution is justified. Could they, like, give a 2-year heads-up before the banning?
Or is that legally not possible? I am pro-banning, but banning duals overnight, that would be the sickest DCI announcement evar.

"Functional" reprints of the duals are an illusion, they will either not see print, or not cut it. Compared with the shocklands however....$Hasbro$...

[dontbiteitholmes]

Whatever bros. If you don't care I don't care. I'm tired of people talking about banning duals or making a new format, that shit is fucking stupid. If I wanted to play a shitty unfun format I would play extended. I was throwing this out there as an alternate solution that avoids the format dying a slow death and avoids a garbage format because people will in time demand an eternal format they can afford to play (as card costs continue to climb). Whatever though, to everyone who wants to throw insults at me for trying I got three words for you, "I got mine." So whatever, playset of duals (still need 4 more but I got an extra set of Seas so more then enough to trade for rest), full set of fetches (-1 Arid Mesa), goyfs, forces, wastes, 2 moats, tabernacle, mox/Lion's Eye diamonds, Jaces, I have ALL the staples and could build any deck for under $300 except something will 4x Candelabras, so don't think this is a cry fest over card costs on my behalf.

One day it's going to come down to the format will die or they will reprint dual lands. That is a fact. Card costs will still go up either way so I guess I shouldn't care in all reality I will probably have a kid in the next 5 years and I can sell my collection and put a solid 5k in the college fund and call it a day. Either way I don't think my idea is on the top 5 worst ideas I've heard this year as to what should happen with Legacy cards into the future, but regardless this thread can be locked now since we all know most likely the format is on the Vintage 5 year plan and I no longer care to write anything speaking to either side of the issue, I'll just sit back and enjoy the game while I can and then cash in somewhere down the road and be happy that something I had fun with paid out in the end.

/thread

[I am the brainwasher]

@dont: I appreciate the time and effort you put in that, answering nearly each comment and making your point in a clear and reasonable way, keep it up.

In general: The whole concept you introduced might not be THE solution but is the most well thought I've heard about by far. It is definetly a very good point to start with and I encourage every single player to support and criticise in an constructive way the work done so far.

Towards the fear of collectors: The fear of loosing money due to reprints is in any kind of sense ridiculous. Cards already printed which are on the reserved wont never ever loose their worth. They stay as rare as they are now. Unlimited stays Unlimited and numbers of those cards wont ever, ever raise. If you want to own these in terms of beeing a collector you have to spend a lot more money than you would have to buy reprints, this is the most simple bill to calculate, seriously.
I get more and more the feeling that most of the so called "collectors" arent collecting for their personal pleasure but just for their money-bag. If prices from the old cards drop, people who own these would be responsible for the low prices (the funny thing is that these people are the major percentage of the ones who are collecting for money and are afraid of loosing it, the real collectors wont ever react on such things).
Sadly it seems that intelligence is kinda (no pun intended) absent when it comes down to personal posession of individuals. Clear thought magical vanishes when people get afraid and even more if some already afraid add more fuel to the fire.

Wizards making money out of it: This is a must when it comes down to the reprint policy. It has to make sense to Wizards to actually brake the list. As soon as they care and understand that the majority of MtG-players allover the globe are unsatisfied with the list and a shitload of money lurks in that, they will take some action.
The most sad thing would be that they throw away the whole concept to consequent drive the community towards T2.
Dont.Let.This.Happen.
Wizards might be afraid that reprints drive people away from standard, which would mean they wont be as successful with it as they were in the past few years. Here is a lot of work and convinving to do. I get the impression that all that fear (which is in most cases unreasonable) is immobilizing not only parts of the community but also Wizards.

Conclusion: Great concept with a few flaws here and there, respectable work, you have my support here! A lot of hard work sits in that put its possible.

[dontbiteitholmes]

@dont: I appreciate the time and effort you put in that, answering nearly each comment and making your point in a clear and reasonable way, keep it up.

In general: The whole concept you introduced might not be THE solution but is the most well thought I've heard about by far. It is definetly a very good point to start with and I encourage every single player to support and criticise in an constructive way the work done so far.

Towards the fear of collectors: The fear of loosing money due to reprints is in any kind of sense ridiculous. Cards already printed which are on the reserved wont never ever loose their worth. They stay as rare as they are now. Unlimited stays Unlimited and numbers of those cards wont ever, ever raise. If you want to own these in terms of beeing a collector you have to spend a lot more money than you would have to buy reprints, this is the most simple bill to calculate, seriously.
I get more and more the feeling that most of the so called "collectors" arent collecting for their personal pleasure but just for their money-bag. If prices from the old cards drop, people who own these would be responsible for the low prices (the funny thing is that these people are the major percentage of the ones who are collecting for money and are afraid of loosing it, the real collectors wont ever react on such things).
Sadly it seems that intelligence is kinda (no pun intended) absent when it comes down to personal posession of individuals. Clear thought magical vanishes when people get afraid and even more if some already afraid add more fuel to the fire.

Wizards making money out of it: This is a must when it comes down to the reprint policy. It has to make sense to Wizards to actually brake the list. As soon as they care and understand that the majority of MtG-players allover the globe are unsatisfied with the list and a shitload of money lurks in that, they will take some action.
The most sad thing would be that they throw away the whole concept to consequent drive the community towards T2.
Dont.Let.This.Happen.
Wizards might be afraid that reprints drive people away from standard, which would mean they wont be as successful with it as they were in the past few years. Here is a lot of work and convinving to do. I get the impression that all that fear (which is in most cases unreasonable) is immobilizing not only parts of the community but also Wizards.

Conclusion: Great concept with a few flaws here and there, respectable work, you have my support here! A lot of hard work sits in that put its possible.

Are you being sarcastic or did you not read my last post?

I actually have a new idea that is probably better but doesn't involve breaking the reserved list and is much more easy to implement.

Okay, so apparently everyone complains about the reserve list to no end but as soon as you try to scrap it everyone throws a hiss fit. Scrap that.

Everyone who plays Eternal can probably agree that a once a year "Master's Set" that does not affect Standard/Extended is a good idea and would kick serious ass. Not everyone agrees breaking the reserve list is the way to go. So how is a new player to "Open a dual land" in a pack. Simple, make cards worth a dual land. So you have your Masters Set say 250ish cards total none of which are legal outside of Eternal formats. Once a box there is a card that has been printed since the "new" card faces in a random pack as the "Throwback foil." These foils are random, some are of good cards, some not so much. They are cards that have never been printed as foils with the "old" card faces or old cards never printed as foils not on the reserved list and the only way to get them is in these sets. So for example say you open a pack and you luck out and not only get the Throwback Foil, but it's a Chrome Mox (see below)


http://imageshack.us/m/580/613/cmox.jpg

So obviously something like this or say a Goyf or Confidant in this style would be ballin out of control and worth several dual land easily. Kids trying to get into Legacy could buy these packs and pick up some staples from the set and have a chance at opening something easily worth a dual land or if they got super lucky maybe even a playset of dual lands (Imagine a Jace with the old card face or the much coveted holy grail Foil Force of Will). Since the cards that would be foiled are already in rotation no one NEEEEDS to have a super pimp card face foil and it wouldn't stop anyone from being able to play any cards, it wouldn't break the reserved list, but the extreme rarity of chase throwbacks would sell tons of packs and every once in a while some kid would hit the lottery and be able to finance a good chunk of a Legacy deck. The throwback nature of the foils would also fit well into the theme of it being an Eternal set. I would be happy just to get the masters set to tell you the truth, some cards just don't fit Standard but need to be printed/reprinted.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

That changes the mechanisms with which duals are rationed, not the fundamental dearth of duals. If you financially subsidized every Magic player to buy duals, you wouldn't actually increase the amount of duals available, only their raw price.

