Petition to end the reserved list policy

[Francisco Pires]

Hello, i'm not sure if i'm allowed to post this here (if not you can delete).
Recently a new petition to end the reserved list was created, if you agree please help and share.

https://www.change.org/p/wizards-of-the-coast-wizards-of-the-coast-end-reserve-list-policy?recruiter=23903751&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=des-md-share_petition-no_msg

[LegacyIsAnEternalFormat]

This is stupid. If they were going to get rid of the reserve list they wouldve done so already.

[Richard Cheese]

This is stupid. If they were going to get rid of the reserve list they wouldve done so already.

I don't think it's necessarily going to happen either, but I don't see anything wrong with occasionally reminding them that a sizable (we assume) portion of the player base wants it to happen. I'm just wondering how this information is going to make it to WotC?

[morgan_coke]

Remember several years ago when they were going to end it? They were printing paper foils of cards on it? Then Hasbro legal decided they couldn't because it would lead to lawsuits they thought they'd lose?

Yeah. None of that has changed. It's not happening.

[Francisco Pires]

Is not hard to try

[non-inflammable]

Is not hard to try

to get a job and buy the cards you want? or play proxies or play on cockatrice...

[PirateKing]

This came up on my phone news feed as the headline Wizards Of The Coast end Reserve List Policy and I got to say my heart skipped a beat or two. Then I saw it was a petition and I moved along.

[MaximumC]

to get a job and buy the cards you want? or play proxies or play on cockatrice...

"Play-test cards" please. Proxy means something that a judge does in a tournament, and counterfeits are counterfeits. The way to go casually is "play-test card."
See: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/proxies-policy-and-communication-2016-01-14

https://media0.giphy.com/media/Y2nbrJyAR6RiM/200_s.gif

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

This is stupid. If they were going to get rid of the reserve list they wouldve done so already.

Basically this, WOTC doesn't like it, SCG (and I'm assuming other large retailers) doesn't like it, and the community doesn't like it (well at least a sizable chunk of it, there are those people that do like it for one reason or another), yet it still exists.

[ParkerLewis]

I don't think it's necessarily going to happen either, but I don't see anything wrong with occasionally reminding them that a sizable (we assume) portion of the player base wants it to happen. I'm just wondering how this information is going to make it to WotC?

This. Petition signed.

If nothing comes out of it (as it most certainly will), then I will have wasted one minute of my life. I've done worse.

[raudo]

Reserved list is the best thing for collectors. After all, this is a collectible card game.
When you get a job then you can slowly buy your gems if you like.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

I'm not sure why collectors even care, I don't imagine most collectors plan on selling anytime soon and the truly collectible things (Beta, English Legends, etc) are going to retain their value regardless of any reprint.

Speculators may but that comes with the territory of spec'ing cards.

[Cartesian]

Well written petition. Signed.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Like most petitions it probably won't do anything but I signed anyway.

[Mr.C]

Serious question: has anything on change.org ever resulted in something?

[frogczar]

I own all of these "collectable" cards and I want this ridiculous policy to end. I want to play Legacy again with a decent base of players that can grow. Legacy is Magic.

The Reserved List is stupid.

Signed.

[CptHaddock]

I'm not sure why collectors even care, I don't imagine most collectors plan on selling anytime soon and the truly collectible things (Beta, English Legends, etc) are going to retain their value regardless of any reprint.

Speculators may but that comes with the territory of spec'ing cards.

Seriously just reprint the cards with terrible artwork. Problem solved, collectors can continue hording the original art that are worth more and people who want to enter the format get the more affordable worse art versions of cards. Premium cards are going to remain premium regardless of the number of times that they are reprinted.

[Ace/Homebrew]

Serious question: has anything on change.org ever resulted in something?
There are claims it has...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change.org
On October 1, 2011, Molly Katchpole, a "22 year old nanny with two jobs" in Washington D.C., started a petition on Change.org "asking Bank of America and their CEO Bryan Moynihan to drop its unexpected new $5/month banking fee" for debit card customers. Less than one month later, 300,000 signatures were collected. The petition was widely cited as a contributing cause for the bank formally announcing to drop the new banking fee. U.S. President Barack Obama signed the petition; U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, the Democratic senator from Illinois, responded to Bank of America and the petition on Twitter. It may have contributed to the U.S. Congress deciding to "look at legislation for out-of-control banking fees".

But no, probably not. :rolleyes:

[Sidneyious]

No matter how many people sign it's up to the policy holders to make a decision.

And that is the RL stays.

[Lord Seth]

Remember several years ago when they were going to end it? They were printing paper foils of cards on it? Then Hasbro legal decided they couldn't because it would lead to lawsuits they thought they'd lose?
I don't remember that, because that didn't happen. First, they never gave any reason for it, so the idea that lawsuits would ensue is supposition (and what's even more supposition is that they'd lose said lawsuits). However, even if we accept that supposition, I believe Aaron Forsythe said that it was a decision Wizards of the Coast made, and that Hasbro had nothing to do with it.

This petition will do nothing, though. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Online petitions only accomplish one thing, and that is making money for the petition site. There might be times there will be a petition for something and it ended up happening, but in that case the petition was incidental.

[ramanujan]

I wish I could sign against this malarkey.

The reserve list is a key to the health of the game. I'm am well aware of the other perspectives. I always listen to those who come to different conclusions than me. In the end, there are a few people that, apparently, have the cards that want reprints and a gigantic cohort that wants to get what others have without paying fair value for it. Stupid points get made about how Beta Birds of paradise are still valueable. The people making those stupid points know how stupid the points are, but lots of stupid comments tend to drown out well thought out counterpoint.

[Lord Seth]

I wish I could sign against this malarkey.

The reserve list is a key to the health of the game.
Hrm, other TCGs Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh are still really popular with no Reserved List. It's almost as if a Reserved List isn't key to the health of the game.

One also wonders how it is "key to the health of the game" when the formats that Wizards of the Coast actually bothers pushing have no cards on the Reserved List. Modern doesn't. Standard doesn't. Draft doesn't. So in what way is it "key to the health of the game"?


I'm am well aware of the other perspectives. I always listen to those who come to different conclusions than me. In the end, there are a few people that, apparently, have the cards that want reprints and a gigantic cohort that wants to get what others have without paying fair value for it.
"Fair value" is hundreds of dollars for a piece of cardboard?

But even ignoring the price point itself, this is a very odd claim to make, as it means that most people who purchased these things in the past weren't paying "fair value." Back when Volcanic Islands prices were in the 2 figures? Or even when they were "only" $200? Not fair value, apparently. What makes the price right this moment more "fair value" than all those past?

But even if the current price is fair value, then that means if it goes any higher it isn't fair value anymore, so you should therefore be in favor of reprints that keep the price where it is presently rather than being against them.


Stupid points get made about how Beta Birds of paradise are still valueable.
And this point is stupid... how, exactly? You can't just dismiss something as "stupid" yet provide no counterargument.


The people making those stupid points know how stupid the points are, but lots of stupid comments tend to drown out well thought out counterpoint.
Considering your post was naught but baseless claims with no supporting arguments, I'm not sure you have much business accusing anyone else of making "stupid" points.

[ramanujan]

Mtg is not those other games. Each game can succeed and thrive for different reasons. What is okay for one game is not necessarily good for each game. I think the reserved list is good for mtg, on the whole. You don't, which is fine. Your point that those other games work without one is appropriate, I just think the connection you are making is not apples to apples. You are suggesting it is. We disagree, and that is fine.

Fair value is not some turn of phrase meaning whatever you want it to, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_value for additional detail. I have no desire to walk you through it over the course of several posts. If you purposefully/unpurposefully continue to illustrate that you don't know what it means, I will just let you look incompetent.

The price of Beta birds remaining valueable is nothing more than a random true fact.

The least expensive versions of Power nine and dual lands are very vulnerable to substantial decreases in value due to reprints. These cards are commonly the most valuable cards in many people's/stores collections/inventory. It is important for wizards to maintain the value of out of print cards, as it illustrates that the cards are a valuable collectible.

[Lormador]

I am quite interested enough in the application of the concept of fair value to old Magic cards to get into it, however, so I'd appreciate a couple of posts walking through it. Upon reading the post to which you've linked, there seem to be several difficulties.

First, what constitutes a rational and unbiased estimate of the value of a Magic card? Must we take that to mean the price that the market has currently agreed to?

Second, the description states that fair value is a concept generally used in accounting when no market for a good or service is established. This is not the case with old Magic cards.

Would it not be more accurate to say that those folks who wish to buy, for example, Underground Seas but are willing to pay at most $5 per copy are simply consumers whose utility function does not allow them to spend the far greater sum that most shops ask for this card? And is it not perfectly rational for such consumers to press for a reprint, arguing that the cost to produce the good is lower than the price they are willing to pay?

Please forgive my economics, I am quite bad at it.

[tescrin]

That's the whole issue with petitions. It's a squeaky wheel that has no other squeak unless you specifically go make one. In other words, it's a one-sided showing of support; making it look unanimous. It's not a representative sample of anything until it encompasses sizes that are significant.

Additionally; the majority of people who want it abolished don't stand to lose from it. I'd prefer not to lose $1000's of potential resale just because it was badly timed. I know many who own the staples disagree, but that's their perogative. They can throw away money if they want, be valiant and sacrificial with your own stuff.

You can sell your stuff for low prices now and BAM you'll introduce new players to legacy. But you won't. You want to sacrifice *other people's money and investment* to meet your own ends. Well to that I say Screw Off.

[Note: This post exists for the same reason the petition does.]

[Lord Seth]

Mtg is not those other games. Each game can succeed and thrive for different reasons. What is okay for one game is not necessarily good for each game. I think the reserved list is good for mtg, on the whole. You don't, which is fine. Your point that those other games work without one is appropriate, I just think the connection you are making is not apples to apples. You are suggesting it is. We disagree, and that is fine.This is nothing more than dodging the point. One cannot claim that something is so critical to Magic when the other popular TCGs have never used it. You need to give an explanation, so here is the question: What exactly makes it so that the other TCGs have gotten by without a Reserved List but the Reserved List is "key" to the health of Magic?


Fair value is not some turn of phrase meaning whatever you want it to, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_value for additional detail. I have no desire to walk you through it over the course of several posts. If you purposefully/unpurposefully continue to illustrate that you don't know what it means, I will just let you look incompetent.
I can see what it means. What I don't see is how it's relevant.

Fair value, as it explains, is chiefly used for the determination of a price of something that there isn't really a big enough market for in order to gauge supply/demand. For a Magic example, one can consider the case of Blue Hurricane.

However, what does that have to do with Magic cards outside of cases like Blue Hurricane? There is a market, so fair value isn't that relevant. Now, your link does have a brief bit on the relationship between fair value and market price and how some argue the market price is the fair value whereas others argue they are distinct. If you are taking the former, then why use the much more esoteric phrase "fair value" (which most people would interpret to mean a price they see as correct, which is different from what you are using it for) instead of the far more recognizable "market price"? If you are taking the latter, then why do you think the fair value of these cards differs from the market price and where would you put it in comparison?

And if we go with the former (i.e. just market price) I'm not sure what the argument is supposed to be. That people want reprints because they think the prices are too high and make it too hard to get into the format? Okay, but that's kind of their point, so all it's doing is repeating what they're saying, which is not really a refutation.


The price of Beta birds remaining valueable is nothing more than a random true fact.
It demonstrates that the cards whose value comes from actual collectibility rather than simple scarcity retain their price even if a ton of functionally equivalent copies get printed.


The least expensive versions of Power nine and dual lands are very vulnerable to substantial decreases in value due to reprints.
I find it very unlikely that the least expensive version Nine are particularly vulnerable. Vintage is all but dead, so mostly the only reason you'd want one is prestige; people are generally not buying a Black Lotus in order to actually use it. If some reprint occurred, the people who would want Black Lotuses would just want the cheapest versions, which would be the new ones, thereby causing little if any harm to the Unlimited editions. It might actually increase their price, in fact. As noted, it seems almost all of the desire for a Black Lotus or other Power Nine comes from sheer prestige rather than actually using them. A reprint would do nothing to decrease the prestige factor of having an original, much like how Birds of Paradise has retained a high price. However, it would create a new demand, for people who want to actually play with the card but play with a "cooler" version than the newer one (much like how people will play with the Expedition lands). There is a strong possibility that their prices will actually INCREASE.

This is less true for the dual lands, as more of the demand for them comes from people actually wanting to use them. However, as noted above, if their prices do decrease, it just shows those versions of the dual lands weren't actual collectibles. This is a critical point to make, the difference between value from collectibility and value from simple scarcity. The determining factor is what happens if you mass produce functionally equivalent versions. Something that's valuable simply through scarcity would not retain its value. However, a true collectible will not be affected by this. For example, you can go and buy a compendium of Shakespeare's plays for less than a hundred dollars. This does not prevent original copies of The First Folio from being worth millions, even though they are actually less functional than the modern printings (even ignoring their age making them less tenable for reading, they also lack all the useful footnotes so you can better understand what words mean).


These cards are commonly the most valuable cards in many people's/stores collections/inventory. It is important for wizards to maintain the value of out of print cards, as it illustrates that the cards are a valuable collectible.
As noted above, if their price decreases from a reprint, that means their value wasn't from being a collectible. What is being demonstrated by the prices isn't that the cards are collectible, just that they're scarce.

But let us ignore that and suppose the issue is simply one of something losing value, whether it's a collectible or not. How does the Reserved List actually accomplish what you claim? It says that the original dual lands and the Power Nine and all sorts of other older cards won't be reprinted. But this applies to no cards that are currently being printed, nor any cards printed since Urza's Destiny. This argument of yours would make sense if they were continuing to put cards on the Reserved List, to ensure people that the new cards they're purchasing will retain value or whatever... but they're not doing that. The cards that are being illustrated as a "valuable collectible" have no relevance to the cards that are actually being printed. I can't imagine anyone would be persuaded by the argument "don't worry, your new card will hold value! After all, these totally different cards won't be reprinted!"

[Lemnear]

How is this topic still around? I thought it was already clear that its two camps here: The ones who want the old formats to be played for a price which makes MTG comparable to other hobbies versus the ones who put tenthousands of dollars into speculation items hoping to make easy money over time with no work required at all. This will go down like PucaTrade and MTGO with a few people paying the bill once the market crashes or they cant get their money out

[s&s]

If I thought this would have any influence whatsoever I would make a counter-petition.

Its simply not going to happen though. Wizards has to work with gamestores, and those happen to have a lot of money invested in reserved list staples typically.

Looking at SCG stock, they have 10 Black Lotus in stock, from 6.999$ to 17.999$. Surely they wouldn't mind taking a 100k$ loss on only that stock, right?

Not going to happen.


They can throw away money if they want, be valiant and sacrificial with your own stuff. You can sell your stuff for low prices now and BAM you'll introduce new players to legacy. But you won't. You want to sacrifice *other people's money and investment* to meet your own ends.

This also. I have a bunch of legacy decks and have no problem loaning them out so new players can join our FNMs.

Maybe OP can start a service where people can rent decks or restricted cards for events.

[GrimoirePath]

Technically the loss a shop has on a card is what they bought it for, not what they might sell it for. EG, if SCG bought a Black Lotus for $1,000 many years ago, and they still have it but have been marking it up over time, then it is reprinted at a rarity where the value plummets to say, $500, then their loss is actually $500.

Individuals who have been playing and collecting since the 90's probably dont stand to actually lose much, as they have been holding power cards since they cost $100, and duals since they were $10.

Players like myself, who sold their power and duals waaaaaaay back when (96-97) to do things like go to college and live life and who bought back in when duals hit $100-$300 would stand to "lose" a bit of trade value, but would gain in that they would likely buy a lot more cards.

If they reprinted power, I would buy into vintage, something I cannot do now. I think every Legacy player probably would. I think the "losses" shops would take would quickly be made up by new sales.

[Zooligan]

I wish I could sign against this malarkey.

The reserve list is a key to the health of the game. I'm am well aware of the other perspectives. I always listen to those who come to different conclusions than me. In the end, there are a few people that, apparently, have the cards that want reprints and a gigantic cohort that wants to get what others have without paying fair value for it. Stupid points get made about how Beta Birds of paradise are still valueable. The people making those stupid points know how stupid the points are, but lots of stupid comments tend to drown out well thought out counterpoint.

Hahahaha! I am Quite Certain the game would remain healthy without the RL. The eternal formats would actually grow which would increase the health of the game.

[Cartesian]

Its simply not going to happen though. Wizards has to work with gamestores, and those happen to have a lot of money invested in reserved list staples typically.

Looking at SCG stock, they have 10 Black Lotus in stock, from 6.999$ to 17.999$. Surely they wouldn't mind taking a 100k$ loss on only that stock, right?

Not going to happen.
Perfectly sound reasoning, except that SCG stated on several occasions that they would like to see the reprint policy revised, and the RL abolished specifically.

[ramanujan]

Perfectly sound reasoning, except that SCG stated on several occasions that they would like to see the reprint policy revised, and the RL abolished specifically.

I am so glad that what SCG says publicly is what they actually want privately. I'm sure they are not trying to establish good public relations with those statements.

The player base for MTG is late teens to late 20s men who want to win, don't have a lot of money, and have expectations that they deserve a chance to play any deck. It would be a PR blunder for SCG to say anything against that cohort, even if it is nonsensical. SCG wants tons of reprints, no homework, and free beer for everybody at pro tours. Hurray SCG. There are lines, read between them.

[MaximumC]

How is this topic still around? I thought it was already clear that its two camps here: The ones who want the old formats to be played for a price which makes MTG comparable to other hobbies versus the ones who put tenthousands of dollars into speculation items hoping to make easy money over time with no work required at all. This will go down like PucaTrade and MTGO with a few people paying the bill once the market crashes or they cant get their money out

No, that's not true at all.

There's also the camp who believes that it should be significantly cheaper to buy into a competitive deck (not necessarily ALL competitive decks) in any format but also respects the fact that the Reserve List is not going anywhere. This camp wants more reprints of cards they CAN reprint, which they are doing, and new cards that compete with or replace old Reserve List cards, which they are also doing.

This is my camp, and it's winning.

[ramanujan]

No, that's not true at all.

There's also the camp who believes that it should be significantly cheaper to buy into a competitive deck (not necessarily ALL competitive decks) in any format but also respects the fact that the Reserve List is not going anywhere. This camp wants more reprints of cards they CAN reprint, which they are doing, and new cards that compete with or replace old Reserve List cards, which they are also doing.

This is my camp, and it's winning.

They have been very transparent that they will do this. You are correct that your camp is winning. Good points from you.

[Lemnear]

No, that's not true at all.

There's also the camp who believes that it should be significantly cheaper to buy into a competitive deck (not necessarily ALL competitive decks) in any format but also respects the fact that the Reserve List is not going anywhere. This camp wants more reprints of cards they CAN reprint, which they are doing, and new cards that compete with or replace old Reserve List cards, which they are also doing.

This is my camp, and it's winning.

Trump also won, despite the chosen option being shit. Just saying

People can dance around their reprinted cards and call it a success if Might of Old Krosa drops from 9$ to 5$, which is still pointless if RL cards keep climbing and single format staples cost as much as a video game. How can anyone sane argue that the reprinting of Goyf as a mythic made the card more affordable in the context of the average hobby costs and the age of the kids they want to drag into the game?

[TsumiBand]

I still don't understand the argument of the intent behind the Reprint Policy, it doesn't seem to line up with what we already observe about collectible items. Anything that is collectible is so simply because people decide it is, and its "limited edition"-ness is always just a product of time. There can be no new Stradivarius violins, not because they are necessarily superior in demonstrable ways but because it is no longer 1690. The first issue of Superman is worth a couple million dollars USD but it has seen print in varied media since then; however, the *collectible* Action Comics cannot be reproduced as it is no longer 1939. Even recently produced items that can be massively redistributed -- say, a highly popular SNES title like Secret of Mana -- all the parts that matter for the purpose of experiencing the game can be downloaded for free onto a computer that could even cost less than the asking price for a cartridge in good condition. Collectibility is an arbitration; all it would require would be to recognize that there are simply no means of producing brand new Beta dual lands that were printed in the time they were created, on the very card stock they were printed on, and the items themselves retain their value simply because of their status as being "The Originals"; a modern collectors' item in a relatively new gaming landscape. They're a literal piece of history whose value goes beyond their role in the game of Magic, again using the examples from above as proof that functional replacements do not necessarily subjugate their value.

Having said all that, this petition is one of several dozen over many years and is going nowhere fast, but thanks for playing

[Lord Seth]

If I thought this would have any influence whatsoever I would make a counter-petition.

Its simply not going to happen though. Wizards has to work with gamestores, and those happen to have a lot of money invested in reserved list staples typically.
This is a claim often made but it doesn't really make much sense. Game stores are, as people might realize, stores. That means they sell things. Their singles are liquid assets that are constantly being sold. If a store buys a card, they mean to sell it sometime in the near future, so a decrease in a card's value is not particularly harmful, particularly considering the buy price is lower than the sell price. What I mean is, suppose they buy a card for $7.5 and mean to sell it for $10. However, price reductions mean they have to sell it for $8 instead. Guess what? They still make a profit!

Providing a good amount of proof for this is Standard cards. Standard cards always decrease in price as the rotation time approaches. Somehow, this decrease is not harming stores horribly.


Looking at SCG stock, they have 10 Black Lotus in stock, from 6.999$ to 17.999$. Surely they wouldn't mind taking a 100k$ loss on only that stock, right?

Not going to happen.
You're right it's not going to happen. Because it wouldn't happen even if the Reserved List were abolished.

First, you seem to be under the weird impression that the removal of the Reserved List means the cards on it are suddenly worthless. That's nonsensical. The Reserved List being removed means just that they can reprint the cards. It doesn't mean the cards will be be reprinted to such an extent that their price will spontaneously crash.; Tarmogoyf isn't on the Reserved List, how much has its price crashed as a result of its reprints? Even reprints that did more noticeably decrease the price (shocklands, fetchlands, Thoughtseize) still left the originals with a decent value.

Second, you ignore the fact that the price they are selling it for is not what they purchased it for. Even if all of their Black Lotuses became 100% worthless, they wouldn't lose the amount they were selling it for; they'd lose the amount they bought it for.

Third, and most importantly, it would be impossible to make those Black Lotuses worthless by reprints, because the reprints don't retain the uniqueness of the originals. You could reprint them to the point that they're functionally free and the originals would still be worth a lot of money. Want proof? Okay, how much does it cost to get a basic land? Nothing. You can easily get them for free. Want to know how much Summer Magic basic lands or Guru lands cost? Hundreds of dollars.

Removing the Reserved List does not mean a sudden massive reprint for the cards on it. And even if it did, it wouldn't mean Star City Games (or other stores) would lose as much as you claim they would because you're operating by their sell prices. But even if it was their sell prices, the originals would still retain some value no matter how much you flooded the market with reprints. So your claim that removal of the Reserved List would cost them all that money doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

[wcm8]

I used to be all for removing the Reserved List when I was younger.

My perspective has changed a lot as I've grown older.

If you want to play MtG for free, cockatrice and other similar online programs are simple to use and have a fairly large user base. You can find people to play Legacy, Vintage and other random formats at all hours of the day.

If you want to play MtG with automated rules enforcement and tournament structure at a lower price, there's MODO. It's still fairly expensive, but not nearly as much as paper.

Part of the appeal of playing paper MtG for older formats is the high value and collectibility of the decks. Legacy and Vintage simply wouldn't be quite the same without it -- for far too many reasons to list and have been discussed Ad Nauseam.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Part of the appeal of playing paper MtG for older formats is the high value and collectibility of the decks. Legacy and Vintage simply wouldn't be quite the same without it -- for far too many reasons to list and have been discussed Ad Nauseam.

No, frankly, they haven't. Short of frank elitism and not wanting more people to play the format and for it to grow (for whatever reason), there is nothing about the reserved list that is good for the long term health of legacy as a sanctioned format.

[wcm8]

Want proof? Okay, how much does it cost to get a basic land? Nothing. You can easily get them for free. Want to know how much Summer Magic basic lands or Guru lands cost? Hundreds of dollars.

