Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

Some recent threads on here and MTGS really got me thinking about this topic. Everyone seems to accept, without challenging the validity of, the reason for the limited support for Legacy being the Reserved, and that Legacy is destined to eventually die due to the Reserved List, and that Modern is supposed to be the Eternal format that is not bound to the Reserved List.

Is this really a legitimate reason, or is it something else?

I have begun analyzing results from the various SCG Legacy Opens, since they are the most frequent Legacy events that gather 100+ players on a regular basis (Memphis only had 94 people, oddly...yet Cincinnati had almost 300). I did notice one thing in common with the winning decks (which are widely varied from event to event, and seem to be a good random assortment that make good examples of their given types).

They all typically consist of 1% or less of cards from the Reserved List. A couple had a bit over 1% of the deck consisting of Reserved List cards. And aside from mana (IE - duals), it was almost rare to find a card on the Reserved List in the deck list.

The vast, vast majority of cards we play with in Legacy are not bound by the Reserved List. Aside from duals, there are very few Reserved List cards we'd consider staples - Moat and Tabernacle (which are rarely played anyways), Null Rod, Show and Tell, Humility, Meditate (rarely played anyways), Intuition, LED, Mox Diamond, City of Traitors, and Metalworker are the biggest. Some others are Replenish, Gaea's Cradle, Serra's Sanctum, Grim Monolith, Aluren, Abeyance, Firestorm, Undiscovered Paradise, and City of Solitude.

Including duals, that is 30 cards in the format that are semi-frequently played that are on the Reserved List. That is a very, very small portion of the commonly played Legacy cards - probably around or under 5% of the semi-frequently played card pool.

Is it really the Reserved List that is holding back Legacy...or is it something else?

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Originally Posted by Solaran_X

Some recent threads on here and MTGS really got me thinking about this topic. Everyone seems to accept, without challenging the validity of, the reason for the limited support for Legacy being the Reserved, and that Legacy is destined to eventually die due to the Reserved List, and that Modern is supposed to be the Eternal format that is not bound to the Reserved List.

Is this really a legitimate reason, or is it something else?

I have begun analyzing results from the various SCG Legacy Opens, since they are the most frequent Legacy events that gather 100+ players on a regular basis (Memphis only had 94 people, oddly...yet Cincinnati had almost 300). I did notice one thing in common with the winning decks (which are widely varied from event to event, and seem to be a good random assortment that make good examples of their given types).

They all typically consist of 1% or less of cards from the Reserved List. A couple had a bit over 1% of the deck consisting of Reserved List cards. And aside from mana (IE - duals), it was almost rare to find a card on the Reserved List in the deck list.

The vast, vast majority of cards we play with in Legacy are not bound by the Reserved List. Aside from duals, there are very few Reserved List cards we'd consider staples - Moat and Tabernacle (which are rarely played anyways), Null Rod, Show and Tell, Humility, Meditate (rarely played anyways), Intuition, LED, Mox Diamond, City of Traitors, and Metalworker are the biggest. Some others are Replenish, Gaea's Cradle, Serra's Sanctum, Grim Monolith, Aluren, Abeyance, Firestorm, Undiscovered Paradise, and City of Solitude.

Including duals, that is 30 cards in the format that are semi-frequently played that are on the Reserved List. That is a very, very small portion of the commonly played Legacy cards - probably around or under 5% of the semi-frequently played card pool.

Is it really the Reserved List that is holding back Legacy...or is it something else?

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It doesn't matter the percentage of deck, it matters how important the cards are to the overall strategy

Imagine you're playing RUG delver: Playing a game without obtaining mana from any dual land would be considered highly unusual (or even impossible, for some decklists), even if you're only playing 6 dual lands in the entire 60 card deck.

In the same vein, imagine trying to make a storm deck without LED - it would be crap.

It's not really an issue of card availability though - although this can and probably does limit the popularity of legacy as a format. It simply would be extremely bad business practice to heavily promote a tournament format that wizards can't print any more cards for.

While legacy decks still need their snapcasters etc, wotc isn't going to make any money off the sale of duals on the secondary market, so less of their energy is put into supporting formats affected by the reserved list.

When wizards was considering the possibility of getting rid of the reserved list a few years ago Stephen Menendian wrote a couple of good articles explaining why the list is bad news for eternal, I recommend you read them if you haven't already.

You said it yourself: DUALS
How can you build any non-monocolored deck without them?

There is a replacement for duals, although many people consider themselves "better" than the alternative or "above" them.

I speak of the shocklands from Ravnica block.

Sure, they make certain aspects of the game significantly riskier if you play aggressively - such as breaking a fetchland into a Watery Grave to Thoughtseize on turn 1 (taking you to 15 life) instead of breaking a fetchland into an Underground Sea to Thoughtseize on turn 1 (taking you to 17 life). But if you play a bit slower and a bit more patiently, such as in a control deck or a deck like Stoneblade (where you have lifegain through Batterskull), would cracking a fetchland EOT for a Hallowed Fountain untapped be much different from cracking a fetchland EOT for a Tundra (assuming you aren't looking to Brainstorm EOT)?

Sure, a deck like UR Delver would definitely want Volcanic Islands over Steam Vents - it is a very fast, very aggressive deck. But a deck like UW Stoneblade...would it lose much by running Hallowed Fountain over Tundra? Or a deck like One Land Belcher - does it really matter if a Taiga or a Stomping Ground is used?

I think we, as players, are too accepting when we are told how much sway the Reserved List has over our beloved format. Sure, it has an impact - but WotC not reprinting duals or LEDs won't be the end of Legacy unless we let it be the end of the format.

Nothing is holding back legacy atm. Afaik, this format has already exploded. The real question out there is: If vintage is slowly dying, could it come back from the grave?