You might see some marginal bumps of people with five playsets of beta duals willing to go down to 4 to get their old border Goyfs or whatever, but it'd be insignificant next to the actual problem.

[DragoFireheart]

That changes the mechanisms with which duals are rationed, not the fundamental dearth of duals. If you financially subsidized every Magic player to buy duals, you wouldn't actually increase the amount of duals available, only their raw price.

You might see some marginal bumps of people with five playsets of beta duals willing to go down to 4 to get their old border Goyfs or whatever, but it'd be insignificant next to the actual problem.


What do you think the solution should be?

[dontbiteitholmes]

That changes the mechanisms with which duals are rationed, not the fundamental dearth of duals. If you financially subsidized every Magic player to buy duals, you wouldn't actually increase the amount of duals available, only their raw price.

You might see some marginal bumps of people with five playsets of beta duals willing to go down to 4 to get their old border Goyfs or whatever, but it'd be insignificant next to the actual problem.

Yeah, but when I suggested that more duals actually be printed I almost drowned in a river of tears. Forget you guys then, I got my dual lands just give me an Eternal set a year to beat off to.

[Sims]

I am pro-banning, but banning duals overnight, that would be the sickest DCI announcement evar.

You didn't play Eternal in 2004, did you?

[I am the brainwasher]

"Are you being sarcastic or did you not read my last post?

I actually have a new idea that is probably better but doesn't involve breaking the reserved list and is much more easy to implement.

Okay, so apparently everyone complains about the reserve list to no end but as soon as you try to scrap it everyone throws a hiss fit. Scrap that.

Everyone who plays Eternal can probably agree that a once a year "Master's Set" that does not affect Standard/Extended is a good idea and would kick serious ass. Not everyone agrees breaking the reserve list is the way to go. So how is a new player to "Open a dual land" in a pack. Simple, make cards worth a dual land. So you have your Masters Set say 250ish cards total none of which are legal outside of Eternal formats. Once a box there is a card that has been printed since the "new" card faces in a random pack as the "Throwback foil." These foils are random, some are of good cards, some not so much. They are cards that have never been printed as foils with the "old" card faces or old cards never printed as foils not on the reserved list and the only way to get them is in these sets. So for example say you open a pack and you luck out and not only get the Throwback Foil, but it's a Chrome Mox (see below)

So obviously something like this or say a Goyf or Confidant in this style would be ballin out of control and worth several dual land easily. Kids trying to get into Legacy could buy these packs and pick up some staples from the set and have a chance at opening something easily worth a dual land or if they got super lucky maybe even a playset of dual lands (Imagine a Jace with the old card face or the much coveted holy grail Foil Force of Will). Since the cards that would be foiled are already in rotation no one NEEEEDS to have a super pimp card face foil and it wouldn't stop anyone from being able to play any cards, it wouldn't break the reserved list, but the extreme rarity of chase throwbacks would sell tons of packs and every once in a while some kid would hit the lottery and be able to finance a good chunk of a Legacy deck. The throwback nature of the foils would also fit well into the theme of it being an Eternal set. I would be happy just to get the masters set to tell you the truth, some cards just don't fit Standard but need to be printed/reprinted."



@dont:
Unfortunetly I guess heres a bit of misunderstanding my comment and point of view. I was encouraging your work on the topic and was happy someone is putting as much work and thought the whole topic deserves into it... . If you got that whole wrong, I can just hope that this clarifies my former statement; I wasnt beeing sarcastic at all.
I might disagree with some of your points (which was mentioned at the end of my post) but I think it is my good right feeling free to comment on that, as well as pointing out what I think of the reserve list in general. If you neither share this point of view nor can agree on most of my statements this is also your good right but pls dont blame me that harsh for such things... . I was supporting you, regardless if our oppinions are the same because I think this topic needs to be discussed.
Printing cards from the reserved list to death wasnt my wish and wont ever be, but those cards need to find a better access to new players (and I say this with enough competetive decks/cards I own by myself) and there arent many ways how this could happen, one of them is reprinting these in a very rare and limited way.
If you disagree on my statements of rarity and worth of cards, feel free to criticize that in a proper way, I am looking forward to, generally because I honestly see no point why old cards would loose worth, unless they make them as easy available as commons.
And yes, I still believe that Wizards werent too sad if many players start playing T2 because the other formats are unsustainable... .

[Clark Kant]

There is only ONE actual sensible approach... printing functional reprints of the popular cards.

They can't reprint dual lands, but nothing stops them from making...

Plains Island Dual
When it comes into play, your opponents gain 1 life.

Forest Mountain Dual
When it comes into play, put a 0/1 kobold token into play under target opponent's control.

and a handful of other fetchable duals with very minor draw backs.

Plus, most of the format defining cards like FoW and Goyf are NOT on the reserved list.

As much as I would like the idea in the OP, it will never happen for two reasons.

1. The logistics of printing so many foils of old cards would be a nightmare. There's a lot of crap cards on the reserved list, for Wizards to reprint all of them as foil in the correct amounts to mail them to people, not to mention, processing all the mailings they get and sending them out, won't be easy.

2. It would require Wizards to go back on the decision and announcement they just made an year ago. I don't think they would want to do that and risk the credibility of anything they announce in the future, even if it is for good reasons.

[Kich867]

People I think have this reaction to there being a lot more staples in circulation that their prices would drop dramatically--the best lands ever printed will not drop down to 5$ a piece if there are a ton of them, you still need to get them, they're still worth 40-60$ by themselves, they'd just be more likely to be traded amongst people.

Shock-lands aren't rare by any means, they were rather recent and there are a lot of them in the world. They aren't 15-20$ because they're rare, they're 15-20$ because they're literally the closest thing to a dual land you can get. I think people need to consider that if you put a healthy amount of dual lands into circulation, you aren't dropping them to this 25 cent common status, they'll still be like 50-60$, most people who own their dual lands got them when they were like 10$ for christ's sake. I don't get how that doesn't just immediately sink in.