False equivalency; a beat up Revised/Unlimited card isn't really considered "pimp", and the majority of players would be happy to pick up a cheaper reprint regardless of the art or framing. I get the point you're trying to make, and you're absolutely right in the sense of Alpha/Beta and maybe FBB cards maintaining their inflated values, but reprints would significantly tank the value of Revised Duals and/or Unlimited Power.

[Lemnear]

No, frankly, they haven't. Short of frank elitism and not wanting more people to play the format and for it to grow (for whatever reason), there is nothing about the reserved list that is good for the long term health of legacy as a sanctioned format.

This

[s&s]

No, frankly, they haven't. Short of frank elitism and not wanting more people to play the format and for it to grow (for whatever reason), there is nothing about the reserved list that is good for the long term health of legacy as a sanctioned format.

You do realize the people posting in this thread against the proposed change, are also players? Ignoring their opinion and labeling them as elitists is not a great way to grow the game.

Since that is the only argument that seems relevant to you, perhaps its not worth discussing further. Lets not mention things such as consumer confidence, how resellers and collectors would be affected, how WoTC would price / compose a set with reprints of 200$+ cards, .. derp.

[KZhang]

Here's my take on this:

TLDR: The Reserve List will be broken. It's only a matter of when, and to what extent.

Hasbro is a publicly traded company with shareholders. As a public company, they are judged almost purely on their earnings, which directly affects their stock price. Maintaining/Growing a company's stock price is one of the biggest KPIs for the board. The reason for this is alot of the debt a company usually incurs, utilizes its stock as collateral. When stock price dips too much, lenders can exercise margin calls, and create severe cashflow issues within the company.

One key factor affecting stock price is earnings, of which, MTG is a core pillar of. MTG has been registering tremendous growth in the past few years, but have recently started to saturate. i would argue - and this is purely my opinion, that the only reason growth has not stagnated faster is because of all the gimmicks they have been coming up with - Expeditions, Masterpiece, Modern Masters and Eternal Masters. Just consider the rate they are doing this as compared to previous times.

However, Magic fatigue is real. There is only so many products you can buy, before you start losing interest in the game. When this happens in a large enough scale, and we see earnings target being missed, or player base decreasing, that is when you will see them playing their ace in the hole - the reserve list.

The Reserve list is WOTC's/Hasbro get out of jail free card (or keep my job and high bonus). That by itself, would likely be able to reverse the trend, and immediately draw interest back into the game, and aid them in overachieving their earnings target for that fiscal year. Even if WOTC does not want to, there will be enough pressure from senior execs in Hasbro to make it happen - especially when earnings are suffering.

To manage public sentiment, there will be some sort of compromise - All cards from revised onwards are fair game for reprints. In this way, they keep the allure of Power 9 (which affects collectors the most), prices from Alpha & Beta are also unlikely to be affected due to scarcity and pimp factor. They will however be able to print duals, LEDs, etc, which will be more than sufficient in driving revenue. (at least this is how i would do it)

For those arguing that collectors will sue - sure. However, i cannot see how they amount they have to payout to these collectors will be even close to the revenue they can generate from reprinting duals. (that is even if the collectors have an actual case) - especially when the value of alpha beta cards will actually increase when such a reprinting occur.

The Reserve List is simply waiting for the rainy day to be cashed in.

[s&s]

Given the shift away from legacy and vintage at every level, its unreasonable to assume that WoTC has any such plans for the future.

"hai guys we stopped doing events and coverage for older formats, because we wanted to start reprinting those older formats so we can focus on them for financial gains"

Its not even part of their 10-year strategy, guaranteed.

[Lemnear]

You do realize the people posting in this thread against the proposed change, are also players? Ignoring their opinion and labeling them as elitists is not a great way to grow the game.

Since that is the only argument that seems relevant to you, perhaps its not worth discussing further. Lets not mention things such as consumer confidence, how resellers and collectors would be affected, how WoTC would price / compose a set with reprints of 200$+ cards, .. derp.

Did you even read your own post? We outlined ad Nauseam that the format can not grow with the RL and marginal reprints, so if people argue thst this game should be inaccessible, so no one can play, its absurd to credit them as "players caring for the format". Customer Confidence is a bullshit term and a synonym for "protecting the value of my collection" and has NOTHING to do with the fact that the format dies because no new player can pick up decks at the current prices. I have no idea what kind of wack perspective you have on economics claiming that current card values have ANY meaning for a reprint included into a set. If WotC reprints FoW at common in the next block, you would claim its still a 70$ card?

[s&s]

Did you even read your own post? We outlined ad Nauseam that the format can not grow with the RL and marginal reprints, so if people argue thst this game should be inaccessible, so no one can play, its absurd to credit them as "players caring for the format".

You seem blinded by rage.

I play legacy with a large group of players which all have collections. A lot of them would be very unhappy if the value of their collection tanked due to reprints.

So yes, I care about keeping those players active, so I don't want reprints.

I also want stores such as SCG being able to provide what they do, so ruining their main source of income is something I don't want either. They are not making big cash on selling closed product, since margins on that are relatively low given the competition. SCG site offers 39 boxes of Aether revolt at 79.99$ / each, which is less then the value of 1 power 9 card, of which they have dozens in stock.They have 64! Tundra for sale, just the revised ones are over 6.000$ in stock value.

GP Chiba had over 2.5k players, the whole "format is inacessible" is people that want but can't. How come 2K asians can pick up an inaccessible format of which the original cards were never even sold there?

Guess they spent money on it, lets not alienate them by wrecking their investment.

[Stan]

Did you even read your own post? We outlined ad Nauseam that the format can not grow with the RL and marginal reprints, so if people argue thst this game should be inaccessible, so no one can play, its absurd to credit them as "players caring for the format". Customer Confidence is a bullshit term and a synonym for "protecting the value of my collection" and has NOTHING to do with the fact that the format dies because no new player can pick up decks at the current prices. I have no idea what kind of wack perspective you have on economics claiming that current card values have ANY meaning for a reprint included into a set. If WotC reprints FoW at common in the next block, you would claim its still a 70$ card?

How many reserved list cards do you own? If you want to attract new players who are priced out, what's stopping you from selling your duals and LEDs to interested modern players at half their current market value? If you don't care about the loss of collection value such a policy shift would cause, put your money where your mouth is and sell off your own stuff on the cheap. I have no interest in seeing mine devalued.

[Lemnear]

You seem blinded by rage.

I play legacy with a large group of players which all have collections. A lot of them would be very unhappy if the value of their collection tanked due to reprints.

So yes, I care about keeping those players active, so I don't want reprints.

q.e.d.

"Customer Confidence " = " I don't want my collection (and those of my friends) to lose value"


How many reserved list cards do you own? If you want to attract new players who are priced out, what's stopping you from selling your duals and LEDs to interested modern players at half their current market value? If you don't care about the loss of collection value such a policy shift would cause, put your money where your mouth is and sell off your own stuff on the cheap. I have no interest in seeing mine devalued.

I sold what I don't need years ago and keep selling value stuff I get hands on. Nice strawman, dood. I am way ahead of you.

[Stan]

I sold what I don't need years ago and keep selling value stuff I get hands on. Nice strawman, dood. I am way ahead of you.

Sure. At which price do you sell that value stuff? Surely you do so well below market value, if you are so eager to keep the prices low so that new blood may enter the scene.

[Lemnear]

Sure. At which price do you sell that value stuff? Surely you do so well below market value, if you are so eager to keep the prices low so that new blood may enter the scene.

Usually 10% below TCG in the respective FB group. What do you want from me here? I do my part by returning cards into circulation unlike hoarders like you and while you drive up prices, you dare to still piss on my shoes?

[Stan]

Usually 10% below TCG in the respective FB group. What do you want from me here? I do my part by returning cards into circulation unlike hoarders like you and while you drive up prices, you dare to still piss on my shoes?

Why do you dare to call me a hoarder? You have no idea about the size or contents of my collection, primarily because I didn't share that information. So don't assume (you can finish that boring old joke yourself).

Abolishing that list would drive the prices of post-Revised cards, WB Revised stuff and Italian Dark and Legends staples down way more than 10%. The hit people would take on entire collections would be bigger than what you claim to take on an occasional sale.

[s&s]

Why do you dare to call me a hoarder? You have no idea about the size or contents of my collection, primarily because I didn't share that information. So don't assume (you can finish that boring old joke yourself).

Abolishing that list would drive the prices of post-Revised cards, WB Revised stuff and Italian Dark and Legends staples down way more than 10%. The hit people would take on entire collections would be bigger than what you claim to take on an occasional sale.

This guy just calls arguments he doesn't understand "bullshit", anyone that doesn't agree is "a hoarder" and that is pretty much the time to exit the discussion.

The entitlement issue is far to large to reason with.

There are people complaining that legacy is inaccessible, conveniently ignoring the succes of GP Chiba - but it goes beyond that; staples should be reprinted and cheap - so these guys can play at competitive level, because being able to play with proxies isn't good enough.

So, is it about being able to play the format, or is it about being able to play the format at the highest level without having to pay for it?

Its nr 2 without a doubt. Anyone that thinks WoTC is going to cater to such desires really needs to consider it again. Its not like FOW was reprinted as a common, now is it. Why wasn't it? /lament

[frogczar]

Wreck my investment. Please.

I want people to play with. You know, OTHER PLAYERS?

Right now, no one in my area (outside of a single old friend) plays Legacy. When I go to play on "Modern Mondays" at the LGS, there are only a handful of players who can even afford play that. This is a college town, there are tons of kids down for FNM, but none of them can afford to play even Modern let alone Legacy. Everyone I talk to about it says they'd _like_ to play Legacy but they just can't afford it.

While Standard has it's own problems with cost, it's not the same as asking someone to dump $2000 into a deck/cardpool to get started. The cost is upfront, but it's completely out of reach for these players. Not to mention, most of them don't have the nostalgia for these cards like the older players do. They don't have any attachment to slinging Hymn to Tourach or Force of Will. To them, they're just powerful cards. That's not enough of a draw for potentially new players who were likely BORN after those card were printed.

I'm sorry, but the format has to grow or it's just going to go the way of vintage and disappear.

End the Reserved List.

[kirkusjones]

Why does it seem like those most vocally opposed to the abolishment of the reserved list believe that we'll see Chronicles scale reprints? There has to be an intelligent compromise between "no reprints at all" and "print Black Lotus at common hurr durr".

As for the entitlement argument, those clinging to the reserved list should avoid throwing that around...just because you ~possibly~ bought in when prices were high doesn't mean you deserve to turn a profit or even recoup that money down the road. Artificial scarcity is the only thing that's keeping your "investment" safe, and that safety is not something to which any one should be entitled.

[Stan]

As for the entitlement argument, those clinging to the reserved list should avoid throwing that around...just because you ~possibly~ bought in when prices were high doesn't mean you deserve to turn a profit or even recoup that money down the road. Artificial scarcity is the only thing that's keeping your "investment" safe, and that safety is not something to which any one should be entitled.

Perhaps, but unlike what your side potentially brings to the table, your arguments don't scare them with the potential of lawsuits.

They made a promise, I spent money based on the contents of that promise, I expect it to be honoured. Plenty of folks like me who think the same, and plenty of large card dealers.

If you can't afford to play with the grown ups, there's always Standard. WotC would love you if you'd play that.

[GrimoirePath]

The "success of GP chiba" argument defies logic. Is the claim that all asians are poor, therefore if Legacy thrives there, it must be an accessible format? That's bonkers.

[kirkusjones]

I think it would be interesting to see how many of the individuals who want no changes to the reserved list recently bought in to Legacy (and thus would actually lose money from reprints) and how many bought in when reserved list staples were still more readily accessible.

"Legacy is for grown-ups, go play Standard" only reinforces the attitudes of elitism and entitlement from the "protect my investment" crowd, and contributes nothing of value to the conversation and to the growth of a format we all supposedly love.

[s&s]

The "success of GP chiba" argument defies logic. Is the claim that all asians are poor, therefore if Legacy thrives there, it must be an accessible format? That's bonkers.

No, the argument is that older editions were never even sold in Asia, so its not players from the good old days that still have their duals, its new players that have picked up the format. The format is accessible to them, despite all claims of how the format isn't so.

I do not appreciate racism being implied, we have the media for stuff like that.

[Nielsie]

I am all for demolishing the RL and I don't give a fuck about tanking my collection. In the end, I was lucky to buy a lot of cards when prices were still reasonable, it would be very wrong for me to "value" my "collection" at the current market prices because I only payed like a quarter of what it is worth now. Some people seem to forget that they actualy bought their Underground Sea's for $20 bucks a piece but now feel entitled to sell them at $300 a piece and not a cent less...

At the moment I live in Belgium and I am blessed that I can play Legacy, but at the end of this month I move to Bangkok. In Thailand there is no Legacy community because noone can afford RL cards. On the other hand, the biggest format is Modern and only after the first Modern Masters print. For Thais it was the first opportunity to finaly have access to older Modern staples. If they ever want to play Legacy, they need an Eternal Masters print with RL-stuff, it's never going to happen otherwise! Sadly enough for the Thais, some hoarders simply feel elite and entitled enough to sit on their collection, probably without even bothering to play, they just see mtg cards as stocks... !news flash! Mtg is a GAME...

(oh and it's not simply a matter of owning the money to buy the cards, it's also about getting them delivered to you. No sane person would ever buy a $300 Underground sea and take a gamble on the Thai postage service...)

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

You do realize the people posting in this thread against the proposed change, are also players? Ignoring their opinion and labeling them as elitists is not a great way to grow the game.

Since that is the only argument that seems relevant to you, perhaps its not worth discussing further. Lets not mention things such as consumer confidence, how resellers and collectors would be affected, how WoTC would price / compose a set with reprints of 200$+ cards, .. derp.

Never said to ignore them, I said that these arguments should actually be presented and not hand waived under smug condescension, as their seems to be little discernible benefit to the format, but thanks for pointing that out, I would have never actually guessed that people posting in a Magic: The Gathering forum for the format Legacy actually played Magic: The Gathering, once I'm done, I shall spend the rest of the evening pondering this fact until I sufficiently grok this fact

As for the other things, I'm not sure how reprints and ending the reserved list are hurting consumer confidence any more than standard bans and continued neglect and mismanagement of MTGO. Cards such as Imperial Seal (which is among the most valuable non reserved list card) and Tarmogoyf have been reprinted yet consumer confidence has yet to be seriously impacted, in fact, Modern Masters was one of the highest selling sets and it's accompanying GP one of the most attended in recent history. If WOTC were to compose a set of entirely $200 cards, sure that might, but when has WOTC done that, they've learned from Chronicles and likely aren't going to repeat that mistake (presumably, as that is why the reserved list came to be in the first place).

For that matter, I highly doubt stores would be seriously affected. Places like SCG make their money from standard staples due to them being cheaper to buy and sell, it's much easier for a store to sell 30 $100 Underground Seas than 10 $300 underground seas. In certain cases, this could actually help stores due to the increased attention and demand the formats affected by it would bring, foils for Onslaught fetches went up with Khans due to modern players wanting their set as an example.

[square_two]

I am all for demolishing the RL and I don't give a fuck about tanking my collection. In the end, I was lucky to buy a lot of cards when prices were still reasonable, it would be very wrong for me to "value" my "collection" at the current market prices because I only payed like a quarter of what it is worth now. Some people seem to forget that they actualy bought their Underground Sea's for $20 bucks a piece but now feel entitled to sell them at $300 a piece and not a cent less...

At the moment I live in Belgium and I am blessed that I can play Legacy, but at the end of this month I move to Bangkok. In Thailand there is no Legacy community because noone can afford RL cards. On the other hand, the biggest format is Modern and only after the first Modern Masters print. For Thais it was the first opportunity to finaly have access to older Modern staples. If they ever want to play Legacy, they need an Eternal Masters print with RL-stuff, it's never going to happen otherwise! Sadly enough for the Thais, some hoarders simply feel elite and entitled enough to sit on their collection, probably without even bothering to play, they just see mtg cards as stocks... !news flash! Mtg is a GAME...

You claim to have a collection, and you also seem to be annoyed at people who keep their collections...this confuses me. Are you actively working to undersell your current collection?

What about the people who DID buy their Underground Sea's at $300? Having a legacy collection doesn't automatically imply that someone is filthy rich and can afford to see that collection's value disappear. A non-insignificant portion of my current wealth is tied to my cards. I could live if it was gone, but I'd still be damaged immensely if so.

[MaximumC]

Technically the loss a shop has on a card is what they bought it for, not what they might sell it for. EG, if SCG bought a Black Lotus for $1,000 many years ago, and they still have it but have been marking it up over time, then it is reprinted at a rarity where the value plummets to say, $500, then their loss is actually $500.


That's not exactly right; there are other ways to do the accounting. If you've been tracking the value of your inventory over time, perhaps making financial decisions based on that, insuring it, loaning against it, etc, then a rise and fall in price while it sits in your hands can be more meaningful.

And, of course, the opportunity cost of having so much money tied up for so long can be huge. Every dealer I've spoken to prefers to be dealing in high volume, high turnover cards like Standard, Modern, or Frontier, and is less enthusiastic about very expensive older cards that can sit for years before a buyer comes along.

[Stan]

"Legacy is for grown-ups, go play Standard" only reinforces the attitudes of elitism and entitlement from the "protect my investment" crowd, and contributes nothing of value to the conversation and to the growth of a format we all supposedly love.

If that was meant to be an affront, it won't stick on me. Of course I'm elitist about my play experience. Part of the fun at eternal tournaments is that you're usually paired up against a somewhat older, mature opponent. I don't want my rare available gaming days to be ruined by teenagers and students.

I'm happy in the knowledge that this particular elitist's preferences are well protected by a WotC policy that appears to be more solid than a rock. I'm about to drop 575 euro on a German bb USea, I'd never do that if I'd believe there'd be the slightest risk of that investment tanking, or even worse, if they'd effectively tank and fall into the hands of punks with an attitude who'd never be able to afford them at their current value.

[s&s]

As long as people are involved as much as they are in this thread, legacy sure isn't dead. :laugh:

[TsumiBand]

As for the entitlement argument, those clinging to the reserved list should avoid throwing that around...just because you ~possibly~ bought in when prices were high doesn't mean you deserve to turn a profit or even recoup that money down the road. Artificial scarcity is the only thing that's keeping your "investment" safe, and that safety is not something to which any one should be entitled.

This.

The history of the Reprint Policy is entirely tied to the same fad-driven would-be investors that blew money on whatever the hot trend at the moment was; it was a post-Beanie Baby world that saw fit to take WotC to task over the insistence that a 'collectible card game' was, in fact, 'collectible' first and foremost, and that the items created would be necessarily scarce. Set rotation and the existence of the Pro Tour are directly derived from the company's policy on reprinting old power cards while also keeping the game relevant for longer than its initial flare of interest. The length of a Standard season wasn't decided accidentally; it was directly determined by examining the market trends behind fads and their market bubbles. They were shown to last about 18 mos to 2 years, because that's right about when people lose interest and sort of have that "what am I DOING with my LIFE" reality check and cash out of their fad, and if everyone does i at once then the market shifts and never recovers. And the only way they could make it make sense to *not* play with the older, broken cards was to say "Hey guys, play those old cards if you feel like it -- but man, if you wanna play like the PROS then you'll do what they're doing!" because what other possible incentive could there be in getting people to switch out dual lands for fucking Lava Tubes unless they literally could not choose to actually play with a Badlands due to some arbitrary restriction?

I just don't think at this point it even matters anymore, the emphasis on "playing like the pros" is visible in other similar card games that didn't have the problems MtG had early on. Look at Hearthstone, where their only real reason to introduce a Standard format was to nix power creep and prevent interest from waning. They don't have a secondary market within the game, so cards like Sylvanas and Dr. Boom always cost 1600 Dust to just acquire without opening the packs of the sets they're in. So they introduce Standard, and immediately people go 'fuck Wild. Wild is stupid because it isn't what the pros play.' They do this in spite of Team 5 trying to say "nononono you GUYS look you can still play Mech Mage and Secret Paladin and shit" and they just can't get anyone to pay any attention, or if they do they just roll up with a Standard deck because they liquidated their old cards already - just because they aren't in Standard anymore. The whole idea of keeping up with the Pros is a self-sustaining motive at this point, and I think this is a fair pointer to suggest that the Reprint Policy is no longer needed as a means to keep the game alive past its own initial success.

[UnderwaterGuy]

If that was meant to be an affront, it won't stick on me. Of course I'm elitist about my play experience. Part of the fun at eternal tournaments is that you're usually paired up against a somewhat older, mature opponent. I don't want my rare available gaming days to be ruined by teenagers and students.

I'm happy in the knowledge that this particular elitist's preferences are well protected by a WotC policy that appears to be more solid than a rock. I'm about to drop 575 euro on a German bb USea, I'd never do that if I'd believe there'd be the slightest risk of that investment tanking, or even worse, if they'd effectively tank and fall into the hands of punks with an attitude who'd never be able to afford them at their current value.

+1
It may be rude to say but there is a benefit to playing a game where decks cost over $1000. It keeps a lot of casuals out and it means that the people playing are likely more invested in the game (in multiple ways). There is definitely a limit and I would be frustrated if cards became so expensive that I couldn't afford them at all but I don't want the Standard audience to suddenly play Legacy.

The eternal formats are better off being a fringe part of the game where the most enthusiastic players can access it. If Legacy was the most played format then we'd would be subject to more bannings and stricter control from wotc. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they applied the NWO tactics to Legacy at that point and that would ruin the format. We don't need wotc's close attention and we don't need to be their primary audience.

It looks like the RL is here to stay, at least until Hasbro is in big trouble and might do something dramatic. I think petitioning for Snow-Covered Tundra, etc, would make more sense than petitioning to remove the reserve list.

[Lemnear]

What about the people who DID buy their Underground Sea's at $300? Having a legacy collection doesn't automatically imply that someone is filthy rich and can afford to see that collection's value disappear.

Of you mindlessly drop 300$ on card board and thousands for a deck, you either don't have ANY financial problems or are dumb as fuck

[Quasim0ff]

Of you mindlessly drop 300$ on card board and thousands for a deck, you either don't have ANY financial problems or are dumb as fuck

What a stupid post. Perhaps you're working and bought into it in a slow pace...?

[Richard Cheese]

If you don't want to hang out around teenagers and casuals, join a country club.

The problem with 80% of the Legacy player base being people that picked up the game two decades ago is that now all us old farts are getting married and starting families and buying houses so Magic just isn't as much of a priority as it used to be. Like it or not, the format needs a constant influx of new blood to stay healthy. Not that WotC needs to start making Legacy precons or anything, but I think there's a comfortable middle ground out there between "filthy casul" and billionaire's club.

A decade ago duals were still $40-80, Tabernacle was $300, niche Legends rares like Nether Void, Abyss, and Chains were around $100, 50-75 for Italian. It still wasn't exactly a cheap format to break into, but it was at least feasible for anyone with a decent job. It seemed to attract a lot of guys in their early to mid 20s with careers in STEM fields. I certainly didn't feel like the format was dominated by "teenagers and students", and it was a hell of a lot more approachable than it is now. Modern is certainly partially to blame for that, but it seems like WotC is finally starting to find their groove with managing costs for that format. It also felt like people were more open to brewing and experimentation, but that might just have been the lack of regular, large events and coverage.

[Stan]

Of you mindlessly drop 300$ on card board and thousands for a deck, you either don't have ANY financial problems or are dumb as fuck

So every current Legacy player who got his stuff later than the beginning of the century is either a rich bastard or a dumb asshole?

[ScottW]

No. Welcome to Legacy. Glad you invested in such a fun game. :smile:

[H]

So every current Legacy player who got his stuff later than the beginning of the century is either a rich bastard or a dumb asshole?

Those aren't mutually exclusive, we can be both. :cool:

[Ace/Homebrew]

So every current Legacy player who got his stuff later than the beginning of the century is either a rich bastard or a dumb asshole?
I don't think it has to be binary... I'm sure some of those Legacy players are dim-witted with too much money. :tongue:


Edit - Blast you H! You'll rue the day!!!
https://media.tenor.co/images/3a749e5b077fd089b38d71c15bdda6ab/raw

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

If you don't want to hang out around teenagers and casuals, join a country club.

Yeah but who wants hang around a bunch of stuffy old farts all day :^)

[Stan]

Laugh if you want, or foam at the mouth if you must, but the Reserved List is here to stay. :)

[Lemnear]

What a stupid post. Perhaps you're working and bought into it in a slow pace...?

