How to save Legacy

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

With the creation of Pioneer, two formats are on the chopping block. One is Modern, the other is Legacy. The next two years will see one of these two formats die and its playerbase cannibalized by the others. So from now on, it is war.

Legacy *is* by far the *better* format, but it currently stands to lose out. So us Legacy players must find a way to turn the tide.

I've lived in China for the past 12 years. The playerbase here is basically 99% Modern. There are a lot of players I've met interested in Legacy, since Modern is shit, but there is ONE issue that prevents them from buying into Legacy -

Dual lands.

When I talk to players here about Legacy, they ALWAYS say, "yeah I would love to play Legacy, but I'm afraid of buying fake dual lands." Obviously, this is a very real concern in China.

Sure, this might be a China-specific case, but it points to the larger issue at hand. Duals ARE the biggest entry barrier to Legacy. Duals are going to be the reason Legacy is going to die to Modern.

Dual lands must be incised to save Legacy. WotC isn't going to revoke the Reserve List. This is the only way for us to win this war.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

With the creation of Pioneer, two formats are on the chopping block. One is Modern, the other is Legacy.

Half right.

[schweinefettmann]

To be honest, I think all modern players are more likely to move into pioneer, but legacy isn’t going to die.

Legacy actually makes sense as a format, for one. It’s just a banlist, and everything else is game. Modern has an arbitrary starting date, and has no real nostalgia or historic significance.

I think the restriction of dual lands is problematic, but it is what it is. I’d wanna get my playset of candelabra too, but hey.. it’s too much for me. So I’m having to play a different deck.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Alex_UNLIMITED]

By now there are a lot of decks that only play a single copy of different dual lands. Take a look at the top 8 of the last GP (https://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=32548). One thing we would need would be a dual lands cycle with an imperceptible drawback in Legacy, like they enters tapped if an opponent has the commander in play, or if the opponent has a face-down conspiracy card (a card with Hidden agenda). Maybe a legendary cycle of those "impecerceptible drawback dual lands" will impact less the "Reserved List spirit". With another cycle with a similar "drawbacks" a lot of problems will be solved. Yes, there still will be cards like Mox Diamond or Lion's Eye Diamond, but a lot of new players will have the chance to build competitive tier decks more easily, and with those they can win other Reserved List cards.
Even Lion's Eye Diamond can be "reprinted" with a slighty different text: it will be sufficient to print a "tap" symbol on the new "Lion's Eye Diamond" and ban the original one, that should retain much of its value because of the Reserved List.
What we need is to make our voice loud.

[Michael Keller]

With the creation of Pioneer, two formats are on the chopping block. One is Modern, the other is Legacy. The next two years will see one of these two formats die and its playerbase cannibalized by the others. So from now on, it is war.

Legacy *is* by far the *better* format, but it currently stands to lose out. So us Legacy players must find a way to turn the tide.

I've lived in China for the past 12 years. The playerbase here is basically 99% Modern. There are a lot of players I've met interested in Legacy, since Modern is shit, but there is ONE issue that prevents them from buying into Legacy -

Dual lands.

When I talk to players here about Legacy, they ALWAYS say, "yeah I would love to play Legacy, but I'm afraid of buying fake dual lands." Obviously, this is a very real concern in China.

Sure, this might be a China-specific case, but it points to the larger issue at hand. Duals ARE the biggest entry barrier to Legacy. Duals are going to be the reason Legacy is going to die to Modern.

Dual lands must be incised to save Legacy. WotC isn't going to revoke the Reserve List. This is the only way for us to win this war.

Legacy isn't "dying". It wasn't supported before SCG and did just fine. There was a 1600-person GP just a few days ago and I'd argue in the last three weeks more Legacy events than I can remember are popping up across the my region geographically.

[Mr. Safety]

Dual lands.

When I talk to players here about Legacy, they ALWAYS say, "yeah I would love to play Legacy, but I'm afraid of buying fake dual lands." Obviously, this is a very real concern in China.

Sure, this might be a China-specific case, but it points to the larger issue at hand. Duals ARE the biggest entry barrier to Legacy. Duals are going to be the reason Legacy is going to die to Modern.

Dual lands must be incised to save Legacy. WotC isn't going to revoke the Reserve List. This is the only way for us to win this war.

Alternative: errata all dual lands to have the appropriate sub-types for their color combination (Island, Swamp, Mountain, Plains, Forest.) This would do 2 very important things:
1) Make any and all dual lands fetchable, allowing for perfect mana without needing true dual lands as much. Would they still be the best dual lands? Yes, by a fair margin. But people could play Wooded Foothills into Copperline Gorge 3 times in a game before Taiga would be strictly better.
2) It would take away any misunderstanding from newer players that Karplusan Forest isn't a Forest-Mountain and is instead just a non-basic land that produces red and green.

EDIT: Also, Legacy is doing just fine. I've been saying to others that Pioneer is great for Legacy because it will take players away from Modern, therefore creating lower demand for Legacy/Modern crossover staples and eventually feed into Legacy. The next couple years could become a great window of opportunity to really get into legacy if Pioneer cannibalizes enough players from Modern.

[BirdsOfParadise]

If your friends want to play an Eternal format but are scared of counterfeits, try a constructed format defined as
[Vintage cardpool] - [Reserved List] - [additional bans as needed].

[KobeBryan]

1. print snow covered legendary tundra.
2. Print more cards like ice fang coatl.

half of the player base will take 1 - 2 duals out for some snow covered legendary tundras.

[ESG]

When I talk to players here about Legacy, they ALWAYS say, "yeah I would love to play Legacy, but I'm afraid of buying fake dual lands." Obviously, this is a very real concern in China.

This blows my mind.

1) Deal with reputable shops and people.
2) Buy a loupe.

Fear no more.

Also, if you know someone who knows someone making counterfeits, pass on the info to WOTC, because WOTC isn't making much progress in stopping the proliferation of Chinese counterfeits. Having assistance from people in China might help. You're a lot closer to that issue than those of us in the U.S.


Dual lands must be incised to save Legacy. WotC isn't going to revoke the Reserve List. This is the only way for us to win this war.

Nope. This is as foolhardy as No Reserved List Legacy. It's not Legacy. Don't remove the aspects that give Legacy its identity.

I can't create a scene in China, but you can. Host events, network with stores, stream events if you have audio-video equipment, promote the format.

[thecrav]

How many different variations on reserved list threads do we need?

[Cire]

How many different variations on reserved list threads do we need?

And the Reserved List causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their portfolios: and that no man might buy or sell cards or Chinese rip offs, save he made a post about the Reserved List or the number of its Threads: 666.

[Seymour_Asses]

and the reserved list causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their portfolios: And that no man might buy or sell cards or chinese rip offs, save he made a post about the reserved list or the number of its threads: 666.
all hail the reserved list!

Hail!

Hail!

[BirdsOfParadise]

as foolhardy as No Reserved List Legacy
There’s nothing foolhardy about testing No Reserved List Legacy as its own separate format. If it’s fun it’s fun, and if it’s lousy it’s lousy. I’ve never heard of a tournament in this format or seen a decklist, but I would be curious. In the best-case scenario, in which the format was fun to play, the format would inherently be able to support more players than Legacy, just as one strength of the Pauper format is that it’s inherently easier to afford. (No, I’m not saying New Format would be as affordable as Pauper.)

[ESG]

The foolhardy part would be to think that that format would still be Legacy (as the OP implied). There are plenty of other formats, and many of them are fun. Just because we play Legacy doesn't mean we can't also play other formats. If you Google "No Reserved List Legacy," you'll find plenty of things to explore on that topic.

[BirdsOfParadise]

Sure, it would not be Legacy. It would have to be its own format.

I googled and found several discussions, but no tournaments or decks. If your googling was better than mine, let me know. People have been talking about this for years. It would be a pity if the idea was never tested.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

The problem is not the entire reserve list, it is specifically the dual lands. The vast majority of Legacy played Reserve list cards (Replenish, Gaea's Cradle, Serra's Sanctum, LED, basically all of the non-dual land cards) aren't a problem. Dual lands are the only thing that's killing Legacy.

There are three shops in Tianjin and I've been picking up a ton of MH singles this week and talking to them about the issues with Modern and Legacy and the card market in China and it's pretty complicated.

Summing up some of the key points -

a) Legacy's only selling point is that it's the best format to play, but this is shadowed by the advantages Standard, Pioneer, Modern and EDH have over it.

Standard - pro: cards are easily available and players are always available, burn is a powerful and easy deck for new players. Cons: Format is currently shit, cards don't retain value
Modern - pro: players are always available, supports a wide variety of tier 2 and tier 3 decktypes, cards retain and gain value Cons: Format is shit
Pioneer - pro: uses cards from the past 4-5 years which are easily available, burn is viable here as well, pretty cheap to buy into Cons: Format is shit
EDH - pro: can use any card, doesn't need more than 1 copy of any good, doesn't need specific cards, cheap to buy into, variety of strategies, products specifically suport the format. Cons: difficult to organize 4 players for some games

In comparison Legacy-
- cards are difficult to require
- even when available, many singles are painfully expensive compared to other formats (dual lands, force of will, wastelands, jace, etc...)
- very few players makes it difficult to organize games. There are basically 4 Legacy players in all of Tianjin. Beijing has I think about 8. There might be about 35-40 Legacy players in all of China, and 75% of them live in either Beijing or Shanghai.
- the local players basically all know each other's decks. Without new players, it's hard to keep the format fresh
- obviously then, for shop owners there is very little local market for Legacy singles so most singles sit or move overseas

b) the card market and player base are both extremely complicated issues
- first, there are many difficulties in building a player base
- basically, the biggest issue is that Magic is just too complicated. Even if you handed new player a Legacy deck, they don't understand how to play it. This is also true for Modern. In fact over the past year, the one thing I've seen shop owners do over and over again is explain to a player how a deck works, going card by card explaining its interactions. The only format which isn't overly complicated is Standard.
- products designed for beginners are bad buys and don't have any valuable cards. The main culprit here are the Core set precons. Yet they are the only viable entry product for China. The biggest issue is that the Challenger precons are only available in English. So that niche isn't being filled by a product. Challenger decks here sit on the shelf since basically the average player can't use cards in English. Core set precons sit on the shelf because they suck. And Commander precons sit on the shelf because they're too complicated. So really the only product for new players is drafting and seal core set.
- besides the complexity issue and the obvious expense issues, the third constraint for growing a local playerbase is time. Chinese people just don't have the free time to commit to Magic as a hobby. Most card shops are open only about 3 hours on weekdays, from 5pm to 8pm. People have to work or go to school so no one comes to the shops until 5 or 6 pm. So there isn't much time for shop owners and experienced players to work with newer players teaching the game, and generally players don't have the time to read up on the game online on their own either.
- finally, Magic is just too expensive of a hobby for its chief demographic. Free public education in China only covers two years of high school. So for most teenagers, either you drop out after a year or two of high school, OR you go the college path. The typical college students doesn't work so they don't have much
disposable income. Once you graduate, you probably get married or start dating so that's where all your income goes. So really the main demographic for card games are high school dropouts, and Magic is a very expensive hobby on the average salary of the type of work you get without a high school or college diploma.

Will post some observations about the card market later but it's pretty complicated as well.

[Seymour_Asses]

Standard -Cons: Format is currently shit
Modern -Cons: Format is shit
Pioneer - Cons: Format is shit

I gotta say, this made me laugh. Not to mention that it's completely true on all counts.

Also as someone who has zero interest in EDH, Legacy is the only format for me, RL or no RL (although I wouldn't mind getting into Vintage if I was a billionaire).

Apparently it's harder in China but I'm currently building a sub-$1k deck. It'll probably take a few months but I'll figure it out with some saving.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

This is why Legacy *is* in the most most vulnerable position, is the format that is on the chopping block. Legacy as it is currently cannot increase the size of its playerbase, because it is hard capped by the supply of dual lands. This is why, if you've been reading the tea leaves for the past year, Wizards has been signalling hard that they are dropping support for Legacy to focus on Modern and EDH, discontinuing the Masters sets and pushing Modern Horizons and Commander products. The Master sets as well as FTV simply have no market. Iconic Masters is unsellable.

Even Vintage can grow its playerbase - by cannibalizing the Legacy playerbase. If you are a Legacy player, you have to have clear eyes about the possibility that within two or three years the majority of the players and cardstock in Legacy will be carved up by Vintage, Modern and EDH. The Masters sets and reprints in EDH had been holding that off, but now The Wall has fallen and Winter is Here. Which would make me quite sad, because I love and care about decks that don't work in other formats, like Solidarity and Standstill and Enchantress and Food Chain.

Modern and Pioneer are shit but Wizards has the ability to fix that whether through the hammer or the mint. It cannot solve the problems with Legacy. Modern and Legacy are going to end up merging into a format that's somewhere in between both. Wizards can move Modern to be more like Legacy (which is the reason for Modern Horizons), but the only way to move Legacy is to ban the dual lands and other cards from the Reserve List.

[KobeBryan]

This is why Legacy *is* in the most most vulnerable position, is the format that is on the chopping block. Legacy as it is currently cannot increase the size of its playerbase, because it is hard capped by the supply of dual lands. This is why, if you've been reading the tea leaves for the past year, Wizards has been signalling hard that they are dropping support for Legacy to focus on Modern and EDH, discontinuing the Masters sets and pushing Modern Horizons and Commander products. The Master sets as well as FTV simply have no market. Iconic Masters is unsellable.

Even Vintage can grow its playerbase - by cannibalizing the Legacy playerbase. If you are a Legacy player, you have to have clear eyes about the possibility that within two or three years the majority of the players and cardstock in Legacy will be carved up by Vintage, Modern and EDH. The Masters sets and reprints in EDH had been holding that off, but now The Wall has fallen and Winter is Here. Which would make me quite sad, because I love and care about decks that don't work in other formats, like Solidarity and Standstill and Enchantress and Food Chain.

Modern and Pioneer are shit but Wizards has the ability to fix that whether through the hammer or the mint. It cannot solve the problems with Legacy. Modern and Legacy are going to end up merging into a format that's somewhere in between both. Wizards can move Modern to be more like Legacy (which is the reason for Modern Horizons), but the only way to move Legacy is to ban the dual lands and other cards from the Reserve List.

This post makes absolutely no sense. First Iconic masters is not selling is because the cards are junk. The FTV sold like hot cakes. Good luck finding one in any store.

As for your opinion that Modern Vintage and EDH are eating up the stock supplies...that makes absolutely no sense as well. The people playing those formats would have access to cards to play legacy. It is not like people sleeve up their cards to only play one deck.

The only barrier holding legacy back is NEW players, young players, who cannot get the chase cards in legacy to play with...so they settle for formats like modern or standard. So really...its not really taking out the card stock supply.

[kombatkiwi]

- very few players makes it difficult to organize games. There are basically 4 Legacy players in all of Tianjin. Beijing has I think about 8. There might be about 35-40 Legacy players in all of China, and 75% of them live in either Beijing or Shanghai.

There was a 100 player tournament in Beijing at the start of November and probably 90% of the players were Chinese?


First Iconic masters is not selling is because the cards are junk. The FTV sold like hot cakes. Good luck finding one in any store.
Agree, for example Ultimate Masters (after Iconic Masters) was very popular. Some of the FTV don't sell as well, but those are the ones with bad cards in them.


As for your opinion that Modern Vintage and EDH are eating up the stock supplies...that makes absolutely no sense as well. The people playing those formats would have access to cards to play legacy. It is not like people sleeve up their cards to only play one deck.

I will disagree with this in particular with EDH: if 4 different EDH players want e.g. 1 Gaeas Cradle each, then none of them are going to play Legacy Elves, but thats 1 Elf-deck worth of Cradles that won't be used in Legacy (same logic applies to other cards e.g. Dual lands). But the statement But I agree that "vintage can grow by cannibalizing legacy" makes no sense for the reason you say (both formats require a similar pool of cards and people with vintage decks could continue to play legacy easily).

[Seymour_Asses]

Modern and Legacy are going to end up merging into a format that's somewhere in between both. Wizards can move Modern to be more like Legacy (which is the reason for Modern Horizons), but the only way to move Legacy is to ban the dual lands and other cards from the Reserve List.
Yeah, Wizards can merge Modern and Legacy to make the best format ever.

Called Legacy.

You're right that with the RL in place, there's no way for WOTC to pimp Legacy like they do other formats. This doesn't mean that it's just going to die off. Legacy is a great format with a solid player base. It might not be growing exponentially but I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

This post makes absolutely no sense. First Iconic masters is not selling is because the cards are junk. The FTV sold like hot cakes. Good luck finding one in any store.

In the 8 stores I've been to in the past year in Beijing, Chongqing and Tianjin, I've seen boxes of every FTV set after Relics sitting on shelves at MSRP ($100) or slightly marked up (up to 800 rmb). In fact the only FTV that was just selling was Transform after Pioneer was anounced. If you check out the prices on Goldfish you'll see that pretty much every FTV set after Relics have either stayed at slightly above MSRP or dropped below MSRP.

And boxes and boxes of IMA, M25, UMA and Battlebond. Afaik the only eternal masters sets that sell are EMA and the Modern Masters set.



As for your opinion that Modern Vintage and EDH are eating up the stock supplies...that makes absolutely no sense as well. The people playing those formats would have access to cards to play legacy. It is not like people sleeve up their cards to only play one deck.
Except a lot of EDH players have no interest in playing Legacy, and the same with Vintage. People who primarily play those formats acquire cards for those formats pretty exclusively.



The only barrier holding legacy back is NEW players, young players, who cannot get the chase cards in legacy to play with...so they settle for formats like modern or standard. So really...its not really taking out the card stock supply.
There are only x number of Volcanic Islands, Tropical Islands and Underground Seas in the world, and they are moving OUT of the Legacy card pool, not IN.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

There was a 100 player tournament in Beijing at the start of November and probably 90% of the players were Chinese?



I wasn't at the Orlov tournament but I can guess how they got up to 100 players... it's likely that some of the players are not normal legacy players but rather either borrowed 3-6 duals for the tourney or played a non-dual land deck like burn with mostly modern/ modern horizons cards.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/beijing-orlov-s-legacy-tournament-2019#paper

If you analyze the top 16 of the tournament, here is the count of dual lands:
Volcanic Island 18
Tropical Island 19
Underground Sea 5
Bayou 3
Savannah 5
Tundra 2
Scrubland 1
Badlands 1

Total: 54

Force of Will 40
Wasteland 27
Lion's Eye Diamond 4
Gaea's Cradle 1


You also have 2 burn decks, 1 Dragon Stompy and 1 u/w snow control in the top 16 with 0 dual lands

So let's say you extrapolate that to 90-100 decks, so in total in all of mainland China you have somewhere between 150-200 dual lands being played in Legacy.

[Mr. Safety]

This is why, if you've been reading the tea leaves for the past year, Wizards has been signalling hard that they are dropping support for Legacy to focus on Modern and EDH, discontinuing the Masters sets and pushing Modern Horizons and Commander products.

Funny story, Modern Horizons has been one of the most impactful sets to Legacy in years and we always find EDH sets to have a few Legacy playables. They may not be attempting to support Legacy with new products, but they are inadvertently supporting them anyways. It's a little ironic, if your logic is sound, that the harder they push products for other formats in the hopes of making those more popular they are at the same time bolstering Legacy.


Modern and Legacy are going to end up merging into a format that's somewhere in between both.

We have that...it's called Legacy, lol.

Moving in a different direction is the power creep people have been noticing over the past few years, highlighted this past year with War of the Spark, Modern Horizons, and Throne of Eldraine. Another way to make the reserved list less impactful is to simply make cards that are functionally better versions, or just push RL cards out of playability by being a strong foil to them. It's a mountain of a task, but looking at the absurd cards we've seen in recent sets I don't think its impossible.


...but the only way to move Legacy is to ban the dual lands and other cards from the Reserve List.

Or Ban RL cards in EDH; other side of the coin.

[KobeBryan]

Funny story, Modern Horizons has been one of the most impactful sets to Legacy in years and we always find EDH sets to have a few Legacy playables. They may not be attempting to support Legacy with new products, but they are inadvertently supporting them anyways. It's a little ironic, if your logic is sound, that the harder they push products for other formats in the hopes of making those more popular they are at the same time bolstering Legacy.



We have that...it's called Legacy, lol.

Moving in a different direction is the power creep people have been noticing over the past few years, highlighted this past year with War of the Spark, Modern Horizons, and Throne of Eldraine. Another way to make the reserved list less impactful is to simply make cards that are functionally better versions, or just push RL cards out of playability by being a strong foil to them. It's a mountain of a task, but looking at the absurd cards we've seen in recent sets I don't think its impossible.