People bought dual lands and force of wills for like 5-10$ back in the day. If I want to buy a playset of force of wills, I can, right now. I can go on ebay and just do it, it's not like I have to search and search and hope and pray that I can find someone with a few here and there to get my playset, I can just go buy a playset for like 300$.

These cards aren't expensive because they're rare, they're expensive because they're unequivocally the best cards in the format. Adding more of them will detract from this slightly, but not enough to dramatically sink their prices.

I like the spirit of this idea, but I would take it a step further and say that first off: Super Mythics are unnecssary given none of the sets that would be printed in the Masters sets had Mythics to begin with. And just make the "staples" (force of will, lackey, duals, aether vial, top, etc) mythics. Keep the same ratio, 3-5 mythics per box, and let the game do it's thing.

You won't see dual lands drop to 20-30$ a piece, that will not happen. They'll maintain similar, but slightly lower prices. Given that Shock-lands are 15-20$ a piece I don't see how it's feasibly possible for dual lands to ever drop below 45$ a piece.

What adding a healthy supply of staples into circulation will do though, is instead of forcing people to shell out cash, they can buy a box of the Master's set and trade in bulk for what they need--if they need a playset of Bayous, they can trade all the fetches/forces/tops/standstill's etc they got for them. Or they can trade the duals they don't want for duals they DO want.

Contrary to apparently popular belief, the cards that are expensive because they are truly rare are like 200-600$, the cards that are expensive because they are good are in the 30-100$ range, and every card that I would consider a staple fall into that price range of 30-100$.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

What do you think the solution should be?

Break the reserved list or ban everything on it.

[DragoFireheart]

Break the reserved list or ban everything on it.

And I assume you would be in more favor of the former?

Do you think Wizards would even consider banning cards on the reserved list? I don't see why they would as that would screw players, who would in turn sell their card en mass, which would then screw investors.

[Kich867]

I don't see their apprehension to just breaking the list a bit for Legacy. Vintage I feel is an objectively uninteresting format, the idea that a restricted list exists says: "We understand these cards are broken, so in order to add variance and purely randomize your chance of winning, we let you put only one of each in your deck." which is just...stupid. Every vintage decklist I've seen runs 1 of every relevant restricted card + their win condition.

So everything that would be legal in legacy should just be taken off the list. As I mentioned in my previous post, many of those cards aren't expensive because they're rare, they're expensive because they're good. And that distinction really needs to be made.

Banning them seems not necessary when they could just reprint them in their own set. Even if you include 3-5 mythics per box, and those mythics could be Force of Will, Top, Dual lands, Tarmagoyfs, you won't see prices drop dramatically. A little at worst, what you will see though, is people who can buy a box of this Master's set and go to FNM, find other legacy players, and trade the tarmagoyfs they don't need for the duals they do need, trade the duals they have extras of for those Forces of Will they need.

All because it's obvious that they are the best lands ever printed, reprinting them doesn't make them worth less so long as they aren't commons, at the Mythic level you'll probably get one or two per box. They'll still be like 40-60$. Considering many people who got their lands bought them when they were 10$, I don't see how 4-6 times their original value to you is hurting their worth--and those that bought them for ~75-100$ they're at now aren't fucking collectors they bought them because they need them for their deck.

[DragoFireheart]

I don't see their apprehension to just breaking the list a bit for Legacy.

Collectors might try to take legal action against WotC. Which is a buncg of shit considering WotC has a company policy and no actual contract with these collectors.

[Kich867]

Collectors might try to take legal action against WotC. Which is a buncg of shit considering WotC has a company policy and no actual contract with these collectors.

And even then, who the fuck are these collectors? "Oh man my playset of Bayous that cost me 10-20$ when I got them are worth 240$ now instead of 400$!"

It's one thing to reprint lotus' and the power 9, obviously don't do that as those are worth like, legitimate amounts of money, but dropping the price of a Bayou from 75$ to even 55$ isn't cause for alarm. The older bayou's are expensive strictly because they're rare. Newer Bayou's didn't make them lower in price, they're 400$ a pop. Printing more Bayou's won't make Alpha/Beta bayou's any less worth it, because they're still fucking Bayou's from alpha and beta edition.

The sheer fact that there exists a set of Bayou's (I'm just using this card as an example mind you) that is collected because of it's rarity, and another set of Bayou's that are sold and traded daily because of the desire to have them and play them, is reason enough that the list can be broken and only applied to legacy cards. Value of Bayou's will not plummet unless the collectors themselves overreact and sell all of their alpha/beta bayou's in bulk.

[Gheizen64]

There is only ONE actual sensible approach... printing functional reprints of the popular cards.

They can't reprint dual lands, but nothing stops them from making...

Plains Island Dual
When it comes into play, your opponents gain 1 life.

Forest Mountain Dual
When it comes into play, put a 0/1 kobold token into play under target opponent's control.

and a handful of other fetchable duals with very minor draw backs.

Plus, most of the format defining cards like FoW and Goyf are NOT on the reserved list.

As much as I would like the idea in the OP, it will never happen for two reasons.

1. The logistics of printing so many foils of old cards would be a nightmare. There's a lot of crap cards on the reserved list, for Wizards to reprint all of them as foil in the correct amounts to mail them to people, not to mention, processing all the mailings they get and sending them out, won't be easy.

2. It would require Wizards to go back on the decision and announcement they just made an year ago. I don't think they would want to do that and risk the credibility of anything they announce in the future, even if it is for good reasons.

Those land wouldn't be played. They are ALWAYS strictly worse than current duals. You'd need a situationally better dual, as i said before:

Graveyard Taiga
Forest Mountain
As Grave Taiga enter into play, you may put the top card of a graveyard on the bottom of their owner's library. If you don't, grave Taiga enter into play tapped instead.

This, in a world full of fetchland, is often better than a normal dual as it hose grave-based strategy (Goyf would become much worse if they printed those) and will always have a target. It's worse if you draw 2 or 3 of them and neither you or your opponet draw fetches, but most of the time it's better. And this drawback would be extremely significant in any non-eternal format since fetches will be forever present only there, so standard wouldn't be ruined by them.
Finally, new players wouldn't dislike them since they don't involve paying life, and would probably just don't understand why they are good (this, however, can be solved by using those lands in a grave-matter format, so they can realize better the implications of such a "drawback").

[The Wolf]

When a TO runs a tournament, Wotc gets nothing. When MTGO runs a tournament, Wotc gets paid. The reserved list pushes prices in real life up. They have already reprinted duals online and other staples will not be far behind. The reserved list is good for Wotc as it makes their game more collectable and pushes players online to use their software to play older formats (Power will be printed online, just wait). Its win – win for them. The reserved list isn’t going anywhere.