How does that work out? Buy a deck over a 10 month period?


So every current Legacy player who got his stuff later than the beginning of the century is either a rich bastard or a dumb asshole?

You dont need to go back that far. German FBB U.Seas were 70-80€ in 2008. I cant pinpoint the moment the wheel started spinning, but its not even a decade ago. If one is able to simply buy into a topend Legacy deck within the last, say 7 years, I think its one of the cases named

[UnderwaterGuy]

How does that work out? Buy a deck over a 10 month period?



You dont need to go back that far. German FBB U.Seas were 70-80€ in 2008. I cant pinpoint the moment the wheel started spinning, but its not even a decade ago. If one is able to simply buy into a topend Legacy deck within the last, say 7 years, I think its one of the cases named


Geez. You want more people to play the game but everyone that has joined in the past 7 years is rich and/or an idiot. Ok :really:

I'd say that most people I know that play Legacy or Vintage took months to build their decks. I did it myself years ago too by buying some fetches, duals, FoW, etc as I could until I could build some complete decks. How can you call new Legacy players rich bastards while also balking at the idea of a budget and assuming everyone has a couple grand ready to spend on a deck in one purchase?

[CutthroatCasual]

Hrm, other TCGs Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh are still really popular with no Reserved List. It's almost as if a Reserved List isn't key to the health of the game.


If you look at the player demographics for those games, you'll notice that their playerbases are largely younger (pre-teens, teens, early 20's), no doubt because the cost is much cheaper than MTG (a top YGO "Standard" deck would run you maybe $150-200, whereas in MTG you can expect to pay no less than $300). With younger age comes more immaturity and degeneracy. You think MTG theft is bad? Just look at YGO theft, even for $10 cards. So while play of the game is vast, the quality of the community suffers.


That's the whole issue with petitions. It's a squeaky wheel that has no other squeak unless you specifically go make one. In other words, it's a one-sided showing of support; making it look unanimous. It's not a representative sample of anything until it encompasses sizes that are significant.

Additionally; the majority of people who want it abolished don't stand to lose from it. I'd prefer not to lose $1000's of potential resale just because it was badly timed. I know many who own the staples disagree, but that's their perogative. They can throw away money if they want, be valiant and sacrificial with your own stuff.

You can sell your stuff for low prices now and BAM you'll introduce new players to legacy. But you won't. You want to sacrifice *other people's money and investment* to meet your own ends. Well to that I say Screw Off.

[Note: This post exists for the same reason the petition does.]

Hear, hear!


Hahahaha! I am Quite Certain the game would remain healthy without the RL. The eternal formats would actually grow which would increase the health of the game.

I'm weary of such growth, and as should you. Sure, we all want more players in this amazing format, myself included. But when you start letting the less-mature players, who are not coincidentally also the ones with much lower levels of disposable income (mostly because of age group and lack of an established career/job), you get the shitshow community you see in Modern, where there's incessant complaining about how WotC does too much, how WotC doesn't do enough, how $30 for a card is still too much money, how the most recent GP-winning deck is bad for the format and needs a nerf/ban, how the format is defined by [x] archetype, etc. Yea, we get those shitposts here, too, but to a far less degree because we know that's just how this format has been and will continue to be. And we're (most of us, anyway) fine with that because we play the format for the love of the game, not to win top prizes or bragging rights.


Usually 10% below TCG in the respective FB group. What do you want from me here? I do my part by returning cards into circulation unlike hoarders like you and while you drive up prices, you dare to still piss on my shoes?

10% below TCG Low is par for the course on FB groups, so I fail to see how you're the "good guy" in this situation. If cards really have no value to you, why don't you sell that green Gearhulk for $5 instead of the $15 you could otherwise get?


Of you mindlessly drop 300$ on card board and thousands for a deck, you either don't have ANY financial problems or are dumb as fuck

Anecdote: I may be in a financially comfortable position to spend as much money as I did on my collection, but I would be lying if I said that even a 40% decrease in value wouldn't be felt strongly. Like another poster mentioned earlier, one of the biggest reasons I got out of Modern and bought into Legacy was because of the RL promised that I didn't need to worry about reprints tanking the value of the cards. It's one thing when the $80 Scalding Tarn falls to $40 and lower; that's expected and I can live with that because it's not on the RL so I expect it to be reprinted eventually. It's another to have a $600 FBB Volc fall to $200 (or even less) due to a reprint when WotC's RL policy has told me that I could shell out $600 with peace of mind.


How does that work out? Buy a deck over a 10 month period?


It's called saving up. Maybe you should look into it sometime.

[s&s]

The problem with 80% of the Legacy player base being people that picked up the game two decades ago is that now all us old farts are getting married and starting families and buying houses so Magic just isn't as much of a priority as it used to be. Like it or not, the format needs a constant influx of new blood to stay healthy. Not that WotC needs to start making Legacy precons or anything, but I think there's a comfortable middle ground out there between "filthy casul" and billionaire's club.

2k asians playing a GP seems like "new blood" to me.

[Stan]

If you don't want to hang out around teenagers and casuals, join a country club.

The problem with 80% of the Legacy player base being people that picked up the game two decades ago is that now all us old farts are getting married and starting families and buying houses so Magic just isn't as much of a priority as it used to be. Like it or not, the format needs a constant influx of new blood to stay healthy.

And it will get it. I'm 37 now, I doubt my lifestyle will permit me to get much older than 70, so the day I'll drop dead from an overdose of fried meat or whatever, my son will inherit a collection which, except for the absence of Cradles, Tabernacles, Bazaars and Workshops, will allow him to play most Legacy, Vintage and Old School (you should really try that format!) decks you can think of. Our generation will die off and younger men will get the cards, don't you worry.

[TsumiBand]

Yeah I'm seeing a ton of that "money and age increase the odds of maturity" playing out right in front of my eyes. Not sure what I expected from one of the biggest shitpost magnets this side of the Brainstorm ban

I'm sure I'll get my post deleted but honest to god, seeing the way people take sides and spiral down into ad hominem and smug bullshittery whenever one of these hot button issues comes up is just so goddamn disenchanting. I know I know, welcome to the internet, if you can't handle it leave, blah blah blah, I just don't get how anyone can espouse any kind of moral or economical high ground on either side of the issue when you're willing to just spout swill. I wish the hell people could stick to facts instead of rhetorical face-bashing, but nah, rather just be smug pricks and end posts with a :) and be calmer 'n you are. Don't ever actually fix anything, that'd be stupid

[Stan]

Yeah I'm seeing a ton of that "money and age increase the odds of maturity" playing out right in front of my eyes. Not sure what I expected from one of the biggest shitpost magnets this side of the Brainstorm ban

I'm sure I'll get my post deleted but honest to god, seeing the way people take sides and spiral down into ad hominem and smug bullshittery whenever one of these hot button issues comes up is just so goddamn disenchanting. I know I know, welcome to the internet, if you can't handle it leave, blah blah blah, I just don't get how anyone can espouse any kind of moral or economical high ground on either side of the issue when you're willing to just spout swill. I wish the hell people could stick to facts instead of rhetorical face-bashing, but nah, rather just be smug pricks and end posts with a :) and be calmer 'n you are. Don't ever actually fix anything, that'd be stupid


Sure, let's stick to the only fact that matters here. That list ain't going nowhere my friend. That much should have been clear to anybody for at least a decade now.

[CutthroatCasual]

Yeah I'm seeing a ton of that "money and age increase the odds of maturity" playing out right in front of my eyes. Not sure what I expected from one of the biggest shitpost magnets this side of the Brainstorm ban

I'm sure I'll get my post deleted but honest to god, seeing the way people take sides and spiral down into ad hominem and smug bullshittery whenever one of these hot button issues comes up is just so goddamn disenchanting. I know I know, welcome to the internet, if you can't handle it leave, blah blah blah, I just don't get how anyone can espouse any kind of moral or economical high ground on either side of the issue when you're willing to just spout swill. I wish the hell people could stick to facts instead of rhetorical face-bashing, but nah, rather just be smug pricks and end posts with a :) and be calmer 'n you are. Don't ever actually fix anything, that'd be stupid

You want facts then look up any Modern discussion on any of the other MTG websites. That's what will happen to Legacy if it becomes as cheap as Modern. People will always bitch about something. We have enough of that already, we don't need more.

[TsumiBand]

Sure, let's stick to the only fact that matters here. That list ain't going nowhere my friend. That much should have been clear to anybody for at least a decade now.

It won't go anywhere if it can be proven to still serve its purpose, but I think there's enough evidence from other CCGs and the nature of collectibles in general to prove its outlived its usefulness. ABRU cards are collectible now because they are, a later print run probably isn't going to affect that anymore than the numerous instances we've seen of other artifacts (IRL artifacts) being remade or even functionally supplanted, and yet the unique or particular articles fetch a staggering price. I mentioned Stradivarius earlier; like a sommelier that entirely whiffs on a mouthful of box wine in between genuine vintages, such instruments can be tested by blindfold on their physical and auditory properties and be found indistinguishable from their modern counterparts. Science has gone out of its way to find a reason, and apart from a slight increase in density of the woods there really isn't anything going for the older instruments. Yet still, because the human animal prefers the Stradivari, it fetches half a million dollars.

In the same vein as the above sentiment -- I genuinely think the worthiest ABRU cards are no longer under any threat of being devalued for their place in the history of this brand of playing card games. A functional reprint can only succeed them in their ability to be played, but the genuine articles have a value which the game can no longer influence under necessity of playability.

[Richard Cheese]

And it will get it. I'm 37 now, I doubt my lifestyle will permit me to get much older than 70, so the day I'll drop dead from an overdose of fried meat or whatever, my son will inherit a collection which, except for the absence of Cradles, Tabernacles, Bazaars and Workshops, will allow him to play most Legacy, Vintage and Old School (you should really try that format!) decks you can think of. Our generation will die off and younger men will get the cards, don't you worry.

So your answer to getting new (to Legacy) players into the format is to wait 30-70 years for their parents to die or pass on their collections? Please tell me you aren't serious.

[TsumiBand]

So your answer to getting new (to Legacy) players into the format is to wait 30-70 years for their parents to die or pass on their collections? Please tell me you aren't serious.

Magic: the Trickledowning

[H]

The real fact is that the List isn't going anywhere, regardless of what our opinion of it is.

Only Wizard's opinion of it matter and since they have consistently said it will stay, it will stay until they change their minds. Petitions won't do that, they already know our opinions as players. What will it take? Money.

Money talks, nobody walks. I've said it many times and will keep saying it, Standard's failing is Eternal's salvation. Hey, look, Standard didn't do well last year, what do we have here? The best value Modern Masters since the first, but with an even better print run. Must just be a coincidence, :wink:

(Had to get that smile in there for you, TB.)

If it comes down to it, Wizards going out of business or breaking the RL, which do you think gives? Now, something that dramatic probably isn't really going to happen, but it's the essence of the question that is important. When it comes down to the proverbial wire, you'll see something done. Whether the game even exists to play at that point is a totally different story. Fact is, things are "good" as they are right now, they aren't going to mess with that.

[UnderwaterGuy]

I wish the hell people could stick to facts instead of rhetorical face-bashing, but nah, rather just be smug pricks and end posts with a :) and be calmer 'n you are. Don't ever actually fix anything, that'd be stupid

We're just fans of the game bullshitting on a fan forum about a very subjective topic. You're correct in identifying that but we don't have the ability to actually fix anything. Only wotc/Hasbro will actually determine the fate of the reserved list.

[Richard Cheese]

2k asians playing a GP seems like "new blood" to me.

Agreed, GP attendance is (slowly) trending up and I think that's fairly promising. It will be interesting to see where it goes with the loss of SCG Opens and the new combined GPs. I'm also not sure how (if at all) GP attendance translates to local event attendance. I'm also not enough of a stats/math nerd to know if a linear trendline is even worth looking at.

[TsumiBand]

Agreed, GP attendance is (slowly) trending up and I think that's fairly promising. It will be interesting to see where it goes with the loss of SCG Opens and the new combined GPs. I'm also not sure how (if at all) GP attendance translates to local event attendance. I'm also not enough of a stats/math nerd to know if a linear trendline is even worth looking at.

Is it meaningful attendance, or is it people showing up with Modern decks that have, like, a dual and two Forces in it?

I mean, a bunch of people could be showing out for Legacy, but that doesn't mean their decks are as "Legacy-ified" as they could be, right? I took Onslaught Block Goblins to a Vintage tournament once, I don't think it meant that the 10 proxy rule was working. (i didn't proxy anything and i took out my worst goblins for lightning bolt. also i came in second after beating fucking trix)

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

GP attendance as a whole has been trending upwards I believe, which is why entry fees are stupid high now.

[Stan]

So your answer to getting new (to Legacy) players into the format is to wait 30-70 years for their parents to die or pass on their collections? Please tell me you aren't serious.

He can borrow my cards before that. No biggie.

[Darkenslight]

This guy just calls arguments he doesn't understand "bullshit", anyone that doesn't agree is "a hoarder" and that is pretty much the time to exit the discussion.

The entitlement issue is far to large to reason with.

There are people complaining that legacy is inaccessible, conveniently ignoring the succes of GP Chiba - but it goes beyond that; staples should be reprinted and cheap - so these guys can play at competitive level, because being able to play with proxies isn't good enough.

So, is it about being able to play the format, or is it about being able to play the format at the highest level without having to pay for it?

Its nr 2 without a doubt. Anyone that thinks WoTC is going to cater to such desires really needs to consider it again. Its not like FOW was reprinted as a common, now is it. Why wasn't it? /lament

See, I was going to stay out of this, but then I read this. Then I started thinking about what this argument really means. And to me, that argument sounds a lot like a, "Screw you, I got mine!" argument. That makes rational sense from an economic standpoint ('I don't want my property to be devalued') but not necessarily from a gaming standpoint. That's why it looks like you and Stan, and Lemnear in particular, are being so hostile to one another - because you're largely talking cross-ways at one another.

The rate at which EMA sold out speaks to a demand that is there, but a lack of supply means that epople are going to look for value elsewhere. That means looking for cheap and cheerful ways of obtaining the RL cards. That ties in to another subset of this debate - the possibility that it encourages the use of counterfeit cards, especially those high-value cards, like the duals and the Power 9.

So here's a question I'll ask you - in your opinion, would it be better to have those cards you and your friends own devalued more because the counterfeits had gotten good enough, or would you prefer devaluing through an EMA-style reprint set-up? As a follow up, what would your recoomendations be if it were announced that the RL was going to be changed to be less stringent (for example, only white-bordered versions in the new frame of RL cards? Would that affect your decision?

[Richard Cheese]

He can borrow my cards before that. No biggie.

I'm assuming you don't let him play eternal formats though, or will at least be waiting until he's in his 20s. Wouldn't want to ruin an older gentleman's rare available gaming day with your immature teenager.

[Lemnear]

Geez. You want more people to play the game but everyone that has joined in the past 7 years is rich and/or an idiot. Ok :really:

I'd say that most people I know that play Legacy or Vintage took months to build their decks. I did it myself years ago too by buying some fetches, duals, FoW, etc as I could until I could build some complete decks. How can you call new Legacy players rich bastards while also balking at the idea of a budget and assuming everyone has a couple grand ready to spend on a deck in one purchase?

You are twisting my words. I literally said that a young and large audience the format/game needs won't be attracted with the current prices. The official player numbers are stagnant, Legacy events get less worldwide as an indicator of the named problem. If despite the ridiculous price spiral still some people in their mid 20s think its a smart move to pay 200$ for Tarmogoyfs and consider it a safe INVESTMENT, then those people are stupid. If you can pay your rent, student debt, food, insirance, car, etc and still can drop those 200$ for Tarmogoyf, then you are "rich".

Dood, just go into a LGS, grab one of the 14y old Kids and tell them to accumulate money and cards for a deck like Miracles and try to convince him/her that its fun/desirable to collect cards for months until you can actually play the format. Will sure be VERY successful.


So your answer to getting new (to Legacy) players into the format is to wait 30-70 years for their parents to die or pass on their collections? Please tell me you aren't serious.

I believe he is Richard. Would fit the previous posts logic

[MaximumC]

Sure, let's stick to the only fact that matters here. That list ain't going nowhere my friend. That much should have been clear to anybody for at least a decade now.

Dingdingdingdingding.

Which is why we need to put our efforts behind voting with our dollars and comments and internet petitions for Wizards to print cards that replace or are exclusive with Reserve List cards. That grows the format, helps the cost of entry, and doesn't require Wizards to say "OK we will allow people to maybe sue us because THE INTERNET wants Mox Sapphire to be cheaper."

[Stan]

So here's a question I'll ask you - in your opinion, would it be better to have those cards you and your friends own devalued more because the counterfeits had gotten good enough, or would you prefer devaluing through an EMA-style reprint set-up? As a follow up, what would your recoomendations be if it were announced that the RL was going to be changed to be less stringent (for example, only white-bordered versions in the new frame of RL cards? Would that affect your decision?


What would be almost acceptable to me would be the snow/lair/whatever duals solution, the printing of a legendary the Abyss/Moat, that stuff. I would be pissed off, but not to the point of ragequitting, if they did that, and would probably suck it up after a week or two of bitching about it on this forum. But no literal reprints of any kind of RL stuff.

[Lemnear]

Dingdingdingdingding.

Which is why we need to put our efforts behind voting with our dollars and comments and internet petitions for Wizards to print cards that replace or are exclusive with Reserve List cards. That grows the format, helps the cost of entry, and doesn't require Wizards to say "OK we will allow people to maybe sue us because THE INTERNET wants Mox Sapphire to be cheaper."

Except they don't. I admit that they try hard to devalue Fetchlands, but that doesn't help most Vintage & Legacy decks much. Moving Rare cards like Snapcaster or Tarmogoyf to Mythic does neither.

I mean, whoever does not see the madness in 2 Tarmogoyfs costing as much as a PS4 + Games, lost touch with money and whoever thinks that todays 14yo Kids would prefer to aquire 2 Tarmogoyfs (but being unable to play due to the lack of other 73 cards) instead of a gaming console, lost touch with the real world.

WotC needs to make the game accessible and attractive for young, new players or it dies. Keeping Tarmogoyf "stable" at 200$ with marginal reprints is a joke in that regards


What would be almost acceptable to me would be the snow/lair/whatever duals solution, the printing of a legendary the Abyss/Moat, that stuff. I would be pissed off, but not to the point of ragequitting, if they did that, and would probably suck it up after a week or two of bitching about it on this forum. But no literal reprints of any kind of RL stuff.

If they print snow duals the ABRU ones would drop in price and we would be back to you and your friends being pissed.

[UnderwaterGuy]

Tarmogoyf costs much closer to $100 than $200 and his consistent hovering around $100 despite reprints is evidence that wotc isn't just going to make expensive cards cheap, even if they are on the RL.

Liliana of the Veil, Goyf, JTMS, FoW, etc all could be included in precons and have their prices lowered if wotc thought that the game was in trouble because of how expensive it is. They haven't done that though because they don't agree that the game needs to be much cheaper.

Wasteland seems to be an exception to this but Tarmogoyf has been really stable and wotc will not tank his price even though they could. They don't want to tank card prices and the RL is not the reason.

[kirkusjones]

For the record, I'm all in favor of stuff like snow duals. Anything that opens up the format to an increase in players is all right with me. To be fair, I am also in favor of abolishing the RL in favor of a more sensible (not Chronicles style) reprint policy.

[Lord Seth]

Legacy and Vintage simply wouldn't be quite the same without it -- for far too many reasons to list and have been discussed Ad Nauseam.
I agree they would be quite different! Instead of being dead (Vintage) and dying (Legacy), they'd actually be popular!


False equivalency; a beat up Revised/Unlimited card isn't really considered "pimp", and the majority of players would be happy to pick up a cheaper reprint regardless of the art or framing.
The older ones, even the Revised/Unlimited versions, still have a prestige to them modern printings don't.


I get the point you're trying to make, and you're absolutely right in the sense of Alpha/Beta and maybe FBB cards maintaining their inflated values, but reprints would significantly tank the value of Revised Duals and/or Unlimited Power.
This is ignoring the previous points I made. What I was talking about at the end was about how even if they mass reprinted Black Lotuses so much that the new versions were free to get, the originals would still retain considerable value, even the Unlimited versions. However, they're not going to mass reprint Black Lotuses and dual lands to that degree to begin with. It's just showing how silly the claim about Star City Games "losing $100,000" was, because there were multiple layers to how silly that claim was.


There are people complaining that legacy is inaccessible, conveniently ignoring the succes of GP Chiba
People often like to point to large numbers for Legacy Grand Prix as proof the format is still popular, sort of forgetting that there are a lot fewer Legacy Grand Prix. If people have one or two chances a year to play in a Legacy Grand Prix, you're far more likely to attend a nearby Grand Prix.


Its not like FOW was reprinted as a common, now is it. Why wasn't it? /lament
Because the card was absurdly good in Eternal Masters Limited.

Okay, obviously there were other reasons. But one can actually justify it being a mythic rare solely on the basis of Limited (unlike, say, Tarmogoyf).


How many reserved list cards do you own? If you want to attract new players who are priced out, what's stopping you from selling your duals and LEDs to interested modern players at half their current market value? If you don't care about the loss of collection value such a policy shift would cause, put your money where your mouth is and sell off your own stuff on the cheap. I have no interest in seeing mine devalued.
How would this solve any problem? If you sell your cards to other players, you can’t play with them anymore. This doesn’t actually grow the format.


If you look at the player demographics for those games, you'll notice that their playerbases are largely younger (pre-teens, teens, early 20's), no doubt because the cost is much cheaper than MTG (a top YGO "Standard" deck would run you maybe $150-200, whereas in MTG you can expect to pay no less than $300). With younger age comes more immaturity and degeneracy. You think MTG theft is bad? Just look at YGOFirst, that's not really an explanation for why the Reserved List is the key to the health of Magic whereas other TCGs don't need it; I mean, you're pointing out a difference between them, but you don't tie it to the Reserved List. Second, the claim that Yu-Gi-Oh is cheaper than Magic isn't exactly true; their most expensive "Standard" cards are in the $60-$90 range, whereas for Magic it's the $20-$40 range. It's true that there aren't any metagame-relevant Yu-Gi-Oh cards that are as expensive as many cards in Legacy, but in Yu-Gi-Oh you don't get formats like Legacy, just their "Standard" format where you have to deal with the same kind of upkeep as Standard.

("Standard" is in quotes because Yu-Gi-Oh's only real format is actually nonrotating, but constant power creep and bannings effectively make it rotate as much as Standard)

Pokemon is cheaper, definitely... well, or at least it will be after Shaymin-EX gets its reprint. That said, I'm not sure the playerbase is particularly younger than Magic. Okay, its casual playerbase is, but those aren't the ones that are that concerned with prices. The competitive scene is another matter. In the tournaments I've gone to, they're dominated by people who are about the same age as Magic tournament players. Yeah, you'll have some kids at those things, but they're put in a separate bracket. The mean age might be lower because of those outliers, but the median and mode seem to be about the same as Magic, at least in the tournaments I've gone to.


I'm weary of such growth, and as should you. Sure, we all want more players in this amazing format, myself included. But when you start letting the less-mature players, who are not coincidentally also the ones with much lower levels of disposable income (mostly because of age group and lack of an established career/job), you get the shitshow community you see in Modern, where there's incessant complaining about how WotC does too much, how WotC doesn't do enough, how $30 for a card is still too much money, how the most recent GP-winning deck is bad for the format and needs a nerf/ban, how the format is defined by [x] archetype, etc.
I don't think that's because Modern is cheaper. I think it's because Modern as a format has a lot more issues than Legacy does. When you've got more problems, surprise surprise, you get more complaints. For example, I remember a lot more complaining from Legacy players when Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time were legal.

It's worth remembering that there was a time when Legacy was as "cheap" as Modern is right now. Did you consider the community substantially worse during that time period?

[GrimoirePath]

That's not exactly right; there are other ways to do the accounting. If you've been tracking the value of your inventory over time, perhaps making financial decisions based on that, insuring it, loaning against it, etc, then a rise and fall in price while it sits in your hands can be more meaningful.