I disagree with your assesment that anything is holding Legacy back. All of the largest constructed Grand Prix events have been Legacy, which should signal that card availability is not as big of a concern as it is made out to be.

In regards to the Memphis SCG turnout being low, that was an abberation caused by a couple of factors (date and location, primarily). Most of the SCG Legacy events are in the realm of 150-300, which is very healthy for a Sunday tournament (when many people in town for the weekend will leave to head back home).

would cracking a fetchland EOT for a Hallowed Fountain untapped be much different from cracking a fetchland EOT for a Tundra

It depends, what if they use the point where your shields are now down to swords your SFM, even though you had spell pierce in hand. How many games do you stabilize at around 3/5/7 or so assuming more then one shock land activation against burn/delver/zoo. Would it effect every match, no. People play vintage unpowered and underpowered, but generally powered decks win more consistently. It is a very similar situation when using underpowered mana bases in legacy.

What about Dual zoo vs Shock zoo who will win more often? yeah no questions there.

Perhaps with a control deck you could split 2/2 shock/dual and be fine most of the time. But if you really want to win a tournament will you?

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Originally Posted by JACO

I disagree with your assesment that anything is holding Legacy back. All of the largest constructed Grand Prix events have been Legacy, which should signal that card availability is not as big of a concern as it is made out to be.

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The issue is though, outside of huge events with giant prize support, turnouts are not that good, I know many players in my area that would cards be more readily available and affordable, they would be playing legacy right now, but cannot.

While I agree the format is exploding and I love the fact more people are playing it, I would rather this not turn into Vintage where it becomes:
Powered Decks
Null Rod based Decks








Other Decks that cannot have duals/power.
And at the rate prices are climbing I feel that sooner than later, we will get to that point.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Solaran_X

They all typically consist of 1% or less of cards from the Reserved List. A couple had a bit over 1% of the deck consisting of Reserved List cards. And aside from mana (IE - duals), it was almost rare to find a card on the Reserved List in the deck list.

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It is mathematically impossible that anything but a Battle of Wits deck had 1%, much less than 1% Reserved cards.

I am also incredibly skeptical that only a couple decks ran more than 1 dual land, which would be 1.33% assuming you're counting the sideboard.

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Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin

It is mathematically impossible that anything but a Battle of Wits deck had 1%, much less than 1% Reserved cards.

I am also incredibly skeptical that only a couple decks ran more than 1 dual land, which would be 1.33% assuming you're counting the sideboard.

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My math is off...dangers of doing math late at night at work. And I am now on OT, making that money to pay for my car I am going to start doing work on.

Few decks ran even 8 of the 75 as cards from the Reserved List. Most ran less than 6, and they were almost always duals (occasionally others such as Humility, Null Rod, and Show and Tell). I just saw the (let's say) 0.08 in my calculator and mistaking assumed it was 0.08%, not 8%.

I feel that it is not the Reserved List that is bottlenecking Legacy as we are led to believe, but moreso it's the belief of that bottleneck that is holding us back. As I said before, I feel that there are many decks that have nothing to lose by switching over to shocklands in lieu of duals - namely some of the combo decks and the slower control-style decks.

As for Vintage, I fear there is nothing that can be done to revive that format. Availability is a true issue in that format - even the Null Rod-based aggro decks still run an on-color Mox and Lotus frequently, and even if you lump together all the Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited Power...it is insignificant when compared to the Revised duals alone. While I would absolutely love to see a Vintage GP or something like a SCG Vintage Open...I know it is unrealistic because of the availability of Power. Although between the limited availability of Power and the printing of Grafdigger's Cage, I feel that a semi-level playing field for Vintage now exists on a larger scale - I am just worried that the Top 8s would frequently be Powered decks piloted by people with endorsements (such as SCG or CFB) and are supplied with Power by their endorsers, and as such would dissuade the other players. I would love to see Vintage rise to prominence again (in my city, we used to have weekly sanctioned Vintage events with a good half dozen Powered players and 20-30 semi-Powered and unPowered players during the Onslaught-era of Vintage), but I have to realistically accept that that is not going to happen.

Shocklands are strictly worse than ABU duals. Daze becomes a lot crappier. Thoughtseize taking you to 15 on turn 1? That's a quarter of your life total, the burn player is practically rejoicing since if shocklands became a mainstay of legacy burn would be a very powerful deck since I hear free lightning bolts that involve you watching your opponent fetch an untapped shockland are generally great for burn players and even storm players would love it. I know I would, I would love to not require a storm engine and just play out 7 cards into a tendrils after you get an untapped shock with a fetchland or just 2 shocks untapped. You can't make the argument that shocklands can replace revised duals because, again, they are strictly worse than the ABU dual lands.

And yes, the reserved list is holding back legacy. Legacy isn't a PTQ format because of the lack of supply of dual lands, because any multicolored deck in legacy runs some number of revised dual lands the minimum being 1 the max being 40 but generally 12 is the cap for the number of dual lands in a given deck and even that number is generous.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Solaran_X

I feel that it is not the Reserved List that is bottlenecking Legacy as we are led to believe, but moreso it's the belief of that bottleneck that is holding us back. As I said before, I feel that there are many decks that have nothing to lose by switching over to shocklands in lieu of duals - namely some of the combo decks and the slower control-style decks.

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Is your argument here that the issue with availability is actually just a perception issue because players can technically just play with suboptimal decks?

If I know that Taiga exists and is legal, then dying to my own Stomping Ground even once would piss me off so much that I'd quickly lose interest in playing. Your proposition does not address the reality that a player with shocklands is playing with inferior cards, nor the perception that playing with inferior cards/being unable to play exactly what you want is less fun for these players. I don't think it's any surprise that players find this unacceptable to an extent that they would opt not to even attempt to participate. Legacy isn't dying, but it is suffering in that there are a lot of people who would play if they had the ability to play exactly what they wanted to.