Or Ban RL cards in EDH; other side of the coin.

The guy is making a lot of assumptions that people won't sleeve up their duals when playing in another format.

[Poron]

Astrolabe made duals obsolete. Top decks are now playing 2-3 duals AND Back to Basics/Blood Moon with 4 Labes.

The problem is that even UW miracle likes 4 Astrolabe because it is a deck thinner and makes easier and more resilient to have WW (Labe can’t be Wastelanded or Rishadan Ported)

[Plague Sliver]

I wasn't at the Orlov tournament but I can guess how they got up to 100 players... it's likely that some of the players are not normal legacy players but rather either borrowed 3-6 duals for the tourney or played a non-dual land deck like burn with mostly modern/ modern horizons cards.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/beijing-orlov-s-legacy-tournament-2019#paper

If you analyze the top 16 of the tournament, here is the count of dual lands:
Volcanic Island 18
Tropical Island 19
Underground Sea 5
Bayou 3
Savannah 5
Tundra 2
Scrubland 1
Badlands 1

Total: 54

Force of Will 40
Wasteland 27
Lion's Eye Diamond 4
Gaea's Cradle 1


You also have 2 burn decks, 1 Dragon Stompy and 1 u/w snow control in the top 16 with 0 dual lands

So let's say you extrapolate that to 90-100 decks, so in total in all of mainland China you have somewhere between 150-200 dual lands being played in Legacy.

Are you in our Beijing or Shanghai Legacy groups on QQ? Would be interesting to chat.

People borrow cards for events, sure, but that's true for most formats.

[kombatkiwi]

Astrolabe made duals obsolete. Top decks are now playing 2-3 duals AND Back to Basics/Blood Moon with 4 Labes.

The problem is that even UW miracle likes 4 Astrolabe because it is a deck thinner and makes easier and more resilient to have WW (Labe can’t be Wastelanded or Rishadan Ported)

This isn't true, if you were going to play UW the mana fixing and the ability to be bounced by Teferi (which some people aren't even playing at all) don't outweigh the upside of a better cantrip like Portent or Preordain that you could be spending your mana on instead

[malekith]

power creep is an issue
Lotus Field taps for3!!! Wrenn & Six, Oko, Emry, Once Upon a Time ...
last sets are too much impactful for all formats.

Perhaps the power creep can be an opportunity for Old School and Pre-Modern were new cards cannot enter.

Enviado desde mi WAS-LX1A mediante Tapatalk

[ReinhardtGao]

Hi,

I'm not sure if you are currently living in mainland or not, or who you often play MTG together with. Do you players like Liu Yuchen(Hui-Zhang) and Chen, Jia-Bin(a good Legacy player who participated 25th anniversary Team Trios PT on Legacy position)?

Generally IMO, China Legacy is not that bad as you said. In reverse, it is becoming warmer and warmer.

You might have heard some yearly tournament such as Orlov, Guangzhou MTA and etc. In cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, we have weekly Legacy tournament with more than 20 participants every week, which is a hug milestone comparing with several years ago. Orlov is having over 100 participants in the past 2-3 years, and even some famous oversea Legacy palyers were invited to China. Correct, China Legacy Community is still small but our voice is becoming louder and louder. So be optimistic, when old fire disappears, new fire burns.

As for the whole Legacy, my point of view that we are definitely the secondary format compared with Standard or Pioneer or Modern. I have the same feeling that when you try to persuade some other folks to join Legacy they will say sorry but they can't afford the dual lands. Somehow before W&6 published our commnunity in Shanghai had a bunch of new comers who hold the Miracle decks(use only 1 Tundrea and Teferi, Narset). With that being said, I don't think we need to worry about this issue everyday because, Legacy itself, is the reason why players finally decide to join.

Once about the time I saw a discussion in QQ Group(for someone who don't know, QQ is an online chatting software), a Legacy newbee and a Modern advocate was chatting. Newbee says "Oh I've been tired with Modern and I watched some other guys played Legacy yesterday. It was huge fun! I determine to join finally! How about you bro?" The Modern advocate replied:"No. Although I know Modern has is bull-shit part, there are still some parts in legacy I don't like."

My experience like the story above has happened multiple times. A lot of other friends also complained about that. So our final decision is: We will stop like positively ask someone "Come on join us play Legacy!". Instead we will just play our tournament, post our report, share our photoes to social media and let the other China MTG players know that China Legacy Community is active and insane. Learnt from foreign communities, we are also posting our match videos onto the internet which attracted other players to watch and raised their interests on Legacy. It is all their rights to decide join or not, but from our result's perspective this is a better way to attract other players join.

Hope my reply makes you feel more confident about the Legacy community in China. And I totally believe Legacy players around the world are all trying their best to not only save but also enlarge the community. Seeing the GP Bolognia 1600 players' participating is really a cheerful thing for everyone.

[Plague Sliver]

Yes, what Reinhardt said :)

You can also check the following sites for Legacy in China content:

itsjulian.com
writtenbyjames.com (shameless plug)

Also how does one define Legacy player? Someone who only plays Legacy? Even then there are probably >4 Tianjin players.

I'd consider someone who plays Legacy for big tournaments a Legacy player.

It's this sort of elitist classification that drives people away and gives the format a bad reputation.





Stuff

[Mavboy]

Hi,

I'm not sure if you are currently living in mainland or not, or who you often play MTG together with. Do you players like Liu Yuchen(Hui-Zhang) and Chen, Jia-Bin(a good Legacy player who participated 25th anniversary Team Trios PT on Legacy position)?

Generally IMO, China Legacy is not that bad as you said. In reverse, it is becoming warmer and warmer.

.........................................
Hope my reply makes you feel more confident about the Legacy community in China. And I totally believe Legacy players around the world are all trying their best to not only save but also enlarge the community. Seeing the GP Bolognia 1600 players' participating is really a cheerful thing for everyone.


Thanks for typing a lot:wink: I stand for each word you said.



Btw.
Legacy needs help,but doesn`t need saved.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Are you in our Beijing or Shanghai Legacy groups on QQ? Would be interesting to chat.

People borrow cards for events, sure, but that's true for most formats.

I'm coming on Sunday to pick up some singles, will be coming to the Haidian shops.

I don't think I met you before James but last year I visited the shop by Chaoyangmen station several times. I might have met some of you before - I'm the guy who was looking for the foil Wild Mongrels

[MGB]

How to save Legacy:

1. Ban Brainstorm
2. ???
3. Profit!

[non-inflammable]

How to save Legacy:

1. Ban Brainstorm
2. ???
3. Profit!

blue duals would definitely be cheaper...

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Yes, what Reinhardt said :)

You can also check the following sites for Legacy in China content:

itsjulian.com
writtenbyjames.com (shameless plug)

Also how does one define Legacy player? Someone who only plays Legacy? Even then there are probably >4 Tianjin players.

I'd consider someone who plays Legacy for big tournaments a Legacy player.

It's this sort of elitist classification that drives people away and gives the format a bad reputation.

When are the Legacy tournaments at Kadou? I picked up some cards yesterday but the players I met at Xudou and Fangya only played Modern and Standard.

[ReinhardtGao]

When are the Legacy tournaments at Kadou? I picked up some cards yesterday but the players I met at Xudou and Fangya only played Modern and Standard.

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/hFxt8cBIPSk_7GDVT9coxw

Kadou organize Legacy on Sunday. You can follow their WeChat Public Account and receive their notification for weekly tournament schedule.

Beijing Legacy QQ Group: 254676102

It would be better if you connect with the community.

[Ronald Deuce]

How to save Legacy:

1. Ban Brainstorm
2. ???
3. Profit!

Sure, let's knock the cheaper decks down a few pegs to make the format more accessible.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

This blows my mind.

1) Deal with reputable shops and people.
2) Buy a loupe.

Fear no more.

Also, if you know someone who knows someone making counterfeits, pass on the info to WOTC, because WOTC isn't making much progress in stopping the proliferation of Chinese counterfeits. Having assistance from people in China might help. You're a lot closer to that issue than those of us in the U.S.



Having played some EDH over the past two weeks, I've noticed a few things -

1) It's common practice for EDH players here to use fake Revised or fake Beta dual lands and some other expensive lands in their decks. Like nearly every EDH player uses them.

2) So fake duals are really, really common. Everyone's seen them. I'm not saying they are used in Legacy here but they are use in EDH here.

3) You can order them from Taobao (Chinese eBay). Easy to find.

4) It's really difficult to "spot" a fake revised dual. The only way I knew immediately they were fakes was they were too clean, did not have the grime on the white borders. Otherwise they look exactly like fresh out of the pack revised duals as far as I can tell. The betas I saw were obviously fake since a) beta - come on b) the text extends into the card frame.

5) I'm doubtful that newer shop owners have the experience or preserverence to spot fakes. So a dealer might not know that they have fake singles in their stock. I say this because I've encountered many singles which clearly feel wrong to the touch, but I can't tell if they are actual fakes or if Wizards used a different printer for foreign cards or something. The really obvious ones (super glossy, almost plastic) are either Korean, Chinese or Japanese. The point is you really have to be an expert on print runs to avoid buying and selling fakes now.

[ESG]

Having played some EDH over the past two weeks, I've noticed a few things -

1) It's common practice for EDH players here to use fake Revised or fake Beta dual lands and some other expensive lands in their decks. Like nearly every EDH player uses them.

2) So fake duals are really, really common. Everyone's seen them. I'm not saying they are used in Legacy here but they are use in EDH here.

3) You can order them from Taobao (Chinese eBay). Easy to find.

4) It's really difficult to "spot" a fake revised dual. The only way I knew immediately they were fakes was they were too clean, did not have the grime on the white borders. Otherwise they look exactly like fresh out of the pack revised duals as far as I can tell. The betas I saw were obviously fake since a) beta - come on b) the text extends into the card frame.

5) I'm doubtful that newer shop owners have the experience or preserverence to spot fakes. So a dealer might not know that they have fake singles in their stock. I say this because I've encountered many singles which clearly feel wrong to the touch, but I can't tell if they are actual fakes or if Wizards used a different printer for foreign cards or something. The really obvious ones (super glossy, almost plastic) are either Korean, Chinese or Japanese. The point is you really have to be an expert on print runs to avoid buying and selling fakes now.

1) This is common in the U.S. as well. Casual play doesn't require ownership of the cards unless your playgroup insists on it, so people proxy those. It's always preferable to use proxies, such as color copies, over counterfeits. Giving counterfeiters money encourages counterfeiting.

4) It's fairly easy if you have a real dual to compare it to. I've spotted fake duals twice in tournaments, and both times they were double-sleeved on the other side of the table, so I don't think it's hard at all. And if you're buying a card and you're able to hold the card up close and use a loupe, there's no way to get fooled.

5) Why would you choose to do business with shop owners you don't think could spot a counterfeit card? If they can't tell the difference, they aren't going to be in business long. Just buy from reputable people and businesses. Yes, Wizards has used lots of different printers in the past few years, but you don't need to be an expert on print runs.

[Tylert]

... I've spotted fake duals twice in tournaments, and both times they were double-sleeved on the other side of the table...

Did you call a judge?

[KobeBryan]

Let people play with fakes. At least the game is being promoted. I dont want people to say i cant play cuz i cant afford the duals bro

[Grizzlenasty]

Let people play with fakes. At least the game is being promoted. I dont want people to say i cant play cuz i cant afford the duals bro

Yup, I'd rather play against people with fully proxed decks, than to sit alone in my room and goldfish my 2k+ decks into oblivion.

Hell, I'd even play against people that print their own proxies and glue them in front of plains.. I just want to play.
For me it's just important, that I am able to see at first glance, which card they are dropping.

Just imagine a chess tournament. Everbody needs to bring their own figures. But they have to be made of pure solid gold.
Wooden figures? You ain't participating here, poor boy!
Sounds stupid, doesn't it?

Btw, I'm not trying to tell people to "cheat" and break the rules via using "fakes".
I'd like to have the rules changed, so they can safely use proxies and have fun in the best format available - Legacy.

[ed06288]

i know we don't have access to insider sales numbers as to what todays magic players like to play/buy... but i'm really in the mood to play legacy/modern and i feel that we're expected to just play arena or pioneer. or commander. i don't get it.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

4) It's fairly easy if you have a real dual to compare it to. I've spotted fake duals twice in tournaments, and both times they were double-sleeved on the other side of the table, so I don't think it's hard at all. And if you're buying a card and you're able to hold the card up close and use a loupe, there's no way to get fooled.

This is definitely not true with the revised fakes.



5) Why would you choose to do business with shop owners you don't think could spot a counterfeit card? If they can't tell the difference, they aren't going to be in business long. Just buy from reputable people and businesses. Yes, Wizards has used lots of different printers in the past few years, but you don't need to be an expert on print runs.

See #4.

It's important to me to support physical stores, especially owners. One of the owners I'm thinking of has been in business for about 3 years, and this year has really hit him hard. First it was his first real "rotation" and he clearly didn't understand you need to dump the bulk of your Standard stock before rotation so that kicked him economically, and then the hits on Oko, Once Upon a Time and Modern Horizons were a double whammy. He's really not going to be able to tell the difference between a real Scalding Tarn and a fake (https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/card-authentication/801991-warning-fake-modern-masters-2017-scalding-tarn).

I've only gotten foils, sealed product and cheap junk that doesn't matter, but you bet I am getting really paranoid about counterfeit foils and booster boxes. One of my Eldraine art foil Merfolk Secretkeepers is noticably murkier than the other 3, and since then I've seen a couple of other Eldraine foils with the same discrepancy. I can't imagine someone would go to the trouble of counterfeiting a common foil, but I've been looking for info to see if there are different print runs for these. But high quality counterfeit foils would be a real nightmare.

It would be really simple for EDH proxy duals to be in Chinese language, for example, but instead there is some sort of strange cultural admiration for high quality counterfeit production here. If your friend is playing with with fake duals, you're supposed to say "My gosh! These look so real! How much did you pay for these?"

[Wrath of Pie]

The big issue is that the local game store model is effectively obsolete and has been for a while. Basically, selling via Amazon and major retailers makes more sense because it gives better access to the most important audiences for Wizards, the kitchen table players, which are the vast majority of players. With this in mind, it makes little sense to focus on a niche format of a game that should be a minor part of any local game store at this point because of the costs associated with inventory upkeep along with the fact that the stores cannot realistically compete on price with Amazon for booster packs/boxes. Rather than focus on Magic itself, it is better to focus on what the local game store can offer, which is a place to gather with options for snacks and drinks and treat Magic as a loss leader to get people in the door to spend on items with a higher profit margin.

I would focus less on saving Legacy and more on saving the local game stores, because without them the only real option for Legacy is Magic Online.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

The big issue is that the local game store model is effectively obsolete and has been for a while. Basically, selling via Amazon and major retailers makes more sense because it gives better access to the most important audiences for Wizards, the kitchen table players, which are the vast majority of players. With this in mind, it makes little sense to focus on a niche format of a game that should be a minor part of any local game store at this point because of the costs associated with inventory upkeep along with the fact that the stores cannot realistically compete on price with Amazon for booster packs/boxes. Rather than focus on Magic itself, it is better to focus on what the local game store can offer, which is a place to gather with options for snacks and drinks and treat Magic as a loss leader to get people in the door to spend on items with a higher profit margin.

I would focus less on saving Legacy and more on saving the local game stores, because without them the only real option for Legacy is Magic Online.

Yes, that is the model that I've found in many places in China. Board game clubs, where people pay a flat entry fee to rent a room and use of the store's board games. Not sure if it's a profitable model though, as many of the boardgame clubs I visited in Chongqing didn't actually sell the games.

Also, that model actually requires a store. A lot of this bumper crop of trading card "stores" are just kiosks with product and tables and chairs, without an actual storefront. Of the three shops in Tianjin, only one (Pengfei) is a physical store with floor space.

So you have two models ~
a) boardgame stores with rooms that charge entry fee and mostly sell drinks and snacks and occasionally product. Often these are actually people's houses or apartments
b) cardgame kiosks in a mall with a tiny display, product, and tables and chairs that you set up around the kiosk. Owner keeps most of their inventory at home, except perhaps a few binders. Singles are mostly done online, in fact to buy singles from the store physically you often have to order the cards from the store's website in advance and arrange when the owner brings the cards to the store. Mostly set up for draft and sealed tournaments (which is very popular here).

[Wrath of Pie]

It is more profitable to buy the games and rent them rather than directly sell them and compete with your own renting service. Plus with online vendors, there is no point to selling the games directly anyways when they can be likely be found cheaper online.

The kiosks seem like they would violate WPN somehow, because I think there are actual storefront requirements, so I assume said events are unsanctioned.

[ESG]

@jiazhouhuaqiao: OK, well, the ones I'm referring to were fakes of Revised.

@Tylert: I'll give some more context. Neither of the incidents occurred at Comp REL events. In the first one, which happened maybe five years ago, the judge asked the guy to replace his fake cards. When he returned a different week still running the fakes, the judge told him he had to abide by the rules and use real cards, and he left and didn't come back to the store. In the second incident, which happened this year, the tournament was ending, and I and a couple other players were able to determine a guy had been using some fake dual lands. He was upset to find out they were fake and was able to get his money back from the person who sold them to him. He continues to play regularly at the store.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

I'm calling horseshit on anyone who says they can tell a fake across the table through a pair of sleeves.
And double so on any judge who read some article online and thinks they can spot and dq players based on it.

[ESG]

I'm calling horseshit on anyone who says they can tell a fake across the table through a pair of sleeves.
And double so on any judge who read some article online and thinks they can spot and dq players based on it.

Meh. It's actually not hard. I've never seen a fake dual that was good enough to pass for a real one. It's possible they exist, but anyone buying a high-value card ought to own a loupe and know how to use it. If you can afford to play Magic, you can afford a loupe.

As for judges, judges interview players. In the first incident, when questioned, the player admitted his duals were fakes, so it's not like there was much of an investigative process required.

[thefreakaccident]

Personally, I hope the fakes one day become indistinguishable from the real thing. I would love to be able to play legacy again.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Meh. It's actually not hard. I've never seen a fake dual that was good enough to pass for a real one. It's possible they exist, but anyone buying a high-value card ought to own a loupe and know how to use it. If you can afford to play Magic, you can afford a loupe. and how, pray tell, would you identify the fake? Every method under heard of including the "tells" in this thread are nonsense. Like the edges are too clean? Ok you can control that. Cards can be restored to some extent, altered to look better. The bend test? You're going to bend a card in half and just guess at the card stock? Wizards can't make a consistent product in the year of our Lord 2019 but I'm sure they did 25 years ago when the game was in it's infancy


As for judges, judges interview players. In the first incident, when questioned, the player admitted his duals were fakes, so it's not like there was much of an investigative process required.
...ok well coping to it I suppose is one method that works

[morgan_coke]

The only real way to "save" legacy involves personnel changes at WotC. As long as BS+Fetchlands are an unbannable format staple, 50-75% of the format will be blue shell + most efficient wincons. Sometimes something else will get lucky and take down a tourney, or something else will be super broken for a little while before it gets banned, but that's it, that's the format. I mean, hell, even all the best anti-blue cards (Narset, Leovold, TNN, Mystic Rebuke) are ALSO blue. It's just kinda dumb to pay an absurdly high (and thousands of dollars as a starting point IS an absurdly high barrier for any hobby) entry fee for a one strategy concept format.

I wish that wasn't the case, but it is. Legacy will probably never die, it'll just keep going on into an ever more niche format played by fewer and fewer people, much like Vintage and '94.

[Grizzlenasty]

The only real way to "save" legacy involves personnel changes at WotC. As long as BS+Fetchlands are an unbannable format staple, 50-75% of the format will be blue shell + most efficient wincons. Sometimes something else will get lucky and take down a tourney, or something else will be super broken for a little while before it gets banned, but that's it, that's the format.

Only way to save legacy, is to ban Lightning Bolt. As long as this broken little spell is in the format, noone can play x/3 or smaller toughness creatures! So people are forced to play degenerate combo decks which forces other players to play Force of Police with cantrip cartel.
Undercosted hyperefficient spotremoval and the color red in general is the real problem. Not BS+fetches!

[ESG]

and how, pray tell, would you identify the fake? Every method under heard of including the "tells" in this thread are nonsense.

The quality of fakes is consistently exaggerated. Visual inspection has been enough, but I'm happy to carry a loupe in my bag if there's ever a question.

Also, the "bend test" isn't a test. No one's bending cards.