While they might entangle their perceptions with such notions, that doesnt make them true. All of the years of the price increasing in which they held or didnt sell product, but continued to mark it up on the price sheet and in their heads, doesnt mean they ever actually had that money or that value.

Just like stock. If you buy it at a dollar, and it hits one hundred, then crashes to fifty cents, you didnt lose ninety-nine and a half dollars. You lost fifty cents. Everything else was imaginary, irrespective of other financial decisions you may have made across that time period.



And, of course, the opportunity cost of having so much money tied up for so long can be huge. Every dealer I've spoken to prefers to be dealing in high volume, high turnover cards like Standard, Modern, or Frontier, and is less enthusiastic about very expensive older cards that can sit for years before a buyer comes along.

That might be true, but its pure speculation to presume that had you not done X, you would have done Y and made a larger sum of money. Again, its all in one's head.

[Stan]

How would this solve any problem? If you sell your cards to other players, you can’t play with them anymore. This doesn’t actually grow the format.



Do you play every staple you own? Every dual, every fetch, every Jace, your LEDs, your FOWs? Many people who collect their duals go for the full set of 40, that will allow them maximum options in shifting decks. All of you, and I obviously, are sitting on a pile of staples which we don't use but which we keep around because we imagine using them later on, or even because some people like to collect complete sets. If all those people who want to tank prices would just keep their current deck, and perhaps even one other, and then throw the rest of their staples on the market at reduced prices, you'd see enough cards entering the market to provide A LOT of potential new players with cardboard.

[Lemnear]

Tarmogoyf costs much closer to $100 than $200 and his consistent hovering around $100 despite reprints is evidence that wotc isn't just going to make expensive cards cheap, even if they are on the RL.

Liliana of the Veil, Goyf, JTMS, FoW, etc all could be included in precons and have their prices lowered if wotc thought that the game was in trouble because of how expensive it is. They haven't done that though because they don't agree that the game needs to be much cheaper.

Wasteland seems to be an exception to this but Tarmogoyf has been really stable and wotc will not tank his price even though they could. They don't want to tank card prices and the RL is not the reason.

I see part of the current issue that WotC is required to look at the secondary market and their targeted audience to realize that there is actually a problem in encouraging the ~14yo audience to buy single cards at that price the secondary market charges and drives up by buyouts and price memory. I am convinced their market analysis sucks as much as their playtesting for Standard given what we have seen with massive bans and now Spliter Twin combo legal. So we have unnecessary high prices for non RL cards from Chalice to Snapcaster plus the mandatory Duals & Co locked down by the RL, with the laters having risen by 300-500% in like 10 years. With that speed an FBB U.Sea is like 1000€ in 2025 ... given the Eternal Formats still exist that long with that price pressure and the players growing old

[Darkenslight]

What would be almost acceptable to me would be the snow/lair/whatever duals solution, the printing of a legendary the Abyss/Moat, that stuff. I would be pissed off, but not to the point of ragequitting, if they did that, and would probably suck it up after a week or two of bitching about it on this forum. But no literal reprints of any kind of RL stuff.

Thank you for your honesty. I disagree, but I understand where you're coming from.

[Hopo]

Do you play every staple you own? Every dual, every fetch, every Jace, your LEDs, your FOWs? Many people who collect their duals go for the full set of 40, that will allow them maximum options in shifting decks. All of you, and I obviously, are sitting on a pile of staples which we don't use but which we keep around because we imagine using them later on, or even because some people like to collect complete sets. If all those people who want to tank prices would just keep their current deck, and perhaps even one other, and then throw the rest of their staples on the market at reduced prices, you'd see enough cards entering the market to provide A LOT of potential new players with cardboard.

Now that is an unprecedentedly stupid idea. Instead of trying to put blame on people owning more than 75 cards it makes a lot more sense to think through whether one really needs 4+ copies of each card. I don't and therefore I have some extra money now while someone else now has some cards to play with.

[Stan]

Now that is an unprecedentedly stupid idea. Instead of trying to put blame on people owning more than 75 cards it makes a lot more sense to think through whether one really needs 4+ copies of each card. I don't and therefore I have some extra money now while someone else now has some cards to play with.

You misunderstand me completely. I don't thi k people should do this for the health of the game, I certainly won't do it myself. However, people who want to see that list abolished with the explicit intention of tanking the collection of others should put their skin in the game. If you want to devalue the holdings of others, couple thnose words with actions and be consistent with what you preach. If you want the price of rare staples to diminish so that new players can get them, sell your own stuff at firesale prices first before you demand a policy that would do the same to others.

[Nielsie]

You claim to have a collection, and you also seem to be annoyed at people who keep their collections...this confuses me. Are you actively working to undersell your current collection?.
My "collection" (notice the " ) are all the cards in my decks + tweak cards for the different metas. All cards I own are being played with. I don't have any card in my "collection" just for being in a collection. So yes, I realy dont mind if those cards tank, I bought them to play Legacy, I never bought them as an investment I want to make a profit with. I never even expected to break even if I ever want to sellout. But I dread the day Legacy would die because new players simply can't afford the cards, it's a very stupid way for a format to die that way, completely artificial and for what??


You misunderstand me completely. I don't thi k people should do this for the health of the game, I certainly won't do it myself. However, people who want to see that list abolished with the explicit intention of tanking the collection of others should put their skin in the game. If you want to devalue the holdings of others, couple thnose words with actions and be consistent with what you preach. If you want the price of rare staples to diminish so that new players can get them, sell your own stuff at firesale prices first before you demand a policy that would do the same to others.
We aren't advocating that others should sell their cards for cheap, we are advocating to PRINT new cards so new players don't have to pay $3000+ for a deck... You make no sense, why would I have to sell the cards I am playing with? How will I play Legacy from then on?

[Stan]

I know reading is difficult, but try it anyway. I specifically spoke of 'selling the staples you DON'T use for peanuts' so that new players pick them up. Once you do that, come back to me, and I'll take your efforts to drestroy the value of my cards serious. If you play with everything you own, the argument doesn't apply to you.

[GrimoirePath]

Sure, as an adult, I kind of like the fact that the legacy players are a bit older and more refined than the entire block of Magic players. But I acknowledge thats kind of shitty and elitist. When all is said and done, I would like more legacy players and more legacy events. Abolishing the reserve list is really the only way to achieve this.

I am one of those people who keeps two decks, sideboard and tweak cards, and thats it. I trade and sell out of stuff I am not using because I cannot sink that much money into a game. If the reserve list were abolished I would love to keep a few more Legacy decks around. I really think that there would be more money made by shops if this happened.

[Stan]

Sure, as an adult, I kind of like the fact that the legacy players are a bit older and more refined than the entire block of Magic players. But I acknowledge thats kind of shitty and elitist. When all is said and done, I would like more legacy players and more legacy events. Abolishing the reserve list is really the only way to achieve this.

I am one of those people who keeps two decks, sideboard and tweak cards, and thats it. I trade and sell out of stuff I am not using because I cannot sink that much money into a game. If the reserve list were abolished I would love to keep a few more Legacy decks around. I really think that there would be more money made by shops if this happened.

In Magic, and in most of the other aspects of contemporary culture and life, it's the acceptance of the average and below as normal, and not elitism, that's problematic.

[kirkusjones]

In Magic, and in most of the other aspects of contemporary culture and life, it's the acceptance of the average and below as normal, and not elitism, that's problematic.

I would agree that applies to art, music, writing and a lot of other pursuits, but buying pieces of cardboard to eventually turn sideways is not one of them.

[Stan]

I would agree that applies to art, music, writing and a lot of other pursuits, but buying pieces of cardboard to eventually turn sideways is not one of them.

It does apply to the company you keep to engage your hobby in, though. Eternal being what it is, that stuff is expensive, and takes time and commitment to collect. People who put a real effort in assembling their deck, and who through the nature of the economic processes at work got through a vetting process for maturity (translated: if kids can't afford the stuff, you won't see kids at tournaments) make for better company when you're gaming.

[s&s]

People often like to point to large numbers for Legacy Grand Prix as proof the format is still popular, sort of forgetting that there are a lot fewer Legacy Grand Prix. If people have one or two chances a year to play in a Legacy Grand Prix, you're far more likely to attend a nearby Grand Prix.

Unsure what Chiba is close to unless you Asian. Even then.

[kirkusjones]

It does apply to the company you keep to engage your hobby in, though. Eternal being what it is, that stuff is expensive, and takes time and commitment to collect. People who put a real effort in assembling their deck, and who through the nature of the economic processes at work got through a vetting process for maturity (translated: if kids can't afford the stuff, you won't see kids at tournaments) make for better company when you're gaming.

Having an extra 1000-2000 dollars to plunk down (whether over time or all at once) is no gaurantor of maturity. As for your play experience, it sounds like you want an exclusive, regular group of mature individuals to play with, and that's okay. EDH players look for much the same thing. But you can't get so discerning when you want a competitive format to survive and thrive.

[Zombie]

I'm confused as to why a ruleset format for a certain kind of MTG should have a prohibitive buy-in. I can understand a desire for a "gents' club", but there's a world of difference between arranging for events "for adults" - for all I care, require cards to be of the first printing, people will flock to your games which need 500€ Bayous - and bluntly denying access to a sanctioned format from most people. Or, even more importantly, dooming it do die because wear and tear is a thing. I bought my cards very late, at a steep price, because Legacy was a fun format. Not because it was exclusive.

There are things that are expensive because they are rare in a real sense - say, natural diamonds. There are things that are expensive by virtue of being hard to make. Tailored suits being a great case in point. An MTG card with the rules text of Bayou is none of these. ABUR duals should carry a price as far as I'm concerned, they're the ultimate pimp option. There's just something wrong if they're the only one. As said before, Islands are dirt cheap, but all manner of pimp Islands fetch far higher prices than you could ever ask for a single random Island simply by virture of being pimp - old, rare, good-looking: ABUR duals are this. I just want there to be a cheap Bayou as well because I just want to play Magic, and I can't if the cards literally don't exist.

[CutthroatCasual]

I don't think that's because Modern is cheaper. I think it's because Modern as a format has a lot more issues than Legacy does. When you've got more problems, surprise surprise, you get more complaints. For example, I remember a lot more complaining from Legacy players when Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time were legal.

It's worth remembering that there was a time when Legacy was as "cheap" as Modern is right now. Did you consider the community substantially worse during that time period?

Legacy is not without its issues, and yes Modern has more than Legacy, but much of what's wrong with Modern's format design is due to WotC's heavy-handedness in dealing with the format, and part of why they're so heavy-handed in their influence is because of the player base. If Legacy's playerbase grows to a comparable size to Modern's through having more Modern players enter the format, what's going to happen? I would put $100 of my own money down that the majority of these from-Modern players, who until now have only experienced metagame shifts through WotC banning intervention, will not be able to adapt to how the Legacy metagame waxes and wanes and will quickly start calling for bans of whatever decks are the top performers month after month. We actually have that on this forum, but such discussion is limited to only a handful of players and is practically a circlejerk/tongue-in-cheek endeavor. But what happens when these complaints so loud (added to by the massive influx of new players) that WotC for whatever reason decides to now curate Legacy? We'll get the same actions that caused Modern to become so shitty, and then congratulations you've actually killed the format. And if WotC maintains their hands-off approach? Then we'll have to sift through pages and pages of "Ban Top! Ban Terminus! Ban Brainstorm! Ban Ponder! Ban fetchlands! Ban RL cards! Ban Storm! Ban Show and Tell! Ban Blood Moon! Ban Chalice!" before we find any quality discussion.


Sure, as an adult, I kind of like the fact that the legacy players are a bit older and more refined than the entire block of Magic players. But I acknowledge thats kind of shitty and elitist. When all is said and done, I would like more legacy players and more legacy events. Abolishing the reserve list is really the only way to achieve this.

See:


It does apply to the company you keep to engage your hobby in, though. Eternal being what it is, that stuff is expensive, and takes time and commitment to collect. People who put a real effort in assembling their deck, and who through the nature of the economic processes at work got through a vetting process for maturity (translated: if kids can't afford the stuff, you won't see kids at tournaments) make for better company when you're gaming.

Exactly my point. Do I think Legacy decks costing $2000+ is dumb? Sure as hell! But do I want them to be cheaper? Not when I weigh the pros and cons. Pros: more players in the format, more events. Cons: many of these additional players will without question be from a less-mature bracket (not necessarily through any fault of their own, though there are still quite a few 25+ y/o players that can only afford Modern that have the social maturity of a 14 y/o), and with these less-mature players comes all the community problems that Modern has (and I've said this time and time again in the past). Ignoring the format issues that Modern has (which are more a result of WotC's inability to decide how they want the format to evolve), the incessant complaining about anything and everything out of the Modern playerbase is not something I want happening to Legacy. You think it's bad enough we have people complaining about the RL and metagame? Multiply that by 100x in both absurdity (prepare for a DnT ban calling once it takes down a single Open because people don't like getting Ported and Wastelanded out of the game) and frequency. The price barrier of Legacy is more a feature than a bug, sort of like a "rite of passage." Is it elitist? In a way. But I would much rather be an elitist among like-company than watch the format I love devolve into a mudslinging mosh pit.

I'm fine with the playerbase in Legacy growing at a snail's pace as younger players grow up, get jobs, mature, and then buy into Legacy. The format isn't going anywhere.

To add, the reason I don't attend many Legacy events is not because they're not frequent enough, but it's because I just don't have the time. Increasing the number of events won't do much to change that. And I'm confident that this is also the case for the vast majority of Legacy's playerbase: limited in their event attendance by their own schedules (because of the general nature of Legacy players being older and having jobs; that's why they can afford these $3000 piles of cardboard) and not whether or not there are events in their area.


Having an extra 1000-2000 dollars to plunk down (whether over time or all at once) is no gaurantor of maturity.

It's no guarantee, but is a very strong predictor because in order to be financially comfortable to plunk down $5000+ needed to own an extensive Legacy collection you'd need to have a stable, moderately paying job. In order to obtain one of those, you need a degree of maturity.

[Zombie]

An incessant complaining about anything and everything is in my experience more a result of the game's patching culture than the age of competition, per se, though age is obviously a factor. Modern gets patched frequently, so you grow accustomed to the idea of whining to solve problems. You can see it in games that are still played today but no longer have dev support: People just grow an attitude of figuring out solutions as best they can because there is nothing else. Heavily patched games have whiny cultures, almost without exception. In games that see patches but more rarely you can really see the change in culture during patch season, even in equivalently adult members of said communities.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

It's no guarantee, but is a very strong predictor because in order to be financially comfortable to plunk down $5000+ needed to own an extensive Legacy collection you'd need to have a stable, moderately paying job. In order to obtain one of those, you need a degree of maturity.

One could debate how mature plunking down $5000 for a legacy collection is in and of itself so I wouldn't say that is true.

[Mr.C]

You misunderstand me completely. I don't thi k people should do this for the health of the game, I certainly won't do it myself. However, people who want to see that list abolished with the explicit intention of tanking the collection of others should put their skin in the game. If you want to devalue the holdings of others, couple thnose words with actions and be consistent with what you preach. If you want the price of rare staples to diminish so that new players can get them, sell your own stuff at firesale prices first before you demand a policy that would do the same to others.

I have a five figure collection, downsized from a six figure collection.

Reprint the shit out if this old stuff. Go wild, who cares. If your collection is made up of stuff that would get hurt by reprints, you don't get to bitch.

[Richard Cheese]

One could debate how mature plunking down $5000 for a legacy collection is in and of itself so I wouldn't say that is true.

Also, what about kids inheriting collections? As I understand it, this will be a large portion of the Legacy player base some time within the next century.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

I mean if my collection survives long enough to be inherited by my theoretical children, I'd be amazed if magic was still printed on cardstock at that point (assuming it survives that long)

[Dice_Box]

However, people who want to see that list abolished with the explicit intention of tanking the collection of others should put their skin in the game. http://i.imgur.com/YxP1UENl.jpg

That's my skin in the game, now kill that fucking list.

Also, before you say I should firesale, I won't. I hold onto my play collection, sell the rest. But new players are always coming to me, asking to borrow cards or decks. I oblige them and help them get a foot into the format until they have a deck or two themselves. I like seeing those people then grow. I wish more could buy in.

[Stuart]

Right there with ya Dice.
http://i1030.photobucket.com/albums/y362/stuartziarnik/images_zpssazxmpbv.jpeg (http://s1030.photobucket.com/user/stuartziarnik/media/images_zpssazxmpbv.jpeg.html)

[MaximumC]

Right there with ya Dice.
http://i1030.photobucket.com/albums/y362/stuartziarnik/images_zpssazxmpbv.jpeg (http://s1030.photobucket.com/user/stuartziarnik/media/images_zpssazxmpbv.jpeg.html)

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQQimurgroBJZGdQJ25r3dYb5B3aiotZM_p9FeRr_BaOPQBomd7

[Stan]

http://i.imgur.com/YxP1UENl.jpg

That's my skin in the game, now kill that fucking list.

Also, before you say I should firesale, I won't. I hold onto my play collection, sell the rest. But new players are always coming to me, asking to borrow cards or decks. I oblige them and help them get a foot into the format until they have a deck or two themselves. I like seeing those people then grow. I wish more could buy in.

OK, I obviously disagree but at least you have the right to speak. My personal policy is that I'll lend out everything up to and including stuff no more 'exclusive' than English Revised duals, no matter who you are. If I were to put up a picture of my 'skin', it wouldn't look all too different from yours (no Workshops or Bazaars, working on the latter). Vintage and 93/94 being my format of choice these days.

They'll never reprint, it'd get them so much shit it wouldn't be worth it. The 1% chance they'll ever do away with the policy, they'd do it through a change of definition of 'functional reprints'. Like I said earlier: almost acceptable.

[tescrin]

I'm of similar mind to Stan; if it wasn't clear whenever the other post was (assuming it wasn't nuked.) I "invested" in legacy under the assumption things would roughly old their value. It's the only justification for me having a boatload of cash in the game; because it's like a savings account you can play games with.

I literally bought in because in my brain, it's a game I'm playing with $100 bills. It's nice when you gain money and it's not the worst when my goyfs deflated a bit; but the idea that just because some people will happily suicide their value; value they probably got for much cheaper than today's prices (looking at you Dice_Box. I'd bet my collection you paid an order of magnitude less than those are worth.)

Them getting rid of it is them is like totaling a car in my driveway with no insurance and no legal recourse. Feel free to blow up *your own car*; but don't blow up mine in the process. I didn't and don't consent to the idea of a drive-by vandal being legally sanctioned to torch my car; no matter how much you tell the neighbor kid you'll let them torch yours and it's fine if they torch the neighbors in the process.

You're literally advocating for them to damage people's collections in a game about collecting, just because you like a specific version of the game and want more to play it. You can play modern, standard, with proxies, fake cards; whatever. But the idea that because you want to play sanctioned games with more people *I* deserve to help pay for *your* enjoyment is utter selfishness.

Sorry if you think I should torch a bag of money because you get off on the idea of people torching bags of money; but you don't get to torch my bag of money just because it gets you off. Torch your own bag and leave me to mine.

[non-inflammable]

Everyone is using apples to oranges and exaggeration to push their point. Your decks costs what you want them to...
I took a year's worth of my trades to SCG philly and traded everything in for credit and got all the pieces i needed to finish my deck.
It "cost" me more in parking ($30 real dollars) than it did to finish my deck.

To say a new legacy player will have to spend "X" is a red herring...
I played professional paintball. However, i didn't start playing paintball by spending $500 (per event!) on my flight, hotels, event registration, paint and guns.
Same thing with MTG; you ease into it and spend what feels comfortable to you.
Some people would have you believe there is a cabal of older players and evil hoarders holding you back from playing a better deck with the reserve list.
You are holding you back...

Example: 16 y.o. local kid opened some expeditions, traded them to me and kicked in some cash and built a complete D&T list.
A month later he uses some b-day money and whatever trades he had and buys "oops all spells."
He now has two legacy decks with minimal outlay of cash in SPITE of the reserve list holding him back (sarcasm).

Same kid also did NJ SCG playing shocklands in his miracles list and got further than anyone else from my local shop.
He said the hardest part about the event was the "looks" he'd get from people after he beat them with shocklands in his deck.
An aside to that is probably just the power of miracles, but you can play shocklands in your list or just play eldrazi and start getting 3 city of traitors.

Saying the reserve list is stopping anyone from playing legacy is a LIE.
you can play at proxy events, play on cockatrice, play magic online, and lastly you can borrow cards (or a deck) for a true sanctioned event.
Or possibly YOU can host an event that allows all proxy cards! Imagine that, doing it yourself...

I support my LGS legacy events by offering to build any deck at any time for anyone.
You only have to show up and pay the entry fee for the event. I've been doing this for almost 5 years.
Imagine playing ANY legacy deck for free at anytime? That's basically my offer to anyone, just respect my cards.
and as crazy as that offer sounds, it HAS NOT increased attendance past one or two players for more than a few weeks.
The core legacy group shows up and plays but other players don't really want to play legacy; they want to play "their" format (whatever that is).

The reserve list is only holding back the current legacy players that want to play other decks.
There is also a small psychological component to this that no one talks about; "you have something that i want and it's not fair that you have it and i don't!"

Let us say the reserve list is abolished: are you going to buy 10 boxes of the no reserve list reprints? How about 20 boxes?
Buddy of mine just dropped $400 on MM17. What did he just buy? He bought a "chance" to get the cards he needs for his deck.
He wants to spend another $400 and get 4 boxes of MM17. I think it's foolish to spend $800; he should've just bought the cards he needed to finish his deck!


I will leave this wall of text with one nugget.
We've talked about a buy-back for reserve list cards but I haven't seen this mentioned: HASBRO "exchanges" your reserve list cards for stock offerings...

TL/DR: holy wall of text batman!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v220/freedomxxx/necropost.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/freedomxxx/media/necropost.jpg.html)

[Dice_Box]

(looking at you Dice_Box. I'd bet my collection you paid an order of magnitude less than those are worth.) I will take that bet. When you want to deliver that collection?

I bought the duals a few years back, 6.5au for the set. Off loaded the spare duals I owned to make up the difference. Bought power only a couple of years ago and the Bazaars this past year. Did I pay market price? No one does when they know what they are doing. Did I pay less than what they are truly worth, (not SCG prices) likely not.

It's hard to explain, but I have honestly had my life burn down around me a few times. I try not to get too attached to things that can go up in flames. I think it's a perception shift after the second time that all went to hell. I don't think I am lucky that I own power, I think I am lucky to have a wife that's ok with me owning power.

So I don't see my cards as the valuable thing in my life. I see the friendships I have made, the mental math that keeps my now 30 year old mind something close to functioning, the look in a kids eyes when I hand him Elves and tell him he can play that night and time spent away from a house with more than one loud voice seeking my attention because someone stood on some Lego as the reason to own cards. If more people can share in that, I welcome the change as beneficial.

The more people that play, the more people I have to drink beer with too. The benefits just keep stacking up.

[tescrin]

I will take that bet. When you want to deliver that collection?

The more people that play, the more people I have to drink beer with too. The benefits just keep stacking up.

lol well. I'll wipe the egg off my face then. My name is Felix Kjellberg, feel free to contact my youtube channel and I'll get that to you ;)

It's not like I won't loan stuff out. I'm fully for that. I'm fully for getting people into the format; but there's no way I'd be in this format if I didn't think I could get my money out of it. I sell cards when they go high (lily of the veil, chalice, EE etc.) and then brew with what's left; in part to help pay the guilt of having too much money in the hobby. In fact, I own 3 sets of Forces (before the reprint) specifically just to loan them out. Same with a couple sets of DRS when he was more like $10, Decays, and some other staples that aren't otherworldly expensive. I'm also nicer in person ;)

By all means, I'm a 30yo beer-swilling metalhead who just wants to enjoy things; but it really would feel like my car getting total'd if they undid it and I don't even own "real" duals; just revised or w/e.

F.E. if Force of Will had been reprinted into oblivion at Common/Uncommon (depending on my speculation about the lands of the format going up) I'd probably have eaten my losses and sold out.

[Lord Seth]

Do you play every staple you own? Every dual, every fetch, every Jace, your LEDs, your FOWs?
Staples aren't the issue. Reserved List staples are. And for your information, yes, every Reserved List staple I own goes into my deck.


Unsure what Chiba is close to unless you Asian. Even then.
I wasn't talking about myself, so I'm not sure what your point is?