The important thing to judge is what % of the cost consists of cards on the reserved list, no- absolute numbers aren't as relevant.

Let's look at the top 8 decks one at a time

Using deckstats.net

The MUD deck costs around 410 of which 203 is made up of reserved list cards.

Burn is 100% non-reserved list and costs around 120 dollars. Many have expressed doubts as to its viability.

The Elf deck costs around 180 and has no reserved list cards, though this list conspicuously lacks Gaea's Cradle, which is an expensive reserved list card.

The Junkblade (?) deck costs around 1220 of which 335 is made up of reserved list cards.

The Bant Stoneblade deck costs around 1180 of which 451 is made up of reserved list cards.

The RUG Tempo deck costs around 1350 of which 401 is made up of reserved list cards.

(Another Bant Stoneblade deck finished 7th)

The UW Blade deck costs around 1400 of which 396 is made up of reserved list cards.

It's also worth noting that it's far easier to pick up the non-reserved list cards. I can trade 15 dollars worth of standard legal cards for a Batterskull with ease; I'm not going to have a fun time trying to trade 60 dollars worth of standard cards for a 60 dollar dual land.

I might have forgotten that some cards were on the reserved list or made some calculation errors, but I don't these any of these numbers are that far off from reality.

Are there lots of people who dont currently play legacy but would if it was cheaper (let alone if it was a ptq format)? Yes

If wizards printed a bunch more dual lands, would it make legacy cheaper? Yes

Legacy is being held back by the reserved list in this sense.

Personally, in quite dissappointed that I can't play Dutch Staxx. So yes, some decks are getting held back by the Reserved list.

Legacy is a hobby.
Hobbies are expensive.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JACO

In regards to the Memphis SCG turnout being low, that was an abberation caused by a couple of factors (date and location, primarily). Most of the SCG Legacy events are in the realm of 150-300, which is very healthy for a Sunday tournament (when many people in town for the weekend will leave to head back home).

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At the same time there were 2 GP's, something to keep in mind also.

Back to topic:

I just finished Canadian Threshold by buying the last missing pieces (4 Trops. Again, thx mates) and I completely agree upon the fact that the prices of cards do hold back people who are interested in playing Legacy.
The only cards I did own for the deck, back then when I decided to build it, were a playset of Forces, 6 Fetches and all commons required. The rest was completely up to me and even if I did quite a good job at getting most of the cards at a decent price, I sure had to invest an ammount of money that is not irrelevant for someone of my age/income.
Luckily, the format has a strong (supporting) community and enough players to run large events, but this doesn't negate the fact that if you want to play the format on a competetive level, you have to invest quite some money to have some sort of long-term ensurance to do so.
Budget-Decks like Dredge, Burn and Robots (Ascension?) for example are decent and fun to play but at some point you want more than that, especially when you want to compete at the higher tables constantly.
I am not one of those Legacy dinosaurs who were lucky enough to get twice (or more) the money out of their investment and and I definetly wouldn't call myself a good trader, but even I am a supporter for reprinting cards on the reserved list to ensure Legacy's future.

So yes, I think the format has a problem, but right now (and in the near future) this doesn't cause too much trouble, even if it will at some point.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Philipp802

Legacy is a hobby.
Hobbies are expensive.

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I know, my response was borderline trolling.

Honestly, you don't need Dual Lands to compete to this format. Outside of being dissappointed of not being able to play Dutch Staxx, I'm happy with what I choose to play. I love broken (albeit linear) decks.

As long as they never print better lands than the Alpha duals, then yes, the Reserved List is holding the format back. I've taken my fair share of shockland-filled decks to Legacy events and to be blunt, it just fucking sucks going to 17 just to play the right thing on the first turn. And as much as I love seeing budget lists and things like Burn and Ascension showing up to Top 8 from time to time, I think increasing the appeal to people that enjoy being able to metagame well instead of just showing up with the one deck they could afford to put together can only increase the player base.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TsumiBand

As long as they never print better lands than the Alpha duals, then yes, the Reserved List is holding the format back. I've taken my fair share of shockland-filled decks to Legacy events and to be blunt, it just fucking sucks going to 17 just to play the right thing on the first turn. And as much as I love seeing budget lists and things like Burn and Ascension showing up to Top 8 from time to time, I think increasing the appeal to people that enjoy being able to metagame well instead of just showing up with the one deck they could afford to put together can only increase the player base.

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This. Until Wizards print situationally better duals, Legacy will be greatly constricted by the price of its manabases.

My suggestion is that they should print cards that reward you for having only 1 or less basic land type among lands you control.
Not only would that be a great thing flavour-wise, but also avoids that cards don't need to cost 3 black and 5 green to ensure that they don't get "abused".
Another upside would be that they aren't tempted to (re)create yet another lame 1.1 version of each manafixing land in existence.

It seems like the only time I comment is during these "is legacy dying" discussions...

I'll play Legacy even if it stops being a popular format. It's strength has already dropped considerably since this time last year (at least by my perception). Before Mental Misstep it seemed like the sky was the limit, and everyone wanted in. Naturally, the prices went up. Luckily for me, I got the bulk of my cards before Legacy was popular, and I'll still play the format even if its just on kitchen tables.

The topic of prices/availability killing Legacy is a thorny issue. I can sympathize with people who don't want to drop X hours of work on a few pieces of cardboard. I can see that budgets are a constraint, but I will always advise people to try and take the long view.