[Seymour_Asses]

Only way to save legacy, is to ban Lightning Bolt. As long as this broken little spell is in the format, noone can play x/3 or smaller toughness creatures! So people are forced to play degenerate combo decks which forces other players to play Force of Police with cantrip cartel.
Undercosted hyperefficient spotremoval and the color red in general is the real problem. Not BS+fetches!
Lightning Bolt is clearly not the problem. We need to go straight to the source.

Mountain.

There, I said it. Ban Mountain and Legacy players will experience a new Golden Age. Maybe ban Volcanic Island too just to be safe.

[Grizzlenasty]

Maybe ban Volcanic Island too just to be safe.

Now that I think about it.. Volc wasn't even supposed to be in the game to begin with.

Regarding the fakes..


Personally, I hope the fakes one day become indistinguishable from the real thing. I would love to be able to play legacy again.

Completely indistinguishible would be bad, as people could get ripped off, thinking they are buying the real deal. But I hope they get good enough, so these special snowflakes who think they can spot a double sleeved fake across the room, won't dare to call you out on it.
At the end of the day it's printed cardboard and I'm not into elitism, if your printed cardboard is "real" enough to grant you to play a childrens game with me.

I have held some of these fakes in my own hands and know for a fact, that they are already really good. I highly doubt, that most people could tell the difference when double sleeved. But outside of sleeves you can still see, feel and smell the difference right away.
Like, you pick'em up and immediatly know, something's fishy here.

As I live in a small city(200.000 inhabitants) with less then 10 legacy players, I really hope these fakes are getting some steam and people start to embrace them as a way to play legacy or even vintage. I don't want to drive across the country for 3+ hours just to be able to play every two months.

Fun fact: Everybody in my playgroup has already been called out for using fakes, except for the one guy, that actually uses them :D
He's running Goblins and his Watelands, Ports, Vials and I think his settler are fake. Noone ever batted an eye. But for some weird reason, these "fakespotting snowflakes" detect my 100%authentic Tabernacle to be fake. It just has to be :D

[Megadeus]

I'm calling horseshit on anyone who says they can tell a fake across the table through a pair of sleeves.
And double so on any judge who read some article online and thinks they can spot and dq players based on it.
I've seen Nedleeds do it. Round 1 game 1 of an SCG I think it was. Opponent fetches a Volc, casts ponder, Nedleeds calls a judge on it being fake. Gets confirmed. Opponent had to change his card to a basic for the rest of the tournament. He supposedly had borrowed the deck so he didn't get a DQ I believe was the story

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

The quality of fakes is consistently exaggerated. Visual inspection has been enough, but I'm happy to carry a loupe in my bag if there's ever a question.

Also, the "bend test" isn't a test. No one's bending cards.

I'm not hearing a method here, just assurances it's possible. Wizards can't even print cards correctly today, as megolithic company, but I'm sure they did 25 years ago when they were funded by farts bits of string

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

I've seen Nedleeds do it. Round 1 game 1 of an SCG I think it was. Opponent fetches a Volc, casts ponder, Nedleeds calls a judge on it being fake. Gets confirmed. Opponent had to change his card to a basic for the rest of the tournament. He supposedly had borrowed the deck so he didn't get a DQ I believe was the story
I'll ask again "how" because it sounds like you're all using witchcraft.

So free nedleeds to get to the bottom of this

[Seymour_Asses]

free nedleeds

This thread is finally getting to the REAL issues!

[Megadeus]

I'll ask again "how" because it sounds like you're all using witchcraft.

So free nedleeds to get to the bottom of this

I mean I'm not an expert, but playing the game for 20+ years and basically only playing eternal means you know what a real dual land looks like even across the table sleeved. It's not something I personally can do, but if you're looking for it and know what you;re looking for I can see how you'd be able to do it.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

I mean I'm not an expert, but playing the game for 20+ years and basically only playing eternal means you know what a real dual land looks like even across the table sleeved. It's not something I personally can do, but if you're looking for it and know what you;re looking for I can see how you'd be able to do it.

And yet you can't tell me how.

[JDK]

I'm calling horseshit on anyone who says they can tell a fake across the table through a pair of sleeves.
And double so on any judge who read some article online and thinks they can spot and dq players based on it.

I've already spotted fake fetchies and a Surgical Extraction. Their color was way off so I took a close look. Told the players those are fakes and let them be. I want to play, not win because people don't want to pay dozens/hundreds/thousands of dollar/euros on cardboard (on a local level).
Of course some fakes are better than those and some won't be spotted from a glance of the other side of the table.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

I've already spotted fake fetchies and a Surgical Extraction. Their color was way off so I took a close look. Told the players those are fakes and let them be. I want to play, not win because people don't want to pay dozens/hundreds/thousands of dollar/euros on cardboard (on a local level).
Of course some fakes are better than those and some won't be spotted from a glance of the other side of the table.

How do you know the coloring was off because they were fake and not because of a failure of the printing process or because of weathering?

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Personally, I hope the fakes one day become indistinguishable from the real thing. I would love to be able to play legacy again.

The problem is, if you sanction proxies, then... why not just go ahead and play Vintage?


The quality of fakes is consistently exaggerated. Visual inspection has been enough, but I'm happy to carry a loupe in my bag if there's ever a question.

Also, the "bend test" isn't a test. No one's bending cards.

I don't want to beleaguer this issue but I would say the fakes you spotted were bad fakes. You've probably encountered dozens of good fakes that you couldn't tell were fakes.

[Seymour_Asses]

The problem is, if you sanction proxies, then... why not just go ahead and play Vintage?

To interject: it's a completely different format.

Even if proxies were legal, I'd still play way more Legacy than Vintage.

[Ronald Deuce]

I've seen Nedleeds do it. Round 1 game 1 of an SCG I think it was. Opponent fetches a Volc, casts ponder, Nedleeds calls a judge on it being fake. Gets confirmed. Opponent had to change his card to a basic for the rest of the tournament. He supposedly had borrowed the deck so he didn't get a DQ I believe was the story

Somehow I'm not surprised someone that odious would be the person to attempt wins without playing the game.


How do you know the coloring was off because they were fake and not because of a failure of the printing process or because of weathering?

Care to appraise that card for me?


The problem is, if you sanction proxies, then... why not just go ahead and play Vintage?

Why the fuck would I want to play a one-deck format?

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Why the fuck would I want to play a one-deck format?
1) Since Narset got restricted, Vintage is the healthiest constructed format right now. All 5 colors have good cards in Vintage. That's not really true for Legacy.
2) Also because it's fun to crack Lotuses and Ancestrals?

Being a good format is not why I care about Legacy. Actually I think Legacy has a lot of retardedness. I care about Legacy because of pet decks that I like, for example Enchantress or Solidarity.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Care to appraise that card for me?
So is that a "I don't" to the "how did you know" question?
Or is this a call back to the "there is no market therefore cards can't be valued" thread?

[Megadeus]

And yet you can't tell me how.

Well I'm not nedleeds, and like I said unlike him I don't have 20+ years experience playing with duals. I can't tell you how because I am unsure of exactly how he knew, all I know is what I witnessed happen.

[Megadeus]

Somehow I'm not surprised someone that odious would be the person to attempt wins without playing the game.



Because playing by the rules (using legal real magic cards) and calling an opponent out for not playing by those same rules is scummy /s

[Cire]

Kinda of? I mean, it's not really a rule that goes towards game play but instead goes towards purchase price. It would be like if there was a NFL rule requiring players to have spent $X+ on their cleats, and Player A points out that Player B's cleats were <$X. The cleats, other than price, allowed the player wearing them to play football just as well as the $X+ Cleats. You better believe that there will be Op-Eds calling Player A scummy. Now MTG is not the NFL, Wizards won't exist if people didn't use the more expensive cards, but that is a corporate problem, on a personal - player level, it does feel scummy to forfeit someone because they don't have the funds for the more expensive real cards. Just play and enjoy the game.

[Megadeus]

Kinda of? I mean, it's not really a rule that goes towards game play but instead goes towards purchase price. It would be like if there was a NFL rule requiring players to have spent $X+ on their cleats, and Player A points out that Player B's cleats were <$X. The cleats, other than price, allowed the player wearing them to play football just as well as the $X+ Cleats. You better believe that there will be Op-Eds calling Player A scummy. Now MTG is not the NFL, Wizards won't exist if people didn't use the more expensive cards, but that is a corporate problem, on a personal - player level, it does feel scummy to forfeit someone because they don't have the funds for the more expensive real cards. Just play and enjoy the game.

That's fine and dandy, but the rules state that you must play with real cards. If you don't play with real cards then you're breaking the rules. I mean I am all for proxy events and I wish that they would be allowed to make it easier to play legacy, but it is what it is. I've definitely played substandard lists because of card availability. If a player is willing to knowingly break the rules by playing with fake cards who knows what other rules that person is willing to break.

[Cire]

That's fine and dandy, but the rules state that you must play with real cards. If you don't play with real cards then you're breaking the rules. I mean I am all for proxy events and I wish that they would be allowed to make it easier to play legacy, but it is what it is. I've definitely played substandard lists because of card availability. If a player is willing to knowingly break the rules by playing with fake cards who knows what other rules that person is willing to break.

Ah, yes - but as I said, but whether you see it scummy to call someone out on it is a question of the classic question To Be Lawful or Good (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ToBeLawfulOrGood).

[JDK]

How do you know the coloring was off because they were fake and not because of a failure of the printing process or because of weathering?
The coloring was off, so I took a close look. It caught my interest because at first glance it looked weird. Upon closer inspection the printing was way off compared to US or EU printings (blurry) and the surface felt different.
Spotting fakes if you can inspect the cards closely isn't that hard in _most_ cases. First you look at color + print patterns + card texture. If you have access to a magnifying glass, scales and a flashlight it gets easier and more accurate.
I am not sure if you are serious and try way to hard to bring across your point of "you cannot be 100% sure though". Of course you cannot spot 100% of the fakes in a game with nothing but your eyes. Some are spottable though. We good now?

[Megadeus]

Ah, yes - but as I said, but whether you see it scummy to call someone out on it is a question of the classic question To Be Lawful or Good (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ToBeLawfulOrGood).

Well in a tourney setting where money is on the line, I'd err on the side of Lawful just in case that person that isn't Lawful is also not Good. Allowing people to slide is how Bertocini's and Mike Longs are created. It sucks, but that's the way it is. Don't get mad at the guy upholding the rules, get mad at those who blatantly break them.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

The coloring was off, so I took a close look. It caught my interest because at first glance it looked weird. Upon closer inspection the printing was way off compared to US or EU printings (blurry) and the surface felt different.
Spotting fakes if you can inspect the cards closely isn't that hard in _most_ cases. First you look at color + print patterns + card texture. If you have access to a magnifying glass, scales and a flashlight it gets easier and more accurate.
I am not sure if you are serious and try way to hard to bring across your point of "you cannot be 100% sure though". Of course you cannot spot 100% of the fakes in a game with nothing but your eyes. Some are spottable though. We good now?

You get that blurry printing from possibly too munch ink being put onto the card would make it feel different right? Would account for the bad colors too.

The real crime though was playing without sleeves where you could touch and begin an inspection mid match.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Because playing by the rules (using legal real magic cards) and calling an opponent out for not playing by those same rules is scummy /s

If you want to compare bank accounts instead of playing Magic there's Old School right over there...

[JDK]

You get that blurry printing from possibly too munch ink being put onto the card would make it feel different right? Would account for the bad colors too.

The real crime though was playing without sleeves where you could touch and begin an inspection mid match.
Are you into astrology? Because it looks like you are looking for a rare luminary eclipse or planetary constellation.
Sleeves are not glued onto cards and you can talk with people.

Anyway, I am done. This is not going to get us anywhere.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Are you into astrology? Because it looks like you are looking for a rare luminary eclipse or planetary constellation.
Sleeves are not glued onto cards and you can talk with people.

Anyway, I am done. This is not going to get us anywhere.

I'm into this razor that says it's more likely the company known for printing problems had a printing problem.

[Mr.C]

Guys, it's over.

It's been nearly 10 years since WotC gave us a the biggest "fuck you" possible with what happened in March 2010 and the lead-up to it. If they had done that today, there would have had been hell to pay on social media, but I digress.

I've moved on; I only have an Old School deck, a completely uncompetitive painter deck with proxied CoTs and some other stuff, and Commander decks. WotC does not care about the Legacy/Vintage player.

[Michael Keller]

Guys, it's over.

It's been nearly 10 years since WotC gave us a the biggest "fuck you" possible with what happened in March 2010 and the lead-up to it. If they had done that today, there would have had been hell to pay on social media, but I digress.

I've moved on; I only have an Old School deck, a completely uncompetitive painter deck with proxied CoTs and some other stuff, and Commander decks. WotC does not care about the Legacy/Vintage player.

Not sure where you live, but I’ve played in a 2K, a 1K and registered for a 20K in March. All of this since the SCG announcement. Legacy events are starting to organically rise in the eastern US.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Guys, it's over.

It's been nearly 10 years since WotC gave us a the biggest "fuck you" possible with what happened in March 2010 and the lead-up to it. If they had done that today, there would have had been hell to pay on social media, but I digress.

I've moved on; I only have an Old School deck, a completely uncompetitive painter deck with proxied CoTs and some other stuff, and Commander decks. WotC does not care about the Legacy/Vintage player.

The outcome is not decided. Not yet.

But Legacy players need to wake up to the fact that this is a state of WAR and the only possible outcome is the annihilation of one side or another. If Legacy is to be saved, Modern MUST be completely, entirely destroyed, and time is on their side, not ours.

It might SEEM Modern is losing this fight since Pioneer has taken a huge chomp into the Modern playerbase, but this is the ONLY thing Legacy has going its way. WotC is backing Modern, and as long as Modern's playerbase remains significantly larger than Legacy's, that wont change and that's fatal to us. We need to deal Modern a deathblow while it's staggered. The longer this goes, the stronger Modern's position will get reinforced by WotC's support.

Even not counting the WotC factor, Modern can replenish its ranks by drawing from new players, Standard, Pioneer, AND Legacy players who go over. The ONLY playerbase that Legacy can draw from is Modern.

This is why we NEED to act NOW. Right now Modern players are jumping out. Many of them WANT to jump to Legacy, but they can't because of the dual lands. 99% of the jumpers are jumping to Pioneer. We NEED them to jump to Legacy, and the only way to get them to do that en mass is to drop the dual lands.

I went to Kadou in Beijing last Sunday. There were 35 players in the Pioneer tournament, about 20 players in the Legacy tournament, and only 2 players in the Modern tournament. I want to be encouraged by that, but the truth of the matter is that those numbers are temporary. It's instead a BAD sign that the Modern players are trying Pioneer. It means that they are not coming over to Legacy. They can't because the card availability can't sustain it. In 6 months, many of them will quit Pioneer, but that will just entrench them in Modern, just in time for Modern Horizons 2. And then WE ARE DEAD.

So the ONLY WAY we can win this war is to ANNIHILATE Modern NOW, so that those players who are dallying with Pioneer do not have a format to return to in 6 months. We need to shanghai the remaining Modern players into Legacy NOW, before Modern can regroup and are rejoined by their erstwhile comrades. If we let Modern hang around, WE ARE DEAD AND FUCKED, like Napoleon at Waterloo.

[ESG]

Guys, it's over.

It's been nearly 10 years since WotC gave us a the biggest "fuck you" possible with what happened in March 2010 and the lead-up to it. If they had done that today, there would have had been hell to pay on social media, but I digress.

I've moved on; I only have an Old School deck, a completely uncompetitive painter deck with proxied CoTs and some other stuff, and Commander decks. WotC does not care about the Legacy/Vintage player.

It's only over if you want it to be. You're in "Raincouver." Drive down to Seattle and play in our Legacy 3K THIS WEEKEND. Details here:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?33232-Card-Kingdom-Mox-Boarding-House-3K-(Bellevue-WA)-Saturday-January-11

[Mr. Safety]

...and time is on their side, not ours.

I disagree. Formats that utilize only a small section of printed cards will never last as long as formats that use the entirety of card printings. I don't see how time is on Modern's side at all. Legacy has endured longer, and with bigger shakeups. If Legacy didn't die when Modern was good, why would it die to the shit-tornado Modern is now?


It might SEEM Modern is losing this fight since Pioneer has taken a huge chomp into the Modern playerbase, but this is the ONLY thing Legacy has going its way. WotC is backing Modern, and as long as Modern's playerbase remains significantly larger than Legacy's, that wont change and that's fatal to us. We need to deal Modern a deathblow while it's staggered. The longer this goes, the stronger Modern's position will get reinforced by WotC's support.

Modern is terrible right now, with Oko ruining yet another format. Modern has a recurring problem that way where there just isn't enough versatility in the competitive card pool to deal with overpowered outliers.

I mean seriously, who still enjoys modern? Masochists, that's who. The format is a dumpster fire. As long as Pioneer continues to create buzz Modern is doomed to the status of the old Extended days: a competitive format on the Pro Tour (or whatever the fuck it is now) and nothing else.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

I mean seriously, who still enjoys modern? Masochists, that's who. The format is a dumpster fire. As long as Pioneer continues to create buzz Modern is doomed to the status of the old Extended days: a competitive format on the Pro Tour (or whatever the fuck it is now) and nothing else.

It doesn't matter that Modern is terrible when Legacy can only support 1% of the magic playerbase maximum.

[Mr.C]

It's only over if you want it to be. You're in "Raincouver." Drive down to Seattle and play in our Legacy 3K THIS WEEKEND. Details here:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?33232-Card-Kingdom-Mox-Boarding-House-3K-(Bellevue-WA)-Saturday-January-11

brb telling my wife I'm re-buying a US$3000 deck to play a few times a year.

[Grizzlenasty]

Setting priorities in live is impotant!

[Megadeus]

brb telling my wife I'm re-buying a US$3000 deck to play a few times a year.

Me except telling myself

[ESG]

brb telling my wife I'm re-buying a US$3000 deck to play a few times a year.

1) You're being dismissive, but there are more than just a few events down here, and I hear about plenty of events in Canada via the Canadian Threshold podcast. You said, "Guys, it's over," and it's clearly not.

2) Not all Legacy decks are $3,000. I'm not telling you to sell your Old School deck, but ... you have an Old School deck, so acting like $3,000 is even a dealbreaker is a little rich. How many Commander decks do you have? Do you love and need all of them? It's pretty easy to get back in if you want to, especially if you have lots of other cards.

If you chose to sell out, that was your choice. If you regret it, you can buy back in and enjoy playing in Legacy tournaments again.

[bruizar]

It doesn't matter that Modern is terrible when Legacy can only support 1% of the magic playerbase maximum.

That 1% is the better half though!

-> Select / Prioritize / Economize

You can make that new Brainfreeze Storm deck for about 1k I think. Just replace duals with shock duals. It doesn't matter because you should combo off on turn 2 anyway and you're not relying on Ad Nauseam / life as a resource. Seriously, people underestimate how good shock lands are, especially in combo decks.

The only really expensive card is LED, and those are easy to sell back anyway.

-> Want to be more effective stop over optimizing
https://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2012/07/14/want-to-be-more-effective-stop-over-optimizing/

It's all about ROI. You can over optimize with dual lands for those few times you play Legacy per year, or you just substitute for a shock dual and play a deck that's fast enough to make the damage irrelevant.

Also, Arcum's Astrolabe and Prismatic Vista has significantly reduced the cost of entry to legacy.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

"Play a worse deck because you can't afford the better one" Isn't the compelling argument you think it is.

[PirateKing]

"Play a worse deck because you can't afford the better one" Isn't the compelling argument you think it is.

https://i.imgflip.com/2v47yy.png

"Don't be poor" is much more straightforward. No more compelling though...

[bruizar]

"Play a worse deck because you can't afford the better one" Isn't the compelling argument you think it is.

It doesn't matter if you win your games at 18 life instead of 16 life. The games you go to zero with a combo deck, are games where your plan was disrupted beyond repair anyway. If you can't win by turn 6 playing combo, turn 7 will be relevant a negligible amount of games..

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

It doesn't matter if you win your games at 18 life instead of 16 life. The games you go to zero with a combo deck, are games where your plan was disrupted beyond repair anyway. If you can't win by turn 6 playing combo, turn 7 will be relevant a negligible amount of games..

If my opponent is only dealing two damage to me then they need a better deck.

[pettdan]

If my opponent is only dealing two damage to me then they need a better deck.

Many games with combo decks end before the other deck manages to deal much damage, however many games are also drawn out and in these games a couple of points of damage will make a difference (in some non-negligible percentage of games). Edit: or well, whether that's a negligible percentage of games or not is the central question here, not intending to answer it. Maybe it's negligible, maybe not. Should depend on the deck..

[compacta_d]

Modern and Legacy are comparitively priced.