There are things that are expensive because they are rare in a real sense - say, natural diamonds.
I know this is a nitpick that really doesn't relate to the rest of your post, but diamonds are actually not rare at all. However, the diamond industry has control of almost all of the diamond mines in the world and only releases a limited amount each year into the market order to keep them valuable.


Legacy is not without its issues, and yes Modern has more than Legacy, but much of what's wrong with Modern's format design is due to WotC's heavy-handedness in dealing with the format, and part of why they're so heavy-handed in their influence is because of the player base.
Not at all. Their "heavy-handedness" comes from the problems of the format design (e.g. the setup ensuring no actually good catch-all answers not named Thoughtseize ever get printed) causing them to ban cards that are basically unplayable in a format with better checks like Legacy. And the more constantly you ban things, the more constantly people will be asking for bans or unbans (this is exacerbated by the fact the format does have a lot of issues). You're mixing up the order of things. The constant complaints about Modern come from the fact it’s a really flawed format and Wizards of the Coast’s bannings that try to fix problems only serve to solve things for a short amount of time; it's not a flawed format because of bannings that occur because of complaints.

And I'll ask again, because you totally skipped over this point: Legacy used to be as "cheap" as Modern is now. Did you find the Legacy player base so problematic at that point? If not, then your entire claim that it's prices stopping these things falls apart.

[Purple Blood]

I'm of similar mind to Stan; if it wasn't clear whenever the other post was (assuming it wasn't nuked.) I "invested" in legacy under the assumption things would roughly old their value. It's the only justification for me having a boatload of cash in the game; because it's like a savings account you can play games with.

I literally bought in because in my brain, it's a game I'm playing with $100 bills. It's nice when you gain money and it's not the worst when my goyfs deflated a bit; but the idea that just because some people will happily suicide their value; value they probably got for much cheaper than today's prices (looking at you Dice_Box. I'd bet my collection you paid an order of magnitude less than those are worth.)

Them getting rid of it is them is like totaling a car in my driveway with no insurance and no legal recourse. Feel free to blow up *your own car*; but don't blow up mine in the process. I didn't and don't consent to the idea of a drive-by vandal being legally sanctioned to torch my car; no matter how much you tell the neighbor kid you'll let them torch yours and it's fine if they torch the neighbors in the process.

You're literally advocating for them to damage people's collections in a game about collecting, just because you like a specific version of the game and want more to play it. You can play modern, standard, with proxies, fake cards; whatever. But the idea that because you want to play sanctioned games with more people *I* deserve to help pay for *your* enjoyment is utter selfishness.

Sorry if you think I should torch a bag of money because you get off on the idea of people torching bags of money; but you don't get to torch my bag of money just because it gets you off. Torch your own bag and leave me to mine.

This view is entirely dependent on whether you think of MTG primarily as a collectible item or a game that's meant to be played. Obviously there is some overlap but the inevitable reality of the matter is that if you don't reprint certain parts of the product formats that require that part of the product will be played progressively less until those formats are entirely dead. At that point the reserve list becomes nothing but a collector's item.

Now, depending on your view, that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing but we have to recognize that there is the other view.

If you hold the other view (MTG is meant to be played primarily and that the collectability aspect is merely a product of the popularity of playing the game) having a reserve list is akin to if Hasbro decided that in the future all new sales of Monopoly will no longer include Park Place and Boardwalk cards. Now this is of course a silly example but I think useful for illustration purposes. Imagine if that were the case but that players were also allowed to bring their own copies of those cards and play them in the game and that they would have a huge advantage as they would be the only ones allowed to purchase these squares in a Monopoly game. Would this make any sense in the context of a board game designed to be played?

At what point does the Legacy format die off? When duals are $1000 each and your average deck costs nearly $10k? Do we just tell new players to move on to Modern at that point? Create a new format that begins where the reserve list ends plus all masters reprints (this would be kind of interesting to think about actually)? Would a solution be to allow proxies in sanctioned events or is that just heresy?

[Ruta Barracuda]

Serious question: has anything on change.org ever resulted in something?

It resulted in the Dark Souls 1 PC port.

[tescrin]

At what point does the Legacy format die off? When duals are $1000 each and your average deck costs nearly $10k? Do we just tell new players to move on to Modern at that point? Create a new format that begins where the reserve list ends plus all masters reprints (this would be kind of interesting to think about actually)? Would a solution be to allow proxies in sanctioned events or is that just heresy?

Honestly it's already happening to modern and whatnot too. People are attempting to build Frontier as a bridge to a cheaper more standard-ish format.

IMO, if they did gold-bordered reprints I'd be happy with it. People should be able to use that at least in the big tournaments. It's probably mildly tank the value of "real" cards, but that's different. If someone can grind either locals or SCGs or whatever tournies for $50 in gold bordered stuff I'd be fine with that. Or maybe you can only use gold at big events.. I don't know. I never had a problem with that. Someone smarter about this than I can come up with the technicalities.

But that btw bypasses the RL I think, makes collectors happy knowing that they hold the only "real" cards, and lets people play tournies without dropping a deuce on their savings.


EDIT: Maybe instead of selling them; you register your list and they hand you a gold version of it; revoking it at the tournies' end. Even better.

[CutthroatCasual]

Not at all. Their "heavy-handedness" comes from the problems of the format design (e.g. the setup ensuring no actually good catch-all answers not named Thoughtseize ever get printed) causing them to ban cards that are basically unplayable in a format with better checks like Legacy. And the more constantly you ban things, the more constantly people will be asking for bans or unbans (this is exacerbated by the fact the format does have a lot of issues). You're mixing up the order of things. The constant complaints about Modern come from the fact it’s a really flawed format and Wizards of the Coast’s bannings that try to fix problems only serve to solve things for a short amount of time; it's not a flawed format because of bannings that occur because of complaints.

I'm convinced the reason why WotC hasn't banned something from Miracles yet is because not enough people have complained loudly enough. Plus, Miracles doesn't dominate every event so there's no reason to complain.

When Birthing Pod was the top deck in the format, there were still plenty of top decks that could beat it: Tron had a good MU, Scapeshift (even before DTT) destroyed Pod, Jund had a relatively even 50/50 (even post-DRS), and the Twin-Pod MU was one of the most interesting games anyone could play in any format, not just Modern. But what did people do? Complain that Pod was "pushing aggro (see: Zoo) out of the format" rather than accept that Zoo just plain sucked (and it still kinda does). Complaining that Pod was "too good"; it was very good, but it wasn't unbeatable. Instead of adapting to the metagame, they took to the internet to complain about it. Yes, part if that is due to getting used to WotC's influence on the meta. Would WotC have banned Pod even if people had adapted their decklists? Maybe; at that time Modern was still a PT format and WotC liked to see artificial diversity. But the fact that people didn't change their decklists only helped Pod succeed even more. There might have been an undiscovered brew or not-played-as-much list that had a solid MU against the rest of the field while having a good Pod MU that wasn't explored.

Look at Twin. People complained about how EOT flash untap win wasn't fair. And in a format without free countermagic, it sort of isn't. But rather than play decks that were inherently good against Twin (like Jund/Junk; which I can understand why, but you could have still played CoCo—no Goyfs = cheaper—which still had a solid MU), people stayed stubborn and stuck with what they had ben playing since forever. Part of that is limited by money (you can't just go out and buy a new Modern deck after every GP), part of that was due to stubborness. Sideboard cards could have changed, and even maindecks could have been tweaked. Instead, you get this "in the interest of competitive diversity Twin is now banned" announcement from WotC. And it angered a lot more people because there really was no reason to ban the deck (though you could argue that once Pod left, it was only a matter of time before Twin left, too, as those two decks were about as evenly matched as possible and now that Twin didn't have a proper rival, its success rate was ever so slightly too much higher than the next closest deck, but that's another discussion for another time).

My point is, while complaints about the meta may not have been the sole reason for Modern bannings, they most certainly have to have been a factor, since WotC wanted (at the time) to push Modern as a premier competitive format, and in order to do that you need to make sure people want to play it. So you need to listen to the players that do, even if what they say makes no sense.


And I'll ask again, because you totally skipped over this point: Legacy used to be as "cheap" as Modern is now. Did you find the Legacy player base so problematic at that point? If not, then your entire claim that it's prices stopping these things falls apart.

Back then, Modern wasn't nearly as popular (if it even was a thing). I also was not playing MTG back then so I can't comment on the playerbase. But from speaking with the 10+ year veterans of the game about the state of the format back then, it doesn't appear like it was anything nearly as cancerous as Modern's playerbase is currently.


Honestly it's already happening to modern and whatnot too. People are attempting to build Frontier as a bridge to a cheaper more standard-ish format.

IMO, if they did gold-bordered reprints I'd be happy with it. People should be able to use that at least in the big tournaments. It's probably mildly tank the value of "real" cards, but that's different. If someone can grind either locals or SCGs or whatever tournies for $50 in gold bordered stuff I'd be fine with that. Or maybe you can only use gold at big events.. I don't know. I never had a problem with that. Someone smarter about this than I can come up with the technicalities.

But that btw bypasses the RL I think, makes collectors happy knowing that they hold the only "real" cards, and lets people play tournies without dropping a deuce on their savings.


EDIT: Maybe instead of selling them; you register your list and they hand you a gold version of it; revoking it at the tournies' end. Even better.

I've proposed this as a solution countless times and have yet to run into a good counterargument:

Release tournament-legal proxies that you can buy for like $10 a pack. These can be purple-bordered or whatever bordered, but obviously distinguishable from real cards. Then, if players want to play them in large events (GPs, Opens, EW, BoM, etc.) charge them a flat rate of $5 (or something relatively inexpensive) per proxy registered in their decklists to be able to play them at these events (on top of entry fee, obviously). So now you let people who could buy all the non-RL cards they needed for their decks but not the duals and stuff play Legacy at an entry-fee cost that's more expensive than someone who owns all the real cards, but a less buy-in cost than those same people. It's really a win-win-win-win.

1. You get more players playing at large events
2. You get more players playing at smaller, local events (charging for proxy use would be up to the individual stores, but if proxies were used without the fee, then obviously the event would be classified 'Casual' under WER)
3. You get less people paying $150 for a pack of fakes, thus taking away a large chunk of that market because most people who buy fakes just want to be able to play sanctioned eternal, and these proxies are giving them a way to do so in clean conscience. "I play with fakes because I can't afford real cards." "Here's a pack of WotC-produced, for all intents and purposes 'real' cards you can use instead." "Sweet!"
4. The players who don't grind Legacy events will still have the cards for their decks (be they Vintage or Legacy or EDH decks), which is sort of related to #3: people buy fakes because they can't afford the real thing but want the cards to look like the real thing (which is flawed logic in my opinion but that's another discussion). Now they can own something that's as real as it gets without being the most real, all without having to pay for something that will ALWAYS fail a thorough deck check and put the player at risk for being DCI banned

If you don't want to distribute directly to players, then since they would only be required to be paid for at large events, distribute a sizable amount to each large TO and when the players without RL cards go to register their decklists, they would indicate which proxies they need and how many, and then go to the TO's main table at the event to collect their proxies.

[GrimoirePath]

By all means, I'm a 30yo beer-swilling metalhead who just wants to enjoy things; but it really would feel like my car getting total'd if they undid it and I don't even own "real" duals; just revised or w/e.


The car thing is not quite an analogous comparison. A car getting totaled prevents you from using it. Reprinting cards does not make your cards useless. Not to mention, a car is something you rely on, and cards are used for a hobby.

In other words, it seems like a dramatic analogy.

[Lord Seth]

When Birthing Pod was the top deck in the format, there were still plenty of top decks that could beat it: Tron had a good MU, Scapeshift (even before DTT) destroyed Pod, Jund had a relatively even 50/50 (even post-DRS), and the Twin-Pod MU was one of the most interesting games anyone could play in any format, not just Modern. But what did people do? Complain that Pod was "pushing aggro (see: Zoo) out of the format" rather than accept that Zoo just plain sucked (and it still kinda does). Complaining that Pod was "too good"; it was very good, but it wasn't unbeatable.
"It wasn't unbeatable" isn't exactly much of an argument for a card being okay. The Eldrazi weren't unbeatable either; are you arguing there should have been no ban on that? (they may have dominated but other decks were still putting up results during the Eldrazi era of Modern) Or for a Legacy example, Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise weren't unbeatable either, are you saying those bans were mistakes? Something can be "beatable" but if it's such a huge amount of the format (Birthing Pod was dominating more than Miracles ever did in Legacy) it still does a lot of warping that really restricts it.


Instead of adapting to the metagame, they took to the internet to complain about it.
Not from what I saw, and I looked at a lot of discussions about Modern's banlist at the time. Birthing Pod, quite surprisingly, didn't get many complaints. Treasure Cruise was the one that was provoking all of the discussion in regards to a banning, which is kind of funny because Birthing Pod decks were outdoing even the Treasure Cruise decks at the time. I ironically figured there would be no ban on Treasure Cruise with the reasoning "I don't think they'd ban Birthing Pod, and you can't really ban Treasure Cruise if you're not going to ban the deck that's actually better." I guess my reasoning was sort of correct?


Yes, part if that is due to getting used to WotC's influence on the meta. Would WotC have banned Pod even if people had adapted their decklists? Maybe; at that time Modern was still a PT format and WotC liked to see artificial diversity. But the fact that people didn't change their decklists only helped Pod succeed even more. There might have been an undiscovered brew or not-played-as-much list that had a solid MU against the rest of the field while having a good Pod MU that wasn't explored.
You can make the same argument for Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time in Legacy. Are you saying their bannings were a mistake? I mean, sure, if you think they were a mistake in Legacy, fine, but that's a fairly fringe position and you should defend it.


Look at Twin. People complained about how EOT flash untap win wasn't fair. And in a format without free countermagic, it sort of isn't. But rather than play decks that were inherently good against Twin (like Jund/Junk; which I can understand why, but you could have still played CoCo—no Goyfs = cheaper—which still had a solid MU),
Actually, it's my understanding that Collected Company had a pretty bad matchup against Twin and its banning was a big reason for it being a big deck again for a while (well, once the Eldrazi mess got sorted out). That said, I'm not going to try to defend the banning of Splinter Twin which was really just done for the purpose of a metagame shakeup.

Still, there was actually not that much complaining about Splinter Twin (certainly far less than Birthing Pod!); that banning completely blindsided most people. I remember there was a guy who was claiming he has insider information of a Splinter Twin+Amulet of Vigor ban and pretty much everyone laughed off the idea of a Twin ban because they didn't see a justification. So claiming "people complained so the deck got banned" isn't really accurate because there really weren't many complaints. The few complaints I did see weren't that Twin was too good as it was, but that it was preventing cards like Ancestral Vision and Preordain from getting unbanned, and that those would be more interesting to have in the format.


people stayed stubborn and stuck with what they had ben playing since forever. Part of that is limited by money (you can't just go out and buy a new Modern deck after every GP), part of that was due to stubborness. Sideboard cards could have changed, and even maindecks could have been tweaked.
People did change those things to combat Twin. Do you think people were running Rending Volley in their sideboard just because they were that afraid of Merfolk?

Also, I can't help but again notice I can use those same arguments on Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time in Legacy. "People just weren't changing their decks enough to fight against them!"


Instead, you get this "in the interest of competitive diversity Twin is now banned" announcement from WotC. And it angered a lot more people because there really was no reason to ban the deck (though you could argue that once Pod left, it was only a matter of time before Twin left, too, as those two decks were about as evenly matched as possible and now that Twin didn't have a proper rival, its success rate was ever so slightly too much higher than the next closest deck, but that's another discussion for another time).
Their reasoning for the Splinter Twin banning was full of holes and it's why it was highly controversial, though let's be honest, the reason for its banning was clear: They wanted to do a shakeup for the Pro Tour, so they just whacked what happened to be the most popular deck.


My point is, while complaints about the meta may not have been the sole reason for Modern bannings, they most certainly have to have been a factor, since WotC wanted (at the time) to push Modern as a premier competitive format, and in order to do that you need to make sure people want to play it. So you need to listen to the players that do, even if what they say makes no sense.
Actually, as I noted, Birthing Pod and especially Splinter Twin didn't really get that many complaints. So saying "people complain and cards get banned" doesn't really make sense if they were banning cards people really weren't complaining that much about.


Back then, Modern wasn't nearly as popular (if it even was a thing). I also was not playing MTG back then so I can't comment on the playerbase. But from speaking with the 10+ year veterans of the game about the state of the format back then, it doesn't appear like it was anything nearly as cancerous as Modern's playerbase is currently.
Okay, then that seems to disprove your entire argument. You claimed that the reason Modern's playerbase is so problematic is because it's cheap (well, compared to Legacy anyway). But if Legacy, when it was the same price as Modern is now, didn't have its "cancerous" playerbase, then that basically blows your whole argument out of the water and indicates that, like I said, it's problems with the formats themselves that cause the difference, not the prices of them.

[Lord Seth]

Honestly it's already happening to modern and whatnot too. People are attempting to build Frontier as a bridge to a cheaper more standard-ish format.

IMO, if they did gold-bordered reprints I'd be happy with it. People should be able to use that at least in the big tournaments. It's probably mildly tank the value of "real" cards, but that's different. If someone can grind either locals or SCGs or whatever tournies for $50 in gold bordered stuff I'd be fine with that. Or maybe you can only use gold at big events.. I don't know. I never had a problem with that. Someone smarter about this than I can come up with the technicalities.

But that btw bypasses the RL I think, makes collectors happy knowing that they hold the only "real" cards, and lets people play tournies without dropping a deuce on their savings.
That doesn't work. The Reserved List page says "All policies described in this document apply only to tournament-legal Magiccards (sic)." So they can reprint gold-bordered versions of Reserved List cards, but they can't be tournament legal. So your suggestion of using the gold-bordered cards in tournaments doesn't really work out.

Also, they've said they don't want to do gold-bordered reprints of Reserved List cards because they supposedly violate the "spirit" of the list. But even if they backed off from that, the above issues still apply. I guess they could reprint a bunch of them with gold borders and then, after they've stopped printing them, make them tournament legal and claim they're still technically following it (after all, the promise was not to print tournament-legal cards on the Reserved List, but they weren't printing them at a time they were tournament legal!), but that does strike me as a bit fishy.

[UnderwaterGuy]

That doesn't work. The Reserved List page says "All policies described in this document apply only to tournament-legal Magiccards (sic)." So they can reprint gold-bordered versions of Reserved List cards, but they can't be tournament legal. So your suggestion of using the gold-bordered cards in tournaments doesn't really work out.

Also, they've said they don't want to do gold-bordered reprints of Reserved List cards because they supposedly violate the "spirit" of the list. But even if they backed off from that, the above issues still apply. I guess they could reprint a bunch of them with gold borders and then, after they've stopped printing them, make them tournament legal and claim they're still technically following it (after all, the promise was not to print tournament-legal cards on the Reserved List, but they weren't printing them at a time they were tournament legal!), but that does strike me as a bit fishy.

How about allowing proxies in sanctioned Vintage and eventually Legacy? They could print "official" proxy cards as checklists. Bring them back from Innistrad and one checklist card can represent most or all of the cards that cost over $1000. That would let people play the format without hurting the collectible-quality of real power 9, duals, etc.

I think the worst case scenario for Legacy is that it becomes like Vintage and most tournaments start allowing proxies. It wouldn't be that bad.

[MasterBlaster]

My reserved list cards are worth about $6,000, so that is how much my opinion is worth I guess. Almost all of that money being in duals, LED's, and City of Traitors. It accounts for about half the value of my total collection.

I say reprint the cards and kill the list.

[LeoCop 90]

My humble opinion is that, at some point in the future, the reserved list will be abolished just as an attempt to save the game.

They have been screwing up more and more in recent years, and this game popularity will not last forever. I don't know when, maybe in 5 years, maybe 20, but in the end they will realize magic the gathering is dying and try to go back to the roots reprinting duals and stuff. I'm not hoping this happens, but i just think it's inevitable.

Of course, i would be way happier if they got rid of the reserved list spontaneously, just because they realize that old formats can be an integral part for the success of this game in the long term.

[AznSeal]

My question is WHY should eternal be accessible? Legacy and vintage being expensive doesn't mean others don't get to play magic as a whole. Think of owning ferraris and racing them in the track. It takes time to get there. Sure, some people got lucky (inherited money, similar to how some people bought into reserve list cards cheap), but a vast majority of Ferrari owners are hard working people. I don't want kids racing ferraris with me unless they can prove they have he dedication to do it. Is it elitist? Yes. But I don't see a problem with you. You don't HAVE to own a Ferrari. You can drive a Honda. Likewise, you don't HAVE to play eternal formats; you can play pauper, draft, or standard. The format will never die because true affectionados do not need tournaments. Like how we don't organize "public roads just for Ferraris".

[Dice_Box]

Because if the formats become too inaccessible, the formats falter and sputter out. A format with no new players feels like a motorbike that's been flooded. You need to fix something to get it started, even if everything is in place to make it go.

As a " Ferrari" driver, I would like the chance to race against others. You don't race a Ferrari against a Civic. A Legacy deck with no one to play against is about as useful as a Ferrari with no tires.

[GrimoirePath]

You can drive a Ferrari by yourself. Magic tournaments dont really work with one person, or even a handful. Without a community to play with, there is no game.

[Zombie]

My question is WHY should eternal be accessible? Legacy and vintage being expensive doesn't mean others don't get to play magic as a whole. Think of owning ferraris and racing them in the track. It takes time to get there. Sure, some people got lucky (inherited money, similar to how some people bought into reserve list cards cheap), but a vast majority of Ferrari owners are hard working people. I don't want kids racing ferraris with me unless they can prove they have he dedication to do it. Is it elitist? Yes. But I don't see a problem with you. You don't HAVE to own a Ferrari. You can drive a Honda. Likewise, you don't HAVE to play eternal formats; you can play pauper, draft, or standard. The format will never die because true affectionados do not need tournaments. Like how we don't organize "public roads just for Ferraris".

Drastic difference between a piece of cardboard made the same as any other piece of cardboard and an actually tuned high-end sportscar. One is difficult to make, the other not so much. You're drawing an analogy between factory line T-shirts and tailored suits.

[Stan]

My question is WHY should eternal be accessible? Legacy and vintage being expensive doesn't mean others don't get to play magic as a whole. Think of owning ferraris and racing them in the track. It takes time to get there. Sure, some people got lucky (inherited money, similar to how some people bought into reserve list cards cheap), but a vast majority of Ferrari owners are hard working people. I don't want kids racing ferraris with me unless they can prove they have he dedication to do it. Is it elitist? Yes. But I don't see a problem with you. You don't HAVE to own a Ferrari. You can drive a Honda. Likewise, you don't HAVE to play eternal formats; you can play pauper, draft, or standard. The format will never die because true affectionados do not need tournaments. Like how we don't organize "public roads just for Ferraris".

Well said. This entire discussion reminds me of something completely else, some club I went to when I was in my early 20s. They had a problem of too many kids (late teens) who showed up there, because there was no entry and the booze was affordable. They got wasted as fuck and lowered the (admittedly not all too classy) atmosphere. So the owner started charging 5 euro for entry, and you immediately saw the average age of the patron go up by a year or two, three. Any hobby becomes more enjoyable if there is a financial barrier of entry to keep the misbehaved riffraff out.

[Dice_Box]

I don't know (Other than he said something you agreed with) what exactly about his post was well said.

Anyway, if your argument boils down to "I want to play with only those I personally want to be around" thats a fine statement for you personally. But it's not a reason to actively exclude those you don't want around yourself who would also like the opportunity to play.

[AznSeal]

I don't know (Other than he said something you agreed with) what exactly about his post was well said.

Anyway, if your argument boils down to "I want to play with only those I personally want to be around" thats a fine statement for you personally. But it's not a reason to actively exclude those you don't want around yourself who would also like the opportunity to play.

Because life is not supposed to be barrier-free. I had to work hard in school to earn a title, and I don't want someone else to be on equal footing without have gone through what I did. Everything has a barrier of entry, some higher than others. I don't think we should lower the entry for the sake of being inclusive. The price isn't stopping people from playing "legacy." They can always use a printer or a sharpie. I don't mind playing against proxies with real decks. But I feel like the real cards should act as a status symbol.