If Legacy is really what you want, then take time to gather staples/decks. It's not like Standard; you don't need the cards before they rotate. They're not going anywhere. Take your time. Maybe start with forces and wastes, and play some merfolk. It may not be the best deck right now, but it will get your foot into the door as you piece together duals and get access to the 2-3 color tempo decks. This is just one path into Legacy (the one I'd recommend). Before you know it, you'll be dropping tropicals for goyfs. It just takes time to gather the pieces, but you don't need to rush it.

I don't think the constant cries for reprints, especially reserved list reprints, is going to get a big following from Wizards. Their official, corporate stance is that they do not make printing decision based on the secondary market, at least to reduce the price of expensive cards. It appears to me that they definitely do, and they manage this smartly.

Here's my observation. A retail store level product (set release, duel deck, premium, commander) can reprint a card that is worth up to 20 dollars. We have Graveborn (Entomb), Elspeth vs. Tezzeret (Elspeth). These were about 20-25 dollars during printing. Neither has grown or tanked significantly after the printing. The limited print run (FTVs) can go up to about 40-50 on a card. This has also been fairly predictable. (Please let me know if I missed something.) Finally, we have very small runs (Judge rewards) that can go above a 50 dollar reprint.

What does this mean? It just gives us a rough estimation of what we can expect from each release in terms of reprinted cards. We'll never see Jace or Goyf as anything but a rare promo. We might get wasteland in the new Realms. We'll probably see shocklands at some point either in a new set or something like commander.

I believe the reason these trends exist is because Wizards is actually very keen on the secondary market, but not for the reason players may think. Most players you talk to would prefer as many expensive reprints as possible to reduce the price of the game overall. They often cite the assertion that Wizards would also make a ton of money as a result.

Wizards is certainly a for profit company, and this logic is seductive. So why not put Black Lotus in M13 as a common? Wizards' wants as many people to play magic as possible in order make as much money possible. They also have an audience of game stores, and they can't be abandoned. More so than any individuals, these stores carry a ton of stock in Magic singles. They stand to lose the most if the secondary market crashes. When they lose, us players don't have a place to get the exact singles we crave for tournament decks. More importantly, we don't have the venues for even playing in these tournaments. Wizards needs the vendors, large and small, for its business model to work. Without your local game store, there are no tournaments, no places to buy singles, and no community. Wizards, wisely, does not want to sacrifice them to the altar of format accessibility for Legacy (or any other format).

If you're craving high priced reprints, its probably not going to happen. It might be a tough pill to swallow, but Wizards must be doing something right if the game is on an all time high. Enjoy it, and if you want to play the best format (Legacy) just understand that there is going to be some barrier to entry, but it is one worth breaking down.

Backseat Critic

I'm glad we can have this conversation without too much whining about the topic.

I am in the camp that thinks they can make more money in the long term by abolishing. I think the vendors will also make more in the long term.

I'm sure many of you know vendors who have had power or otherwise sitting in the case for a long time because they're hard to move.
With reprints, more people will buy the reprinted cards and more people will play the game/format in general.

More players = more money.

They don't need to make it standard legal or some bullshit like FTV. Just sell eternal packs where the cards are only legal in their respective formats.

Seems most stores would sell many many many more copies of the reprinted lotus to make up for the one beta copy they sold. People would still bust packs but consider how many people would buy the reprinted lotus as a single. The value would almost certainly blow away all of the money made selling Abu lotuses during the same time period. Make that money wizards, you morons.

If they can find the budget to print goddamned unhinged/unglued they can make an "Archives" series of sets.
The increased number of players to the game/eternal formats would make more money than the losses from the disgruntled player base and collectors IMO.

God have mercy on us all.

It's all fine and dandy to have an expensive hobby until there's no one to play with due to price barrier. RIP vintage.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Philipp802

Legacy is a hobby.
Vintage is expensive.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Backseat_Critic

It seems like the only time I comment is during these "is legacy dying" discussions...

I'll play Legacy even if it stops being a popular format. It's strength has already dropped considerably since this time last year (at least by my perception). Before Mental Misstep it seemed like the sky was the limit, and everyone wanted in. Naturally, the prices went up. Luckily for me, I got the bulk of my cards before Legacy was popular, and I'll still play the format even if its just on kitchen tables.

The topic of prices/availability killing Legacy is a thorny issue. I can sympathize with people who don't want to drop X hours of work on a few pieces of cardboard. I can see that budgets are a constraint, but I will always advise people to try and take the long view.

If Legacy is really what you want, then take time to gather staples/decks. It's not like Standard; you don't need the cards before they rotate. They're not going anywhere. Take your time. Maybe start with forces and wastes, and play some merfolk. It may not be the best deck right now, but it will get your foot into the door as you piece together duals and get access to the 2-3 color tempo decks. This is just one path into Legacy (the one I'd recommend). Before you know it, you'll be dropping tropicals for goyfs. It just takes time to gather the pieces, but you don't need to rush it.

I don't think the constant cries for reprints, especially reserved list reprints, is going to get a big following from Wizards. Their official, corporate stance is that they do not make printing decision based on the secondary market, at least to reduce the price of expensive cards. It appears to me that they definitely do, and they manage this smartly.

Here's my observation. A retail store level product (set release, duel deck, premium, commander) can reprint a card that is worth up to 20 dollars. We have Graveborn (Entomb), Elspeth vs. Tezzeret (Elspeth). These were about 20-25 dollars during printing. Neither has grown or tanked significantly after the printing. The limited print run (FTVs) can go up to about 40-50 on a card. This has also been fairly predictable. (Please let me know if I missed something.) Finally, we have very small runs (Judge rewards) that can go above a 50 dollar reprint.