You don't need to play a worse version of a deck at all.

"But dual lands are expensive" so are Caverns and fetch lands and Lilis and Goyfs and blah blah blah. Just like you don't need to play the most expensive deck in modern, and you don't need to play the most expensive deck in Legacy.
In fact the most expensive legacy decks are actually bad. Looking at you Pox and Tezzerator.

We don't need to poach only modern players. Be open and friendly to anyone with questions. We've recently had an influx of standard/pioneer players at our locals.

I'm fact it's easy to be like "why play modern when you can play legacy for similar cost?" To ppl LOOKING at modern.


Also modern gets natural disastered like once a year. It's not much work to kill it. Now it's oko. Last time was Hogaak. Time before that was KCI. Before that Eldrazi winter. Bc it's a "turn 4 format" it's actually very easy for whatever breakout deck bc the finish line to break modern is "win by turn 3". Modern decks will constantly get bans for balancing leaving bad tastes in players mouths.

Part of the reason I'm anti- most legacy bans is because of this.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Modern and Legacy are comparitively priced.
By "comparatively" priced you mean that we can compare them. Like we can compare the top deck in Legacy: UR Delver at 2500 dollars, and UG Whirza at 1400. A difference of over a thousand buckeroos.


You don't need to play a worse version of a deck at all.
Shocks are not duals. Shadow excepted.


"But dual lands are expensive" so are Caverns and fetch lands and Lilis and Goyfs and blah blah blah.
Caverns are sixty, Taigas are a hundred and sixty, hundred bucks per card, blah blah blah.

[bruizar]

Many games with combo decks end before the other deck manages to deal much damage, however many games are also drawn out and in these games a couple of points of damage will make a difference (in some non-negligible percentage of games). Edit: or well, whether that's a negligible percentage of games or not is the central question here, not intending to answer it. Maybe it's negligible, maybe not. Should depend on the deck..
This


By "comparatively" priced you mean that we can compare them. Like we can compare the top deck in Legacy: UR Delver at 2500 dollars, and UG Whirza at 1400. A difference of over a thousand buckeroos.

Shocks are not duals. Shadow excepted.

Caverns are sixty, Taigas are a hundred and sixty, hundred bucks per card, blah blah blah.
@FourDogsinaHorseSuit You are not being constructive. Shocks are nonbasics with multiple basic land types which allow for the construction of resilient fetchland heavy manabases. You even take damage at your own volition, so you don't get damaged by them 100% of the time and if you can't afford the damage, you don't have to unlike tapping a fetch land.


https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=24256&d=369320&f=LE


Card Kingdom
$1988 (NM)

TCGplayer
From $1559

Replace 2 volcanic island with 2 steam vents to knock $479.99*2 = $959.98 off the price

<$1k top tier deck with the maximum downside of taking 4 extra damage, which in most matchups will be 0 or 2 damage.

For someone arguing that the format is too expensive, exchanging 2 duals for 2 shock duals is a very small price to pay to attend a legacy event. Building a format starts with local tournament support. If you only host big events, you wont get new players because it makes no sense to spend thousands of dollars for 3 days of magic per year. Use the tournament winnings to save for a volcanic the way we used to do with proxy 10 vintage tournaments where the price was a Mox.

Suboptimal lists win all the time. Don't attribute you losing to not having a volcanic island when it's probably your own skill as a pilot that leads to losses.

[lavafrogg]

To jump in, wizards has also done a decent job of printing cards where you don’t need to play duals.

The list of actually good decks without duals is as high as it’s ever been.

Goblins and DnT are both playable, burn, elves (cradles only real expensive card), dredge, astrolabe control, ur Delver and go Depths can be played with shocks over duals (or with vistas and basics for the budget and life concious).

Eldrazi is on the cheaper side of legacy decks as well, humans is also becoming better with every set and has an almost modern legal mana base.

His thread has a very simple solution : functionally reprint duals, but short of that I believe wizards is actually trying.

[pettdan]

We've recently had an influx of standard/pioneer players at our locals.

In [fixed] fact it's easy to be like "why play modern when you can play legacy for similar cost?" To ppl LOOKING at modern.

I agree with this [edit: the general sentiment], a lot, and I think I'm repeating myself, but there will be an influx of players to MtG, probably, and Legacy is a great format so some players will end up there. I don't see legacy dying, but it's hard to say and it's very much up for time to tell. Actually, recently card prices are dropping and I think this also favors Legacy. I mean, I also see a lot of counter-arguments but I think these are the strongest ones. Like, price drops [edit: I had the impression there were price drops, may be wrong?] are because people are moving out of Legacy.. But I think it's more people worrying about card prices, just my speculation, and this worry is good because it means people move away from hoarding and investing in legacy staples, freeing them up for new players to join.. Of course it's actually both effects working at the same time, but I think the sobering effect of the price drop could be a good lasting effect for a couple of years.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

This


@FourDogsinaHorseSuit You are not being constructive. Shocks are nonbasics with multiple basic land types which allow for the construction of resilient fetchland heavy manabases. You even take damage at your own volition, so you don't get damaged by them 100% of the time and if you can't afford the damage, you don't have to unlike tapping a fetch land.

You know what's really not constructive? The guy who made a whole thread about how magic was dying because it was too expensive is now king ostrich of the price of Legacy. Shocks aren't duals. You can pretend all you want that they are but they're not. Playing them puts you at a disadvantage, and when you're intentionally hamstringing yourself it makes it a lot harder to get that prize money you mentioned to use to trade up for a dual. And also what's the payout your events? What is your net on average? Maybe 20 in credit an event if you're both winning and it's big enough? So just string together 8 wins and you'll finally afford that Tiaga from my previous post. 479 for a volcanic? a mere 24 away! Assuming they have them in stock, of course. All you have to do is take the deck you already know is worse than your opposition and be best.
Just a quick question: In your own decks which do you run? Shocks or duals?

[bruizar]

You know what's really not constructive? The guy who made a whole thread about how magic was dying because it was too expensive is now king ostrich of the price of Legacy. Shocks aren't duals. You can pretend all you want that they are but they're not. Playing them puts you at a disadvantage, and when you're intentionally hamstringing yourself it makes it a lot harder to get that prize money you mentioned to use to trade up for a dual. And also what's the payout your events? What is your net on average? Maybe 20 in credit an event if you're both winning and it's big enough? So just string together 8 wins and you'll finally afford that Tiaga from my previous post. 479 for a volcanic? a mere 24 away! Assuming they have them in stock, of course. All you have to do is take the deck you already know is worse than your opposition and be best.
Just a quick question: In your own decks which do you run? Shocks or duals?

My rationale behind magic's (not specifically legeacy) problems in general are connected to the velocity and power creep of the product. The constant influx of new sets contrasted against the lack of tournaments to play those cards. That's a different discussion though.

Legacy's price itself is a separate problem. I have proposed my alternative to reducing the cost of the format with the Trinity Manifesto. The options are that and/or shock duals. Reserved list isn't going to go away. I am not arguing legacy is in a bad state. I'm trying to come up with ways to improve the current state.

Shocks put you at a disadvantage yes. How big is that disadvantage? That depends on the deck you register, its matchups, whether you draw any of them in the first place or not, and if you are able to EOT fetch Steam Vents tapped or not. Running 1 Brazen Borrower instead of 2 Brazen Borrowers, or deciding which and how many counter magic you need to play is a much higher impact decision, because it's the lack of having the right interaction that leads you to losing life in the first place. If you have the right answers, that 2 or 4 damage does not matter.

I'm confident that legacy is not played enough to say that the current decks are completely done evolving, and I can also safely say that you or I do not play without making any misplays. What I'm saying is, you don't have to spend money on duals before you are good enough to resolve brainstorm correctly. You are over optimizing the wrong things. A good pilot with shock duals will beat a medium pilot with duals. Your local legacy tournament doesn't have World's level players, eternal players are notoriously shitty pilots compared to your average standard grinder.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Shocklands are nearly as good as dual lands. Which is exactly why jetisoning dual lands is the most painless way to removing one of the biggest barriers to growing the Legacy player base.

If you are arguing that someone can take a deck and replace Volcanic Island with Steam Vents, then you should be on the side of getting rid of dual lands all together. Since really none of us cares about Legacy being a format where you compare wallets/ autism, so let's just get rid of the fact that $1000 buys you a 4 life advantage.

Legacy without dual lands is still legacy.
Modern with legacy imitations from future Modern Horizon sets like FoN, but without Wasteland or High Tide or Burning Wish or Phyrexian Dreadnoughts, is not legacy. A futured merged Modern/ Legacy format where everyone is playing a Delver or Whirza or Depths variant is not legacy. If you think Modern Horizons was good for Legacy, you've swallowed the bait. MH isn't to pull Modern players into Legacy. It's to push Legacy towards Modern.

That's what we must fight to save.

[Seymour_Asses]

In fact the most expensive legacy decks are actually bad. Looking at you Pox

Pffffft. Pox can be had for around $750 and is literally the sickest deck in Legacy. The RL enchantments are fun but usually win more.

[Deirex85]

Can this shitty hyperbole thread die already?

Imo the only thing killing Legacy is a bunch of threads stating that "Legacy is dying" showing up here and on Reddit every few months.
Perhaps I'm just lucky to live in a country where my salary allows me to buy the occasional dual land but honestly how many do you even need?

In almost every deck I've played bar perhaps Delver variants I make an effort to avoid duals as much as I can.
But I would NEVER want to remove duals form legacy, that's the shittiest idea ever taking away a big reason that many are playing Legacy at all, that being nostalgia and the chance to play with powerful cards.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Can this shitty hyperbole thread die already?

Imo the only thing killing Legacy is a bunch of threads stating that "Legacy is dying" showing up here and on Reddit every few months.
Perhaps I'm just lucky to live in a country where my salary allows me to buy the occasional dual land but honestly how many do you even need?

In almost every deck I've played bar perhaps Delver variants I make an effort to avoid duals as much as I can.
But I would NEVER want to remove duals form legacy, that's the shittiest idea ever taking away a big reason that many are playing Legacy at all, that being nostalgia and the chance to play with powerful cards.

Lol. I recommend you get a loupe and check for yourself how much money you've squandered on fake cardboard.

I know my dual lands are real since I got them out of Revised boosters.

The problem with the dual lands isn't that they are expensive. A dual land isn't a Mox. Since, they WERE reprinted in Revised.

The problem is that they create a hard cap on the ability of Legacy to grow the playerbase, especially since they are increasingly being used in Vintage and EDH.

And secondly it's pretty tough to get Modern players to buy an entirely different set of expensive staples such as FoW, Wasteland, etc... in addition to dual lands, when they are already entrenched and invested in Modern cardboard. Seriously, no one actually *WANTS* to pay $400-$500 for an Island with an extra landtype.

As for nostalgia, I started in 1994 so for me nostalgia is 4X Necropotence, Hymns, Sinkholes, some Demonic Consultations, a Strip Mine and a Sol Ring. Phil and Kaja Foglio art and Quentin Hoover.

As for power, sorry but Brainstorms are not Ancestral Recalls and cheap jewelry is still cheap jewelry. If you want to play with the powerful cards, that's not Legacy. That's Vintage or EDH or Cube.

And if you are not worried about the future for Legacy, you need to take a moment and give some serious thinking to the changes that have been happening over the past two years. WotC has made it clear that Legacy is OUT. So get the message. If you are not prepared to fight to save Legacy, then either sell out now, or look into investing in either a Black Lotus or a bunch of shitty shocklands, fastlands, checklands, darklands and other wtf lands for pioneer.

[KobeBryan]

Lol. I recommend you get a loupe and check for yourself how much money you've squandered on fake cardboard.

I know my dual lands are real since I got them out of Revised boosters.

The problem with the dual lands isn't that they are expensive. A dual land isn't a Mox. Since, they WERE reprinted in Revised.

The problem is that they create a hard cap on the ability of Legacy to grow the playerbase, especially since they are increasingly being used in Vintage and EDH.

And secondly it's pretty tough to get Modern players to buy an entirely different set of expensive staples such as FoW, Wasteland, etc... in addition to dual lands, when they are already entrenched and invested in Modern cardboard. Seriously, no one actually *WANTS* to pay $400-$500 for an Island with an extra landtype.

As for nostalgia, I started in 1994 so for me nostalgia is 4X Necropotence, Hymns, Sinkholes, some Demonic Consultations, a Strip Mine and a Sol Ring. Phil and Kaja Foglio art and Quentin Hoover.

As for power, sorry but Brainstorms are not Ancestral Recalls and cheap jewelry is still cheap jewelry. If you want to play with the powerful cards, that's not Legacy. That's Vintage or EDH or Cube.

And if you are not worried about the future for Legacy, you need to take a moment and give some serious thinking to the changes that have been happening over the past two years. WotC has made it clear that Legacy is OUT. So get the message. If you are not prepared to fight to save Legacy, then either sell out now, or look into investing in either a Black Lotus or a bunch of shitty shocklands, fastlands, checklands, darklands and other wtf lands for pioneer.

based on your analysis, even modern is out.

[compacta_d]

My point wasn't to play with shock lands.

My entire point was that you can build a top tier deck that does NOT play dual lands at the same rate as a top tier deck with shocklands in place of duals.

So you don't need to play an inherently nerfed deck.

And yes to the point if a Magic player can afford/hustle a $1400 deck, then they can do the same for a $2400 deck. Magic is an expensive hobby. If the budget is that tight, then the player knows they are either playing the wrong format, or playing the budget decks in all formats. At that point you have access to things like Burn, post decks, or manaless dredge. Similar to the budget modern decks that cost a few hundred. I have been this player my whole life until a few years ago. My first Legacy deck was Oops all Spells, which is still very budget as well.

It's VERY comparable. That is the fight that I fight with Magic players as much as possible. And provide links as well. I lend decks and help players find deals on singles whenever people are looking to sell low, or even in the multiple FB sell groups.

I agree the "OMG LEGACY IS DEAD" posts cause more harm than good. I think the "OMG DUALS ARE TOO MUCH THEREFORE CAN'T PLAY" causes as much if not more harm.

And yes the cards I mentioned that are expensive have fluctuating prices. I think it's silly to make the argument that Goyfs are less than Plateaus now, when before goyfs were $180 and plateaus were like $50. Cards fluctuate. Nature of the beast. Those were the top modern cards when I played that format. I don't know what they are now. Tarns? then use tarns as the example. The point stands despite fluctuating card prices.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

based on your analysis, even modern is out.

WotC cares enough about Modern to ban Oko there. That shows they CARE.

[Mr Miagi]

Why do you engage with these obvious trolls?

[KobeBryan]

WotC cares enough about Modern to ban Oko there. That shows they CARE.

They also banned W6 in legacy the last time around...so they CARE

[Ronald Deuce]

As for power, sorry but Brainstorms are not Ancestral Recalls and cheap jewelry is still cheap jewelry. If you want to play with the powerful cards, that's not Legacy. That's Vintage or EDH or Cube.

1) What in Hell are you talking about?
2) If you don't think Legacy has powerful cards, why are you wasting your time here?

[Seymour_Asses]

1) What in Hell are you talking about?
2) If you don't think Legacy has powerful cards, why are you wasting your time here?

As far as #2 goes, it seems that he's here to tell everyone that their duals are fake and to sell out now because Legacy is dumb or something.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

1) What in Hell are you talking about?
2) If you don't think Legacy has powerful cards, why are you wasting your time here?

It just amuses me to see Legacy labeled as a power format.

I remember the first time I ever saw a Legacy tournament being held and it was just people durdling with Brainstorms, Fetchlands and Sensei's Divining Tops. It was amusing.

Lol. Legacy: Where you get to play with POWERFUL CARDS like Brainstorm, FoW and Wasteland!

[TsumiBand]

ShOcKs ArE aBoUt As GoOd As DuAlS

Yeah no lol. I tried this like 10-12 years ago. Brought GRW Zoo to a Legacy thing. Round one paired me up against a Merfolk deck. You know what happens when you curve out with a 3-color deck with fetches and shocks? You cut your life total in half in 3 turns. And you lose to decks that should never under any circumstances "out-aggro" you.

Moving to shocks changes what's good in a pretty big way in my experience, enough that people would really need to rethink how viable certain decks are. I mean unless you're a total edgelord and you're happy to roll up to a venue with "Suicide Delver" whatever the fuck that pile looks like and start every game at 11 life?? Honestly that sounds sick af, you guys do that and I'll just bring Legacy Mirrorweave Kithkin, then WotC will look at the format and whinge "well we can't support THIS, it's a clown fiesta" and we can all go back to hating playing Arena, right

[Mr. Safety]

It just amuses me to see Legacy labeled as a power format.

I remember the first time I ever saw a Legacy tournament being held and it was just people durdling with Brainstorms, Fetchlands and Sensei's Divining Tops. It was amusing.

Lol. Legacy: Where you get to play with POWERFUL CARDS like Brainstorm, FoW and Wasteland!

Translation:

https://happyandfulloficecream.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/img957930.jpg

[Deirex85]

It just amuses me to see Legacy labeled as a power format.

I remember the first time I ever saw a Legacy tournament being held and it was just people durdling with Brainstorms, Fetchlands and Sensei's Divining Tops. It was amusing.

Lol. Legacy: Where you get to play with POWERFUL CARDS like Brainstorm, FoW and Wasteland!

In what scenario are legacy cards not powerful? Just because you have a very narrow view of what is considered powerful does not mean that Legacy is not powerful.

In addition please don't assume that my duals are fake, you have no way of knowing other than assuming because you disliked me disagreeing with your hyperbole bullshit, so you immediately decided to attack my personal purchasing decisions.
I can assure you that all my duals are legit as both me and several knowledgeable other players have checked them, I also only ever buy from legitimate sellers in my home country.

I don't owe you or anyone else shit so I will keep my duals for as long as I want and never ever feel bad about it.
You talk a lot of crap about "fighting" but what does that even entail for you? I'm an active member of my local legacy community and that is enough for me.

Edit: Ignored, there's no point in reading your weak attempts of gatekeeping, you do not get to decide what is and isn't nostalgia.
You also have no idea of how long most people have been playing so you're not impressing anyone with "I've been playing since 1994".

[bruizar]

In what scenario are legacy cards not powerful? Just because you have a very narrow view of what is considered powerful does not mean that Legacy is not powerful.

In addition please don't assume that my duals are fake, you have no way of knowing other than assuming because you disliked me disagreeing with your hyperbole bullshit, so you immediately decided to attack my personal purchasing decisions.
I can assure you that all my duals are legit as both me and several knowledgeable other players have checked them, I also only ever buy from legitimate sellers in my home country.

I don't owe you or anyone else shit so I will keep my duals for as long as I want and never ever feel bad about it.
You talk a lot of crap about "fighting" but what does that even entail for you? I'm an active member of my local legacy community and that is enough for me.

Edit: Ignored, there's no point in reading your weak attempts of gatekeeping, you do not get to decide what is and isn't nostalgia.
You also have no idea of how long most people have been playing so you're not impressing anyone with "I've been playing since 1994".

I've been playing since '94 as well and get excited about standard. The power level of every format is very high right now.

Whether you play:
Vintage ->Time Vault / Voltaic Key (ok in all fairness this combo has been outclassed for other stuff that provides value individually, still BROKEN though)
Legacy -> Painter Servant / Grindstone
Modern-> Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek (and Urza for infinite)

They are all very high in power level. Every format plays Karn, Oko, Teferi, Narset.

You don't have power9 in legacy or broken stuff like Mental Misstep, but you do have 4x ponder, 4x mox opal, 4x brainstorm, 4x monastery mentor, 4x lion's eye diamond, etcetera.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

In what scenario are legacy cards not powerful? Just because you have a very narrow view of what is considered powerful does not mean that Legacy is not powerful.

Doesn't matter since you've presumedly ignored me.

Force of Will, Brainstorm and Wasteland are not POWERFUL cards. They are BALANCED cards. And Legacy is not a POWER format. It was intended to be the FAIR format,and the SMART format.

If anyone hasn't been here since the beginning of Legacy, you'd be informed to read Adam Barnello's article series (https://www.channelfireball.com/home/recurring-nightmares-geocentrism/http://) on the history of the format. Legacy was created by banning all of the power cards in Vintage, including Workshops and Bazaars. They certainly would have banned dual lands then as well if they had been $400 back then instead of $15.