[Dice_Box]

I never said it needed to be open season, I just don't feel like a 18 year old should have to pick between his first car or Legacy. There has to be a way both are possible. I mean, at one point people were bitching that Blood Moon cost 5 whole dollars. Now that looks like a dream. Just because you bought into a GAME before some poor kid started high school should not exclude him from playing.

This is a game. It's a game that at one point I could watch being played every weekend, have a great time seeing new and wonderful things happen and watch this site grow. Now it's fading away. Decks worth more than cars and fools trying to treat cardboard like Blue Chips. Well they are not fucking stock options, they are playing pieces. If you want to treat them like stock options that's your problem. But your taking a dumb as fuck risk in that. Other than the game aspect, what's a revised Dual really worth? What happens if the game collapses?

Your better off playing the stock market now, the cards are no longer going up like they once did. If you want to make money, time to move onto something else. If you want to play a game then don't act like your shuffling up stock options, remember your shuffling a game.

[Stan]

I never said it needed to be open season, I just don't feel like a 18 year old should have to pick between his first car or Legacy. There has to be a way both are possible. I mean, at one point people were bitching that Blood Moon cost 5 whole dollars. Now that looks like a dream. Just because you bought into a GAME before some poor kid started high school should not exclude him from playing.

This is a game. It's a game that at one point I could watch being played every weekend, have a great time seeing new and wonderful things happen and watch this site grow. Now it's fading away. Decks worth more than cars and fools trying to treat cardboard like Blue Chips. Well they are not fucking stock options, they are playing pieces. If you want to treat them like stock options that's your problem. But your taking a dumb as fuck risk in that. Other than the game aspect, what's a revised Dual really worth? What happens if the game collapses?

Your better off playing the stock market now, the cards are no longer going up like they once did. If you want to make money, time to move onto something else. If you want to play a game then don't act like your shuffling up stock options, remember your shuffling a game.


Nobody is excluded from playing the game, ie MtG. It just so happens that some people have the means to participate in sessions of the game which allow more cards than others. Even if you accept the dubious notion that somebody should be able regardless of financial position to partake in a completely useless game, a luxury hobby, the fact remains that this kid can play MtG just fine if he limits himself to one draft per week.

[Lord Seth]

The arguments of "we can't reprint these cards because we need to keep things expensive to keep the supposed riffraff out of Legacy!" ring hollow when you consider that prices were considerably cheaper in the past and the supposed 'riffraff' wasn't overtaking Legacy then. If that wasn't happening when Underground Seas were less than $100, then why is it critical to have Underground Seas at over $200?

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

I mean if underground sea was $200 and not $150, there would be one less drunken idiot at my LGS so there may be some merit to that

[ParkerLewis]

The arguments of "we can't reprint these cards because we need to keep things expensive to keep the supposed riffraff out of Legacy!" ring hollow when you consider that prices were considerably cheaper in the past and the supposed 'riffraff' wasn't overtaking Legacy then. If that wasn't happening when Underground Seas were less than $100, then why is it critical to have Underground Seas at over $200?

I'm guessing the actual reason is that the ones claiming this actually just don't want to feel bad if their "investment" drops in value. If playing Legacy costed 10x LESS as it does today, we'd still be talking about a very expensive game, so the claimed argument makes no sense. Also, if that was the real reason, then why not play Vintage instead of Legacy ? Oh yeah, because it is dead due to no one being able to afford a deck.

At one point you simply got to face the truth : are you here to play Legacy games with other Legacy players, or are you here to make money ? The only way you may have a problem with the idea of the barrier of entry getting lower (remember, we're not talking about it being free, but about it being significantly lower than like a month @ minimal wage in the richest countries in the world) is in the second case.

I am here to play Legacy games. I couldn't fucking care less about the "monetary value" of my collection. Its only actual value is in playing with it. You want MtG to be an investment ? I guess that's your prerogative ; but please, go buy Black Lotuses instead of Legacy-legal cards. You won't be able to find a more iconic card, and thus more safe MtG investment (even now with any format where it's playable long gone it is still and will always be sought-after). Non-P9 cards ? Not so much. Vintage has already died due to no one being able to play it so at least there's no one left to hurt. So please, do everyone a favor (including yourself), and invest in Lotuses instead.

[Nonex]

Well said. This entire discussion reminds me of something completely else, some club I went to when I was in my early 20s. They had a problem of too many kids (late teens) who showed up there, because there was no entry and the booze was affordable. They got wasted as fuck and lowered the (admittedly not all too classy) atmosphere. So the owner started charging 5 euro for entry, and you immediately saw the average age of the patron go up by a year or two, three. Any hobby becomes more enjoyable if there is a financial barrier of entry to keep the misbehaved riffraff out.

The problem with Legacy and the Reserved List is that your owner is currently charging 200 € instead of 5. Not only the misbehaved riffraff is being kept out.

[Warden]

Because life is not supposed to be barrier-free. I had to work hard in school to earn a title, and I don't want someone else to be on equal footing without have gone through what I did. Everything has a barrier of entry, some higher than others. I don't think we should lower the entry for the sake of being inclusive. The price isn't stopping people from playing "legacy." They can always use a printer or a sharpie. I don't mind playing against proxies with real decks. But I feel like the real cards should act as a status symbol.

Not to single you out, but it's this exact attitude that's ruined MTG for me. I do not understand the elitism.
Cards are significantly more expensive today than they were 5, 10, 15+ years ago. How can you expect new players to participate? When was the last time you saw a middle school or high school legacy player? All I see are players over 21.


This is a game. It's a game that at one point I could watch being played every weekend, have a great time seeing new and wonderful things happen and watch this site grow. Now it's fading away. Decks worth more than cars and fools trying to treat cardboard like Blue Chips. Well they are not fucking stock options, they are playing pieces. If you want to treat them like stock options that's your problem. But your taking a dumb as fuck risk in that. Other than the game aspect, what's a revised Dual really worth? What happens if the game collapses?

Your better off playing the stock market now, the cards are no longer going up like they once did. If you want to make money, time to move onto something else. If you want to play a game then don't act like your shuffling up stock options, remember your shuffling a game.

^^This. It would bring interest back into legacy, mitigate counterfeiting, and mitigate theft.
I have been in favor of abolishing the list for a while (and I own a fair amount of duals).

[Stan]

I'm guessing the actual reason is that the ones claiming this actually just don't want to feel bad if their "investment" drops in value. If playing Legacy costed 10x LESS as it does today, we'd still be talking about a very expensive game, so the claimed argument makes no sense. Also, if that was the real reason, then why not play Vintage instead of Legacy ? Oh yeah, because it is dead due to no one being able to afford a deck.

At one point you simply got to face the truth : are you here to play Legacy games with other Legacy players, or are you here to make money ? The only way you may have a problem with the idea of the barrier of entry getting lower (remember, we're not talking about it being free, but about it being significantly lower than like a month @ minimal wage in the richest countries in the world) is in the second case.

I am here to play Legacy games. I couldn't fucking care less about the "monetary value" of my collection. Its only actual value is in playing with it. You want MtG to be an investment ? I guess that's your prerogative ; but please, go buy Black Lotuses instead of Legacy-legal cards. You won't be able to find a more iconic card, and thus more safe MtG investment (even now with any format where it's playable long gone it is still and will always be sought-after). Non-P9 cards ? Not so much. Vintage has already died due to no one being able to play it so at least there's no one left to hurt. So please, do everyone a favor (including yourself), and invest in Lotuses instead.

1. I'm participating in a Vintage tournament later today in fact.

2. I could. I make no illusions about the game pieces being an investment, but I did buy them under the accurance of their publisher that no new ones would ever be printed. I would have acted in a different manner, if they had not made this very direct and explicit promise. I expect them to honour their word, and every indication so far says they will. I already said it before, if you want new blood in the scene so bad, tank the value of your own stuff by selling it cheap, that might draw in one or two new guys. You don't care about the value of your own cards anyway (or so you say), the value of mine aren't diminished, and new guy gets to play for real. Everybody wins.

Are the current prices too high? Yes, the price levels of a decade ago were preferable. But I prefer the current situation over one with reprints of non-reprint cards.

[CutthroatCasual]

When was the last time you saw a middle school or high school legacy player? All I see are players over 21.


Why would you want a middle or high school Legacy player? Playing against adults too difficult?

[Fjaulnir]

Also, it's not only keeping out immature kids, but also very mature players I know who've been in the game for 15-20 years but with other financial duties (getting married, kids and a house - their wife does "allow" them to go play magic but you can't really defend spending 2000$ on just one deck if you know what a newborn kid costs. For this reason I most likely have to sell out of Legacy again in 1-2 years myself :wink: )

[ParkerLewis]

I already said it before, if you want new blood in the scene so bad, tank the value of your own stuff by selling it cheap, that might draw in one or two new guys. You don't care about the value of your own cards anyway (or so you say), the value of mine aren't diminished, and new guy gets to play for real. Everybody wins.

- I end up having sold (or given, it looks like) my cards so I'm out of the format. So definitely not a win for me.
- Instead one other person is in the format. One Legacy player has been replaced by another. That's just not a win for the format either.

In my book, this is more like nobody wins...

By not increasing the supply of cards, the number of players slowly erodes to oblivion.


I make no illusions about the game pieces being an investment, but I did buy them under the accurance of their publisher that no new ones would ever be printed. I would have acted in a different manner, if they had not made this very direct and explicit promise.

I think you're saying you are not willing to see your cards end up being worth less than, or "drop down too much compared to", what you paid for them. Can you confirm / tell me if this is indeed the actual issue ? (this is not a trap question, it's a sincere effort on my part to try to pinpoint the source of the issue).

[guillemnicolau]

Why would you want a middle or high school Legacy player? Playing against adults too difficult?

I'm sure there are many high school Legacy players harder to beat than you (and I'm not raging, I'm closer to my thirties)

[Warden]

Why would you want a middle or high school Legacy player? Playing against adults too difficult?

I'm not sure what you are trying to get at unless you're implying I hope to just "bottom feed" against a younger player in an event. That's not where I'm going with the discussion. The point I'm making is that there is no "new blood" being brought into legacy. The average age of people I personally play against has to be mid-to-late 20s. A majority of the top players I know are over 30. I find it upsetting on a macro level to realize there are no younger players participating in the format.

@ParkerLewis' last comment is where I completely agree. The player base is just eroding over time. I also see it aging. On one end, young players aren't joining. On the other end, people are starting families. Meanwhile, prices rise. There is a very "have vs have not" mentality going on. I'm not asking for or expecting dual lands to be free. I still think cards should have some value. But creating a financial barrier for playing in the format is detrimental to its long term health.

[CutthroatCasual]

I'm sure there are many high school Legacy players harder to beat than you (and I'm not raging, I'm closer to my thirties)

Want to put your money where your mouth is? I'm free all day to play some Xmage.


I'm not sure what you are trying to get at unless you're implying I hope to just "bottom feed" against a younger player in an event. That's not where I'm going with the discussion. The point I'm making is that there is no "new blood" being brought into legacy. The average age of people I personally play against has to be mid-to-late 20s. A majority of the top players I know are over 30. I find it upsetting on a macro level to realize there are no younger players participating in the format.



But new blood is entering the format, just not at the age bracket you want it to. Most of the new Legacy players are recent college grads with jobs and stuff. Is that not good enough for you? If you want a massive influx of Legacy players you're going to get an increase in WotC intervention with the format and that's something no one wants.

[AznSeal]

Also, it's not only keeping out immature kids, but also very mature players I know who've been in the game for 15-20 years but with other financial duties (getting married, kids and a house - their wife does "allow" them to go play magic but you can't really defend spending 2000$ on just one deck if you know what a newborn kid costs. For this reason I most likely have to sell out of Legacy again in 1-2 years myself :wink: )

That's part of life. As The Rolling Stones said "you can't always get what you want." I love violin. I want to own a Stradivarius. It sucks I wasn't born in the 18th century (alluding to people who bought into
Legacy 20 years ago). Do you know what I do instead? Buy a modern violin. I still "play" the violin, but it's not what I want. Nothing is stopping proxies or sharpie users from kitchen top legacy. No one is "entitled" to play legacy just as how I'm not entitled to a multi million dollar violin.

[Dice_Box]

Strat is dead, he ain't building another instrument. Underground Sea is a printable item. It's not the same.

On one had we have something that CAN'T be done, one the other we have something that CAN be done. Easy really.

Also I am tapping out here. This thread is going to end up locked I reckon, I am likely going to be the one to do it. So I am stepping away so it doesn't look like I triggered that. I think this talk is actually valuable. It's hard to get people to actually defend the list, it's not a popular thing to do. So while I feel your arguments are weak, ineffectual and full of holes, I am glad we are actually talking about this. Nothing ever changes in an echo chamber.

[ParkerLewis]

But new blood is entering the format

Source ? If there is evidence that there are more Legacy players than 5 years ago, I'd be happy to hear it. Also, to be taken with a grain of salt, since apparently the general number of Magic players has gone up +35% each year from 2012 to 2014, so even if there temporarily is more players, it may very well simply be a simple mechanical effect from a larger Magic population overall (which is great but would mean additional Legacy players could be a temporary side-effect). But if you have numbers on this, that'd still be welcome news.


If you want a massive influx of Legacy players you're going to get an increase in WotC intervention with the format and that's something no one wants.

Seems like a very strange argument. First off, I'd take a WotC-format over a dead one any day of the week.

Second, WotC has basically always been very offhand regarding Legacy. When did they really ever fiddle with it ?

- In 2004 when they created it
- In 2007 to nuke Hulk Flash out of the format
- In 2013 to ban MM
- In 2015 to ban Cruise & DTT

And I'm pretty sure everyone was happy they acted on each of these instances. Other than that they've just been once in a while getting cards off the list, which everyone seems also quite happy with.

Any assumptions about a change of behavior regarding Legacy are just random. Additional assumptions on top of this that it would suddenly become badly managed make for a very weak argument.


Strat is dead, he ain't building another instrument. Underground Sea is a printable item. It's not the same.

This. The comparison is completely inadequate. And even if it wasn't, just because something is or isn't fucked up makes absolutely no justification that something else should / needs to be.

[Warden]

I'm right there with @ParkerLewis and @Dice_Box. This quote exemplifies my thoughts:


First off, I'd take a WotC-format over a dead one any day of the week.

[hymnyou]

If they're reprinted small amounts of reserve list cards collectors value would go up. Revised would take a hit but they would rebound a decent amount. White boarder cards are easier to find land wise when fetching and there is some nostalgia, he'll you might see more of those white boarder my deck dudes pop up. At this point they have learned a ton as we all know and they see the value as gold bricks in their closet to sell sets: see expeditions/masterpiece/whatever and goyf is the ultimate value flag when it comes to how they reprint.

One thing to consider is that when you have more players, you have a larger customer pool which makes your odds of having buyers for original prints goes up. Most players of older formats typically want original art. Collectors still want original printings. Look at original rares that are playable that have been reprinted into oblivion. A/b/u Birds of paradise, a/b/u shivan dragon, erhnam djinn, Serendib efreet- goes on and on. A comic book company can reprint the first appearance of superman #1 but the original still holds, granted there are differences because you cannot 'play' with a comic but how many people are playing with a beta shivan dragon- looking at prices on original prints the value is based on rarity no matter the reprint.

I'd imagine the biggest complainers are the spec community that are tearing up right now over the MM reprints, they would bath in their own rears on Twitter with a cornacopia of empty threats. Then you have the silent weirdo hoarders with millions invested, calling lawyers at the drop of a dime. There are prob some misc smaller companies that would write some shitty articles and a letter to wotc but that's about it. Finally your randos who will bitch while your trying to play a game. I think there are enough of the silent weirdo hoarders in their community to threaten wotc with costly and annoying lawsuits that prob make it not worth it and pushes their law team to advise them not to pursue with deconstructing or creating a loophole for the list.

I got cards and I'm fine with the list going, sincerely best of luck to anyone that can convince them.

[CutthroatCasual]

Source ? If there is evidence that there are more Legacy players than 5 years ago, I'd be happy to hear it. Also, to be taken with a grain of salt, since apparently the general number of Magic players has gone up +35% each year from 2012 to 2014, so even if there temporarily is more players, it may very well simply be a simple mechanical effect from a larger Magic population overall (which is great but would mean additional Legacy players could be a temporary side-effect). But if you have numbers on this, that'd still be welcome news.


The best I can do is tournament attendance.

I tried to compare SCG events in the same regions.
SCG Open - Somerset (NJ) 2015 (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=11018&f=LE) - 523 players
SCG Open - Edison, NJ 2011 (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=1167&f=LE) - 294 players

SCG Open - Baltimore 2016 (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=13952&f=LE) - 312 players
SCG Open - Baltimore 2012 (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=3879&f=LE) - 287 players

SCG Open - Richmond 2014 (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=8609&f=LE) - 225 players
SCG Open - Richmond 2010 (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=743&f=LE) - 179 players

As for GPs, those were easier to find so here's all the ones for Legacy for the past 5 years.

American GPs (has probably reached a plateau for the time being, but still signifcantly more than 5 years ago):
2011 Providence Legacy 28–29 May 2011 - 1179
2012 Indianapolis Legacy 10–11 March 2012 - 1214
2012–13 Atlanta Legacy 30 June–1 July 2012 - 905
2012–13 Denver Legacy 5–6 January 2013 - 700
2013–14 Washington, D.C. Legacy 16–17 November 2013 - 1698
2014–15 New Jersey Legacy 14–16 November 2014 - 4003
2015–16 Seattle Legacy 7–8 November 2015 - 2014
2015–16 Columbus Legacy 11-12 June 2016 - 1824
2016–17 Louisville Legacy 6-8 January 2017 - 1607

European GPs (with the exception of Amsterdam and Prague, attendance has been trending up compared to previous years):
2011 Amsterdam Legacy 22–23 October 2011 - 1878
2012–13 Ghent Legacy 21–22 July 2012 - 1345
2012–13 Strasbourg Legacy 13–14 April 2013 - 1364
2013–14 Paris Legacy 14–16 February 2014 - 1587
2014–15 Lille Legacy 4–5 July 2015 - 1548
2015–16 Prague Legacy 11-12 June 2016 - 1480

Asian GPs:
2014–15 Kyoto Legacy 18–19 April 2015 - 1943
2016–17 Chiba Legacy 26-27 November 2016 - 2503

Here's Eternal Weekend:

NA:
EW NA 2016 (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=13872&f=LE) - 410 players
EW NA 2011 (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=2075&f=LE) - 293 players

Europe:
EW Europe 2016 (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=13871&f=LE) - 294 players
EW Belgium 2011 (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=2560&f=LE) *not sure if this is actually affiliated with EW as we know it - 105 players



Seems like a very strange argument. First off, I'd take a WotC-format over a dead one any day of the week.

Second, WotC has basically always been very offhand regarding Legacy. When did they really ever fiddle with it ?

- In 2004 when they created it
- In 2007 to nuke Hulk Flash out of the format
- In 2013 to ban MM
- In 2015 to ban Cruise & DTT

And I'm pretty sure everyone was happy they acted on each of these instances. Other than that they've just been once in a while getting cards off the list, which everyone seems also quite happy with.


Yes, and those are 4 changes as opposed to the tens of changes that Modern has seen due to WotC interference since its inception. If many more people start playing Legacy, WotC's hand will be forced to start curating it more if they decide to use it as a source of revenue. That means more bans will be inevitable in order to keep attendance high and appease the masses so they keep spending money on supplementary product specifically for Legacy and continue attending Legacy events.

[Francisco Pires]

If you don't agree don't sign, i'm not forcing to sign

[Fjaulnir]

Also something that doesn't usually get considered, probably also cuz it's very unlikely to happen (I give abolishing the RL a higher chance), but imho it's one of the better things that could happen after RL reprints or legendary/snow duals:

Ban ABUR duals in Commander; whenever I sell off my spare duals, they get bought by local EDH players. There are a lot of EDH players. Not all of them have real duals, but as they mature more and more finish their decks by getting ABURs. Every EDH player (who isn't also a Legacy player) that buys duals, makes it harder for people to buy into Legacy as they raise prices - I can't prove it but personally I'm convinced part of the steady growth in dual prices is more related to EDH players than to Legacy, as that format isn't growing so much as to 2,5uple Underground Seas since I bought them a few years ago. (at least over here, Legacy tournament attendance was about the same when I started as it is today - so not dying nor growing)

[Lord Seth]

That's part of life. As The Rolling Stones said "you can't always get what you want." I love violin. I want to own a Stradivarius. It sucks I wasn't born in the 18th century (alluding to people who bought into
Legacy 20 years ago). Do you know what I do instead? Buy a modern violin. I still "play" the violin, but it's not what I want.
Quite a few major differences. First, it's not possible to make a Stradivarius because they were defined by being made by a specific group of people. Second, a modern violin is not any less functional than a Stradivarius; they both will do the exact same thing, and in fact modern violins might be better. People get Stradivariuses for prestige, not functionality.


The best I can do is tournament attendance.
The problem with the argument "look! More people are at these big events!" is ignoring the fact how much fewer of them there are. If there was a Legacy Open every single freaking weekend like there was in the past, of course you'd see fewer people incentivized to go to them because they have more options and more opportunities to play. But if there's only a few in a year, people will be more willing to try to go to a particular one because they have fewer opportunities.


Yes, and those are 4 changes as opposed to the tens of changes that Modern has seen due to WotC interference since its inception.That's because Modern as a format has a lot more problems than Legacy has had. That's not to say Legacy doesn't have some of its own, but in Modern they don't bother with decent answers or safety valves so something or other keeps getting broken and then they ban stuff.

I think there were also some big goofs made at the start of the format. When Legacy was first made, there wasn't a rush so I figure they had a lot of time to think things through, plus it was an offshoot of another format so they had better data. When Modern was "officially" made for the Pro Tour (it sort of existed beforehand but only for a month or two and had a much shorter banned list), it was a last minute decision and they probably had to just hammer out some kind of a banned list in a week or two. Questionable decisions made regarding bannings back then (as well as the also questionable starting point) are still hurting the format.

Of course, if you want to count the start of Legacy as the creation of Type 1.5, I should point out there quite a few more bannings that occurred in the first 5 years of that format than Modern (more than 20!).

[Stan]

- I end up having sold (or given, it looks like) my cards so I'm out of the format. So definitely not a win for me.
- Instead one other person is in the format. One Legacy player has been replaced by another. That's just not a win for the format either.

In my book, this is more like nobody wins...

By not increasing the supply of cards, the number of players slowly erodes to oblivion.



I think you're saying you are not willing to see your cards end up being worth less than, or "drop down too much compared to", what you paid for them. Can you confirm / tell me if this is indeed the actual issue ? (this is not a trap question, it's a sincere effort on my part to try to pinpoint the source of the issue).


Any drop in prices would suck, but of course 10 to 20% wouldn't be dramatic. I currently own 52 duals, 50 of which are WB (a playset of every one Revised, and I also own a complete UNL set). As people here have correctly said, the WB duals would tank the hardest. I bought them under the promise that no reprints would be made, I expect that promise to hold. I could post some obligatory bullshit about how I'm 'sorry for those people who didn't get theirs, but...' but that'd be bullshit. Truth be told, I don't give a damn about who didn't get his duals by now. Nobody gave them to me at a discount price, I didn't hold my breath waiting for reprints either.

[ParkerLewis]

The best I can do is tournament attendance.

Interesting sum up. Things aren't yet bleak on this aspect, and that's good to know. To be seen how much is due to Magic general's growth / how much more would it be with lower Legacy prices.



If [i]many more people start playing Legacy, WotC's hand will be forced to start curating it more if they decide to use it as a source of revenue.
That means more bans will be inevitable in order to keep attendance high and appease the masses so they keep spending money on supplementary product specifically for Legacy and continue attending Legacy events.

Once again, WotC's hand would not end up being forced to anything, simply because WotC isn't forced to do anything.

First, more people playing Legacy =/= WotC deciding to use it as a direct source of revenue. It's already an indirect source, giving long-term value to old cards thus benefitting Magic's ecosystem.

Second, WotC deciding to use it as a source of revenue =/= WotC banning cards left and right. Example ? You could make the opposite argument that WotC even already did use it as a direct source of revenue with Eternal Masters, yet Legacy's B&R management does not seem to have changed a bit.