[swoop]

he reserved list is good for Wotc as it makes their game more collectable

yes, because if you print or reprint old cards you can't collect them all

[DukeDemonKn1ght]

I don't know if this is a helpful analogy, but I think we should consider comic books. Rare, valuable comic-books, which are functionally identical to the original item (IE, you can read them and look at the pictures)-- these are reprinted ALL THE TIME, without altering the value or collectibility of the authentic original. Except for the paper stock, the printing date, and the monetary value, the reprinted trade paperback might as well be the same thing as that Batman #1 or whatever the fuck.

I guess I just don't understand what seems to me to be WotC's fear that functional reprints/ actual reprints/ situationally better reprints/ etc, would inevitably enrage collectors. And furthermore, I think it's pretty ridiculous that they go to these lengths to validate the anxieties of what is frankly a fringe group among their consumer base (and one to which they have no contractual obligation other than a 'gentleman's agreement' made about twelve years ago.) Fuck the collectors, I want to complete my sets of duals, and I want this format to be alive and healthy five years down the line, in case I still care about tapping cardboard rectangles.

I've played MtG since like ~ 1996, and I've played in about five Standard events over that entire time-frame. Guess what? It's not fun, so I choose not to play it. I for one, will stop playing MtG if the only format that I consistently enjoy goes the way of the dodo. And it just depresses me that since I don't buy four boxes of every new set that comes out, Wizards seems to steadily give less and less of a fuck about me as a consumer. I feel like they're protecting the segment of their consumer base that views this as some sort of nerd stock market, while giving the shaft to people like me who appreciate the gameplay.

[Lemnear]

I don't see their apprehension to just breaking the list a bit for Legacy. Vintage I feel is an objectively uninteresting format, the idea that a restricted list exists says: "We understand these cards are broken, so in order to add variance and purely randomize your chance of winning, we let you put only one of each in your deck." which is just...stupid. Every vintage decklist I've seen runs 1 of every relevant restricted card + their win condition.

So everything that would be legal in legacy should just be taken off the list. As I mentioned in my previous post, many of those cards aren't expensive because they're rare, they're expensive because they're good. And that distinction really needs to be made.

Banning them seems not necessary when they could just reprint them in their own set. Even if you include 3-5 mythics per box, and those mythics could be Force of Will, Top, Dual lands, Tarmagoyfs, you won't see prices drop dramatically. A little at worst, what you will see though, is people who can buy a box of this Master's set and go to FNM, find other legacy players, and trade the tarmagoyfs they don't need for the duals they do need, trade the duals they have extras of for those Forces of Will they need.

All because it's obvious that they are the best lands ever printed, reprinting them doesn't make them worth less so long as they aren't commons, at the Mythic level you'll probably get one or two per box. They'll still be like 40-60$. Considering many people who got their lands bought them when they were 10$, I don't see how 4-6 times their original value to you is hurting their worth--and those that bought them for ~75-100$ they're at now aren't fucking collectors they bought them because they need them for their deck.

You failed several times in a single post ... Congrats! First you have absolutely no idea of Vintage but make comments about it. Please stop that thing. Because of such uneducated commenting we have all that bullshit rumors of "Dice-Roll-Format" and "all about Turn 1 kills".

Second there is a large group of people arguing for reprints and I agree with that but you and others miss the Point here: If Bayou is 55$ instead of 75€ and a compeditive Decks is 800$ instead of 1100$, does this make lil' Timmy want to enter the Format?

The answer is a clear NO ... because it's still damn expensive. This point makes a much smaller part of those players argue for mass-reprints so everyone gets his playset of Duals for 15$. Here, the joke has a hole you might understand; Not only for "collectors".

I have a problem with the word "collector". People having their precious Guardian Beasts and Juzaams on the wall aren't eternals problem; The players who hord their 40 duals and a-playset-of-every-staple-in-case-I-might-need-it-somedays are!!! And we have A LOT of those people around. You might consider selling your bayous, mox diamonds and shit if you only play Countertop, Landstill and Team America for years before blaming guys with their dusty beta Serra Angels. Those are NOT the people who make Batterskull and Jace cost a fortune.

P.S. I dumped a large part of my Eternal collection (Bazaars, Workshops, white bordered Power 9, Force of Wills (sets), Duals, etc.) more than a year ago into my community, remaining only Sets of Tundra, Tropical, U. Sea, 2 Sets of Blue fetches, Power 10, blue Legacy Staples and the common Vintage pile in their premium p.i.m.p. version 4 play ;D. I helped to establish a community and can still play compeditive ... imo a win-win-condition

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

And I assume you would be in more favor of the former?

Do you think Wizards would even consider banning cards on the reserved list? I don't see why they would as that would screw players, who would in turn sell their card en mass, which would then screw investors.

I don't really care about people who bought up Magic cards en masse on speculation that they'd double in value within a few years, to be honest.

I don't see where there's another option besides Overextended. You can't have an eternal format without reprints of the core cardboard components, it's that simple.


I have a problem with the word "collector". People having their precious Guardian Beasts and Juzaams on the wall aren't eternals problem; The players who hord their 40 duals and a-playset-of-every-staple-in-case-I-might-need-it-somedays are!!! And we have A LOT of those people around. You might consider selling your bayous, mox diamonds and shit if you only play Countertop, Landstill and Team America for years before blaming guys with their dusty beta Serra Angels. Those are NOT the people who make Batterskull and Jace cost a fortune.

P.S. I dumped a large part of my Eternal collection (Bazaars, Workshops, white bordered Power 9, Force of Wills (sets), Duals, etc.) more than a year ago into my community, remaining only Sets of Tundra, Tropical, U. Sea, 2 Sets of Blue fetches, Power 10, blue Legacy Staples and the common Vintage pile in their premium BB(and or foil) version 4 play. I helped to establish a community and can still play compeditive ... imo a win-win-condition

The problem with Legacy isn't that people want to be able to play multiple decks or, gasp, lend out cards to their friends.

It's that Wizards is fucking retarded at managing their intellectual property.

[lorddotm]

They can't reprint dual lands, but nothing stops them from making...

Plains Island Dual
When it comes into play, your opponents gain 1 life.

Forest Mountain Dual
When it comes into play, put a 0/1 kobold token into play under target opponent's control.

and a handful of other fetchable duals with very minor draw backs.



Those are both absurd. The first one can get back Punishing Fire (which isn't huge, but could be dangerous). The real problem is the second one. Vintage Oath would be busted. A tutorable Orchard is not the business.

[Kich867]

Second there is a large group of people arguing for reprints and I agree with that but you and others miss the Point here: If Bayou is 55$ instead of 75€ and a compeditive Decks is 800$ instead of 1100$, does this make lil' Timmy want to enter the Format?

I'm just speaking from my experience, I've never not seen a competitive vintage list run every single restricted card their deck can possibly have, plus whatever their win condition is.

Anyways, it's not about the quoted portion--Reprinting won't drive prices down, if they do, it won't be by much. But by giving people access to staples, it allows them to trade for other staples. The difference of a 75$ bayou and a 55$ bayou won't actually matter unless you want them -now-. Otherwise, you can buy packs, buy boxes, of this Master set, and trade your Tundra, your Force of Will, your Taiga, for the Bayou's you're missing.