What does this mean? It just gives us a rough estimation of what we can expect from each release in terms of reprinted cards. We'll never see Jace or Goyf as anything but a rare promo. We might get wasteland in the new Realms. We'll probably see shocklands at some point either in a new set or something like commander.

I believe the reason these trends exist is because Wizards is actually very keen on the secondary market, but not for the reason players may think. Most players you talk to would prefer as many expensive reprints as possible to reduce the price of the game overall. They often cite the assertion that Wizards would also make a ton of money as a result.

Wizards is certainly a for profit company, and this logic is seductive. So why not put Black Lotus in M13 as a common? Wizards' wants as many people to play magic as possible in order make as much money possible. They also have an audience of game stores, and they can't be abandoned. More so than any individuals, these stores carry a ton of stock in Magic singles. They stand to lose the most if the secondary market crashes. When they lose, us players don't have a place to get the exact singles we crave for tournament decks. More importantly, we don't have the venues for even playing in these tournaments. Wizards needs the vendors, large and small, for its business model to work. Without your local game store, there are no tournaments, no places to buy singles, and no community. Wizards, wisely, does not want to sacrifice them to the altar of format accessibility for Legacy (or any other format).

If you're craving high priced reprints, its probably not going to happen. It might be a tough pill to swallow, but Wizards must be doing something right if the game is on an all time high. Enjoy it, and if you want to play the best format (Legacy) just understand that there is going to be some barrier to entry, but it is one worth breaking down.

Backseat Critic

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See, i agree with this. But if they abolish the reserve list, it's not like distributors would lose from it, quite the opposite. Injecting a small quantity of cards in the market make for massive demands, and who gain from those demands are mostly the retailers. We've seen already from FTV and whatsnot that the price of cards don't go down, at least i've not seen a single card vary in price too much. The only exception to this rule i've observed is SFM that was printed in a precon, and as such in very large numbers and its price has remained low whereas now would be much higher.
But that was a precon. As long as WotC inject small quantity of cards in the market, they can at least keep the cost constant while increasing the number of players. And everyone would gain more. New players would enter, retailers would gain from more packs sold, and collector wouldn't lose anything.

Maybe they wouldn't GAIN in the long term as much as before (the collectors), but considering the fact the player base would surely grow, i'm not even sure that would be the case at all.

The alternative (printing situationally better duals) would be far worse for collectors. Duals would tank in price extremely fast. If i were a collector, i'd prefer limited reprints than a possible destructive new print. That, or Legacy will inevitably lose players in the long run and possibly go the way of Vintage, duals are a bit too scarce to support a large playerbase already. And sadly i think this is the way Wizard choose, with the creation of Modern.

Guys, Modern was the death knell of Legacy. It's only a matter of time. See Vintage for reference. In five years, Legacy and Vintage will be similar.

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Originally Posted by Mr.C

Guys, Modern was the death knell of Legacy. It's only a matter of time. See Vintage for reference. In five years, Legacy and Vintage will be similar.

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Modern is an eternal format without any cards on the reserved list, so I don't see how you can argue that it's "modern and not the reserved list" that's the issue.

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Originally Posted by Solaran_X

There is a replacement for duals, although many people consider themselves "better" than the alternative or "above" them.

I speak of the shocklands from Ravnica block.

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This is silly. Saying that you can play a strictly worse card than the best available card does not mean that playing a strictly worse card is in any way, shape or form acceptable. As Magic players, we do crazy things to eke out fractions of a percentage vs. our opponents. You can win even if you tap your mana wrong or play your threats in the wrong order, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't make an effort to hit the ideal lines of play.

I'm sure one of the Hatfields could D2 a Legacy GP with one of the newer precons like Graveborn, but that wouldn't make it a good idea for them to run it. Optimal is just that, optimal.

It's not really the reserved list that crushes the format. That's *a* root cause of the problem, but not the only one. The real problem is two-fold; price and power-creep.

I play Magic when I can borrow cards from Jaco. That means once in a while for major events, when I've got the money to shell out for hotel rooms and 6 hour car rides. I'm not going to show up to a little local tournament because I have no intention whatsoever of spending $1600 to buy a deck. I had one, last year. I sold it because $1400 in pocket was a hell of a lot more enticing than some little bits of cardboard. I'm not going to pigeon-hole myself into some shitty budget deck like Dredge or Affinity because it's cheap. I play this game for enjoyment. If I wanted to play cards to make money, I'd play poker. I can walk into a casino almost any night of the week and spend 2 hours at a $1/$2 no limit table and walk out $200-$300 up. Sometimes I'll lose, it happens, but on the whole, it's so far ahead of Magic in EV, there's not even a question. I just spent 8 hours playing in a PTQ today. I came in 13th, walked out with 9 packs of DKA. If I flip those at $2.50/ea. then I've lost $2.50 on 8 hours of my time. The only people making money on this game are the speculators and maybe the top 30-40 players worldwide.

Two, the power creep is a problem. Once games get swingy enough, people will quit. I've got a friend that wants me to get him into Magic; he quit Yu-gi-Oh! because he said it got stupid how ridiculous some cards were to beat. It's not even a matter of balance. A format can be balanced and still be too swingy, depending on the power disparity between various cards and the amount of time you have to find an answer before those cards kill you. Belcher is a great example. You have 0 turns to find an answer to Belcher before they beat you. You either have it in your opeining hand or it's irrelevant. Imagine if the whole format was like Belcher, but each one required a different strategy to beat. Did you correctly guess what your opponent is playing and mull for the right answers or did you guess wrong and lose? All the decks are around 50%, but it's no fun for anyone. becaise balanced is not the same as healthy. If they keep printing better mousetraps, eventually, Legacy will die because it will be such a coinflip format even after you spend half a dozen car payments on a deck that no one in their right mind will play it (I'm looking at you, Vintage enthusiasts).