Some highlights from his articles to keep in mind:



At the time, circa 2003, the 1.5 format was the bastard step-child of Vintage. The people who played it were ridiculed and cast off from the teat of the mother format. While Vintage (at the time, called Type 1) had a healthy and thriving metagame and plenty of players, 1.5 was a wasteland where only the few people obsessed with it even knew of its existence. It didn’t even have its own banned list – it was just the Type 1 restricted and banned lists combined, meaning any card banned or restricted in T1 was banned in 1.5. The decks of the time were all super-powered compared to the decks of today. There were 1.5 “power” cards, which were all super expensive – in the range of $100 or more for a playset. These cards, Bazaar of Baghdad, Mishra’s Workshop, Mana Drain, etc, were the pillars of the format, and on the backs of these the format took shape:



The people I’d left behind when venturing into the world of academia had been busy. Some of them had become moderators on TheManaDrain.com, and when differences of opinion on what was best for the 1.5 portion of the site had arisen, they left the site to found mtgTheSource.com, which was the first dedicated forum to the development of 1.5.

The intent was for a home to be created for players who would soon be feeling the effects of the impending Extended rotation. With the first rotation coming up, dual lands and the rest of the older cards would have no home other than the antiquated Type 1 format, or the expensive and overpowered Type 1.5 format. They wanted to solve a few problems in one swoop, and the result was Legacy.

1.5 players were pissed. The format that they’d worked so hard to develop – literally from the ground up – had vanished in the blink of an eye. The cards they had worked to earn or win or break were devalued, and were mostly just fodder for eBay or trades. They had pimped out versions of illegal decks, they had nowhere to look for tech, and they basically had to start completely new with a format that only barely resembled something familiar.

Think about how much damage banning a single card like Jace would do to Standard. Think about how much damage banning more than one card – say, Jace and Preordain – would do. Now imagine that there are no PTQs, no Grand Prixs, and no SCG Opens. Imagine that the only events you play in are your FNMs, but you play in them as though each was Sunday of the Pro Tour. Now imagine they banned not only Jace and Preordain, but Primeval Titan, Valakut, Goblin Guide, Stoneforge Mystic – and just for good measure, banned Fauna Shaman and Vengevine, too. Now you’re scratching the surface of just how devastating these changes were. The 1.5 players had every right to be upset.

So try to understand my perspective, as someone who started in 1994 and was around when 1.5 got chopped into Legacy, why I find trying to sell Legacy as a POWER format pretty funny.



In addition please don't assume that my duals are fake, you have no way of knowing other than assuming because you disliked me disagreeing with your hyperbole bullshit, so you immediately decided to attack my personal purchasing decisions.
I can assure you that all my duals are legit as both me and several knowledgeable other players have checked them, I also only ever buy from legitimate sellers in my home country.

If you've purchased dual lands within the past five years, you seriously should examine them with a loupe if you want to know for certain they are not fakes. From some investigation that I've done over the past month, there's been around 500,000 - 1,000,000 high quality fake revised dual lands put into circulation over the past 5 years, and not just limited to China or Asia but all over the world. So basically between 1/2 and 3/4 of all revised dual lands are high quality fakes. There are also high quality fake betas as well but you'd be pretty stupid to buy a beta that looks fresh out of the pack.



I don't owe you or anyone else shit so I will keep my duals for as long as I want and never ever feel bad about it.
You talk a lot of crap about "fighting" but what does that even entail for you? I'm an active member of my local legacy community and that is enough for me.

Edit: Ignored, there's no point in reading your weak attempts of gatekeeping, you do not get to decide what is and isn't nostalgia.
You also have no idea of how long most people have been playing so you're not impressing anyone with "I've been playing since 1994".

That's the sad thing about Legacy. It's stagnant because there's little or no growth in the playerbase. Everyone who wants Force of Wills basically already has them. So there's no point in WotC printing a million more copies of FoW or Wasteland, since there's no point in getting those cards if you can't get Volcanic Islands and Underground Seas. So as soon as you talked about buying dual lands with your paycheck, I pretty much knew you didn't start 25 or even 20 years ago.

The only way to save Legacy is for those of us that care for it to organize and proactively find solutions to the issues that limit the growth of the playerbase and block Modern players from transitioning into Legacy players. That's why it's clear to me that getting rid of dual lands is a necessary and urgent step to save the Legacy format. Such a large shift would tumesce interest among Modern players to give Legacy a go. I don't think WotC wants to kill Legacy, but there's nothing more they can do to save it. It's in the hands of the community now. That's why I made this thread.

[ronco]

Force of Will, Brainstorm and Wasteland are not POWERFUL cards. They are BALANCED cards. And Legacy is not a POWER format. It was intended to be the FAIR format,and the SMART format.


I think having multiple decks that can win unobstructed T1 makes for a pretty powerful format, even if it is rare in the tournament scene. Avenues like T0 leylines and chancellors, surgicals (and other phyrexian mana cards), and forces (and probably others) give opponents the option to interact with them. Seems pretty powerful AND balanced to me.

[Cire]

What is the point of determining what is a "power" format?

[KobeBryan]

What is the point of determining what is a "power" format?

he's making shit up. he wants legacy to die world wide because he can't play in china

[Seymour_Asses]

From some investigation that I've done over the past month, there's been around 500,000 - 1,000,000 high quality fake revised dual lands put into circulation over the past 5 years, and not just limited to China or Asia but all over the world. So basically between 1/2 and 3/4 of all revised dual lands are high quality fakes.

Uhhhhh... Do you have any evidence to support this? A source (ha ha get it)? ANYTHING?

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Uhhhhh... Do you have any evidence to support this? A source (ha ha get it)? ANYTHING?

Yes. I've been doing the investigating that ESG recommended a few weeks back and about 100 posts ago. I hope to have enough sources and better information to submit a report to WotC.

I'm also getting a set of high quality counterfeits myself to figure out the ways to test them and I'll write a report once I do.

For now, you must know that feel and light tests DO NOT work. I've tried a blind feel test with revised cards and couldn't tell which one was counterfeit. And last month someone tried to sell me a fake Phyrexian Dreadnought and the first thing they did to try to prove it was real was the light test. I had a real MI Phyrexian Dreadnought with me and could tell it was a fake because the colors were *slightly* redder and the art was *slightly* less crisp than my real copy. And also I've had enough Mirage cards (including 2 Teeka's Dragons) to know that Mirage artifacts aren't reddish like that. So I would guess that a lot of the counterfeits were sold through light tests.

Needless to say I'm only buying judge Dreadnoughts now. Fake foils is an entirely different can of worms.

[Seymour_Asses]

Interesting if true. Love to see that report.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Interesting if true. Love to see that report.

Any printing error or damage from 25 year old inking is evidence of a forgery. Amazing how every card is fake!

[Ronald Deuce]

This may well be the wrong place to say this, and if it is, I apologize.

I've added two people to my ignore list in the past week—that's twice as many as I'd added since I joined the site several years ago. I'm not trolling when I say that I genuinely don't know whether people even moderate this site anymore. Perhaps I was naïve to assume that people would engage in a rational discussion, but where did the constructive discourse go? Have the mods bailed? (cf. the DtBs.)

[Cave]

I don't care that much about the original thread, I just came in to say that using shocklands in legacy is nonsense bar specific deck interactions (e.g. Shadow). Yes they are only slightly worse than Duals, I'm aware of that. Nobody wants to deliberately play a worse deck anyway, even though it's only slightly worse.

I remember there was a moment around 2004-2007 when Vintage (type 1) was still going strong, and especially in Europe many players who couldn't afford Black Lotus, Moxen and other expensive cards tried to develop alternative strategies based around mana and artifact denial, such as chalice of the void cast for 0, null rod, kataki, and so on and so forth (e.g. the famous Fish decks). Long story short, worse decks never work: i can remember being at tournaments with a 50-50 split metagame (power-unpower) but only as much as two unpowered decks in the top8s. Why? Because they're worse.

Having a format where some players, and only those players, have access to the better cards, while all the rest is trying to develop alternative strategies by using clearly worse alternatives (because they can't afford or can't find the better cards) is exactly what killed vintage in first place. Youngsters, approaching players were being denied access to the format; unpowered players got sick of fighting uphill battles against people who could drop their hand on the board at turn1; and that's all she wrote.

[kombatkiwi]

he's making shit up. he wants legacy to die world wide because he can't play in china

There are plenty of places to play in China too if he wants, he's just a troll

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

I don't care that much about the original thread, I just came in to say that using shocklands in legacy is nonsense bar specific deck interactions (e.g. Shadow). Yes they are only slightly worse than Duals, I'm aware of that. Nobody wants to deliberately play a worse deck anyway, even though it's only slightly worse.

I remember there was a moment around 2004-2007 when Vintage (type 1) was still going strong, and especially in Europe many players who couldn't afford Black Lotus, Moxen and other expensive cards tried to develop alternative strategies based around mana and artifact denial, such as chalice of the void cast for 0, null rod, kataki, and so on and so forth (e.g. the famous Fish decks). Long story short, worse decks never work: i can remember being at tournaments with a 50-50 split metagame (power-unpower) but only as much as two unpowered decks in the top8s. Why? Because they're worse.

Having a format where some players, and only those players, have access to the better cards, while all the rest is trying to develop alternative strategies by using clearly worse alternatives (because they can't afford or can't find the better cards) is exactly what killed vintage in first place. Youngsters, approaching players were being denied access to the format; unpowered players got sick of fighting uphill battles against people who could drop their hand on the board at turn1; and that's all she wrote.
Ok but if we get rid of dual lands, then it would be fair since no one would be using duals against shocklands. That's part of the point.

At this point keeping duals around is purposefully keeping players from joining Legacy by making it an unappealing option for them.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

I have not gotten my set of counterfeit dual lands yet but let me show you a fake Meditate that I picked up last month from one of the most reputable stores in China.

https://i.ibb.co/G34QXh1/IMG-20200115-220303.jpg

One of these two Mediates is real and the other is a counterfeit. They both pass the light test and they both feel like Magic cards. Unless you know exactly what to look for, the only visual difference is a slight difference in color between the two cards. You cannot see the details that reveal the counterfeit without a loupe. Can you tell which one is the fake?


https://i.ibb.co/0sqnWvd/IMG-20200116-160247.jpghttps://i.ibb.co/VpJ4KjY/IMG-20200116-160802.jpg
Look at the pale blue trim on the right edge of the card. On the counterfeit, a sliver of the pale blue bleeds across the black line into the main frame.


https://i.ibb.co/3SnNFG2/IMG-20200116-160333.jpghttps://i.ibb.co/mqv9hQb/IMG-20200116-161233.jpg
Look at the black border around the text book. On the counterfeit, this line is weak and fuzzy, while on the real card it is stark and solid.


https://i.ibb.co/jHrp6V0/IMG-20200116-160619.jpghttps://i.ibb.co/k3TgbVB/IMG-20200116-160903.jpg
This is really difficult to see in the picture but if you look at Susan Van Camp's name, on the counterfeit you can see a slight space between the white lettering and the shadow.


https://i.ibb.co/mqv9hQb/IMG-20200116-161233.jpghttps://i.ibb.co/fvnH9b8/IMG-20200116-160712.jpg
Finally look at the Tempest expansion symbol. On the real card, the white around the storm symbol is pure white, whereas in the counterfeit there is a little reddish bleed that discolors the white.

Those are the only differences that differentiate the real card and the counterfeit that can be discovered with a loupe.

[Grizzlenasty]

Can you tell which one is the fake?


Easily.. both are real!
None of the commonly known fake stores runs them! Why would they print 1 dollar commons to begin with. I don't want to offend you, but your behaviour seems either paranoid or trollish.

By the way you absolutely can tell the difference between fakes and real ones right away. It's a completely different cardstock and printing method. I mean even the best ones are super obvious. No loupe needed.

Apart from that this thread is about saving legacy, not detecting counterfeits.
One way to save it, would be a gentlemen's agreement to swallow it down if the person across the table uses counterfeits and simply shut up about it. I know for sure I have played people that used them. I couldn't care less. As long as they otherwise play fair and honestly, who gives a crap?
Private unsanctioned tournaments with smaller pricepools would be another one.
Open up a facebook group, rent a pub or something alike and you are good to go.
This way proxies could be legitimized as well.

Regarding the "get rid of duals" arguement..
Aahh.. I'm lacking words here. Yes you can do well with suboptimal lists.
I run suboptimal lists and petdecks myself.
But shocks are lightyears worse than real duals. No discussion.

[kombatkiwi]

Easily.. both are real!
None of the commonly known fake stores runs them! Why would they print 1 dollar commons to begin with. I don't want to offend you, but your behaviour seems either paranoid or trollish.

By the way you absolutely can tell the difference between fakes and real ones right away. It's a completely different cardstock and printing method. I mean even the best ones are super obvious. No loupe needed.



You can call this guy paranoid or whatever (and the Chicken-Little attitude is definitely super fucking annoying) but I will give him props for actually taking the photos to explain. Meditate is a Reserved List rare (albeit not one of the more expensive ones) and even for confirmed fakes I have seen in the past (ie last few months) in person you need to assess a similar level of detail to confirm it. "Lol at your $1 common, completely different cardstock and printing, even best ones are super obvious" is just an ignorant thing to say. Maybe a few years ago this was true but you're not keeping up if you still think this. I'm above 50% to agree with him that 1 of those Meditate is fake. I'm going to examine some of my tempest cards when I get home (actual crap <$1 commons from ages ago) to see if they consistently match the features listed, I don't expect to find any of the flaws (colour bleed into expansion symbol, inconsistent borders around textboxes etc)

[bruizar]

Easily.. both are real!
None of the commonly known fake stores runs them! Why would they print 1 dollar commons to begin with. I don't want to offend you, but your behaviour seems either paranoid or trollish.

By the way you absolutely can tell the difference between fakes and real ones right away. It's a completely different cardstock and printing method. I mean even the best ones are super obvious. No loupe needed.

Apart from that this thread is about saving legacy, not detecting counterfeits.
One way to save it, would be a gentlemen's agreement to swallow it down if the person across the table uses counterfeits and simply shut up about it. I know for sure I have played people that used them. I couldn't care less. As long as they otherwise play fair and honestly, who gives a crap?
Private unsanctioned tournaments with smaller pricepools would be another one.
Open up a facebook group, rent a pub or something alike and you are good to go.
This way proxies could be legitimized as well.

Regarding the "get rid of duals" arguement..
Aahh.. I'm lacking words here. Yes you can do well with suboptimal lists.
I run suboptimal lists and petdecks myself.
But shocks are lightyears worse than real duals. No discussion.

The problem is, if there are fakes that are as good as real, you wouldn't even consider them as fake and are thus unable to say that the fakes are really good.You say that fakes are easily identified because you only handled bad fakes.What makes you think the card stock is different or difficult to get? The paper suppliers are in Germany and France. Proprietary papers were not used in the first half of magic's existence. I believe it's Koehler and Zuber Rieder if you really want to know.

[PirateKing]

Why is the Tempest set symbol not fully white-spaced on one?

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Why is the Tempest set symbol not fully white-spaced on one?

The counterfeiter did not use the same printing process as Carta Mundi.

[Cire]

If the fakes are as good as real unless you take out your personal electron microscope and vials of aqua regia to test them, then why is it a problem? Just play the game and stop worrying about your opponent's poverty.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

If the fakes are as good as real unless you take out your personal electron microscope and vials of aqua regia to test them, then why is it a problem? Just play the game and stop worrying about your opponent's poverty.

Once even a loupe cannot reveal counterfeit dual lands, it becomes a problem since people will still try to buy and sell dual lands at $400 assuming it has value due to scarcity, when in fact anyone would be able to order a set of them as well as the entire reserve list for $20. It would be a joke to price dual lands on the assumption that there only exists 300,000 copies of each in the world, when in fact there could easily be millions. At that point the Reserve List does nothing except enable counterfeiters to exploit the ignorance of the community, and it would be moronic for WotC to not revoke the reserve list and print and distribute new copies of the reserve list cards themselves with better counterfeit protection.

The thing is that although WotC's policy is that they do not regulate the secondary market, the value of singles is vital to the health of the game. I don't think I need to explain this. This is still as true today as it was when the Reserve List was created.

Millions of counterfeit dual lands might seem like it would benefit Legacy, but it wouldn't. Many players, even if they could get fake cards, wouldn't out of disgust. Others would quit since their collections ceased to have any monetary vaue. Both WotC as well as the community have a vested interest in maintaining the value of our collectons. We take Magic seriously, but a large part of why we take Magic more seriously than say Scrabble is because our cards have real value.

Legacy would die immediately, Vintage would probably still be ok but would probably lose a large part of its player base. A small handful of counterfeiters would profit greatly financially and many others would be hurt greatly. But I doubt the counterfeiters would stop at old cards. Rare holograms mean nothing even now, and if counterfeiters are making fake foils then the paper ccg business model is essential over.

I hope you realize that you are playing with $400 cards that used to be worth $15 and $50 cards that used to be worth 50 cents.

If you consider all this, you really can't blame WotC for trying to squeeze as much money out of the game as possible while they still can. The end seems inevitable.

[Cire]

the value of singles is vital to the health of the game. I don't think I need to explain this. This is still as true today as it was when the Reserve List was created.

Please enlighten me. I keep hearing of these mysterious people who purchase into the game as if the game was an investment vehicle. Most others cringe at the prices and take the plunge because they want to play the game. If they were suddenly devalued, well sucks for them. Sucks for me.


Many players, even if they could get fake cards, wouldn't out of disgust.

I doubt it. If my friends who keep proxying up legacy cards so they can play legacy with me can get cheap legacy cards they would. Hell some are playing with sticky notes at the moment so if they can play with cards that feel and look like real cards they gladly would.


Others would quit since their collections ceased to have any monetary vaue.


My collection's value was a trap - it was the idea that "its totally fine to spend thousands on this stupid hobby because when I no longer want to play it anymore I can cash out" - but the problem with that is . . . I still want to play it. There is never going to be a reason for me to "cash out" unless I have a medical emergency, need extra cash for collateral on a loan or I've assumed a certain value to it when I leave it as an inheritance. Why would I quit if they cards become worthless . . . the only reason I have them in the first place is so that I can play the game.


We take Magic seriously, but a large part of why we take Magic more seriously than say Scrabble is because our cards have real value.

We take Magic seriously because we take Magic seriously. I have friends who are into scrabble. They are way more into scrabble then I am into magic. They memorize thousands and thousands of word combinations. They have so many flash cards. People take their own hobbies seriously.

The only reason I feel people care about the monetary value of the cards is the sunk cost fallacy. If they are suddenly worthless are you going to stop playing with your friends? Is the free time you spend to drive to a store or apartment or house to play suddenly not how you want to spend your free time? Nah.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

If the fakes are as good as real unless you take out your personal electron microscope and vials of aqua regia to test them, then why is it a problem? Just play the game and stop worrying about your opponent's poverty.

Exscuse me, sir! But I spent FULL PRICE for my duals in 2004 when they were 40 bucks a piece and now some huckster thinks he can just waltz into my legacy sandbox by trying to buy in with mildly discounted duals off ebay? Personally I believe he got exactly what he paid for.

*monocle pops*

[bruizar]

Please enlighten me. I keep hearing of these mysterious people who purchase into the game as if the game was an investment vehicle. Most others cringe at the prices and take the plunge because they want to play the game. If they were suddenly devalued, well sucks for them. Sucks for me.



I doubt it. If my friends who keep proxying up legacy cards so they can play legacy with me can get cheap legacy cards they would. Hell some are playing with sticky notes at the moment so if they can play with cards that feel and look like real cards they gladly would.



My collection's value was a trap - it was the idea that "its totally fine to spend thousands on this stupid hobby because when I no longer want to play it anymore I can cash out" - but the problem with that is . . . I still want to play it. There is never going to be a reason for me to "cash out" unless I have a medical emergency, need extra cash for collateral on a loan or I've assumed a certain value to it when I leave it as an inheritance. Why would I quit if they cards become worthless . . . the only reason I have them in the first place is so that I can play the game.



We take Magic seriously because we take Magic seriously. I have friends who are into scrabble. They are way more into scrabble then I am into magic. They memorize thousands and thousands of word combinations. They have so many flash cards. People take their own hobbies seriously.

The only reason I feel people care about the monetary value of the cards is the sunk cost fallacy. If they are suddenly worthless are you going to stop playing with your friends? Is the free time you spend to drive to a store or apartment or house to play suddenly not how you want to spend your free time? Nah.

Poker without a monetary bet aint poker
Vintage without crazy expensive nostalgic cardboard aint vintage

A collectible game without colllectibility is just a game

Many people enjoy collecting, speculating and trading as fun or more as deck building or playing. In fact, playing is my least enjoyed form of magic consumption

A slight hit for the growth of the game? Sure.
Absolute destruction of all monetary value associated with mtg cards? Never

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

I have not gotten my set of counterfeit dual lands yet but let me show you a fake Meditate that I picked up last month from one of the most reputable stores in China.

https://i.ibb.co/G34QXh1/IMG-20200115-220303.jpg

One of these two Mediates is real and the other is a counterfeit. They both pass the light test and they both feel like Magic cards. Unless you know exactly what to look for, the only visual difference is a slight difference in color between the two cards. You cannot see the details that reveal the counterfeit without a loupe. Can you tell which one is the fake?