Reprinting the cards will not lower the prices so that people can buy them for cheap on the secondary market, reprinting the cards in their own set will let people who are interested in legacy, invest in boxes of legacy cards, and be able to actually trade between friends / strangers for what they're missing. So while Timmy still won't be able to afford a 200$ playset of lands, he may be able to crack 5-6 packs a month, snag some good trade fodder, and get the cards he needs for his deck the way people used to do it: by trading.

[DragoFireheart]

I'm just speaking from my experience, I've never not seen a competitive vintage list run every single restricted card their deck can possibly have, plus whatever their win condition is.

Anyways, it's not about the quoted portion--Reprinting won't drive prices down, if they do, it won't be by much. But by giving people access to staples, it allows them to trade for other staples. The difference of a 75$ bayou and a 55$ bayou won't actually matter unless you want them -now-. Otherwise, you can buy packs, buy boxes, of this Master set, and trade your Tundra, your Force of Will, your Taiga, for the Bayou's you're missing.

Reprinting the cards will not lower the prices so that people can buy them for cheap on the secondary market, reprinting the cards in their own set will let people who are interested in legacy, invest in boxes of legacy cards, and be able to actually trade between friends / strangers for what they're missing. So while Timmy still won't be able to afford a 200$ playset of lands, he may be able to crack 5-6 packs a month, snag some good trade fodder, and get the cards he needs for his deck the way people used to do it: by trading.


I suggested a paper Master Set akin to the on-line version awhile ago. It could work... if WotC wasn't incompetent. The fact that WotC still does nothing with a growing Legacy community goes to show how out of touch they are. WotC will only do something related to the issue IF they are forced. Right now, it's easier for them to ignore the issue.

[Kich867]

I'm confident they'll eventually do it. I'm under the impression they're just waiting to see if Legacy is going to keep gaining popularity. I know just recently my local FNM place just started doing weekly tournaments of it.

[kinda]

I don't think anyone has tried to look at the accounting perspective so...here's a crash course.

Magic the Gathering the product is likely evaluted on ROI or Residual Income or something similar that they don't teach you in managerial accounting. As long as the division is doing well by whatever standard they are being judged by they have little incentive (the little is bonuses) to do anything controversial like break the reserve list. This is especially true for dealings with legacy which have little impact on these accounting tool calculations. Magic as a whole (including legacy) is doing very well right now from what I can tell...I predict they'll address changing the policy when these indicators show they aren't doing so well.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I don't think anyone has tried to look at the accounting perspective so...here's a crash course.

Magic the Gathering the product is likely evaluted on ROI or Residual Income or something similar that they don't teach you in managerial accounting. As long as the division is doing well by whatever standard they are being judged by they have little incentive (the little is bonuses) to do anything controversial like break the reserve list. This is especially true for dealings with legacy which have little impact on these accounting tool calculations. Magic as a whole (including legacy) is doing very well right now from what I can tell...I predict they'll address changing the policy when these indicators show they aren't doing so well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFZfj__baDs

[Mr.C]

What about:

- Banning fetches, making duals without land types (better against merfolk, for example)

- Restricting the reserve list

?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Restrictions are never going to happen. The format is defined largely by having a banned, not a restricted list.

Banning fetchlands ups the number of duals you have to play and makes the format even less accessible.

[perm]

if we're discussing bans/restrictions, I think a 2-dual restriction is a sensible way to do it. I know it's unprecedented, but it would solve a lot of the problems of pricing and accessibility. If you run a deck with more than one color (nearly all decks) it's almost an auto-4 of the relevant duals. This type of restriction, maybe called limited or something, is sensible for cards that are both
A. too good
B. being present in every single deck

[joemauer]

They need to reprint Force of Will and Wasteland as uncommon! There is no reason to reprint em. That would lower the price of merfolk, monoblue control, and stax decks to much more reasonable prices.
Duals being expensive isn't what is killing Legacy. I don't know if anyone realizes this, but duals have always been expensive, although stupid expensive now. However, mono colored decks gunning for duals with wasteland were always a good cheap option. Having more decks become affordable outside of dredge would help the format.
While I am on a tangent let me say Legacy is not dying. If it was dying then people would not be paying these prices for the Legacy staples. In fact I think Legacy is being played more now than it has been for years. Thank you starcitygames. I like Legacy and I am sure everyone here does to. So now that people are playing it we are worried that it will just die like vintage, and it may. Enjoy it while you can and don't overthink this. Just reprinting gofy, fow, and wasteland would pump life into what I believe to be the best format ever.

[Fossil4182]

If the solution to these issues is to restrict cards, then it should be limited to the cards on the reserved list. I like the idea of a restriction not necessarily meaning a card is limited to one copy per deck as it is in Vintage.

Part of the problem is WotC is very conservative about reprinting Eternal format staples. Its true that given the current business model, the ultimate good for them is if Eternal players started playing limited and or Standard/Extended. However, that model probably has some poor assumptions. The following is based on my own experience, but I know more players that move from Standard/Extended to Legacy than vise versa. The reasons they commonly give are:

-Standard is too volatile in terms of money spent. Essentially that most of the time you have to be vigilant on almost a daily basis in order to keep your money.
-Standard is a repetitive and limited format for design space. The argument here is that while there is parity, its usually limited to one or two decks. In the status quo especially, its defined by Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic.
-Legacy is more affordable both in the short term and long term. It also provides a greater degree of parity and complexity compared to Standard.

*Essentially all the reasons everyone in these forums commonly cite.

Regardless, I think WotC is starting to figure out that they can make some profit by printing Eternal staples. The FtV series has been somewhat successful; I say somewhat because of the price gauging due to scarcity (irony! or just an example how little WotC actually cares about eternal formats). However, the Dual Decks and Premium Decks have not been terrible by any means and have reprinted a lot of Legacy staples. However, I think WotC could get Eternal players more interested in seal product either with a Master's Edition set as suggested in the first post, or doing a dedicated smaller run similar to how they are approaching the EDH/Commander deck releases.

[kinda]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFZfj__baDs

I'm actually familiar with work motivation in regards to organizational behavior. I'm not entirely sure what you're going for here though. If some VP pushes to break the reserve list and it goes badly they may be fired...and what's the benefit for them? Given the right working conditions a 7%+ bonus has been show to motivate people, but they may not even get that. Helping legacy would be a motivator too. However, getting fired is a pretty big disincentive especially considering people overvalue risk 2:1. The other problem is that a healthier legacy format could hurt wizards in the long term by drawing people away from standard.

[Mr.C]

Restrictions are never going to happen. The format is defined largely by having a banned, not a restricted list.

Banning fetchlands ups the number of duals you have to play and makes the format even less accessible.

