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Thread: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks?

  1. #101
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Watery Grave is $13; Drowned Catacomb is $8. Fetid Pools & Choked Estuary are $5, Darkslick Shores is $16, Creeping Tar Pit is $4. Sunken Ruins is $18, Underground River, despite innumerable printings, is $8. Polluted Delta is $42 of course. Morphic Pool is $27.

    All of these are worse than Underground Sea, which is $800.

    But it is also obvious that all of them are good enough that people want to play them, or more accurately, are willing to play them.

    What players want is indestructible five color artifact snow lands that also shuffle your library, draw you a card when they enter play, and modal double faced with a Brainstorm/Force of Will split card. Or rather that's what they think they want, because players want to be able to do everything all the time with no restrictions and don't understand that that would make the game unfun.

    And like I don't mean to interrupt people talking about what they think the game should look like from a purity of play standpoint, but this thread seems to be specifically framed as "what will Wizards do" and then people keep saying stuff that sure sounds like they don't understand that Wizards only interest in the game is as a means to make money.

    It's not enough then to just say you think Wizards should make lands that are equal to or better than the duals for mana fixing, you have to have an actual case for why they would do that.
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  2. #102

    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Now the key thing here is that Wizards absolutely does not give a single solitary flying shit what products the players are buying as long as it's the product they're making and they thing they can maintain these sales long term. If tomorrow Richard Garfield shoved an old woman in line at the grocery store, and she turned out to be an evil witch who, in retaliation, cursed him and erased forever the concept and memory of the Reserved List and every card on it, and in fact of Alpha/Beta entirely; what would that change? I mean obviously that would alter the metagame a lot and make things confusing for us, but from Wizards' perspective the only thing that matters is how that would affect sales. And their sales, right now, are completely unaffected by the existence of the cards on the reserved list because. Y'know. They're not printing them.
    Let's make things really simple:
    Right now, some number of people are willing to spend hundreds / thousands of dollars on duals/power/workshops/bazaar etc.
    WotC doesn't currently get 1 cent of this, because the reserved list means they aren't currently selling those items.
    If the secondary market price of an underground sea is $1000 (for the sake of argument), the announcement of removing the reserved list would drop the price (especially of revised edition copies), but the amount of money wotc makes from printing underground sea increases infinite, because the amount of money they are currently making from selling underground sea is zero

    Wizards' concern can be expressed in a pretty simple formula: (Number of players buying product) x (Average amount of money spent by players on product)
    Correct, assuming that players are buying product in a way that helps WotC bottom line, but players are instead spending a lot of money buying old cards on the secondary market rather than getting money to WotC because WotC has this rule that they aren't allowed to print them anymore.

    So no, it's ridiculous to think of Wizards as having "unrealized equity" in the Reserved List, because instead of a product containing dual lands it could just release any other product and it doesn't care about the content of the product, it only cares that people are buying it. It's all fungible to Wizards. If the people wanted white-bordered Ouphe theme decks they could print those and be just as happy.
    It's not all fungible to WotC, this is the point I made in my previous post; there's no other reasonable way for WotC to cards that have pricetags of hundreds of dollars. If they priced an Ouphe theme deck at $500 nobody would buy it but people are paying that much on the secondary market right now (and more) for 1 card

    To make an argument that reprinting duals would increase Wizards' profits you have to have a situation where one half of the formula outlined above is slumping in a way that more duals would plausibly help.
    Why does anything have to be slumping? Wouldn't they want to increase "average amount of money spent by players on product" (in a way that makes money for WotC) at any time?

    As mentioned the prestige/conspicuous consumption aspect of old expensive cards works pretty much one way.
    I don't think this idea of RL cards giving MTG "prestige" has any merit
    - If people do like the idea of owning a lotus a la they like the idea of owning a rolex it doesn't help WotC at all because WotC can't currently produce and sell them
    - Therefore you have to make the argument that the existence of the reserved list creates an allure/credibility for other formats, and no, I don't believe that the high price of the power9 makes people look in and go "wow cool I want to start playing the cheaper / mass market version of this". "It elevates the brand" is such a hand-wavey argument

    Like theoretically maybe there's a price point where lowering entry costs somewhat would attract more players, but you're almost certainly not going to be able to accurately identify where that is.
    Lowering entry costs to attract players works on a continuous scale. You reduce the price a bit and a few people will join. You reduce the price a bit more and a few more people will join. So reducing the barrier to entry by any amount helps. There's not some magical cutoff point that needs to be hit.

    As a reminder, my argument isn't that "more people will join ergo WotC will make more money" (even though that could possibly happen) or that "we need Lotus for the proletariat" or something like that, my argument is that WotC is currently making 0 dollars from the sale of RL cards when they could be making some (high) nonzero amount.

    You could frustrate your players by making it wildly inaccessible or creating enormous power gaps between a budget list and a budget-doesn't-matter, but that's not what they've been doing.
    This is basically true for legacy / vintage
    Even if you just want to play a fun EDH deck that draws cards and don't care about powerlevel you still want to have duals and twister.