I think the major issue that Wizards faces when it comes to reprints is how to deliver the cards to the players. Let's say that Wizards releases an "Eternal" set (because they actually give a shit about what players want, and they understand that more cards = more players = more money) with a traditional booster approach. They put 15 cards representing a pool of staples and slap an MSRP of $3.99 because they want to get cards into players hands. The big issue is whether or not it is going to be possible for players to purchase packs for MSRP. (hint, it's not) Shop owners would likely hoard the packs/ open them and sell singles. Sure it will "flood" the market, but the immediate reaction is not going to lower prices. In fact, if the formats are really that popular then supply will catch up to demand quickly, but probably will not make an appreciable dent in prices. So in essence, Wizards wins, shop owners win, but do players really get what they want? It depends on what players want; to play the game or or to play with cheaper cards.
I've been playing for a while and when revised came out, I thought it was actually kind of cool that certain cards were not getting reprinted. I thought it would enhance the "flavor" of the game because if the game survived years down the road, there would only be a certain number of powerful cards representing these really powerful items or spells. What a dipshit I was. The secondary Magic market has become an investment opportunity instead of a game, and propped up by Wizard's ill-management of their intellectual property, i.e. the Reserve List. Every time some mouth piece from Wizards says "we don't care about the secondary market" it makes me laugh. If they're afraid of pissing off some speculators who have "struck it rich" in this market that they (Wizards) have let spiral out of control, at the expense of people who actually want to PLAY the game, then they're ignoring the fact the bubble has to burst someday. When people finally get sick of paying thousands of dollars for cardboard, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

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Originally Posted by Backseat_Critic

Wizards is certainly a for profit company, and this logic is seductive. So why not put Black Lotus in M13 as a common? Wizards' wants as many people to play magic as possible in order make as much money possible. They also have an audience of game stores, and they can't be abandoned. More so than any individuals, these stores carry a ton of stock in Magic singles. They stand to lose the most if the secondary market crashes.

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LOL at a secondary market "crash" if WotC reprints expensive cards.

If Wizards reprints duals, these stores will make money. Sure, their white-border dual lands lose some percentage of their value (the supply of revised duals is ABUNDANT and the market is a bubble, revised had an enormous print run), but if the format becomes more accessible then more people will start playing and thus more eternal product gets moved through the store (on the whole) and the value of non-reprinted staples goes up.

Reprinting expensive cards--as long as the pacing is careful--is good for the eternal market. Reprinting dual lands mainly hurts speculators sitting on a ton them, but I don't care about them and neither should Wizards.

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Originally Posted by Gheizen64

See, i agree with this. But if they abolish the reserve list, it's not like distributors would lose from it, quite the opposite. Injecting a small quantity of cards in the market make for massive demands, and who gain from those demands are mostly the retailers. We've seen already from FTV and whatsnot that the price of cards don't go down, at least i've not seen a single card vary in price too much. The only exception to this rule i've observed is SFM that was printed in a precon, and as such in very large numbers and its price has remained low whereas now would be much higher.
But that was a precon. As long as WotC inject small quantity of cards in the market, they can at least keep the cost constant while increasing the number of players. And everyone would gain more. New players would enter, retailers would gain from more packs sold, and collector wouldn't lose anything.

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I can see where you're coming from with this. It uses the sound logic that a larger player base equals more customers equals more sale equals more profit. What I think this model is missing is that creating a larger Legacy player base may not dramatically increase the size of the aggregate player base, and each player has finite money to spend on this hobby (hence the reason for this discussion). So just because Legacy is easier to get into, it doesn't mean that each individual player will spend more money in total.

I would conclude that it is in Wizard's best interest to look out for the stores in regards to their long and short term profitability. I don't know any rich game store owners, so I can't imagine their profit margins are that large. Also, I would be willing to bet that a good portion of their sales come from people selling them cards and other people buying them. The secondary market has to be a viable way to stay in business, and even a short term shake up could mean some stores will lose too much money to be viable.

Wizards gets the enviable position of being on top of a quasi pyramid scheme. They push this product out to retailers, but they rely on these stores to facilitate the game itself. If the stores don't feel they can't make money by offering Magic, they'll stop, which will in turn hurt Wizards.

Wizards has become great at keeping this machine working with the cards they decide to print and reprint. Drastic shifts in this system will likely produce negative consequences. Right now, everyone has a story about "the friend who would play Legacy, if only the costs were lower." Flooding the already delicate secondary card market with plentiful reprints may lead to the issue of "now I don't have a store nearby to buy cards and play."

Not being able to play a format due to availability and cost is not fun, but it is a situation that can be fixed at the individual level. If you want to play, pay the costs. If you don't want to pay, no one is forcing you. Trying to fix it with reprint policy changes would likely be the worse of two worlds.

Backseat Critic

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Originally Posted by lochlan

LOL at a secondary market "crash" if WotC reprints expensive cards.

If Wizards reprints duals, these stores will make money. Sure, their white-border dual lands lose some percentage of their value (the supply of revised duals is ABUNDANT and the market is a bubble, revised had an enormous print run), but if the format becomes more accessible then more people will start playing and thus more eternal product gets moved through the store (on the whole) and the value of non-reprinted staples goes up.

Reprinting expensive cards--as long as the pacing is careful--is good for the eternal market. Reprinting dual lands mainly hurts speculators sitting on a ton them, but I don't care about them and neither should Wizards.

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Those 'speculators' are the big stores that run the big tournaments. Ask yourself what if starcity stopped running its open series? What if they stopped paying people to write columns? The belt tightening could produce some much more negative effects.