Never is a long time. I remember people saying that Time Spiral would never be unbanned.

Also, if you read what I posted, I advocate banning fetchlands *and* printing duals without basic land types.

[Kich867]

-Legacy is more affordable both in the short term and long term. It also provides a greater degree of parity and complexity compared to Standard.


In regards to Legacy being a cheaper format in the short and long run, I kind of have to disagree with that. Legacy is cheaper in the long run only under the condition that if you purchase the optimal version of a single deck now, and play it for the next 5-6 years, over the span of those 5-6 years you spent less money specifically on magic. Or in the event you purchase a suboptimal version of your deck and over time build it. Which sucks anyways.

That logic doesn't really follow if one were to decide to try and make something else, or want both, for instance. So while it may mathematically be true, that over 5 years you'll spend less on legacy than in standard, when you live in an actual real world, it's just easier to spend 200$ to make a very competitive deck in standard and actually do a good amount of winning every year.

I think that's just sort of the jist of standard in general, everything is easier. The card pool is easier, the accessibility is easier, the competition is easier, the decks are easier, etc. I've spent about 450$ (approximately) on standard cards this year. However, over 150$ of that was for a playset of Vengevines, Fauna Shamans, and U/G Fetch lands specifically for my U/G Madness deck.

So more appropriately, I spent ~300$ specifically on standard as a format this year, and have...somewhere in the realm of 4 competitive decks. With very little investment I'll have a 5th and 6th.

I know Legacy has it's like, pride or whatever to it, but for me the game is about having fun. I don't want to have fun 5 years from now, I want to be having fun every day. It's not fun having to explain every time I tried to play my U/G Madness deck before stifles, before fetches, before vengevine, that the deck just isn't good and that I'll be ordering the cards when I have the money.

To me, it's a lot more fun dropping 50-60$ on some crazy idea with Reassembling Skeleton and Sarkhan the Mad to have a perfect chump blocker, perfect sac target, perfect combo engine to produce dragons every turn without losing any board advantage whatsoever, going to FNM, and doing better than a 50-60$ deck probably should.

Anyways, ontopic--From the Vault seems like the most obvious way to reprint things. From The Vault: Lands, every dual land, wasteland, karakas, maze, etc. Ship out 2000 of them. Donezo. Make them like 100$ a pop, you buy one, trade what you don't want for what you do want, everyone's happy, Wizards makes an easy 200k.

[Lemnear]

FtV and the Premium Decks are our hopes for reprints and I'm cool just waiting for the next installments. The FtV Legends was a waste ... I beg for a "Lands" or "Enchantment" version (Rishadan Port, wasteland, Standstill, Humility, etc.).

Since I've heared that the next Premium Set seems to be blue I'm positive that we'll see foil Gush, FoW, 4x Counterspell and maybe even Back to Basics during this year so I chill :@)

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I'm actually familiar with work motivation in regards to organizational behavior. I'm not entirely sure what you're going for here though. If some VP pushes to break the reserve list and it goes badly they may be fired...and what's the benefit for them? Given the right working conditions a 7%+ bonus has been show to motivate people, but they may not even get that. Helping legacy would be a motivator too. However, getting fired is a pretty big disincentive especially considering people overvalue risk 2:1. The other problem is that a healthier legacy format could hurt wizards in the long term by drawing people away from standard.

My point is that I don't know what kind of monetary bonus you think would change this situation. It's not like anyone is unaware of the extra money they could be making reprinting valuable old cards, there's obviously a holdup somewhere else in the system. Either people don't care enough to rock the boat, or they think their concept of Wizards' integrity is more important or whatever.

[Fossil4182]

In regards to Legacy being a cheaper format in the short and long run, I kind of have to disagree with that. Legacy is cheaper in the long run only under the condition that if you purchase the optimal version of a single deck now, and play it for the next 5-6 years, over the span of those 5-6 years you spent less money specifically on magic. Or in the event you purchase a suboptimal version of your deck and over time build it. Which sucks anyways.

That logic doesn't really follow if one were to decide to try and make something else, or want both, for instance. So while it may mathematically be true, that over 5 years you'll spend less on legacy than in standard, when you live in an actual real world, it's just easier to spend 200$ to make a very competitive deck in standard and actually do a good amount of winning every year.

I think that's just sort of the jist of standard in general, everything is easier. The card pool is easier, the accessibility is easier, the competition is easier, the decks are easier, etc. I've spent about 450$ (approximately) on standard cards this year. However, over 150$ of that was for a playset of Vengevines, Fauna Shamans, and U/G Fetch lands specifically for my U/G Madness deck.

So more appropriately, I spent ~300$ specifically on standard as a format this year, and have...somewhere in the realm of 4 competitive decks. With very little investment I'll have a 5th and 6th.

I know Legacy has it's like, pride or whatever to it, but for me the game is about having fun. I don't want to have fun 5 years from now, I want to be having fun every day. It's not fun having to explain every time I tried to play my U/G Madness deck before stifles, before fetches, before vengevine, that the deck just isn't good and that I'll be ordering the cards when I have the money.

To me, it's a lot more fun dropping 50-60$ on some crazy idea with Reassembling Skeleton and Sarkhan the Mad to have a perfect chump blocker, perfect sac target, perfect combo engine to produce dragons every turn without losing any board advantage whatsoever, going to FNM, and doing better than a 50-60$ deck probably should.

Anyways, ontopic--From the Vault seems like the most obvious way to reprint things. From The Vault: Lands, every dual land, wasteland, karakas, maze, etc. Ship out 2000 of them. Donezo. Make them like 100$ a pop, you buy one, trade what you don't want for what you do want, everyone's happy, Wizards makes an easy 200k.

That's the point though. If you're going to dropping $50 on a Reassembling Skeleton Deck is fine if you're looking at the game from a fun standpoint only. I'm also including financial considerations in my of calculus; personally, I don't find any part of having to constantly rotating my collection in order to protect myself financially fun. Also looking at the prospect of reprints along with set rotations makes standard a risky investment in the short term and terrible long term investment.

I also disagree that Standard is cheaper. Your narrative on trying to assemble a UG madness deck isn't any different that someone attempting to put together Cawblade for Standard. For example, using data from the last 5 SCG Open Standard tournaments, there was an average of copies 24 Jace, the Mind Sculptors and 25 Stoneforge Mystics out of a possible 32 copies in the top eight of those events. Jace, was selling anywhere from $80-$100 at the time and Stoneforge Mystic is at $25 a piece. Using lower end pricing, that still means someone new to the format who wants to be competitive is looking at spending $420 on eight cards alone; that amount would be even higher if both cards were not going to rotate this summer. The reality of Standard is that while one can construct any number of "competitive" decks, there is only one real competitive deck in Cawblade of some sorts. One could pick up a set of Wasteland's and Force of Will for roughly the same price and invest another $200-$300 and play Merfolk which is one of the better decks in Legacy. Or alternatively, a set of Tropical Islands for about $275 - $325. Not to knock you're card acquisitions, but in your example, you are acquiring desirable cards in Standard right now which will rotate very soon. The price would of been substantially lower on those cards had you waited which would given you even more capital to invest in your UG deck or whatever else you wanted to.