Look at the pale blue trim on the right edge of the card. On the counterfeit, a sliver of the pale blue bleeds across the black line into the main frame.

Look at the black border around the text book. On the counterfeit, this line is weak and fuzzy, while on the real card it is stark and solid.


This is really difficult to see in the picture but if you look at Susan Van Camp's name, on the counterfeit you can see a slight space between the white lettering and the shadow.

Finally look at the Tempest expansion symbol. On the real card, the white around the storm symbol is pure white, whereas in the counterfeit there is a little reddish bleed that discolors the white.

Those are the only differences that differentiate the real card and the counterfeit that can be discovered with a loupe.

Again, how do you know this is because they're counterfeit and not because of errors in the printing process? Age? Ect.
Also, how do you know the baseline ones are real?

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

I started playing Magic when I was 13. I'm now 39. I'm thinking about retirement- many of my classmates from high school have already been retired for a few years now. When I want to have fun, there are many things I can do that are more fun than playing Magic. There are many, many great board games that I enjoy far more than Magic. There are many other card games designed by Richard Garfield that are far more fun than Magic, including VtES and Netrunner. So while playing Magic was really fun when I was 13, it's not really that entertaining when you are 39 and about to retire.

What I enjoy about Magic, that I do not have with boardgames or VtES or Netrunner, is collecting cards, especially old cards that are difficult to find or that I wanted when I was younger. I enjoy travelling to different cities and shops, meeting players and storeowners, talking to them about Magic's past and present, purusing old collections looking for old cards or bargains. I care for this game (although not as much as I care for VtES or Netrunner). So I enjoy collecting Magic cards - not just getting cards but the entire process. I would certainly never spend $400 to buy a white-bordered, Revised dual land. Nor do I care to spend $80 to buy silly cards like Tarmogoyfs or Jace, the Mind Sculptors. I recently bought a set of foil Once Upon a Times for $45 since I think it's a very nice card, and I bought a set of foil Emrys for $35 since I think she's a nice card too. If I didn't think they could keep their value long term I probably wouldn't have bought them, since I don't use them in any of my Legacy decks or any of my Vintage decks. I think Phyrexian Dreadnought is also a silly card but I bought one for $35 because it was a pretty good bargain for a Reserve List card, and I think Dreadstill is a really cool, very fun deck.

The three decks I have for Legacy are Enchantress, Solidarity and now Dreadstill. Like I said earlier, my first impression of Legacy was that it seemed like a terrible format. I watched someone spend 3 minutes deciding whether or not to FoW a Brainstorm. I watched a LOT of shuffling happening. It didn't seem fun to me. Although I couldn't really hate Legacy then, since suddenly my cards had become really valuable because of it. In 2002 I had bought about 50 Wastelands for 50 cents each from a dealer at DragonCon, since at the time they were worth about $2, and I figured that would cover the cost of the Con. So it was pure gas to sell or trade them to Legacy players at $70 value a few years later. So you might not care about making money from your collection, but you actually do long-term and it's pretty cool. But I agree with you. I don't care for the investors that treat Magic cards like stocks and order 500 copies of this card or that card and try to make money off short-term value. There's better uses for one's time and capital, and life isn't about making money and neither is a card game.

I didn't start playing Legacy until Solidarity. It was the first Legacy deck that really impressed me. My Enchantress deck I had actually built for Vintage at the time. Once Enchantress's Presence was printed in Onslaught, it didn't take much to put it together with Sterling Grove from Invasion and have a pretty sweet deck. Ironically I had played against a Solidarity deck with my Enchantress deck a long time before. I didn't know what his deck was trying to do, but suddenly he milled my whole deck with Brain Freeze. But he couldn't kill me since I had an Elfhame Sanctuary in play so I could skip my draw step. So I didn't really think about his weird deck until years later I realized he was playing a Solidarity legacy deck.

I don't know if I would call Solidarity a fun deck to play. Enchantress is sometimes fun, and sometimes it isn't fun. Solidarity is often not that fun to play, and it probably isn't that fun to play against. So for me Legacy is... not quite fun. Even a few months ago, I watched the NA Eternal Weekend matches, the Vintage Championship matches seemed super fun, while the Legacy matches really did not. So for me Legacy is something I enjoy playing once in a while for the challenge of winning with Solidarity or Enchantress, but my opinion of it hasn't changed much over the years. Legacy is ok but it's not a great casual format and it isn't a great competitive format either.

You know that you can order fake cards that actually look and feel like real cards now. That's why we're talking about counterfeit cards so much, is because they've been easily available for the past 2 or 3 years.

I've never cashed out, but most people who started in 1993 or 1994 has made a ton of money off the value of their old cards.

Like I said, without the secondary market, the game stores would disappear and it would pretty much be the end of paper Magic and likely competitive Magic as well. WotC could continue selling products like a LCG or commander but it's pretty silly to hold a tournament or play most games competitively. I can see Vintage surviving like the way VtES and Netrunner still have competitive tournaments every year, but definitely not Legacy.

Collecting and the secondary market are an integral part of the Magic experience. Without it, I would also be more serious about Scrabble. I love Scrabble.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

I started playing Magic when I was 13. I'm now 39. I'm thinking about retirement- many of my classmates from high school have already been retired for a few years now.

Oh fuck you.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Again, how do you know this is because they're counterfeit and not because of errors in the printing process? Age? Ect.
Also, how do you know the baseline ones are real?

You know baseline cards are real because you ripped them out of booster packs yourself back in the 90's.

There is expertise in detecting counterfeit cards. There's experts who do this, some of them have written guides that you can find if you search. You also learn what to look for by examining a lot of cards from each set and comparing them. Finally there's available knowledge about Carta Mundi's printing process so we know some things are not Carta Mundi printing errors.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

You know baseline cards are real because you ripped them out of booster packs yourself back in the 90's.

There is expertise in detecting counterfeit cards. There's experts who do this, some of them have written guides that you can find if you search. You also learn what to look for by examining a lot of cards from each set and comparing them. Finally there's available knowledge about Carta Mundi's printing process so we know some things are not Carta Mundi printing errors.
Amazing how despite all the power at these counterfitter's disposal and they can't repeat a twenty year old method to print out literal five-hundred dollar bills.

[Cire]

If you and your friends are retiring before 40 then we are living such completely different lives.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Amazing how despite all the power at these counterfitter's disposal and they can't repeat a twenty year old method to print out literal five-hundred dollar bills.

is this sarcasm

[bruizar]

Amazing how despite all the power at these counterfitter's disposal and they can't repeat a twenty year old method to print out literal five-hundred dollar bills.

you wouldnt be able to tell if they already succeeded, that's the whole goal of counterfeiting

[Seymour_Asses]

So if counterfeits become indistinguishable from real cards won't the market adjust accordingly and make Legacy affordable for everyone, as per the Communist Manifesto?

[Grizzlenasty]

I doubt it. If my friends who keep proxying up legacy cards so they can play legacy with me can get cheap legacy cards they would. Hell some are playing with sticky notes at the moment so if they can play with cards that feel and look like real cards they gladly would.

My collection's value was a trap - it was the idea that "its totally fine to spend thousands on this stupid hobby because when I no longer want to play it anymore I can cash out" - but the problem with that is . . . I still want to play it. There is never going to be a reason for me to "cash out" unless I have a medical emergency, need extra cash for collateral on a loan or I've assumed a certain value to it when I leave it as an inheritance. Why would I quit if they cards become worthless . . . the only reason I have them in the first place is so that I can play the game.

We take Magic seriously because we take Magic seriously.

The only reason I feel people care about the monetary value of the cards is the sunk cost fallacy. If they are suddenly worthless are you going to stop playing with your friends? Is the free time you spend to drive to a store or apartment or house to play suddenly not how you want to spend your free time? Nah.

Just checking in to co-sign this.
But we have to acknowledge that people are into magic for different reasons.
I guess most people are into it because they simply like the game. But there also might be a good portion of people who simply use it as a vehicle to profile themselves over "Uh I got 40k of cards" or " Uh I know 3 cards more than you, so you don't even know the game".

Just like with fine watches. Some people simply adore the craftmanship and technical aspect of a fine timepiece. They are into the history of, let's say the company rolex.
So they would wear a rolex even if it was 15 dollars.
And then there are people who simply want to wear 15k at their wrist, only for the reason of wearing 15k at their wrist. No matter the company or if it even was a good watch.

As much as it would suck if my expensive cards got devalued, I think I would be much more glad to have 30+ people to play my favorite game in my hometown, than having a stack of valuable paper, that I cannot do anything with, other than look at it.
I was actually playing with the idea of cashing out and getting myself some nice proxies as I can't find many people to play legacy anyways and dislike the idea of walking around the town with 10k of cardboard in my backpack when I simply want to visit my best friend for 3 or 4 casual rounds of magic and a beer!

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

you wouldnt be able to tell if they already succeeded, that's the whole goal of counterfeiting

Yes but don't you see this card has a smuge on it therefore

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

So if counterfeits become indistinguishable from real cards won't the market adjust accordingly and make Legacy affordable for everyone, as per the Communist Manifesto?

All of the recorded the meta is a history of two groups the winners, and the losers.

[Mr. Safety]

Oh fuck you.

If there ever was a signal that mods are no longer managing this site, this is it. I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment, quite the contrary, but I think TheSource is now moderator-less.

https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.vEHGBH_RgBX9W8iwsfotgwAAAA&pid=Api&rs=1

[H]

If there ever was a signal that mods are no longer managing this site, this is it. I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment, quite the contrary, but I think TheSource is now moderator-less.

We've been moderator-less for years now. The last really active people were Dice_Box and Julian as Admins, but Julian has been well and gone for years and Dice_Box barely checks in from time to time (but seemingly not recently).

As for this topic, well, it's entire premise is a boardline troll-job, so it's hardly a surprise to see how it's been going.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

If there ever was a signal that mods are no longer managing this site, this is it. I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment, quite the contrary, but I think TheSource is now moderator-less.

https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.vEHGBH_RgBX9W8iwsfotgwAAAA&pid=Api&rs=1
Was there some rule my post broke or....

[H]

Was there some rule my post broke or....

In reality, several most probably:

Presenting your thoughts clearly and coherently encourages others to take you seriously and to listen to what you have to say. The best way to do this is to use proper grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and sentence structure. Also, spell your words correctly.


Simply, be respectful of other forum users. If you can't control the urge, go somewhere else.


3.0 Lack of Content (No Spam)
One-liners or even one-word posts. There's a fine line between wit and spam.



4.2: Criticize faulty lines of logic or incomplete reasoning, but don't personally attack a person making an argument.


On your end of things, if you make a concentrated effort to post well thought-out, intelligent, relevant posts (aside from the Mish-Mash Forum, of course), it will go a long way toward receiving the kind of feedback you are looking for.

However, I'm sure you'll find a way to excuse yourself on all those counts.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

However, I'm sure you'll find a way to excuse yourself on all those counts.

Its easy when you cite the rule about concise posting and grammar. My post was both.

[H]

Its easy when you cite the rule about concise posting and grammar. My post was both.

And the applicability of the rest? Go on with your case then, or do you suppose that because you post aligns with one rule, it must with all rules?

[PirateKing]

And the applicability of the rest? Go on with your case then, or do you suppose that because you post aligns with one rule, it must with all rules?

608.2b If the spell or ability specifies targets, it checks whether the targets are still legal. A target that’s no longer in the zone it was in when it was targeted is illegal. Other changes to the game state may cause a target to no longer be legal; for example, its characteristics may have changed or an effect may have changed the text of the spell. If the source of an ability has left the zone it was in, its last known information is used during this process. If all its targets, for every instance of the word “target,” are now illegal, the spell or ability doesn’t resolve. It’s removed from the stack and, if it’s a spell, put into its owner’s graveyard. Otherwise, the spell or ability will resolve normally. Illegal targets, if any, won’t be affected by parts of a resolving spell’s effect for which they’re illegal. Other parts of the effect for which those targets are not illegal may still affect them. If the spell or ability creates any continuous effects that affect game rules (see rule 613.10), those effects don’t apply to illegal targets. If part of the effect requires information about an illegal target, it fails to determine any such information. Any part of the effect that requires that information won’t happen.

Wait what are we fighting over again?

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

And the applicability of the rest? Go on with your case then, or do you suppose that because you post aligns with one rule, it must with all rules?

What about them?
Anyone crying about not being able retire by 40 is obscenely wealthy or out of touch, either way he deserves no respect and therefore got the appropriate amount of respect.
There's plenty of content there, I mean look at how many replies we've made from. It goes back to being concise.
And finally I'm not even bothering to argue with him so "engaging with his argument" doesn't apply because there's nothing to argue. It's not like you report anyone who agrees with the poster they quote.

[H]

Anyone crying about not being able retire by 40 is obscenely wealthy or out of touch, either way he deserves no respect and therefore got the appropriate amount of respect.

So, you are the arbiter of who, or what, is deserving of respect? Fascinating, under what auspices are you, in particular, granted this ability? Perhaps you should message Brado and let him know we should amend the rule to be clear then to say: "Simply, be respectful of other forum users (unless FourdogsinaHorsesuit says they aren't deserving of respect). If you can't control the urge, go somewhere else."


There's plenty of content there, I mean look at how many replies we've made from. It goes back to being concise.

There is no rule stating the need to be concise. The rule is against lacking content. You seem to imagine that a discussion of the lack of content is content in-itself. Not quite. Even so, your post did not make a case for lack of content, it was an insult and/or personal attack.


And finally I'm not even bothering to argue with him so "engaging with his argument" doesn't apply because there's nothing to argue. It's not like you report anyone who agrees with the poster they quote.

A clever attempt, but the rule states you need to engage with his argument, not that you don't. You don't get a pass because you chose not to engage his argument, the whole point is that you need to do just that and not resort to personal attacks. If he did, as a matter of fact, make no argument, then your post should have been about that lack, not a personal attack.

You can "creatively" read the rules however you like, but "engaging with an argument" does not mean you must disagree. In fact, agreeing with someone's point is engaging, quite specifically.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

So, you are the arbiter of who, or what, is deserving of respect?
In my life? Yupperoo.


There is no rule stating the need to be concise. The rule is against lacking content. You seem to imagine that a discussion of the lack of content is content in-itself. Not quite. Even so, your post did not make a case for lack of content, it was an insult and/or personal attack.
This is incoherent, logically and linguistically. Post better.



A clever attempt,
This describes your efforts which have confused "guidelines" for "rules." And shame on me for taking so long to notice.

[H]

In my life? Yupperoo.

This forum is not the exposition of your life, it's a communal space. That means there are behavioral expectations. I couldn't care any less if you respect him "in your life" the matter at hand is conduct on this forum.


This is incoherent, logically and linguistically. Post better.

In what way? You cite "It goes back to being concise." This is not a claim that being concise is the purpose here? What, then, does "it goes back to being concise" mean, exactly?

My point is rather coherent. You make the case that if someone posts something that lacks content, then you are free to make comments further lacking content, because that constitutes content. That hardly follows. If you had, on the other hand, actually made the case for his lack of content, then you'd have a case. However, you instead simply insult and/or attacked him. Now, you'll make the case that in your mind, "fuck you" is substantive content, or that it is the making of such a case, but I would simply wish you good luck with that normative claim. It might be where you come from, but hardly seems like it would be a universal.


This describes your efforts which have confused "guidelines" for "rules." And shame on me for taking so long to notice.

What did I quote, the site guidelines, or the site rules?

[Wrath of Pie]

Its easy when you cite the rule about concise posting and grammar. My post was both.
I appreciate the missing apostrophe in this post.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Anyone crying about not being able retire by 40 is obscenely wealthy or out of touch, either way he deserves no respect and therefore got the appropriate amount of respect.

You're not a very careful reader, I see.
Or else it's some sort of English translation difficulty.

[Ronald Deuce]

https://68.media.tumblr.com/3a6799ed42e5df93c97b1b14cc105c26/tumblr_oueql07ttr1qeuiqyo1_1280.jpg

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

You're not a very careful reader, I see.
Or else it's some sort of English translation difficulty.

Come inside, and I'll show you. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W12BO9zJboY)

[bruizar]

Please stay on topic even if u don't like the topic

[Zilla]

If there ever was a signal that mods are no longer managing this site, this is it.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/downloads/false.jpg
http://mtgthesource.com/downloads/false.jpg&quot;

[Jander78]

http://www.mtgthesource.com/downloads/false.jpg
http://mtgthesource.com/downloads/false.jpg&quot;

https://media.giphy.com/media/5xtDarmwsuR9sDRObyU/source.gif

[H]

https://media.giphy.com/media/5xtDarmwsuR9sDRObyU/source.gif

https://i.imgflip.com/3mfkn7.jpg (https://imgflip.com/i/3mfkn7)via Imgflip Meme Generator (https://imgflip.com/memegenerator)

[Zilla]

Okay, fine. I'm hijacking this motherfucker. You want new mods? Send me a PM with your top 3 choices of members who you think have the temperament and dedication to the community to do the job. Feel free to explain why you think a person deserves consideration. Don't vote for yourself. If I'm seeing a lot of the same names, the administrative staff will discuss them as mod candidates. Go on then.

[Lava Snacks]

gib dtb upd8 pls

[Mr. Safety]

Thank you mods/admins! Your meme skills are admirable. I'm lookin' at you Zilla and Jander!

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

You're welcome, thread.

[Seymour_Asses]

Okay, fine. I'm hijacking this motherfucker. You want new mods? Send me a PM with your top 3 choices of members who you think have the temperament and dedication to the community to do the job. Feel free to explain why you think a person deserves consideration. Don't vote for yourself. If I'm seeing a lot of the same names, the administrative staff will discuss them as mod candidates. Go on then.

Uhhh... Can I vote for people who I don't want to be mods?

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Hey everyone! Guess what? I picked up another winner at the card shop today! So who wants to play another round of Which Card is the Counterfeit?
https://i.ibb.co/5hbLX9N/IMG-20200118-231747.jpg
#1,#2, #3 or #4?


https://i.ibb.co/XyB81pL/IMG-20200118-231807.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/C56NF7m/IMG-20200118-231816.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/m5V5mnG/IMG-20200118-231825.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/wrDQbng/IMG-20200118-231837.jpg

[Water_Wizard]

Hey everyone! Guess what? I picked up another winner at the card shop today! So who wants to play another round of Which Card is the Counterfeit?
https://i.ibb.co/5hbLX9N/IMG-20200118-231747.jpg
#1,#2, #3 or #4?

Second card the hologram is off.

[kombatkiwi]

Second card the hologram is off.

The alignment of all 4 holograms are clearly inconsistent: what kind of tolerance do you consider acceptable?

Similarly, with respect to that Meditate, I went through my collection and quickly found 2 copies of Impulse from Visions, which
a) Is from a similar era as Meditate
b) Had similar issues across both copies in terms of colour balance and alignment of the different frames/layers
c) Is not a reserved list rare and is actually a worthless common

If you want to demonstrate the quality of fakes then you need to have copies of fake cards you have obtained directly from the source. (I.e. the counterfeiters themselves, not "the source" this forum)

Just taking random cards you own and putting them under a microscope and saying "hey look at this barely perceptible difference, this card must be fake" isn't convincing, because at a certain level of precision even the legitimate printing process will have some variation.

[Ronald Deuce]

I've got a fake Wall of Heat from Legends, and I can tell because the shadow on the text was misaligned.

I've seen a quad of fake Worldspine Wurms that flexed more than a single real card from RtR.

I pulled some fake cards from a Battle for Zendikar pack: they're all pink, regardless of the color of their mana symbols.

I've got some fake Rishadan Ports that have gold borders. They've also got the wrong back!

I'll sell any of these to any interested buyer for $500.

[Seymour_Asses]

I've got a fake Wall of Heat from Legends, and I can tell because the shadow on the text was misaligned.

I've seen a quad of fake Worldspine Wurms that flexed more than a single real card from RtR.

I pulled some fake cards from a Battle for Zendikar pack: they're all pink, regardless of the color of their mana symbols.

I've got some fake Rishadan Ports that have gold borders. They've also got the wrong back!

I'll sell any of these to any interested buyer for $500.

Sold!

for $5.00

[Grizzlenasty]

Hey everyone! Guess what? I picked up another winner at the card shop today! So who wants to play another round of Which Card is the Counterfeit?