They are sitting on a ton of cards. It's like the stock market, which is also driven on speculation. They have a large number of 'dual land shares.' Tanking that 'stock' is going to hurt, even if it can be somewhat mitigated by the selling of reprints. They will make some margin on the reprints, but they invested thousands in the original duals that are now worth less than what they paid for them.

Imagine a hefty part of your own stock portfolio were to lose a significant amount of value. LOL, right?

Backseat Critic

Dude, there is no way that the profitability of SCG's Open Series hinges on the price of the most expensive cards. If magic cards are like stocks then SCG has a very diverse "portfolio." And it is simply untrue that dual lands are a "hefty" volume of their stock. The price of white-border duals falling to even $0 would not break them--and, as I said earlier, could stimulate prices for other staples (assuming that it caused more people to enter the format, which I predict would be the case).

After all, just look at the SCG open series itself, adding more players makes all values rise.

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Originally Posted by Backseat_Critic

but they invested thousands in the original duals

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My understanding is that SCG created the open series to add value to their stock of eternal cards and that they made a ton of money as the series continued to increase Legacy's popularity. So it's not as if they started out by purchasing dual lands and other expensive staples at 2012 prices, these things used to be worth a lot less money just a few years ago.

But, seriously, forget that, because the real money to be made for SCG was and is in the sub $20 cards, which move a lot faster on the whole. And SCG has dealt with cards dropping in price before, what's a few more?

Sorry, but the Legacy market as a whole simply does not rely on the most expensive cards holding their value. They are small fish in an ocean of cards.

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Originally Posted by Backseat_Critic

Those 'speculators' are the big stores that run the big tournaments. Ask yourself what if starcity stopped running its open series? What if they stopped paying people to write columns? The belt tightening could produce some much more negative effects.

They are sitting on a ton of cards. It's like the stock market, which is also driven on speculation. They have a large number of 'dual land shares.' Tanking that 'stock' is going to hurt, even if it can be somewhat mitigated by the selling of reprints. They will make some margin on the reprints, but they invested thousands in the original duals that are now worth less than what they paid for them.

Imagine a hefty part of your own stock portfolio were to lose a significant amount of value. LOL, right?

Backseat Critic

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This is patently false. The big stores stand to gain if something major like the duals were reprinted. The speculators are individuals. Now, some of them happen to be pretty nice people (I'm thinking of Morbid- and Jaco), but with a few notable exceptions, I couldn't possibly give a fuck less about them.

Here's how the scenario works. You're a major company. You have to keep inventory of the product you sell because your customers don't want to keep inventory. That means that they're not going to put up with long lead times. Either you have the part in stock, or they buy somewhere else. But inventory, ANY inventory, is a waste of your money. That's money you could have invested in something useful. Instead, you've got it invested in something that's not accruing interest and in fact actually costs you money for the warehouse space and man-power necessary to manage that inventory. So the faster you move that inventory, the more liquid your position. And while not having the inventory means not making a sale, the closer to "just enough" that you can get - the less of your capital you have tied up in useless inventory - the happier you are, because you're maximizing your gains.

You don't want to sit on cards for long periods of times. You want something to come in and move right out the door again. Ideally, the moment anything touched your dock, you'd turn around and ship it out again. This concept is known as "turns". The company I work for, we shoot for 12 turns a year. That means, ideally, every month, we've turned our entire inventory. The stuff that came in at the end of January needs to be gone by the end of February. Some things turn faster, some slower, but that's our goal. And we're a stocking supplier. If you look at JiT (Just-in-Time) companies like Dell, they try and push their turns to the sub-day level.

I can't tell you what kind of turns Ben Bleweiss averages. But I can say with a fair degree of certainty that he measures his average turns in days. I'd be shocked if his average turn ever extended out past 2 weeks. Now there are going to be some items, mostly older things with limited play value, that are going to end up sitting for 3 months, but there are also going to be cards they're turning daily.

Why does this matter? Say the price of duals drops a dollar a day for 40 days. The speculator, who's holding on to the cards, just lost $40/ea. on those duals. The store, who has no illusions about stockpiling (because remember, inventory is a necessary evil) the shit out of some duals, is buying and selling every day. Yes, they lose a little bit off the profit of each dual, but since they're constantly selling out of their position and buying back in at a lower price, make up the difference in profit in volume. Rather than making 20 transactions at $15, they're making 22 at $14. Voila, profit!

Perhaps you weren't here for the original discussion, but SCG pushed hard for the repeal of the Reserved List. They stood to make a lot of money off it because Ben and Pete are intelligent businessmen.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Backseat_Critic

I can see where you're coming from with this. It uses the sound logic that a larger player base equals more customers equals more sale equals more profit. What I think this model is missing is that creating a larger Legacy player base may not dramatically increase the size of the aggregate player base, and each player has finite money to spend on this hobby (hence the reason for this discussion). So just because Legacy is easier to get into, it doesn't mean that each individual player will spend more money in total.

I would conclude that it is in Wizard's best interest to look out for the stores in regards to their long and short term profitability. I don't know any rich game store owners, so I can't imagine their profit margins are that large. Also, I would be willing to bet that a good portion of their sales come from people selling them cards and other people buying them. The secondary market has to be a viable way to stay in business, and even a short term shake up could mean some stores will lose too much money to be viable.

Wizards gets the enviable position of being on top of a quasi pyramid scheme. They push this product out to retailers, but they rely on these stores to facilitate the game itself. If the stores don't feel they can't make money by offering Magic, they'll stop, which will in turn hurt Wizards.

Wizards has become great at keeping this machine working with the cards they decide to print and reprint. Drastic shifts in this system will likely produce negative consequences. Right now, everyone has a story about "the friend who would play Legacy, if only the costs were lower." Flooding the already delicate secondary card market with plentiful reprints may lead to the issue of "now I don't have a store nearby to buy cards and play."