[Kich867]

I would contest the idea that Cawblade is even remotely the norm. Perhaps it's just the shift that Magic is going to, but this standard specifically has been the most expensive yet. Furthermore, those jace prices are also only recent--people who were playing standard during Worldwake got their playsets of jace for something like 80$ (or so I'm told, whenever I ask players how much they got their jaces for, it's almost always between 80-150$ for the playset).

My narrative about UG Madness unfortunately hasn't necessarily ended. It would be my desire to eventually acquire a playset of Force of Wills and Wastelands for the deck as well as a playset of tropical islands, it's still a budget version.

At it's current stage it has cost me:
4x vengevine
4x stifle
4x fauna shaman
4x misty rainforest
4x breeding pool / Yavimaya coasts (these will be transitioned out of, but in order to play the deck functionally to begin with..duals are a necessity)

Which totals around 344$ not including tax. A playset of force of wills is going to be something close to 300-360$, wastelands would be another 280-350$, and tropical islands would be another like 300$ or so. Oh, and a playset of Tarmagoyfs.

So in order for my deck to be competitive, it might take me 4 years or dropping 1300$ in one year on it. I understand that a lot of people who kind of point out what you're pointing out are people who have been playing legacy for a long time, but for someone who's just starting out, do you have any idea how daunting that is? To fully understand that the deck I'm playing, at nearly 400$ if you total in everything, is 3-4 years away from being competitive at least?

Jace is an anomaly, as the other most expensive cards in the format that are relevant are 25-30$ (in other words, outside of Jace, it's actually hard to build a 400$ deck in Standard right now, there aren't enough expensive cards that function well together). They're also quite a bit easier to obtain just in general--from a purely monetary point of view, you miss that trading is extremely easy in standard. Buying a box for 100$ will guarantee you that you will get far more than 100$ worth out of it. Trading in legacy is only possible once you already have legacy staples and to someone like myself who's just getting in, I have literally no cards a legacy player would want for their Tropical Islands.

Apologies for going off topic.

[DarthVicious]

Duals are the only truly significant part of the reserved list that have any effect whatsoever on the health of Legacy. The rest of Legacy staples aren't on the reserved list. Just the fact that Wizards was considering printing snow duals should tell you that they are aware of this, AND that they want to keep Legacy around.

They've been printing 'duals' in just about every block since these duals became popular. (circa... 1995?)

Eventually they'll get it right.

[Gheizen64]

Duals are the only truly significant part of the reserved list that have any effect whatsoever on the health of Legacy. The rest of Legacy staples aren't on the reserved list. Just the fact that Wizards was considering printing snow duals should tell you that they are aware of this, AND that they want to keep Legacy around.

They've been printing 'duals' in just about every block since these duals became popular. (circa... 1995?)

Eventually they'll get it right.

Y i'm starting to think that too. A dual like this:

Forest Mountain
~ this ~ don't untap as long as all graveyard are empty.

Or something along those lines are strictly worse than normal duals, but play basically 98% the same thanks to fetchlands + MM + Brainstorm in eternal formats. May be considered a tad too good for modern, where waste don't exist and there are fetches, but fuck Modern, it's a retarded format.

[Koby]

Since I've heared that the next Premium Set seems to be blue I'm positive that we'll see foil Gush, FoW, 4x Counterspell and maybe even Back to Basics during this year so I chill :@)

Did you hear the rumor that R&D is going to ban every color but blue, because that would make designing good cards easier? True story. Example:

Koth of the Ocean, 2UU, Planeswalker
+1: Untap target Island. Draw 2 cards.
-1: Add 1 blue mana for each Island you control. Draw 2 cards.
-5: Draw 2 cards. Then, draw 2 more cards. Gain an emblem: "Islands gain "T: Draw 2 cards.""

*/sarcasm

[Marke]

There simply is no elegant way to solve the issue with the restricted list and the costs of getting into legacy.
Anything that will make it easier to get into legacy, ie. reprinting or redistributing or any way whatsoever you can get to play legacy without having to make the big costs WILL reduce the price of the tournament staples. The difficulty of getting access to the cards determines their cost...

They simply have to get rid of the reserved list at some point or allow proxies at tournaments. Prices will drop but it's the only way to make legacy more accesible to everyone.

Edit: for legacy there aren't actually that many cards on the restricted list that matter, only these come to mind:
the duals (this is big, but can be circumvented by making the snowlands or simply banning the duals from legacy, i'd think the format would be nicer with the shockduals anyway).
survival of the fittest
mox diamond
dream halls
humility
intuition
phyrexian dreadnought
lion's eye diamond
the tabernacle at pendral vale
moat
candelabra of tawnos

of those only the duals really matter much i think, if they just reprint of ban those and reprint some of the staples it will help alot already. On the other hand mythics only make cards even more expensive now so it's unlikely the format will ever be cheap.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

There ought to be a checklist.


Hello, friend. Thank you for sharing your idea for how to save Legacy. Unfortunately, this won't work because

[ ] Wizards has flatly stated their unwillingness to break the reserve list.

[ ] Wizards has flatly stated their unwillingness to restrict cards outside of Vintage.

[ ] If players were willing to play in the format with worse duals they would have done so already, so the odds of any specific iteration of worse duals changing this seem slim.

[ ] Your plan fails to recognize that the high cost of duals and other staples is a function of insufficient supply, particularly outside of Western Europe and North America.

[ ] Your plan fails to recognize that Wizards' interest in the format is based on maintaining its own revenue stream.

[ ] Your plan fails to recognize that players' interest in the format is based entirely around being able to play exactly those sort of busted old cards.

[ ] Several people at Wizards have indicated their own desire to break the reserve list, so merely trying to bring attention to the issue can't change anything.

[ ] Your suggestion is far too complicated, counter-intuitive, and difficult to enforce for anyone to be interested in.

[ ] Your suggestion would only preserve Legacy in name while actually erasing the things about the format that people enjoy.

Shamelessly stolen from. (http://boingboing.net/2009/10/15/why-your-idea-to-sav.html)

[dontbiteitholmes]

Well, looks like we'll be getting a new shitty format instead...

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/144

That might not be the one of course. They will probably rotate until they find one that works, but this one looks pretty likely as the one everyone will be stuck with. So instead of reprinting stuff in a responsible way we'll just end up with a less fun format and Ravnica dual lands will likely be reprinted soon to push this (or w/e shitty format they decide to push). Hot dog, can't wait to NOT play some Modern.