You "picked" up a winner? By that you mean you ripped off some poor kid, telling him his perfectly fine and very expensive Magic card is fake and you have to seize it for scientific reasons? Threatening him with gulag if he won't comply?

All 4 are clearly fake! I don't even have to zoom in. They are all fake! Hope you didn't pay a lot for them.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

The two English were 80 yuan each, the Japanese was 70 yuan and the Chinese was 60 yuan.

If I picked up 4 fetches from a kid, they probably ARE fake. Right beside the 80 revised dual lands in their trade binder.

The Tempest symbol on the fake Meditate is also wrong.

If you do a simple search for "counterfeit magic cards" you can find a lot of information.

[non-inflammable]

i looked at my meditates and they are very similar to yours. i'd say both of yours are real.
also, i was a commercial graphic artist in the printing industry for 25 years. i even ran a printing press (ABDICK9810).
printing irregularities happen all the time (charlie brown sapphire medallion?).
the press-room foreman where i worked, lost a fingertip in the press and we didin't even stop the press; shiitte happens all the time..

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Some of you are in denial about the existence of hq fakes even despite the evidence that I've posted and that you can find elsewhere.

It's hard to imagine that mtgsalvation users are better informed about this than mtgthesource users.

[Seymour_Asses]

Some of you are in denial about the existence of hq fakes even despite the evidence that I've posted and that you can find elsewhere.

It's hard to imagine that mtgsalvation users are better informed about this than mtgthesource users.

Yes... Evidence...

[Cire]

I'm trying to picture how this all works in a game. . .

Turn 1 - your opponent plays a Volcanic Island
In response you claim its a fake
They claim its real
You pull out your loupe
They pull out their authentication papers
You get Eddie the local art forgery expert to claim its a fake
They call Pawn Stars and fly them in to verify it is real
A judge is called to hear the opposing evidence
The lawyers rush over to present their motions
The evidentiary hearing is fast tracked through the system
You're now flying to London for arbitration.
Opponent casts brainstorm.
You cast Force of Will targeting brainstorm.
Pass the turn.

Sounds like a blast.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

I'm trying to picture how this all works in a game. . .

Turn 1 - your opponent plays a Volcanic Island
In response you claim its a fake
They claim its real
You pull out your loupe
They pull out their authentication papers
You get Eddie the local art forgery expert to claim its a fake
They call Pawn Stars and fly them in to verify it is real
A judge is called to hear the opposing evidence
The lawyers rush over to present their motions
The evidentiary hearing is fast tracked through the system
You're now flying to London for arbitration.
Opponent casts brainstorm.
You cast Force of Will targeting brainstorm.
Pass the turn.

Sounds like a blast.
Nah, it's for when you're trading

[Wrath of Pie]

I'm trying to picture how this all works in a game. . .

Turn 1 - your opponent plays a Volcanic Island
In response you claim its a fake
They claim its real
You pull out your loupe
They pull out their authentication papers
You get Eddie the local art forgery expert to claim its a fake
They call Pawn Stars and fly them in to verify it is real
A judge is called to hear the opposing evidence
The lawyers rush over to present their motions
The evidentiary hearing is fast tracked through the system
You're now flying to London for arbitration.
Opponent casts brainstorm.
You cast Force of Will targeting brainstorm.
Pass the turn.

Sounds like a blast.

Now that is a tournament report worth reading.

[non-inflammable]

Some of you are in denial about the existence of hq fakes even despite the evidence that I've posted and that you can find elsewhere.

It's hard to imagine that mtgsalvation users are better informed about this than mtgthesource users.

no, not in denial.
good lighting, a loupe and a reference card(s) will go a long way to spot fakes.

[Ronald Deuce]

Someone, please curb this idiocy.

Nobody can tell a fake from 10,000 miles away based on blurred photographs and the conviction of the photographer.

Nobody can demonstrate that fake RL cards will do anything one way or the other to/for the game, and not everyone who bought a dual within the last ten years purchased stolen goods.

Nobody here is saving Legacy.

[kombatkiwi]

Some of you are in denial about the existence of hq fakes even despite the evidence that I've posted and that you can find elsewhere.

It's hard to imagine that mtgsalvation users are better informed about this than mtgthesource users.

There may or may not be evidence elsewhere but whatever you have posted so far certainly doesn't qualify

[Grizzlenasty]

The two English were 80 yuan each, the Japanese was 70 yuan and the Chinese was 60 yuan.


Wow, this is rather expensive. ~7-10 dollars each? You could've gotten authentic cards for that amount.

[bruizar]

I'm trying to picture how this all works in a game. . .

Turn 1 - your opponent plays a Volcanic Island
In response you claim its a fake
They claim its real
You pull out your loupe
They pull out their authentication papers
You get Eddie the local art forgery expert to claim its a fake
They call Pawn Stars and fly them in to verify it is real
A judge is called to hear the opposing evidence
The lawyers rush over to present their motions
The evidentiary hearing is fast tracked through the system
You're now flying to London for arbitration.
Opponent casts brainstorm.
You cast Force of Will targeting brainstorm.
Pass the turn.

Sounds like a blast.

Lol! Stephen Menendian will finally win tournaments again!

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Wow, this is rather expensive. ~7-10 dollars each? You could've gotten authentic cards for that amount.

I thought you were being sarcastic. Only the Japanese one is fake as far as I can tell.

Ofcourse I'm a pretty terrible judge of authenticity if I can't even tell between sarcasm and sincerity.

This is all very PKD/ MitHC, and/or Benjamin's Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

[non-inflammable]

Turn 1 - your opponent plays a Volcanic Island
In response you claim its a fake
They claim its real
You pull out your loupe
They pull out their authentication papers
You get Eddie the local art forgery expert to claim its a fake
They call Pawn Stars and fly them in to verify it is real
A judge is called to hear the opposing evidence
The lawyers rush over to present their motions
The evidentiary hearing is fast tracked through the system
You're now flying to London for arbitration.
Opponent casts brainstorm.
You cast Force of Will targeting brainstorm.
Pass the turn.

that ^^ stack interaction is still better than watching a miracles player counterbalance/top masturbation...

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Ofcourse I'm a pretty terrible judge of authenticity

/thread.

[Grizzlenasty]

I thought you were being sarcastic.

Ouuh, I wanna hug you so bad right now. No homo of course, or however the cool kids say it these days :D

I think they are all real. The only bigger counterfeiter known to me that is able to mass print in such quality, doesn't do the new fetches in foreign languages. But I haven't checked his lists in a while. Believe me. When you pick up one of these counterfeits unsleeved you definetly know it right away.
They literally do not feel like a legit Magic card.
If you are really worried take a loupe and look if the card is printed in multiple layers.
The counterfeits are printed in one go, so you can see the pixels within the text.
Real magic cards are printed like Artwork, frame, text and mansymbols yadayada.

And when the counterfeiters finally reach the point, where they nail cardstock, paint/color, and printing method exactly like a real magiccard - well, then they are actually kind of producing real magic cards, aren't they?
But I doubt this will ever happen. Why would they willingly produce worse goods, then they are doing right now :D

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

And when the counterfeiters finally reach the point, where they nail cardstock, paint/color, and printing method exactly like a real magiccard - well, then they are actually kind of producing real magic cards, aren't they?


Ah. Now you really have made me find the quote from The Man in the High Castle. Authenticity is definitely a theme in pretty much all of PKD's works (what is authentic life in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, what is authentic experience in Ubik), it is in MitHC where it is most directly expressed:



'Well, I'll tell you,' he said. 'This whole damn historicity business is nonsense. Those Japs are bats. I'll prove it.' Getting up, he hurried into his study, returned at once with two cigarette lighters which he set down on the coffee table. 'Look at these. Look the same, don't they? Well, listen. One has historicity in it.' He grinned at her. 'Pick them up. Go ahead. One's worth, oh, maybe forty or fifty thousand dollars on the collectors' market.'
The girl gingerly picked up the two lighters and examined them.
'Don't you feel it?' he kidded her. 'The historicity?'
She said, 'What is 'historicity'?'
'When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of those two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt's pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn't. One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing. Can you feel it?' He nudged her. 'You can't. You can't tell which is which. There's no 'mystical plasmic presence,' no 'aura' around it.'
'Gee,' the girl said, awed. 'Is that really true? That he had one of those on him that day?'
'Sure. And I know which it is. You see my point. It's all a big racket; they're playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it's the same as if it hadn't, unless you know. It's in here.' He tapped his head. 'In the mind, not the gun. I used to be a collector. In fact, that's how I got into this business. I collected stamps. Early British colonies.'

Historicity is, as far as I can figure, pretty much what Benjamin meant by an object's aura (although not exactly). But would you pay $100 for a revised Volcanic Island that you knew was fake but no one could tell? How much would you pay for a fake beta Black Lotus? How much is a beta Black Lotus' historicity worth?


In even the most perfect reproduction, one thing is lacking: the here and
now of the work of art-its unique existence in a particular place. It is
this unique existence-and nothing else-that bears the mark of the his-
tory to which the work has been subject. This history includes changes to
the physical structure of the work over time, together with any changes
in ownership. Traces of the former can be detected only by chemical or
physical analyses (which cannot be performed on a reproduction), while
changes of ownership are part of a tradition which can be traced only
from the standpoint of the original in its present location.

The here and now of the original underlies the concept of its authen-
ticity, and on the latter in turn is founded the idea of a tradition which
has passed object down as the same, identical thing to the pres-
ent day. The whole sphere of authenticity eludes technological-and of
course tIot only technological-rel)roduction. But whereas the authentic
work retains its full authority in the face of a reproduction made by
hand, which it brands a forgery, this is not the case with techno-
logical reproduction. The reason is twofold. First, technological repro-
duction is more independent of the original than is manual reproduction.
For example, in photography it can bring out aspects of the original that
are accessible only to the lens (which is adjustable and can easily change
viewpoint) but not to the human eye; or it can use certain processes, such
as enlargement or slow motion, to record images which escape natural
optics altogether. This is the first reason. Second, technological reproduc-
tion can place the copy of the original in situations which the original it-
self cannot attain. Above ali, it enables the original to meet the recipient
halfway, whether in the form of a photograph or in that gramophone
record. The cathedral leaves its site to be received in the studio of an art
lover; the choral work performed in an auditorium or in the open air is
enjoyed in a private room.

These changed circumstances may leave the artwork's other properties
untouched, but they certainly devalue the here and now of the artwork.
And although this can apply not only to art but (say) to a landscape
moving past the spectator in a film., in the work of art this process
touches on a highly sensitive core, more vulnerable than that of any natu-
ral object. That core is its authenticity. The authenticity of a thing is the
quintessence of all that is transmissible in it from its origin on, rang-
ing from its physical duration to the historical testimony relating to it.
Since the historical testimony is founded on the physical duration, the
former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction, in which the physical dura-
tion plays no part. And what is really jeopardized when the historical tes-
timony is affected is the authority of the object, the weight it derives from
tradition.

One might focus these aspects of the artwork in the concept of the
aura, and go on to say: what withers in the age of the technological
reproducibility of the work of art is the latter's aura. This process is
symptomatic; its significance extends far beyond the realm of art. It
might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction
detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicat-
ing the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique
existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his
or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced. These two
processes lead to a massive upheaval in the domain of objects handed
down from the past-a shattering of tradition which is the reverse side of
the present crisis and renewal of humanity. Both processes are intimately
related to the mass movements of our day.

[Grizzlenasty]

But would you pay $100 for a revised Volcanic Island that you knew was fake but no one could tell? How much would you pay for a fake beta Black Lotus? How much is a beta Black Lotus' historicity worth?

Never ever in my life would I pay 100 dollar for a piece of cardboard. Even not for a real one. I'm lucky and own most legacy staples like duals, LEDs and cradles etc. already.
To be honest, a real beta Black Lotus would be worth 10 dollars max to me, as I will almost never have a chance to actually put it to use and play with it. Nobody owns these cards, so what do I need it for? To look at it? Or just for the sake of owning it? It'll rot in a binder! A fake one would be worth mhmmm 1-2 dollars to me. I could get a few of them to hand them out to my friends so we could enjoy some cool and casual Vintage action without worrying to lose the equivalent of a spanking new AMG Mercedes if someone spills a drink.
Just imagine the face of a 15 year old, finding one of these, randomly hidden in a draft chaff box at your local store :D

Or to put it otherwise, a 1 dollar brainstorm is much more worth to me, than a Black Lotus from I don't care what edition.

The highest price I ever payed for a Magiccard was 23 Euros for a NM revised Volcanic. Shipping included. Think that was ~'08.

What I don't get are these artificially inflated prices for Magic cards. Of course, stuff needs a price to it. And something more desirable can have a heftier price to it. But 400 dollar for a core card of the game? Yes talking about you Usea!
It's not like wizards couldn't print more of them. And it's not like the OG card from the OG edition would lose any of its charm or desirability if wizards decided to print a million Useas or Black Lotuses or whatever.
Alpha Lightning Bolt is still 300+ dollars even though it got reprinted what? 25 or so times.
Swords to plowshares got reprinted 35+ times and is still 700 dollars and more if you want an alpha one that is in good enough condition to even recognize it as what it actually is.

I think if Wotc/Hasbro keeps on refusing reprinting absolute core cards of the game in a manner so people can have every card for max 10 dollars a piece, counterfeiters will flourish. They are just getting started!

I love Magic, but I hate "pay to win" with the intensity of a thousand blazing suns!

[Zilla]

No homo of course, or however the cool kids say it these days :D
Cool kids are comfortable enough with their own sexuality that they don't need to spout ridiculous disclaimers when expressing simple affection for others. Carry on.

[Cire]

Ah. Now you really have made me find the quote from The Man in the High Castle. Authenticity is definitely a theme in pretty much all of PKD's works (what is authentic life in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, what is authentic experience in Ubik), it is in MitHC where it is most directly expressed:

Historicity is, as far as I can figure, pretty much what Benjamin meant by an object's aura (although not exactly). But would you pay $100 for a revised Volcanic Island that you knew was fake but no one could tell? How much would you pay for a fake beta Black Lotus? How much is a beta Black Lotus' historicity worth?

The problem with Fake cards is that people like you will inspect them and prevent them from being played. If I can purchase a Fake card with a guaranteed promise that I will always be able to play them 100% in a tournament with no issue, than yeah sure I would. I want to pay for "legality" and not "historicity". Unfortunately, the two are one and the same in the real world which means that legality depends on the card's historicity which makes Legacy and Vintage have the same historical problems - mainly high cost (or age locked, i.e. people who have purchased the cards thirty years ago when they were cheap) and small amount of availability.

If the solution is to print non-historical rare cards, perhaps with the words "Lower Class" in the super type, that are nontheless legal, I would purchase.

[Grizzlenasty]

Cool kids are comfortable enough with their own sexuality that they don't need to spout ridiculous disclaimers when expressing simple affection for others. Carry on.

I'm cardsexual!

Indirectly accusing a man married to another man of homophobia is kind of an accomplishment in itself.
But I understand you. Voicing an opinion is very important.
I will carry on now.

[Zilla]

Indirectly accusing a man married to another man of homophobia is kind of an accomplishment in itself.
I don't think it's accurate to suggest that being openly gay makes you immune to homophobia. A dear friend of mine who happens to be gay spent the better part of his youth and young adulthood kinda hating himself and others for it. But that's beside the point; cool kids don't say no homo because it's a dumb fucking thing to say. Also, for every gay person who's comfortable with it (kudos to you, seriously) there are plenty out there who are reasonably uncomfortable with it and don't have the context to know you don't mean it.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

The problem with Fake cards is that people like you will inspect them and prevent them from being played. If I can purchase a Fake card with a guaranteed promise that I will always be able to play them 100% in a tournament with no issue, than yeah sure I would. I want to pay for "legality" and not "historicity". Unfortunately, the two are one and the same in the real world which means that legality depends on the card's historicity which makes Legacy and Vintage have the same historical problems - mainly high cost (or age locked, i.e. people who have purchased the cards thirty years ago when they were cheap) and small amount of availability.

If the solution is to print non-historical rare cards, perhaps with the words "Lower Class" in the super type, that are nontheless legal, I would purchase.
... my WHOLE POINT is that $400 dual lands are unhealthy for Legacy so we must get rid of them
Accepting counterfeit cards like you are suggesting would solve one problem but create an even worse problem.

[Cire]

... my WHOLE POINT is that $400 dual lands are unhealthy for Legacy so we must get rid of them
Accepting counterfeit cards like you are suggesting would solve one problem but create an even worse problem.

We just disagree that a collapse of the value of MTG cards is a worse problem.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

I don't think it's accurate to suggest that being openly gay makes you immune to homophobia. A dear friend of mine who happens to be gay spent the better part of his youth and young adulthood kinda hating himself and others for it. But that's beside the point; cool kids don't say no homo because it's a dumb fucking thing to say. Also, for every gay person who's comfortable with it (kudos to you, seriously) there are plenty out there who are reasonably uncomfortable with it and don't have the context to know you don't mean it.

Internalized homophobia, in my gay community?
It's more likely than you think.

[LOLWut]

Cool kids are comfortable enough with their own sexuality that they don't need to spout ridiculous disclaimers when expressing simple affection for others. Carry on.


I don't think it's accurate to suggest that being openly gay makes you immune to homophobia. A dear friend of mine who happens to be gay spent the better part of his youth and young adulthood kinda hating himself and others for it. But that's beside the point; cool kids don't say no homo because it's a dumb fucking thing to say. Also, for every gay person who's comfortable with it (kudos to you, seriously) there are plenty out there who are reasonably uncomfortable with it and don't have the context to know you don't mean it.

Such brave. Much wow. Very virtue.

[Seymour_Asses]

Such brave. Much wow. Very virtue.

I clapped. I cried.

[Zilla]

Such brave. Much wow. Very virtue.
okay edgelord

[Grizzlenasty]

Internalized homophobia, in my gay community?

We are all closet bigots!

@Zilla
The ones you should be defending here, are the "no homo" sayers, as I was clearly mocking them.
I wasn't fucking with gay people at all.. oh wait :eyebrow:

I suggest ending this topic alltogether and keep on philosophizing about overprized cardboard and rarely supported formats again.

Reserve list needs to go and staples need to be reprinted. Probably won't happen too soon, if at all. Proxies + unsanctioned tournaments can be a way for legacy afficionados on a budget. At least if you wanna play in paper.
Ripping duals out of legacy or replacing them with mediocre shocks wouldn't satisfy me. Taking counterfeits to sanctioned tournaments is a nogo if you wanna abide by the rules, even though I wouldn't care and won't call anyone out for it, if he sat across the table. Questionable if I was even able to tell when they are double sleeved. That is my stance.

Any other Ideas?

[non-inflammable]

Any other Ideas?

ban brainstorm?
and bring back all the other offenders that have been banned to keep brainstorm in the format

blue duals would certainly drop. no more $400 volc.

[Lava Snacks]

okay edgelord

If thinking what you said is really funny and appreciating a joke about it makes someone an "edgelord," I guess I'm one too :laugh:

[TsumiBand]

Such brave. Much wow. Very virtue.

Imagine calling out virtue signaling by also virtue signaling.

Anyway, can we all agree that the purest form of Magic it's now solely taking place in MtG Puzzle Quest

[LOLWut]

okay edgelord

okay portlandia

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Ok, boomers

[Grizzlenasty]

ban brainstorm?

I've just spoken to my 17 Brainstorms. They are already calling you names, I won't dare to repeat publicly here :p

[Ronald Deuce]

There's a bit of a "ship of Theseus" problem with a lot of these suggestions.

Legacy is what it is, and a lot of people (incl. me) don't want to see the structure of the format change rapidly and artificially. (Cf. all the braying nonsense about how 2019 was the worst thing ever.) Banning something fundamental to the format isn't going to "make Legacy more accessible"; it's going to fundamentally restructure the format, the metagame, etc. If that's what you want, then fine, but it feels to me like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Would Legacy still be the ship of Theseus? Er—I mean...

The best thing for the format would be ending the reserved list. Seeing as that's probably never going to happen, the next best thing would be to remove all the cards on the list from the list (as they did with all commons and uncommons "due to popular demand") or start reprinting cards on the list anyway (because Wizards literally has done this on multiple occasions). Next would be to allow gold-bordered and collector's edition cards to be used in tournaments. Their prices might spike in the short term, but I think you'd see them drop again (along with the prices of other format staples) once things stabilized.

They could always start printing nearly functionally identical cards ("The Tabernacle at Denprell Vale enters the battlefield tapped as a copy of The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale"). Hell, if they're worried about overlap with existing cards (e.g., the "eight Volcanic Island problem"), they could introduce a supertype like "Iconic:" "Your deck can only have one copy of an Iconic card."