Not being able to play a format due to availability and cost is not fun, but it is a situation that can be fixed at the individual level. If you want to play, pay the costs. If you don't want to pay, no one is forcing you. Trying to fix it with reprint policy changes would likely be the worse of two worlds.

Backseat Critic

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Backseat_Critic

Those 'speculators' are the big stores that run the big tournaments. Ask yourself what if starcity stopped running its open series? What if they stopped paying people to write columns? The belt tightening could produce some much more negative effects.

They are sitting on a ton of cards. It's like the stock market, which is also driven on speculation. They have a large number of 'dual land shares.' Tanking that 'stock' is going to hurt, even if it can be somewhat mitigated by the selling of reprints. They will make some margin on the reprints, but they invested thousands in the original duals that are now worth less than what they paid for them.

Imagine a hefty part of your own stock portfolio were to lose a significant amount of value. LOL, right?

Backseat Critic

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I'm so happy you're back to chime in; always so correct regarding the subject of reprints. Level headed instead of utter nonsense whining that comes out of most people's mouths because they have to actually spend money on a hobby. :frown:

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Originally Posted by SpikeyMikey

This is patently false. The big stores stand to gain if something major like the duals were reprinted. The speculators are individuals. Now, some of them happen to be pretty nice people (I'm thinking of Morbid- and Jaco), but with a few notable exceptions, I couldn't possibly give a fuck less about them.

Here's how the scenario works. You're a major company. You have to keep inventory of the product you sell because your customers don't want to keep inventory. That means that they're not going to put up with long lead times. Either you have the part in stock, or they buy somewhere else. But inventory, ANY inventory, is a waste of your money. That's money you could have invested in something useful. Instead, you've got it invested in something that's not accruing interest and in fact actually costs you money for the warehouse space and man-power necessary to manage that inventory. So the faster you move that inventory, the more liquid your position. And while not having the inventory means not making a sale, the closer to "just enough" that you can get - the less of your capital you have tied up in useless inventory - the happier you are, because you're maximizing your gains.

You don't want to sit on cards for long periods of times. You want something to come in and move right out the door again. Ideally, the moment anything touched your dock, you'd turn around and ship it out again. This concept is known as "turns". The company I work for, we shoot for 12 turns a year. That means, ideally, every month, we've turned our entire inventory. The stuff that came in at the end of January needs to be gone by the end of February. Some things turn faster, some slower, but that's our goal. And we're a stocking supplier. If you look at JiT (Just-in-Time) companies like Dell, they try and push their turns to the sub-day level.

I can't tell you what kind of turns Ben Bleweiss averages. But I can say with a fair degree of certainty that he measures his average turns in days. I'd be shocked if his average turn ever extended out past 2 weeks. Now there are going to be some items, mostly older things with limited play value, that are going to end up sitting for 3 months, but there are also going to be cards they're turning daily.

Why does this matter? Say the price of duals drops a dollar a day for 40 days. The speculator, who's holding on to the cards, just lost $40/ea. on those duals. The store, who has no illusions about stockpiling (because remember, inventory is a necessary evil) the shit out of some duals, is buying and selling every day. Yes, they lose a little bit off the profit of each dual, but since they're constantly selling out of their position and buying back in at a lower price, make up the difference in profit in volume. Rather than making 20 transactions at $15, they're making 22 at $14. Voila, profit!

Perhaps you weren't here for the original discussion, but SCG pushed hard for the repeal of the Reserved List. They stood to make a lot of money off it because Ben and Pete are intelligent businessmen.

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This is the most intelligent post in the entire thread.

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Originally Posted by majikal

This is the most intelligent post in the entire thread.

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Agreed. When most of the playing population hates the reserve list and the largest store argues against the reserve list, I can't help but wonder who the people are arguing for the reserve list and what their motivation is.

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Originally Posted by CorpT

Agreed. When most of the playing population hates the reserve list and the largest store argues against the reserve list, I can't help but wonder who the people are arguing for the reserve list and what their motivation is.

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I know right, because people with opposite views than your whiner cry facing about paying money for a hobby clearly equals...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...n_title%29.jpg

Caught me! Sitting on my inventory of 600 blue dual lands.

Or maybe some would rather not see this CCG go the way of others like Yugioh and Pokemon where nothing holds value.

As strongly as you feel about Legacy costing as little as possible for all parties involved I feel just as strongly that people should have to put in the same amount of effort as I did to get where I am. You cannot go through life expecting everything to be handed to you, you have to work for it. Do people really find this concept that unreasonable? Especially in regards to something as inconsequential for quality of life as a card game. Unfortunately Legacy is going to be out of the price range for some people just like everything else in life, this is the socioeconomic system we live in.

Edit: For the record I own literally zero dual lands. If I want to play Legacy I either borrow them or proxy them for smaller events at my LGS.

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Originally Posted by Ertai's Familiar

Or maybe some would rather not see this CCG go the way of others like Yugioh and Pokemon where nothing holds value.

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You mean like Tarmogoyf? Or Dark Confidant? Or Jace? Or Wasteland? Or Force of Will?

If your argument is that nothing will hold value unless it is on the reserve list, you should realize how wrong you are and that plenty of things hold (and increase) in value despite the fact that none of these cards are on the reserve list.

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Originally Posted by CorpT

You mean like Tarmogoyf? Or Dark Confidant? Or Jace? Or Wasteland? Or Force of Will?

If your argument is that nothing will hold value unless it is on the reserve list, you should realize how wrong you are and that plenty of things hold (and increase) in value despite the fact that none of these cards are on the reserve list.

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All of those have been reprinted right? Oh wait no they haven't excluding Wasteland which were both Foil and both small run player/judge rewards.