Finally, and dare I say this strikes me as quite shocking, I can't help but notice I'm quoting an argument starting with "If many more people start playing Legacy" that is then going on trying to explain how this would be bad.


Any drop in prices would suck, but of course 10 to 20% wouldn't be dramatic. I currently own 52 duals, 50 of which are WB (a playset of every one Revised, and I also own a complete UNL set)..

Ok. I do also own my share of RL cards.

I'm trying to gauge what you feel would be 'acceptable'. I'd dare say "0% drop vs what I bought them for" would be a bit unrealistic to expect from any kind of expenditure, but I'm just trying to find out where you're at. Do I correctly understand you would be 'realistically ok' as long as the selling value of your collection retains 80-90% of what you bought it for ? Is this ok with you if I try to go from this premise ?

[Stan]

I wouldn't ragequit if they dropped to 80% OF PRESENT VALUE, but I would still be quite annoyed. The thing is, white bordered stuff would drop quite a lot more. The risk of them tanking way harder outweighs the potential benefits of a slight decrease, so screw the 'have nots'.

[CutthroatCasual]

The problem with the argument "look! More people are at these big events!" is ignoring the fact how much fewer of them there are. If there was a Legacy Open every single freaking weekend like there was in the past, of course you'd see fewer people incentivized to go to them because they have more options and more opportunities to play. But if there's only a few in a year, people will be more willing to try to go to a particular one because they have fewer opportunities.


I don't buy the "there's less of these large events so people will be more willing to travel to them." It's not like it's a trivial thing to travel to many of these venues. Plus, that only really explains the US side of the format because 1) there are so many more European eternal events in general, many moderately sized (<100 players) that we don't ever hear about and 2) the Asian scene is still relatively young yet just look at that growth; scarcity of events can only be a very minor factor in those cases.

[ParkerLewis]

I wouldn't ragequit if they dropped to 80% OF PRESENT VALUE, but I would still be quite annoyed.

Not that it necessarily matters for where I wanted to go, but what's important about "PRESENT VALUE" ? Isn't the price you bought them the only reference that's important to you ?

[Stan]

Not that it necessarily matters for where I wanted to go, but what's important about "PRESENT VALUE" ? Isn't the price you bought them the only reference that's important to you ?

nope

[ParkerLewis]

nope

Why ?

[Namida]

I don't buy the "there's less of these large events so people will be more willing to travel to them." It's not like it's a trivial thing to travel to many of these venues. Plus, that only really explains the US side of the format because 1) there are so many more European eternal events in general, many moderately sized (<100 players) that we don't ever hear about and 2) the Asian scene is still relatively young yet just look at that growth; scarcity of events can only be a very minor factor in those cases.

The Asian GPs aren't really an indicator of growth at all--there are tons of factors that actually account for the difference in attendance between Kyoto and Chiba. First of all, GP Kyoto preregistration was capped at 2000 players, and the cap was hit in a week so the attendance numbers cannot accurately reflect the number of players who would have participated if able. Chiba also had a cap, so the attendance numbers really only reflect that these events are reaching capacity. Another thing is that I live on the other side of the island from Kyoto--despite being only the size of California, travel within Japan is expensive and prohibitive for many people so the Japanese players in my area never even considered going to GP Kyoto; the only other people from up north who went were all Americans from the military base. Putting the GP in the middle of Japan (Chiba) suddenly made everyone in my area rush to get in under the preregistration cap.

Furthermore, concerning your disbelief at the idea of people traveling to these events as a reason for boosting attendance... Kyoto was the first Legacy GP in the APAC region. There were a ton of players there from the Philippines, Australia, and other places that have never had a Legacy GP before. Looking at the calendar, Chiba was also clearly the last APAC Legacy GP for the next two years (if they ever have one again) and this was a known factor during preregistration. About half of the players I faced off against in both of these GPs were not Asian. When it comes to Asia at least, you are wrong in your belief: people traveled from all over the place because they wanted to play in an Asian Legacy GP and this might just be the last one.

[AznSeal]

Why ?

Because no one keeps track of stuff according to initial value. Present value is always used. Try selling a used car for "initial value" or try buying a Stradivarius for "initial value."

[TsumiBand]

I like how people keep mentioning Stradivarius as if it defends the RP when really it stands as an example of the arbitrary nature of what we as humans deem of value. Trained violinists will fail blinded tests on identifying the Strad vs a modern instrument, either by sound or feeling, time and again - it is literally just a status symbol and is in no way a requisite for playing any particular genre of music in a meaningful way.

Now maybe if the world had gotten together and decided to falsely limit the number of violins ever made, there might be an argument there.

If you don't think that Magic: the Gathering has certain key printings of cards that have a value which is recognized beyond their intrinsic value to the game itself *without the Reprint Policy in place* then you have to concede the point that eventually the investment you perceive in your collection will come to mean absolutely nothing. Magic is not a game that is designed to persist in perpituity with a limited number of pieces like Poker or Chess. The emphasis on Standard over all other formats acknowledges this. The RP exists as a means to maintain this status quo, in concert with the Pro Tour to generate interest in Standard in the first place. If Standard can't stay relevant or profitable then the rest of the game tanks, and the new cards quit coming, and the RP means nothing because the game is dead. At that point, the value of the cards as they apply to historical interest will become apparent, and to continue the metaphor, we will then see who has a Stradivarius and who has a First Act.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

...I did buy [the game pieces] under the accurance of their publisher that no new ones would ever be printed. I would have acted in a different manner, if they had not made this very direct and explicit promise...

Even if the WotC didn't make some promise quarter a century ago, I wouldn't be playing painlands instead of duals, and I wouldn't limit my gaming experience and the hundreds of hours of playing to some kind of casual attempts with Llanowar Wastes and Coastal Tower. Definitely not. Btw, the duals did cost 10 DM back in 1996, and the ppl already bitched, and rightfully so, as the game was already kind of expensive, considering that it's just cardboard. As WotC needs to sell packs (and thus the Standart tournaments), it's understandable that duals and stuff were excluded from the 4th Edition, but I still hate that. RL leaves no scrubs behind, trust me, I saw a few lgs. What the RL have done for me, and that's the only thing that matters to me, as we're living in a competitive world of personal interests, is that the game is expensive.


Everybody who's not blind to the world around him, and who's still clinging to his expensive cards, is delusional. I expect the scene to crumble for two reasons:

1) overall trends in gaming/MtG do not favor the anachronism that TCGs present, and namely Eternal is an uncertain affair; I may be wrong on this, though.

Seeing what the usual gaming is centered about, I'm less than happy that I should be paying insane amount of money for it. And translating the price of cardboard in the necessary work, I came to a conclusion that the only way I can afford, justify and play MtG, is if the prices fall well below the 1996 levels. The only way how I'd be willing to own and play a Tier1 Legacy Blue deck is if it would cost somewhere around 100 USD. That's the appropriate price for a dozen of 1:2 drops/year in a hipsters-stoners settings.
The nowadays MtG is worse in some aspects then it was two decades ago (especially the gimmicky Legacy gaming that turned into Joker, in response Joker, in response my Joker...) so I sold most of my stuff while it was still expensive. Granted, I could have waited a year or two longer (I had some expectations and they were not correct), but I didn't want be the one to virtually burn hundreds of bucks. Now I'm finishing (albeit slowly, as I depend on middleman to avoid the stink-pits) the butchering with a hopeful result to not have a single card by the end of the year (or the next one; it's all about middleman's tempo and control)


2) overall trends in geopolitics make me sure that it's much more reasonable to convert the cardboard into some heavier and reliable kind of treasure; I'm correct on this one.

I could be paranoid, and yes, I was wrong two or three years ago when my expectations about the near future of Europe were not fullfilled, but this erroneous estimate of mine doesn't really matter, as the general tensions are more and more visible with every passing day, and the continent is heading for the catastrophe. I'm not against having MtG-fun even in the trenches, but seriously, what's happening in past few years reminds me of Titanic and Dunkirk 44/45 scenarios.
I pretty damn know that once the shtf the last of my troubles would be the fate of my playset of Goyfs, but on the other hand, this quadriga is already unsuitable to move me into job, and the less waste I'd be having around, and the more real valuables I'd be having in my hand, the brighter the future will be for me and those around me.
It won't be RL abolishment (mainly as nobody's going to follow it with massive reprints, least of all WotC) that will devalue your collection/stocks, but an hybrid war that's about to start in five years and that will devastate the whole world as we know it now, inflated hobbies included.
And verily I say unto thee: a people that permit what happened in past 2.5 millenia, deserve no less than their Library of Alexandria burnt.

[UnderwaterGuy]

When your Eurabian RL cards start being devalued you can ship them to the US.

[jrsthethird]

I totally understand the Reserved List and I'm behind it about 95%. There's a huge about of absolutely terrible cards on there that nobody wants reprinted. WOTC is clearly experimenting with a more flexible and well-thought-out reprint policy, with annual Masters sets, Masterpiece edition cards, etc. I feel that this may lead them to becoming more flexible on the list, and being willing to reinstate the "premium-only" loophole.

They would have to be very careful with this. Perhaps that they would use the Masterpiece series exclusively (no FTV, Duel Deck, Judge printings like before), where cards are inserted into packs at a roughly 1.5 per case rate. Imagine a standard set with Dual Land Masterpieces. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't be excited to buy those packs, and they've shown that the Masterpiece series does not hurt the value of original cards at all. A Masterpiece-only change to the Reserve List would generate massive profits for WOTC in booster sales and keep the collector values of original ABUR printings intact, all while releasing more copies of RL cards into the world and promoting format accessibility by giving newer players the chance to open a Masterpiece and trade into a real deck.

[CutthroatCasual]

I totally understand the Reserved List and I'm behind it about 95%. There's a huge about of absolutely terrible cards on there that nobody wants reprinted. WOTC is clearly experimenting with a more flexible and well-thought-out reprint policy, with annual Masters sets, Masterpiece edition cards, etc. I feel that this may lead them to becoming more flexible on the list, and being willing to reinstate the "premium-only" loophole.

They would have to be very careful with this. Perhaps that they would use the Masterpiece series exclusively (no FTV, Duel Deck, Judge printings like before), where cards are inserted into packs at a roughly 1.5 per case rate. Imagine a standard set with Dual Land Masterpieces. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't be excited to buy those packs, and they've shown that the Masterpiece series does not hurt the value of original cards at all. A Masterpiece-only change to the Reserve List would generate massive profits for WOTC in booster sales and keep the collector values of original ABUR printings intact, all while releasing more copies of RL cards into the world and promoting format accessibility by giving newer players the chance to open a Masterpiece and trade into a real deck.

I can get behind this.

[Fjaulnir]

And Expeditions are so ugly that most people probably still will want to play their revised, hence not really tanking demand for these :wink:

[ParkerLewis]

Because no one keeps track of stuff according to initial value. Present value is always used. Try selling a used car for "initial value" or try buying a Stradivarius for "initial value."

The whole argument that was being discussed was that Stan said he purchased these cards a certain price based on the premise that their value wouldn't tank. If this was truly the only issue, that of protecting the money one put into the cards, then the only value reference point one is interested in (and doesn't want to dip too much under) is the one at the time of the buy, and any up or down variation above this level is then absolutely no basis for arguing for or against anything. This is of course if that is indeed the only issue at hand.

It'd also be great if you could stop referencing Stradivarius when it has been demonstrated numerous times how inadequate and misguided this is (answers that on the other hand you have conveniently ignored).

This is one those moments where I'd be wanting to reference the "not sure if trolling" futurama meme.

Aside from that, you don't really have to answer personal questions that were asked to someone else. Or if you do, at least have the courtesy to check and follow the previous discussion and the context they were asked. Otherwise, just expect to be ignored next time.



WOTC is clearly experimenting with a more flexible and well-thought-out reprint policy, with annual Masters sets, Masterpiece edition cards, etc. I feel that this may lead them to becoming more flexible on the list, and being willing to reinstate the "premium-only" loophole.

They would have to be very careful with this. Perhaps that they would use the Masterpiece series exclusively (no FTV, Duel Deck, Judge printings like before), where cards are inserted into packs at a roughly 1.5 per case rate. Imagine a standard set with Dual Land Masterpieces. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't be excited to buy those packs, and they've shown that the Masterpiece series does not hurt the value of original cards at all. A Masterpiece-only change to the Reserve List would generate massive profits for WOTC in booster sales and keep the collector values of original ABUR printings intact, all while releasing more copies of RL cards into the world and promoting format accessibility by giving newer players the chance to open a Masterpiece and trade into a real deck.I can get behind this.

That's great. Abolishing the RL definitely does not, in absolutely any way, mean "mass printing said cards until their circulation is that of basic lands". Absolishing the RL just means that - WotC saying they'd be willing to *some day* reprint *some amount* of *some of these cards*. That's all. If you'd be fine with this, then we agree.

My point is, let's not 100% kill an idea just because there's a way to imagine it being done stupidly - that's true of every idea, every solution, to every problem.

[CutthroatCasual]

That's all. If you'd be fine with this, then we agree.

My point is, let's not 100% kill an idea just because there's a way to imagine it being done stupidly - that's true of every idea, every solution, to every problem.

Too bad people who would be okay with "expeditions" duals are vastly outnumbered by the entitled GIMME MUH DUALS FOR $10 BUT EVEN THEN THAT'S TOO EXPENSIVE BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE $40 TO AFFORD A PLAYSET BUT LEMME GO DRAFT FNM EVERY WEEK FOR A YEAR crowd.

WotC would also need to adjust the drop rate so that they can have them in every set, but at a lower drop rate so not too many enter the market and then crash the price of the existing RL examples.

[Purple Blood]

What do you guys think would happen to the meta if tomorrow, instead of ending the RL policy, they just banned every card on the RL for Legacy?

[CutthroatCasual]

What do you guys think would happen to the meta if tomorrow, instead of ending the RL policy, they just banned every card on the RL for Legacy?

I think you should take your shitty idea back to Seth Olive.

[ParkerLewis]

Too bad people who would be okay with "expeditions" duals are vastly outnumbered by the entitled GIMME MUH DUALS FOR $10 BUT EVEN THEN THAT'S TOO EXPENSIVE BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE $40 TO AFFORD A PLAYSET BUT LEMME GO DRAFT FNM EVERY WEEK FOR A YEAR crowd.

The important point is that caps lock posts on internet forums are of no effect on anyone or any company. I personally doubt there'd be such a huge crowd anyway (after all, we're talking product not directed at their main market which is Standard), but even if there was, its existence would be as significant as pissing in the wind. No reason to worry here.


WotC would also need to adjust the drop rate so that they can have them in every set, but at a lower drop rate so not too many enter the market and then crash the price of the existing RL examples.

I don't think they'd need to have them in every set, but so be it. Any number is feasible.

[kirkusjones]

Too bad people who would be okay with "expeditions" duals are vastly outnumbered by the entitled GIMME MUH DUALS FOR $10 BUT EVEN THEN THAT'S TOO EXPENSIVE BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE $40 TO AFFORD A PLAYSET BUT LEMME GO DRAFT FNM EVERY WEEK FOR A YEAR crowd.

WotC would also need to adjust the drop rate so that they can have them in every set, but at a lower drop rate so not too many enter the market and then crash the price of the existing RL examples.

Wouldn't this be the best of both worlds? Those of us looking for new blood in the format and a more moderate reprint policy get what we want and those who support the current policy because it keeps out the hoi polloi get what they want. No one here (as myself and others have pointed out multiple times) seems to be in favor of massive reprints that render the Reserved List cards worthless, just that they become affordable enough to breath new life into the format.


My point is, let's not 100% kill an idea just because there's a way to imagine it being done stupidly - that's true of every idea, every solution, to every problem.

This, 100%.

[CptHaddock]

The important point is that caps lock posts on internet forums are of no effect on anyone or any company. I personally doubt there'd be such a huge crowd anyway (after all, we're talking product not directed at their main market which is Standard), but even if there was, its existence would be as significant as pissing in the wind. No reason to worry here.


I'm sure that even WOTC will realize that they don't want to crash prices but just decrease them. Seems like a win/win all around, casuals get a chance of getting dual lands for their EDH decks, people who want to buy into legacy get cheaper cards and existing players can extend the number of decks that they can play and ideally there will be more events. Even stores without a large collection of duals get to make some $ selling people packs. I guess the larger stores which may have a large supply of ABUR duals might lose out on it a bit, but I think that is for the greater good. The point is that the ABUR duals and any of the other valuable RL stuff will retain it's price to some degree.

The "investments" that some people consider their cards to be might even grow in price since the original RL stuff will be kind of a premium product. Although i'm not sure why these people are choosing to put their stock into cards rather than 401ks, stocks, property, etc like many of the older players that they enjoy playing against do.

[Purple Blood]

I think you should take your shitty idea back to Seth Olive.

I never even proposed it as an idea. I mainly posed the question as a thought experiment.

Would it tank RL prices? (Intuitively the answer is yes but Vintage being dead didn't really hurt power; although that might be an exception)

What would the meta look like? Obviously it would cause a shift to the land bases seen in Modern. Seems like it would kill some fringe decks like MUD. Some decks would lose some interest one-ofs.

Edit: found an interesting article on the subject: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/no-reserved-list-legacy

[UnderwaterGuy]

I never even proposed it as an idea. I mainly posed the question as a thought experiment.

Would it tank RL prices? (Intuitively the answer is yes but Vintage being dead didn't really hurt power; although that might be an exception)

What would the meta look like? Obviously it would cause a shift to the land bases seen in Modern. Seems like it would kill some fringe decks like MUD. Some decks would lose some interest one-ofs.

Edit: found an interesting article on the subject: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/no-reserved-list-legacy
Probably a midrange hellscape, why not just play Modern at that point? Even if Modern is not a fun format for some Legacy players it at least gives those people something to play. If you hate Brainstorm, Counterspell, and faster combo decks then people can just play Modern and let Legacy players enjoy their format with fewer creatures and its own flavor interaction (on the stack instead of in combat)

Vintage isn't dead either, by the way.

[Purple Blood]

Probably a midrange hellscape, why not just play Modern at that point? Even if Modern is not a fun format for some Legacy players it at least gives those people something to play. If you hate Brainstorm, Counterspell, and faster combo decks then people can just play Modern and let Legacy players enjoy their format with fewer creatures and its own flavor interaction (on the stack instead of in combat)

Vintage isn't dead either, by the way.

Umm...Counter Spell and Brainstorm (and FOW, Daze, Wastland, Rishadan Port and a whole host of other cards for that matter) aren't on the reserve list.

I don't think it would really be Modern. That article broke it down pretty well. Mana bases switch from duals to shocks. MUD and Aluren die. Some decks lose some non-essential toys here and there. It really wouldn't change things all that much. Besides killing off two really fun decks I kind of like slowing down combo by a turn/half-turn which might actually give real aggro decks a chance. As it stands now Legacy "aggro" is really combo and traditional aggro decks are tempo/mid-range that play a lot of disruption. Not that there's anything wrong with that setup.

That being said, I'm not exactly in favor of doing a mass RL banning but its an interesting idea to solve a looming and existential problem.

[UnderwaterGuy]

I really don't think Legacy is facing any existential crisis. Over the next few years there may be less tournaments but even Vintage has tournaments and I think it's a much less popular format than Legacy. When Legacy tournaments start allowing proxies that will be a sign that things have changed but that doesn't seem to be happening yet.

I see proxies as a better answer than begging wotc to break their promise.

[Dice_Box]

The format was trialled for a while, known as "Eternal" when Eternal Masters was announced. It's reddit subfourm is dead and from all reports I have been given it turned into DnT the format.

In short it was not something the Legacy players wanted to move too, what's the point in playing a stripped down version of the format you already play, and the Modern players didn't want to buy into something with absolutely zero support. It was DOA. Though there was one event run out of my local store. I didn't go, but from what I am today it was 3 DnT and a Fish deck in the top 4. All legacy decks straight ported over.

[s&s]

What do you guys think would happen to the meta if tomorrow, instead of ending the RL policy, they just banned every card on the RL for Legacy?

Why not just ban every card in rotation?

Good for sales and new players can buy a new set booster and be right up there with the veterans, collection-wise!

The first 6 months of the format will be 1-booster sealed deck only.

[Barook]

I totally understand the Reserved List and I'm behind it about 95%. There's a huge about of absolutely terrible cards on there that nobody wants reprinted. WOTC is clearly experimenting with a more flexible and well-thought-out reprint policy, with annual Masters sets, Masterpiece edition cards, etc. I feel that this may lead them to becoming more flexible on the list, and being willing to reinstate the "premium-only" loophole.

They would have to be very careful with this. Perhaps that they would use the Masterpiece series exclusively (no FTV, Duel Deck, Judge printings like before), where cards are inserted into packs at a roughly 1.5 per case rate. Imagine a standard set with Dual Land Masterpieces. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't be excited to buy those packs, and they've shown that the Masterpiece series does not hurt the value of original cards at all. A Masterpiece-only change to the Reserve List would generate massive profits for WOTC in booster sales and keep the collector values of original ABUR printings intact, all while releasing more copies of RL cards into the world and promoting format accessibility by giving newer players the chance to open a Masterpiece and trade into a real deck.
They can change the RL wording to their liking whenever they want. A new iteration could easily become "never to be reprinted again with old frame or art", maybe Foil only, to make them Masterpieces.

If expeditions could make the PoS Battle for Zendikar was the best-selling set of all time, just imagine what Masterpiece Duals would do to the sales. IIRC, somebody has done the math regarding the number of Masterpieces - they're suprisingly low. For the print run of a current Standard in-print set, each specific Masterpiece might only have ca. 7000-8000 copies. So the increase in actual duals isn't even that high as one might suspect.

I don't think we're far from that point, given how much WotC has fucked up Standard & player numbers are stagnating. Modern Master 2017 is clearly a new direction in terms of reprints, both in terms of what gets reprinted and the rumored significantly increased print run. The new CEO Chris Cocks might be responsible for this new direction, but who knows. Fun fact: According to the interview he gave for the MTGO Championship last weekend, he started playing Magic in 1993. As an actual Magic player of the first hour, he might have a different view in the RL than other CEOs.

[Megadeus]

I never even proposed it as an idea. I mainly posed the question as a thought experiment.

Would it tank RL prices? (Intuitively the answer is yes but Vintage being dead didn't really hurt power; although that might be an exception)

What would the meta look like? Obviously it would cause a shift to the land bases seen in Modern. Seems like it would kill some fringe decks like MUD. Some decks would lose some interest one-ofs.

Edit: found an interesting article on the subject: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/no-reserved-list-legacy
This article is the exact shitty idea and person that was referenced that you should take your idea to

[Megadeus]

The format was trialled for a while, known as "Eternal" when Eternal Masters was announced. It's reddit subfourm is dead and from all reports I have been given it turned into DnT the format.

In short it was not something the Legacy players wanted to move too, what's the point in playing a stripped down version of the format you already play, and the Modern players didn't want to buy into something with absolutely zero support. It was DOA. Though there was one event run out of my local store. I didn't go, but from what I am today it was 3 DnT and a Fish deck in the top 4. All legacy decks straight ported over.

Sorry to double post, but I feel like one factor of this was probably because the same reason I don't want to buy cards to play in No Banned List Modern. While an interesting idea, I have no reason to own those cards outside of the one particular tourney so It's not worth investing in.

[nedleeds]

The foil 'loophole' was a nice happy medium it let them squeeze a little supply out and throw retailers a bone. The judicious reprints did really nothing to impact card prices of playable cards over a few years. See Mox Diamond, Cradle, Intuition, Hermit, Will, SotF all foiled ... the foil held or holds a premium the originals are sought after enough for one reason or another that their price still maintains a floor.

95% of you weren't playing during Chronicles. You don't want Chronicles. It was a total disaster. Taking the first C out of CCG doesn't benefit the players or the collectors.

[Pilhas]

The foil 'loophole' was a nice happy medium it let them squeeze a little supply out and throw retailers a bone. The judicious reprints did really nothing to impact card prices of playable cards over a few years. See Mox Diamond, Cradle, Intuition, Hermit, Will, SotF all foiled ... the foil held or holds a premium the originals are sought after enough for one reason or another that their price still maintains a floor.

95% of you weren't playing during Chronicles. You don't want Chronicles. It was a total disaster. Taking the first C out of CCG doesn't benefit the players or the collectors.