I also have no problem with proxies. I started playing Legacy in sixteen-proxy tournaments. I bought into the real thing because I wanted to actually have the cards even though nobody was stopping me from treating Watery Grave like Underground Sea if I told them beforehand that that's what I was doing. I also have friends whose interests were piqued by my Legacy stuff and who are totally priced out of the format now, and I don't want them not to play just because the prices of staples spiked after I bought mine.

I think any or all of those things would be a lot better than banning RL cards. I like old cards, I like playing old cards, and I don't care if people xerox a trillion proxy duals to play the format with me. I like the format. And before people say it's disingenuous for me to say that I'm fine with the last year's printings but not fine with banning fundamentally important cards, I don't have a problem with the format's evolving: I have a problem with people's cutting it up in the name of anything other than gameplay.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

There's a bit of a "ship of Theseus" problem with a lot of these suggestions.


...

Delver of Secrets and Modern Horizons/2019 is more Ship of Theseus than getting rid of 10 cards, of which 3 don't see any play except in "budget" (i.e. non-blue, non-green) decks.

This is why Modern Horizons is bait, and so many Legacy players have taken the bait. Modern Horizons isn't "evolving the format", it's a Hickman -esque Darwin bubble that's going to push Legacy players into essentially playing Modern '19.

You need to see Modern Horizons as the first piece of a bigger picture:

In two years or so, Modern and Legacy are going to be using 95% of the same cards.
The biggest difference between them will be that Modern has 100 times the playerbase that Legacy has and prize support. So at that point why would you not play Modern? And then Legacy is dead.
I want to get rid of the 1% (dual lands) that's keeping out 99% of Magic players from joining Legacy and trying to save the 4% (High Tides and Veteran Explorers and Dreadnoughts and Goblin Welders) that make Legacy heads better than Modern.

The problem with using counterfeits or even proxies is many players, even most players, aren't interested in playing with counterfeit cards even if they could get away with it. You can order online, right now, a counterfeit of any RL card that's indistinguishable from the real thing without a loupe or blacklight (if that actually works anymore). But I'd rather play Pioneer or even Modern than use a counterfeit card.

Vintage with proxies is a little different; it's ok, sort of like playing Shandalar or MTGO.

[PirateKing]

..."just" 10 cards

It's a waste to even bother, but that's not how this works.

The game is just a game, man. Cardboard rectangles. Most have words.

Saving the game by changing the game so it's a different game isn't saving it.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

..."just" 10 cards

It's a waste to even bother, but that's not how this works.

The game is just a game, man. Cardboard rectangles. Most have words.

Saving the game by changing the game so it's a different game isn't saving it.

It is if the game is dead otherwise.

And WotC isn't killing Legacy. WotC has done all they can. Legacy was born with a terminal birth defect. Again, like Hickman, if you've read his New Avengers run.


They could always start printing nearly functionally identical cards ("The Tabernacle at Denprell Vale enters the battlefield tapped as a copy of The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale"). Hell, if they're worried about overlap with existing cards (e.g., the "eight Volcanic Island problem"), they could introduce a supertype like "Iconic:" "Your deck can only have one copy of an Iconic card."

Why would WotC bother doing this, for the .5% of idiots that refuse to get off a sinking boat, like people who refused to leave when Hurricane Katrina was coming, when they are busy building a new boat for everyone else?

WotC has clearly signalled that UMA was the last act of charity they are going to waste on Legacy (that's what the U stands for).

I don't like the new boat as much as the old boat, but I also love green cards and hate playing blue cards, so I'm much happier with where the new boat is going than where the old boat has been. So if this doesn't work, I'm not capsizing with the rest of you. I'm bailing.

I mean, Aaron Barich just won SCG Knoxville with a deck that played Birds of Paradise. I dig that SO MUCH. Those birds are like the dove signalling to Noah that the deluge was over. I'm all in on a format where Birds is a good card.

[PirateKing]

Irrelevant if it's dead or who or who not is killing it.

Changing it to something it's not isn't saving it. It's changing it; to something it is not.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Irrelevant if it's dead or who or who not is killing it.

Changing it to something it's not isn't saving it. It's changing it; to something it is not.

Then you're going to need to freeze Legacy in cryogenic storage like Old School.

[H]

Then you're going to need to freeze Legacy in cryogenic storage like Old School.

No, you really don't. Your premise is that it needs to grow to live. Fair enough. But like you said, Legacy was born essentially terminal.

In reality, we are in the undeath state now. And that is the state we will forever be in, as long as the Reserve List exists (i.e. as long as Standard and Limited are Wizards focus).

What people are saying is, that changing Legacy's fundamental character to allow it to grow is not saving Legacy, it's essentially making a new format as a Legacy "analogue." I don't think that, generally speaking, such a thing is what most people want. Legacy can go on in undeath prospectively forever, never growing, but also never being extinguished.

[Cire]

Ban All Reserve List Cards -> Legacy becomes a New Format.
Ban the most important Reserve List Cards -> Legacy becomes a New Format.
Get Rid of Reserve List -> Not going to happen.
Allow Proxies -> People can play Legacy.
Allow Fakes -> Value of Legacy Cards Tumbles and some people are so disgusted holding cardboard that isn't worth hundreds of dollars that they eat in frustration and quit the game. The remaining souls play Legacy.
Wizards Prints More Cards that Upend Legacy -> Legacy evolves but stays legacy, much like it has done when Gofy, Delver, Eldrazi, Chalice, Vile, Affinity, Dredge, Etc, Etc other cards had been printed over the years making the format evolve.
Wizards prints functional copies of Reserved List Cards -> Not going to happen.

[Seymour_Asses]

...

Delver of Secrets and Modern Horizons/2019 is more Ship of Theseus than getting rid of 10 cards, of which 3 don't see any play except in "budget" (i.e. non-blue, non-green) decks.

This is why Modern Horizons is bait, and so many Legacy players have taken the bait. Modern Horizons isn't "evolving the format", it's a Hickman -esque Darwin bubble that's going to push Legacy players into essentially playing Modern '19.

You need to see Modern Horizons as the first piece of a bigger picture:

In two years or so, Modern and Legacy are going to be using 95% of the same cards.
The biggest difference between them will be that Modern has 100 times the playerbase that Legacy has and prize support. So at that point why would you not play Modern? And then Legacy is dead.
I want to get rid of the 1% (dual lands) that's keeping out 99% of Magic players from joining Legacy and trying to save the 4% (High Tides and Veteran Explorers and Dreadnoughts and Goblin Welders) that make Legacy heads better than Modern.

The problem with using counterfeits or even proxies is many players, even most players, aren't interested in playing with counterfeit cards even if they could get away with it. You can order online, right now, a counterfeit of any RL card that's indistinguishable from the real thing without a loupe or blacklight (if that actually works anymore). But I'd rather play Pioneer or even Modern than use a counterfeit card.

Vintage with proxies is a little different; it's ok, sort of like playing Shandalar or MTGO.

I'm really curious as to how you can type in that straitjacket.

[bruizar]

You guys are giving jiazhouhuaqiao way too much heat. I agree with many of the things he is saying, from his perspective on counterfeits to his rationale on Modern Horizons. Also, making legacy more affordable without changing the fabric of what makes legacy legacy, is to use the 3 card limit in the trinity manifesto. That's how you keep the character of legacy alive. At some point, people will come to this same conclusion, because as was stated earlier, if Legacy and Modern are too similar, modern will be the preferred format.

[Grizzlenasty]

In two years or so, Modern and Legacy are going to be using 95% of the same cards.

Sounds like wizards is going to reprint duals, Wastelands, Forces, Brainstorms, Dreadnoughts, Show and Tells, Reanimates, Entombs, Ichorids, Nether Shadows, High Tides, Ancient Tombs, Cradles, LEDs, Standstills and all the other legacy goodstuff 1 to 1 into modern legal sets?
I'd be down for that and could see myself finally giving Modern a try.



But I'd rather play Pioneer or even Modern than use a counterfeit card.

That is up to you.



Vintage with proxies is a little different; it's ok.

How is that different? Seriously! How?

If I own every single card of a legacy deck, except for 3 Volcanics. It is not ok to prox them?
But if I own every single card for a vintage deck, except for 3 volcanics, it suddenly is no problem anymore to prox them?

[bruizar]

How is that different? Seriously! How?

If I own every single card of a legacy deck, except for 3 Volcanics. It is not ok to prox them?
But if I own every single card for a vintage deck, except for 3 volcanics, it suddenly is no problem anymore to prox them?

Power has always been deemed nigh unobtainable, even back when I spent €400 on a mint unlimited lotus many years ago. That's why proxies in vintage are generally deemed ok

[Grizzlenasty]

Power has always been deemed nigh unobtainable, even back when I spent €400 on a mint unlimited lotus many years ago. That's why proxies in vintage are generally deemed ok

I fully understand that logic.
But 1. duals are slowly getting into that range of unobtainabilty for most people
and 2. If I owned power but lack volcanics would it be deemed not ok to use my proxy slots for duals?

[LOLWut]

In two years or so, Modern and Legacy are going to be using 95% of the same cards.
The biggest difference between them will be that Modern has 100 times the playerbase that Legacy has and prize support. So at that point why would you not play Modern? And then Legacy is dead.

The Modern community is rather abuzz with talk of the death of Modern. One of the leaders in the Modern community, ktkenshinx, creator of Modern Nexus and the administrator of the Modern side of MTGNexus, and historically optimistic, said yesterday (https://www.mtgnexus.com/viewtopic.php?p=58903#p58903):


I also fully agree Modern will be replaced by Pioneer at this current rate, which I have said numerous times. I think 5 years is extremely generous for that prediction; I'm expecting Modern to be toast during 2021 at this current pace.

[kinda]

Hasbro could sell the IP to their pre-modern cards to some group more interested in legacy/vintage. I have no idea what the value of this card pool is though, but it's clear they're not interested in it other than the annual masters set.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

I think a lot of Modern players are playing Pioneer right now (out of frustration with Modern Horizons + bannings), but that rate isn't going to hold. Then they will go back to Modern. So long term Modern will be ok, and WotC is going to keep Modern floating with prize support and MH2.

Modern Horizons gives us a pretty clear picture of how WotC sees nu-Modern. For example, Force of Negation is basically the FoW expy, and there isn't going to be a Wasteland reprint since it would break W6. You're not going to have Ancient Tomb. Ancient Tomb isn't reserve list so if nu-Modern was going to have Ancient Tomb it would have been reprinted in MH1.

Although it would certainly fix the Astrolabe problem if they printed a Wasteland for Snow lands/ permanents.

One thing that has surprised me is how slow Modern players have been to adapt Modern Horizons cards. It took them almost half a year to see that Urza and Yawgmoth are good cards, and there's still a lot of cards from that set which have no reason to be unplayed in Modern. Vintage and even Legacy have adapted quicker to the new paradigm.

[kombatkiwi]

I think a lot of Modern players are playing Pioneer right now (out of frustration with Modern Horizons + bannings), but that rate isn't going to hold. Then they will go back to Modern. So long term Modern will be ok, and WotC is going to keep Modern floating with prize support and MH2.

Modern Horizons gives us a pretty clear picture of how WotC sees nu-Modern. For example, Force of Negation is basically the FoW expy, and there isn't going to be a Wasteland reprint since it would break W6. You're not going to have Ancient Tomb. Ancient Tomb isn't reserve list so if nu-Modern was going to have Ancient Tomb it would have been reprinted in MH1.

Although it would certainly fix the Astrolabe problem if they printed a Wasteland for Snow lands/ permanents.

One thing that has surprised me is how slow Modern players have been to adapt Modern Horizons cards. It took them almost half a year to see that Urza and Yawgmoth are good cards, and there's still a lot of cards from that set which have no reason to be unplayed in Modern. Vintage and even Legacy have adapted quicker to the new paradigm.

A lot of Modern players are playing Pioneer right now because Modern was very stale for a long time pre-Okoban and because the upcoming Pro Tour is Pioneer.
Now that the bans have freshened up the format again I agree numbers will probably bounce back (maybe not all the way, but mostly), especially after the Pioneer PT when (A) there's not a large upcoming premier event of a non-modern eternal constructed format and (B) Pioneer gets somewhat 'solved' by the PT results and the novelty wears off to a significant extent.

Of course if Modern gets 0 official tournament support then it will die just like legacy but I don't think there's any indication this will happen

Wasteland would do a lot more than break W6 when Tron, Amulet, Valakut etc are all highly competitive strategies and even generic multicolour decks don't have to build their manabases with any consideration to playing around Wasteland. Even if W6 didn't exist Wasteland would still basically turn the whole format upside down

People figured out Urza was a solid card pretty fast; the reason why it didn't see the same amount of success for a large part of this year was because Hogaak was legal for a lot of that time, and only the printing of Oko really pushed it over the top. The recent yawgmoth results are kind of interesting but I think we need to see some more consistent performances to not write that off as a kind of 1-hit-wonder

If you are so confident that there are MH1 cards not seeing play in modern then why not name them? People figured out Hogaak and Urza in modern before they saw any success in other eternal formats. The reason why e.g. Narset saw a lot more play in Vintage and Legacy isn't because Modern players are donks, it's just because Narset is much worse in Modern. That's not even an MH1 card, but Wrenn is basically the same story. I'm really curious as to which MH1 card you think is a Modern sleeper hit that nobody else has figured out yet

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

It's better now than two months ago, but I would say Ouphe, Echo, Plague Engineer, Gobbo Engineer, Force of Vigor, Planebound Apprentice, Generous Gift, Geomancer's Gambit, Unsettled Mariner, Cordial Vampire, Cabal Therapist, Ephemerate, Watcher for Tomorrow, Vesperlark and Springbloom Druid.

I have a good friend who plays Modern and two months ago I bought a box of Modern Horizons and asked him which cards he wanted, and the only cards he knew were W6 and Seasoned Pyromancer (Hogaak had already been banned). A lot of cards weren't on people's radars two months ago. Like, Modern wasn't playing Astrolabe two months ago.

I read the Modern General too (it's often funny) and it's ridiculous that they are calling for Astrolabe to be banned when they aren't bothering to play Ouphe. Like, they're crying how Astrolabe kills Prison, when guess what is really good with Blood Moon? Ouphe.

Vintage players were on Urza pretty fast. It was a card discussed on So Many Insane Plays podcast, back in June. Speaking of podcasts, I've been listening to older episodes of Leaving a Legacy... kind of slow on Oko there guys.

[Humphrey]

just let them reprint everything except reserve and brainstorm into modern, then you dont need legacy anymore.

ill make the jump as soon as i get the missing cards, considering my petdeck: vial goblins is almost the same in modern now

[Maximus]

I don't think the format needs saving. However, here is my opinion on how to really help the legacy community:

1. Accept the increasingly grassroots nature of the format and community. Host smaller events based on good-natured socializing, testing new ideas, and having a good time.
2. Allow proxies. Any number of (reasonable quality) proxies. It's not about the money.
3. Do little things that support the player base IRL. Offer housing for travelers visiting from other regions (thank you, Barcelona). Let new players borrow decks (thanks, Curio Cavern). Encourage free play at the pub before and after the event (London Legacy does this, it's brilliant). Hang out in in The Legacy Pit stream chat. It all adds up.

It's obvious to most people but it's still nice to have in writing; a good culture is way more important than the card game itself.

---

FWIW I also dislike most of the 2019 "obvious mistake" cards. I have no idea what they were thinking.

[bruizar]

I don't think the format needs saving. However, here is my opinion on how to really help the legacy community:

1. Accept the increasingly grassroots nature of the format and community. Host smaller events based on good-natured socializing, testing new ideas, and having a good time.
2. Allow proxies. Any number of (reasonable quality) proxies. It's not about the money.
3. Do little things that support the player base IRL. Offer housing for travelers visiting from other regions (thank you, Barcelona). Let new players borrow decks (thanks, Curio Cavern). Encourage free play at the pub before and after the event (London Legacy does this, it's brilliant). Hang out in in The Legacy Pit stream chat. It all adds up.

It's obvious to most people but it's still nice to have in writing; a good culture is way more important than the card game itself.

---

FWIW I also dislike most of the 2019 "obvious mistake" cards. I have no idea what they were thinking.

I'd like to add: stop fragmenting into Discord channels and stay on mtgthesource

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

Wouldn't the trinity manifesto cripple combo decks too much? You would have to unban a lot of tutors to keep combo decks like Solidarity playable and I'm not even sure that's enough.

However, perhaps a Restricted List would be good for Legacy. Look at Vintage this year - restricting Misstep completely shook up Vintage and Misstep is really ideal as a restricted card. Also, having restricted cards makes the game a little more exciting. Restricting dual lands and some other tutorable RL cards like Cradle and Serra's Sanctum wouldn't completely solve the basic legacy problem, but it would double to triple Legacy's maximum player pool potential.

A restricted list would be less dramatic than Trinity manifesto, and I'm not sure the math works out for 3 card limit in Magic. L5R was a 3 card limit game, designed for 30 card decks. When they increased the minimum deck sizes to 40 the game got a lot worse.

[H]

Wouldn't the trinity manifesto cripple combo decks too much? You would have to unban a lot of tutors to keep combo decks like Solidarity playable and I'm not even sure that's enough.

However, perhaps a Restricted List would be good for Legacy. Look at Vintage this year - restricting Misstep completely shook up Vintage and Misstep is really ideal as a restricted card. Also, having restricted cards makes the game a little more exciting. Restricting dual lands and some other tutorable RL cards like Cradle and Serra's Sanctum wouldn't completely solve the basic legacy problem, but it would double to triple Legacy's maximum player pool potential.

A Restricted List (as opposed to a Banned List) is exactly what really differentiates Vintage from Legacy. If Legacy goes to a Restricted List as well, then the question would of course be, what ends up Restricted as opposed to Banned? There is enough of an issue in formulating what the essential vs accidental properties that make Legacy what we believe Legacy to be without conflating what (seems to) separates Vintage from Legacy as well.

[jmlima]

...
FWIW I also dislike most of the 2019 "obvious mistake" cards. I have no idea what they were thinking.

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[kinda]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Yup Hasbro called out two product lines in their q3 earnings graphic: D&D and mtg. Big things coming for NERF btw in q4 if that's your jam.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Yup Hasbro called out two product lines in their q3 earnings graphic: D&D and mtg. Big things coming for NERF btw in q4 if that's your jam.

Nerf NERF, they'll cry.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

A Restricted List (as opposed to a Banned List) is exactly what really differentiates Vintage from Legacy. If Legacy goes to a Restricted List as well, then the question would of course be, what ends up Restricted as opposed to Banned? There is enough of an issue in formulating what the essential vs accidental properties that make Legacy what we believe Legacy to be without conflating what (seems to) separates Vintage from Legacy as well.

I think you would restrict non-essential, low supply, high demand Reserve List cards like ABUR duals, Gaea's Cradle, Serra's Sanctum, etc... but you would not restrict essential RL cards like LED and Phyrexian Dreadnought for example (basically cards that people run 4 of that are not easy to tutor). Most of the cards you would restrict people are only running 1 or 2 copies of anyway. And then you could move some cards from the banned list to restricted if they are ok as a restricted card, for example Mana Drain, Survival and Gush could be looked out. This is like the only way that a RL card like Survival should ever come off the banned list.

For example a restricted list could look like:
ABUR dual lands (RL low supply non-essential tutorable)
Gaea's Cradle (RL low supply non-essential tutorable)
Serra's Sanctum (RL low supply non-essential tutorable)
Transmute Artifact (RL non-essential)
Grim Monolith (RL low supply non-essential)
In the Eye of Chaos (RL low supply non-essential)
Gilded Drake (RL low supply non-essential)
Intuition (RL non-essential)
Replenish (RL, most lists run only 1 if at all anyway)

Survival of the Fittest (RL low supply unban)
Balance (unban, white could use a boost)
Gush (unban)
Mana Drain (unban)
Mental Misstep (unban)
Wrenn and Six (unban)

Cards that we wouldn't be able to restrict would be like:
LED
City of Traitors
Time Spiral
Phyrexian Dreadnought
Aluren

[PirateKing]

Neat new format, I'll be over here playing Legacy

[H]

You do realize that this hypothetical format is vastly different than Legacy, as is? The notion that it is "just as good" "or maybe better" or "more sustainable" are not matters of fact, but rather matters of subjective valuation and opinion.

Not to mention, the notion the cost is the biggest barrier to Legacy is unproven/unprovable. Even when one runs proxy events, people don't show up. How many of them are against the notion of proxies, or are simply just not actually interested in Legacy play? Unknown and unprovable amounts, really.