[DTC]

the modern format seems very interesting though, and i will definitely look to playing it. Maybe it will cool down legacy a bit also as far as the old duals go as more players will go to modern if they feel legacy is out of their budget. Not saying they'll go down or drop, but at the rate we're going we could see the revised duals become similar in price to FBB duals in the next couple years.

[FieryBalrog]

The other problem is that a healthier legacy format could hurt wizards in the long term by drawing people away from standard.

Ding Ding Ding!

[Kich867]

Honestly I think Modern is fairly healthy. All this falls under the whole, the way Vintage players look at Legacy who look at Standard who look at Legacy looking at Vintage thing. Now it just adds one more step: Vintage players looking at Legacy who look at Modern who look at Standard.

Modern players won't want to play Standard because of the limitations but don't want to play Legacy because of old inaccessible cards / price range. Also, the thing that really irritates me is the idea of the lack of strategy or versatility amongst decks in formats that are limited. At a super competitive level there will always be a handful of tier 1 decks and a much larger supply of tier 2 decks that I'd deem "good enough."

Just in Standard you have Caw-Blade, Valakut, Splinter-Twin, Allies, UW Control, UB Control, Vampires, Questvine, Tezze Control, Kuldotha Red, Boros Landfall, Infect variants, some of the new Koth decks sprouting up that look promising, and so on.

When Modern is official, I suspect a few things: For one, any Legacy deck that's portable will probably be ported (CounterTop?), any Standard deck will be reexamined, and every old "best deck in standard at the time" will be reevaluated to see if it's strong enough.

However I think Modern will sort of have to reprint the old fetch lands, Ravnica duals will be prevalent and probably boost up in price. Tri-Color decks will be less workable unless you're willing to take 3 damage to the dome to help fix you mana (Fetch + Shock)..

I dunno, I think the format will be fun, a lot of experimenting for me.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Honestly I think Modern is fairly healthy. All this falls under the whole, the way Vintage players look at Legacy who look at Standard who look at Legacy looking at Vintage thing. Now it just adds one more step: Vintage players looking at Legacy who look at Modern who look at Standard.

Modern players won't want to play Standard because of the limitations but don't want to play Legacy because of old inaccessible cards / price range. Also, the thing that really irritates me is the idea of the lack of strategy or versatility amongst decks in formats that are limited. At a super competitive level there will always be a handful of tier 1 decks and a much larger supply of tier 2 decks that I'd deem "good enough."

Just in Standard you have Caw-Blade, Valakut, Splinter-Twin, Allies, UW Control, UB Control, Vampires, Questvine, Tezze Control, Kuldotha Red, Boros Landfall, Infect variants, some of the new Koth decks sprouting up that look promising, and so on.

When Modern is official, I suspect a few things: For one, any Legacy deck that's portable will probably be ported (CounterTop?), any Standard deck will be reexamined, and every old "best deck in standard at the time" will be reevaluated to see if it's strong enough.

However I think Modern will sort of have to reprint the old fetch lands, Ravnica duals will be prevalent and probably boost up in price. Tri-Color decks will be less workable unless you're willing to take 3 damage to the dome to help fix you mana (Fetch + Shock)..

I dunno, I think the format will be fun, a lot of experimenting for me.

My opinion, format fucking sucks...

Look at aggro, pretty much every good beater is post 8th. Assuming shocklands are the best lands they are going to get it's criminally easy to play 3 color zoo, yet 3 color control is pretty much out of the question as Bolting yourself twice a game is pretty much a straight road to a loss, even two color control is dicey with or without fetches (risk color screw often or have to bolt yourself every once in a while). The land base favors aggro and combo (try to win before life matters both ways) and puts control at a solid disadvantage and that situation will likely never change. Playing control you absolutely can't afford to be color screwed out of early answers vs. aggro or combo. Meanwhile Zoo can play the top 8 GP list minus Lavamancers and Library and with a couple different burn spells.

I don't think the comparison to Vintage->Legacy is fair. Legacy is a completely different format from Vintage in every way and I don't think anyone is going to argue that. Legacy->Modern is just like saying Budget Legacy, it feels like house rules to me. I mean pretty much everybody, even Wizards, is like, "Yeah, everyone would rather play Legacy, but it's too expensive for some and we are going to honor some 15 year old bad mistake we made instead. So given that people can't afford it, here's a format that kind of feels like bobo Legacy, so if you can't afford to play Legacy you can just play this instead..."

Everyone accepts it's not as good and if price wasn't an issue they would rather play Legacy. If Vintage was an equal price option many would rather play Legacy since they don't find Vintage as fun, almost no one would choose Modern over Legacy in that scenario and the format wouldn't even exist except for dual land prices. At this point I'd rather play Pauper than Modern for fun (and yes I play Pauper). At least they made it 8th forward instead of MM forward though. Get ready for a lot of complaints about the price of Modern cards about 6 months after the format catches on. A lot of kids are thinking they hit the jackpot right now and that they are going to be able to afford to play Modern, seriously though if it hits critical mass who knows what card prices are going to look like. Still I expect either ShockLands, old Fetches, or some new Dual Land are going to come out in the next block (I heard it was a return to Ravnica which would make me think so even more if it was true). I also expect Goyf will be reprinted in the next 2 years in some form to push this format, as aside from Jace he's the chase money rare and Jace was just printed 2 blocks ago.

[Kich867]

I apologize but, at what point did I compare Vintage to Legacy? I'm speaking to the purist crowd. Are there not very specific reasons people who only play Vintage only play Vintage? I would assume it's because there's something about Legacy they don't like, just like how Legacy players (IE: the people who only play legacy) shit on Standard for everything they shit on Standard for. Just like they're shitting on Modern. Who will in turn shit on Standard. Standard is kind of the bastard in all of this. They hate on other people because they just get hated on :laugh:.

Then there's people like me who just..find..magic fun. I'll play standard, limitations are fun and it forces you to think outside the box with a much smaller card set. Legacy is fun, since the lack of restrictions is fun too. Vintage sounds fun, but until I have about $8,000 to dump on a deck I don't see that happening.

[dontbiteitholmes]

I apologize but, at what point did I compare Vintage to Legacy? I'm speaking to the purist crowd. Are there not very specific reasons people who only play Vintage only play Vintage? I would assume it's because there's something about Legacy they don't like, just like how Legacy players (IE: the people who only play legacy) shit on Standard for everything they shit on Standard for. Just like they're shitting on Modern. Who will in turn shit on Standard. Standard is kind of the bastard in all of this. They hate on other people because they just get hated on :laugh:.

Then there's people like me who just..find..magic fun. I'll play standard, limitations are fun and it forces you to think outside the box with a much smaller card set. Legacy is fun, since the lack of restrictions is fun too. Vintage sounds fun, but until I have about $8,000 to dump on a deck I don't see that happening.

I'm not saying you are comparing Vintage to Legacy I was talking about your point about other people comparing Vintage to Legacy in judging Legacy to be the inferior format. Vintage is way too swingy for my tastes.