I also agree a bit with this idea, while I did not play during chronicles, by hearing people that did, I believe it is not a good move to flood the gates. The old loophole let WotC release a few cards each year with a premium for stores and an assurance of easy money for them.

My thinking is that they probably got to many complaints or the wouldn't stop.
The supplemental product was however not ideal to introduce more duals since the demand is much higher than the print run. They would face a outlash of both pro-RL players and general players alike. A FTV duals with all 10 for example would have a price tag out of this world I guess.... No point in reprint duals is the new ones will be more expensive than the older ones and facing the problem of raising the old ones price by the new influx of players.

The best option was probably having them as staple masterpieces with a "mythic masterpiece" drop rate to slowly satisfy the need.

[GrimoirePath]

I did play during Chronicles, and as fifteen year old, I bought the shit out of it. Looking at it now, Im sure there are a lot of valid critiques of how that set was handled, but it doesnt mean that an intelligent process couldnt be figured out for reprinting RL cards.

Again, when prices get high enough, you incentivize counterfeiters to refine their practice. Would you rather your collection lost value to fakes, or to a controlled release of reprints?

[non-inflammable]

I too bought several chronicles' boxes...
I have posted in this thread about a modified buyback for duals: surrender two duals to wotc and get one mint BB dual with the anti-counterfeit stamp or a hasbro stock offering for your duals. Now we can just merge the banned and restricted thread with this one: ban brainstorm and all the people that say they will quit legacy if brainstorm is banned will create a glut of legacy playables and duals where new players can buy in at much lower prices.

[Purple Blood]

This article is the exact shitty idea and person that was referenced that you should take your idea to

OK. The whole point of bringing it up was to engage in a discussion. Why do you think its shitty? I'd like to hear.

[LegacyIsAnEternalFormat]

Wasnt there a zendikar reserved list lottery thing going on back in the day? If so, are reserved list masterpieces still unrealistic? Imagine how many packs that would sell...

[Richard Cheese]

The foil 'loophole' was a nice happy medium it let them squeeze a little supply out and throw retailers a bone. The judicious reprints did really nothing to impact card prices of playable cards over a few years. See Mox Diamond, Cradle, Intuition, Hermit, Will, SotF all foiled ... the foil held or holds a premium the originals are sought after enough for one reason or another that their price still maintains a floor.

95% of you weren't playing during Chronicles. You don't want Chronicles. It was a total disaster. Taking the first C out of CCG doesn't benefit the players or the collectors.

Chronicles was actually pretty successful at what it set out to do. I was in middle school at the time and my friends and I loved Chronicles. I guess if you were older and actually had money to throw at the game then we were "the problem" but it generated and maintained a ton of interest in my demographic, especially on the heels of Fallen Empires. Clearly it could have been handled better - normal sized/priced packs, and a smaller print run, but I think the RL was still a massive overreaction to an overreaction.

OTOH, I didn't work for WotC in '96 so I have no idea how bad the backlash was. The RL tends to get credit for the game's survival through the late 90s but if the outcry from the secondary market was really so bad, how was the print run for Chronicles allowed to go on so long? I guess we'll never know how many of those decisions were calculated moves vs. the flailings of inexperienced management.

[PirateKing]

The misplaced elitism is unbearable.

If you want to emphasize the collectable aspect of a trading card game, then run a little stress test across your collection: imagine card X gets reprinted a thousand fold. What happens to the value? Does it tank to pennies? Then it wasn't a collectable. If you're clutching onto the cheapest version of a card, hiding behind the reserve list so the bottom doesn't fall out from under you, you are an awful collector. Every other collectable fandom manages to play by grownup rules. There's no safety net preventing reprints, in fact it's typically quite the opposite, standout collector's items get their value whored out in replicas and reproductions quite often. But that's just the hallmark of a true collectable; both copies of the Hobbit read the same, but the one dated 1938 is selling for $5,000. Detective Comics 27 reproductions sell for $15, so why would anyone spend $1,380 for the same thing? For all the talk of maturity, the Reserved List represents the most baby mode, collectors-on-training wheels I've ever seen. If you own Alpha and Beta duals, then you'd know that you have nothing to fear with the RL being abolished. Birds of Paradise has shown us that original printings can fetch 220% more than their cheapest printing. Island shows us that genuine collectable copies get 620% more than their cheapest version (if you believe that $0.50 is fair for an Basic Island, otherwise we're talking like tens of thousand percents).

If you guys want to be collectors, there are lots of opportunities to do so in this game. If that's too expensive for you, then get off your high horse and shut up. Because here's the other stress test you can run: imagine Magic goes the way of all the other TCGs it spawned. You're just as likely to find another Magic player as you are another Star Wars (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=swtcg) player. What happens to the value of your cards? Do they tank again? Then it's value exists as a game component. Which means if you're interested in maintaining it's value, you better be interested in the health of the game. Compare the price of Wasteland to Strip Mine and explain why the worse card is four times as expensive. Apply that supply/demand model to a world where Legacy goes the way of Vintage. So if you're serious, then grow up and act serious. New blood is new blood, you don't get to pick who sits down across from you. The recommended age is 13+ for fuck's sake.

[nedleeds]

Go play modern if you want to sit across from 13 year olds.

[Dice_Box]

Go play modern if you want to sit across from 13 year olds.
I taught this game to my niece at 11, she beat me with Fish before 13. Trust me, a smart kid can play Legacy just fine. When the twins are older I will teach them and build them Legacy decks.

[Lemnear]

Go play modern if you want to sit across from 13 year olds.

It real life Satire that its you who tells players to #GoPlayModern

[nedleeds]

I taught this game to my niece at 11, she beat me with Fish before 13. Trust me, a smart kid can play Legacy just fine. When the twins are older I will teach them and build them Legacy decks.

Clearly I'm trolling, but I honestly don't want to teach magic at my one night a week I have time to go play. I want to play with adults who know the rules and have cards. Magic has a pretty clear stepping stone pattern of formats. Introducing more complex interactions from sealed, to standard, to modern etc..

[TsumiBand]

this super on-point post

I want to have this etched into a plaque.

[Richard Cheese]

Clearly I'm trolling, but I honestly don't want to teach magic at my one night a week I have time to go play. I want to play with adults who know the rules and have cards. Magic has a pretty clear stepping stone pattern of formats. Introducing more complex interactions from sealed, to standard, to modern etc..

I think the solution to this problem is one that I've been proposing for years: relax the rules on alcohol and allow stores to run adult tournaments. Maybe put some restrictions on it like no FNM or can't be the majority of events or something so that mom and dad don't accidentally leave little Bryson at what amounts to a pool hall for 6 hours by accident. Although, if you pick him up and he's learned how Sylvan Library works and what a mash bill is, I'm pretty sure you're a better parent than like 70% of the country.

[rlesko]

The misplaced elitism is unbearable.

If you want to emphasize the collectable aspect of a trading card game, then run a little stress test across your collection: imagine card X gets reprinted a thousand fold. What happens to the value? Does it tank to pennies? Then it wasn't a collectable. If you're clutching onto the cheapest version of a card, hiding behind the reserve list so the bottom doesn't fall out from under you, you are an awful collector. Every other collectable fandom manages to play by grownup rules. There's no safety net preventing reprints, in fact it's typically quite the opposite, standout collector's items get their value whored out in replicas and reproductions quite often. But that's just the hallmark of a true collectable; both copies of the Hobbit read the same, but the one dated 1938 is selling for $5,000. Detective Comics 27 reproductions sell for $15, so why would anyone spend $1,380 for the same thing? For all the talk of maturity, the Reserved List represents the most baby mode, collectors-on-training wheels I've ever seen. If you own Alpha and Beta duals, then you'd know that you have nothing to fear with the RL being abolished. Birds of Paradise has shown us that original printings can fetch 220% more than their cheapest printing. Island shows us that genuine collectable copies get 620% more than their cheapest version (if you believe that $0.50 is fair for an Basic Island, otherwise we're talking like tens of thousand percents).

You have a point but this logic falls apart since the price of all duals (not just AB duals) is affected by the presence of the reserved list. I would say in your example that unlimited / revised fulfill the role of "collector's editions", but then shortly afterwards the manufacturer promised they would no longer produce replicas either. Nobody is insisting their revised duals are epic collector's items but the fact of the matter is they've reached the price points of hundreds of dollars and people gained the confidence to buy them at said price due to the fact that WotC has promised to not print them again. Now if there could be a way to somehow print more and simultaneously not tank the values of existing ones, I would be all for it. A trade in program seems like the best bet IMO but I doubt that would ever happen.

[nedleeds]

I think the solution to this problem is one that I've been proposing for years: relax the rules on alcohol and allow stores to run adult tournaments. Maybe put some restrictions on it like no FNM or can't be the majority of events or something so that mom and dad don't accidentally leave little Bryson at what amounts to a pool hall for 6 hours by accident. Although, if you pick him up and he's learned how Sylvan Library works and what a mash bill is, I'm pretty sure you're a better parent than like 70% of the country.

Welcome to 93/94. But seriously, since eternal literally has no "upward" path, not even GPTs offsite to get byes for the misers 1 Legacy GP a year. Or with Legacy Grand Prixs likely being limited to Vegas going forward in 2018, there is no incentive at all to award Planeswalker Points for ~90% of the Eternal players out there. What possible benefit is there for sanctioning Legacy at this point? You want some shitrag serum vision FNM promo? You'd just as soon light it on fire. I guess there are qualifiers for other circuits or events that support eternal like EE or Eternal Weekend, those likely would have to be sanctioned to award points.

There are stores with alcohol (Atomic Empire, Mox Boarding House, Card Kingdom, soon Giga-Bites Cafe) in store or at an attached store, I've been to all of them. I believe there is to be no alcohol consumed by players during sanctioned events. But AE for example allows booze during unsanctioned proxy Vintage events.

[Richard Cheese]

Welcome to 93/94. But seriously, since eternal literally has no "upward" path, not even GPTs offsite to get byes for the misers 1 Legacy GP a year. Or with Legacy Grand Prixs likely being limited to Vegas going forward in 2018, there is no incentive at all to award Planeswalker Points for ~90% of the Eternal players out there. What possible benefit is there for sanctioning Legacy at this point? You want some shitrag serum vision FNM promo? You'd just as soon light it on fire. I guess there are qualifiers for other circuits or events that support eternal like EE or Eternal Weekend, those likely would have to be sanctioned to award points.

There are stores with alcohol (Atomic Empire, Mox Boarding House, Card Kingdom, soon Giga-Bites Cafe) in store or at an attached store, I've been to all of them. I believe there is to be no alcohol consumed by players during sanctioned events. But AE for example allows booze during unsanctioned proxy Vintage events.

I totally agree. CML's Pro Tour article kinda ruined the "rewards" system of high-level magic for me. I guess that's why I've just stuck to kitchen table stuff for the last year or two - the social aspect has become way more important than the game itself. Still, I think there's some allure to sanctioned events, even just at regular REL. People take things a bit more seriously, and seeing a fresh face from time to time is nice, since most people I've met playing this format have been pretty rad.

That's why I think WotC should relax on the booze policy, at least for Legacy/Vintage. It's not like allowing 21+ events is going to alienate more players than high prices, poor format management, and general lack of tournaments already have.

[TsumiBand]

You have a point but this logic falls apart since the price of all duals (not just AB duals) is affected by the presence of the reserved list.

I feel like this is addressed by extension of his second argument (absent from your quote). If the game did collapse we would expect the value of the cards to follow trends like every other TCG that's ever folded. These games lose their investment value when they stop printing new cards, not when old cards are reprinted in modest amounts - obviously when a game tanks 100% of the cards won't be printed again, so it's a little like the Omega Reprint Policy.

[Zombie]

Clearly I'm trolling, but I honestly don't want to teach magic at my one night a week I have time to go play. I want to play with adults who know the rules and have cards. Magic has a pretty clear stepping stone pattern of formats. Introducing more complex interactions from sealed, to standard, to modern etc..

At least when I started as a teenager I pretty much just insta-devoured any descriptions of how game rules interactions worked and liked cards doing cool stuff (Granted, starting during Time Spiral / Lorwyn era prooobably has something to do with it). Chances are damn good you wouldn't have to teach the rules for long.

[tescrin]

The misplaced elitism is unbearable.
Snip - Clean it up and repost if you want. Hostile posts (direct or indirect) will not be tolerated. -J

[CutthroatCasual]

^ sums up my thoughts in harsher language than I would have used. It's about being on an equal level with those around me. Legacy is an MTG rite of passage, not a guarantee that everyone who's ever cracked a pack of Theros is entitled to. And the format, while small in playerbase size, has much more quality to it because of this. We all know what it takes to save up for that final dual. Because of that, we all have a deeper respect for the format. I don't want to play against someone who bitched their way to owning Grixis Delver and then quit the format because they're bad at Magic. One of the reasons why I enjoy going to the occasional Legacy event is to catch up with players that I haven't seen in a while due to adult circumstance. I form friendships with the Legacy players I'm matched up against. But (when I was playing Modern) I rarely had such a connection with my opponents.

[Lord Seth]

Modern Master 2017 is clearly a new direction in terms of reprints, both in terms of what gets reprinted and the rumored significantly increased print run.
I talked to my LGS owner. He says that the amount they're getting is only a small increase compared to the previous Modern Masters.


Go play modern if you want to sit across from 13 year olds.
I've actually played against a lot more 13 year olds (or people roughly around that age) playing Legacy than I have playing Modern.

[UnderwaterGuy]

At least when I started as a teenager I pretty much just insta-devoured any descriptions of how game rules interactions worked and liked cards doing cool stuff (Granted, starting during Time Spiral / Lorwyn era prooobably has something to do with it). Chances are damn good you wouldn't have to teach the rules for long.

I also started just before Time Spiral and it was an absolute feast for me :laugh:. I loved that block and its many rules and references.

Every single set since then feels bland and I'd love to see a little bit of a return to that kind of mechanical-focus and clear love-of-the-game. Wotc was brave to make Time Spiral block and they've been playing it safe ever since. Even though it was a set full of in-joke references it still had appeal to new players and I think the people designing those cards were expressing their love for the game while referencing their favorite old cards and it came through to players.


Wasnt there a zendikar reserved list lottery thing going on back in the day? If so, are reserved list masterpieces still unrealistic? Imagine how many packs that would sell...
Those weren't actually reprints though. Wotc either included Power 9 that they had held onto or bought P9 on the secondary market to include in packs. They were also radically more rare than Masterpieces.

Unfortunately, wotc already tried to outsmart the RL with foil reprints and they stopped doing it. I definitely think they were pressured into doing so. Masterpiece-rarity white-borded duals would be reasonable imo but it breaks the RL.

Proxies, proxies, proxies! Almost none of us care about whatever sanctioned tournaments are tracking anymore. If local game store tournament attendance is falling then it's time to go un-sanctioned and allow a few proxies.

[CutthroatCasual]

I've actually played against a lot more 13 year olds (or people roughly around that age) playing Legacy than I have playing Modern.

That must be an anomaly then because the vast majority of Legacy players are mid-to-late 20's and older.

[Megadeus]

I think legacy wise I've played against maybe one person under 18 in years. And that was the brother of someone who had basically every card in existence (he played 4 tabernacle mono green lands one week for fun). But I do remember playing against more than enough high school or middle school kids in standard that I really didn't want to interact with for multiple reasons. It's just a matter of maturity, not riff raff. And understanding of the game. I already have to explain how things work with people who play regularly, I don't want to explain every single card and how they all work together on my off night

[Lord Seth]

That must be an anomaly then because the vast majority of Legacy players are mid-to-late 20's and older.
It was rare, but it did happen, and more so than in Modern. I don't remember playing against a 13-year-old even once in Modern, but in Legacy? Yeah, it happened a few times.

[jrsthethird]

I talked to my LGS owner. He says that the amount they're getting is only a small increase compared to the previous Modern Masters.

That's on him. My LGS owner said he was getting something like 160 cases of MM3. He told the distributor he'd take as much as he could get, while others seem to play it safe.

He's sold out of MM2 and EMA, so there's no reason, even before spoilers showed the set is legit, he wouldn't want to get as much as possible because, no matter how bad it might be (MM2), it still sells.

[Stan]

I totally agree. CML's Pro Tour article kinda ruined the "rewards" system of high-level magic for me. I guess that's why I've just stuck to kitchen table stuff for the last year or two - the social aspect has become way more important than the game itself. Still, I think there's some allure to sanctioned events, even just at regular REL. People take things a bit more seriously, and seeing a fresh face from time to time is nice, since most people I've met playing this format have been pretty rad.

That's why I think WotC should relax on the booze policy, at least for Legacy/Vintage. It's not like allowing 21+ events is going to alienate more players than high prices, poor format management, and general lack of tournaments already have.

I've been to more than one game store where they allowed you to drink beer during the event. I had no idea that WotC was against it. back in the old days, getting back to the trainstation from the gaming store took me twice as long as arriving from it on an FNM draft evening on more than one occasion. It's true, no kids there either.

[s&s]

I've been to more than one game store where they allowed you to drink beer during the event.

I have literally never been to an event where beer wasn't on the card.

Well to be really honest there was GP Utrecht were Heineken was sold on the venue, but Dutch folks are crazy anyway.

[Stan]

I have literally never been to an event where beer wasn't on the card.

Well to be really honest there was GP Utrecht were Heineken was sold on the venue, but Dutch folks are crazy anyway.

Heineken? Talking Duvel here, at 2 euro per bottle. Those were the days.

[Darkenslight]

^ sums up my thoughts in harsher language than I would have used. It's about being on an equal level with those around me. Legacy is an MTG rite of passage, not a guarantee that everyone who's ever cracked a pack of Theros is entitled to. And the format, while small in playerbase size, has much more quality to it because of this. We all know what it takes to save up for that final dual. Because of that, we all have a deeper respect for the format. I don't want to play against someone who bitched their way to owning Grixis Delver and then quit the format because they're bad at Magic. One of the reasons why I enjoy going to the occasional Legacy event is to catch up with players that I haven't seen in a while due to adult circumstance. I form friendships with the Legacy players I'm matched up against. But (when I was playing Modern) I rarely had such a connection with my opponents.

That, to me, is an issue - how do we ensure that the former happens without the latter coming to pass?

And that's why the success of EMA was so important - it demonstrates that there is an economic incentive for WotC to relax the Reserve List policy (which most decidedly affects stupid cards, and is somewhat arbitrary in its nature). So here would be my p[roposal for the change, and I'd like some feedback into this:

1) Modify the Reserve List to affect only the sets affected by Chronicles and Alpha and Beta;
2) Reinstate the 'Premium' loophole;
3) give a hard timeframe for such a change to be effective from (for example, first block of 2019);

In my opinion, that would settle most of the complaints regarding the Reserve List, whilst preserving, as much as possible, the concerns of the collectors.

Thoughts and critiques are, as always, appreciated for such a monumental idea.

[tsabo_tavoc]

And that's why the success of EMA was so important - it demonstrates that there is an economic incentive for WotC to relax the Reserve List policy (which most decidedly affects stupid cards, and is somewhat arbitrary in its nature). So here would be my p[roposal for the change, and I'd like some feedback into this:

1) Modify the Reserve List to affect only the sets affected by Chronicles and Alpha and Beta;
2) Reinstate the 'Premium' loophole;
3) give a hard timeframe for such a change to be effective from (for example, first block of 2019);

In my opinion, that would settle most of the complaints regarding the Reserve List, whilst preserving, as much as possible, the concerns of the collectors.

Thoughts and critiques are, as always, appreciated for such a monumental idea.


In consideration of past commitments, however, no cards will be removed from this list. The exclusion of any particular card from the reserved list doesn't indicate that there are any plans to reprint that card.
As much as I like the idea about fading out the list, it is just not something WotC wants.


All policies described in this document apply only to tournament-legal Magiccards.
This is the reason why WotC does not bother to care. The price of the on-list cards is more affected by its playability than collectibility. Having a look at the recent history, SCG popularising Legacy, WotC popularising Commander, and MO popularising Vintage (and Legacy/Commander) are the main reasons behind the price creep. One notable exception is the 9394 elitism which plays only on the collectible axis. Note that none of the format will be supported by WotC in paper form. WotC could make money otherwise, sure, but only limited unless they let the format grow steadily. As much as we want to see the format grow, it may not be in the best interest for WotC (see Modern).

Back to topic, paper Legacy is a grown-up child now. The parent will no longer buy us toys, but we can make our own toys or at least proxies. Sure, they are illegible for sanctioned tournaments, but why attend sanctioned tournaments in the first place? The success of Commander is a good lesson. As long as there is an online Legacy scene, the paper format will survive worldwide.

[PirateKing]

Maybe we need to talk about valuing cards so we're all on the same page. I feel maybe the schism of our views might be sourced there. Take for example Mox Diamond: in my eyes I see the relevant rules text stating If Mox Diamond would enter the battlefield, you may discard a land card instead. If you do, put Mox Diamond onto the battlefield. If you don't, put it into its owner's graveyard. Tap: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. It seems like perhaps others instead read This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private. Which in this moment has some merit to it. But if that's your basis for value, then I recommend locking that sucker in and stopping by your local shop and trading in your art by Dan Frazier for art by Joseph Duplessis and putting that into your sleeve instead. Sharpie MoxD on it just so everyone is clear what it is. But I'm here for the game, and my basis of value will never change. Dual lands are good cards, that's why I buy them, so I can play a game with good cards. If the bottom falls out on me, my collection doesn't spontaneously combust. My 75 is just as playable as the day before, and I'll still have 100% of the fun I had playing it. Playing it more often? Gawrsh.

And then for all those talking about investments and tossing around stock trading lingo, let's grow up. Because here of all places we should be honest with each other. You can't slide in that "you're fiscally responsible" into claims that you "spent thousands of dollars on cardboard". We've all dug ourselves into comically deep holes for a children's game. The only way to come out of this looking like a responsible adult is if you got played the game on the schoolyard early nineties or just randomly inherit some godly collection. But they're lucky, and any advice from then is as Bo Burnham said, "is like a lottery winner telling you, ‘Liquidize your assets, buy Powerball tickets, it works!'". But for the rest of us, who even if like myself bought my blue duals for $100 each back in the day, I won't attempt to claim that wasn't silly thing to do. But I'll tell you, I enjoy this game more than the money I spent on it, that's why I bought it. That's got to be the reason you buy anything. If you're "investment" is in Magic cards, that's a joke. Go out into the real world without big daddy WotC protecting you from failure and invest there. If you can't cut it there, then come to grips that you're just not a successful investor, and piss off from this game.

[Nielsie]

Do any of the people defending the RL own cards like goyf, Liliana, Imperial Recruiter, Rishadan Port, Imperial Seal, Mana Drain? Why do you own these cards because tomorrow they could be massively reprinted!!

If you are only buying Duals because you trust in WoTC not to reprint them anymore rather than for playing Legacy, how do you go about reprintable expensive cards than?? Or are you only playing 93/94 format?

[Stuart]

Price obviously has some effect on who's playing Legacy, but don't forget:
- Younger players probably want to grind and be semipros, which Legacy doesn't really lead to.
- Younger players probably don't have any nostalgia for old cards. When I got back into MtG in 2014, I picked Legacy because it let me play the cards from when I was a kid. If you're 18, you shouldn't have any attachment to cards like Wasteland & Force of Will.

I also prefer playing against opponents my age, though that's more because they're just the guys I want to hang out with. Our scene happens to have a few mature, skilled high schoolers who I regularly lose to. There's nothing inherently bad about younger people playing Legacy; you just don't want unsociable grinders showing up.

[Dice_Box]

The power to choose what happens to the RL does not sit in our hands, sadly, and it appears even if it did we would again look at the same kinds of debates we have for things like the B/R suggestions. People are not all clones of one another, they will disagree at times and as long as we can stay on the topic at hand will produce reasoned debate. I think that debate has happened and while more may be said of relevance the conversation has come to its end. We are now at the point where we are talking in circles, getting nowhere and we are not doing anything constructive. This is not the first time this thread has become a political conversation and that does not really surprise me. I see it repeating with no benefit to the site as a whole and it is for this reason I am now going to close this thread.

I would like to thank those of you who disagree with me on the List. I know your views are not popular and thus I am sure you knew you were likely going to be on the receiving end of some uncomfortable discussion. I still do not agree that the list should stay, but I am glad to see this was not an echo chamber.