    But ultimately the argument about whether a player merely "wants" vs "needs" it is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that the secondary market price of the cards indicates what people are willing to pay. It's a lot. How much money does WotC currently make from that high price? Zero

    They've been printing lots of pretty good duals in recent years, they're just not as good as the originals. But were pretty far removed from "painlands are too good for Standard" days. So those wildly expensive cards are just aspirational, something to daydream about and maybe start working at collecting a piece at a time. That's not bad for Wizards to have.
    It is bad for WotC to have because WotC doesn't see a cent of that. If a someone says "Im a highly enfranchised MtG player, I spent $1000 on it last week" and rather than buying boxes of Eternal Masters 2 they bought 2 duals off Ebay you don't think that's bad for WotC? You could argue that like it doesn't have any direct "negative impact" and the player is still part of the community/ecosystem and playing in tournaments etc but the opportunity cost for WotC (compared to the player spending money in a way that makes money for WotC) is high.

    Meanwhile non-players just don't give a shit at all because they don't know what dual lands are and while the price of the game generally might be keeping them out, it's not the price of RL cards because there's lots of formats they can play without those. In fact all the most popular ones except again EDH which you can do just fine in without- in fact playing an expensive tricked out deck can be a bad idea in a format where politics matter.
    "Actually the reserved list doesn't matter because you can just play standard"
    "Actually the reserved list doesn't matter because if you play a Taiga in commander people will gang up on you anyway"
    You are seriously grasping at straws now and this "non players" point also assumes that the only thing WotC cares about is pulling new people into the game to spend money on whatever their current offerings are. If wotc can also make money by selling $500 cards to enfranchised players then why wouldn't they want to do that.

    Oh good, it seems you agree:

    So the only half of the equation that reprinting duals might help is the spending by existing players. But there's no indication that's necessary; again, Wizards is doing really, really well at selling new products, and they've long since figured out how to get even eternal players and older players/collectors on board with special promo shit and lots and lots of annual products that just circumvent Standard entirely.
    Define "necessary". WotC is a company and they like to make money ("FiDuCiArY dUtY"). If they have this obvious way that they could make more money, then.... ?

    Now, again, if sales start slumping at some point they have the option of breaking the Reserve List, but they want to do that very carefully and the most careful way to do it is... just don't do it. A short term modest sales bump isn't worth the damage it would entail because again, funds are fungible and most of the money existing players would be spending on a product with duals is just money they would otherwise be printing on From the Vault: Ouphes or whatever.
    In my opinion you haven't made a good case that "brand damage" is a realistic thing to be concerned about here and the idea that people just throw money at WotC for any card printing regardless of what the cards actually do/are is just nonsense. The idea that "We only need to make more money if we find ourselves in a slump otherwise we can just cruise" also stupid

    This is nonsense, shit like Modern Horizons 2 IS them printing new luxury goods.
    Foil old border retro force of negation is $200 on cardkingdom, urza $170, Scalding tarn $80. Whats the price of a revised scrubland? let alone P9, Bazaar etc

    Uh no it has a lot of limitations. Like, they can only make a small number of these things because the artificial scarcity is the point and what drives the brand. They have to be very careful in managing that, in fact. Their equity is in their brand and their brand is all about the public perception of them as being scarce, luxury, conspicuous. And public perception is fickle.
    Yes LV is careful about managing the perception of the brand but you totally misread the point I was making.

    LV has proven that they can sell bags for a high price. Once they have proven that this is a good way they can make money, why would they simply write-off or ignore that and only sell new things for a low price? (It seems like you agree with me that this would not be a good business decision). This isn't a case of "selling things for a low price hurts the brand" it's "selling things for a low price directly cuts revenue".

    The secondary market for MTG has proven that those cards can sell for a high price. If wotc can see that it could make money by selling cards at this price, why would they simply write-off or ignore that and only sell things for a lower price? It seems like this would not be a good business decision but by maintaining the reserved list it is effectively what they are doing.

    Do you not wonder why people make cheap bags when anyone could theoretically just make a bag and charge $50k for it? Hell you could custom order a purse tomorrow and then put it up on ebay for $1million if you wanted, no one could or would stop you. Do you think this is a good money making scheme?
    I don't think they would buy my custom purse for 1 million just like I don't think (many) people would buy secret lair shivan dragon for $1000 just like I posted previously

    Luxury markets are incredibly competitive. Magic cards are cheap fucking cardboard and ink, that cost like pennies to hundreds to make. It requires constant brand management to get people to pay through the nose for the latest product and honestly if anything Wizards is probably oversaturating the market lately with infinite Lair, Commander, Horizon, Market, Duel, FTV etc. etc. products.
    They have done the "brand management" because commander and legacy etc are super popular and people are willing to pay hundreds for the cards on the secondary market. But they aren't "cashing in" on the brand management because they don't make any money from the sales of these

    Again it's like my LV example. You do the necessary brand management to get people to pay $1000 for your bag design. Wow! What an achievement. Then, after demonstrating that you can make a lot of money this way, you arbitrarily decide to only make generic luggage. Again this is not "create a spinoff/sister company to make generic luggage" but simply "the designer bags make a lot of money but we are just deciding not to do that". Why? It doesn't make any sense

    But for right now it seems to be working, Magic sales grew 30 fucking percent last year. What incentive does that give Wizards to fuck around with its winning formula?
    Ronald Deuce reply to this is exactly correct

  3. #103
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Okay let's simplify something

    The total amount of dual lands in existence is about 2.5 million, or 250k of each, according to some guy on the internet.

    TCG listed market price of a revised dual for each type is:

    Tundra 530
    Underground Sea 880
    Badlands 440
    Taiga 390
    Savannah 340
    Scrubland 310
    Bayou 550
    Tropical Island 720
    Volcanic Island 750
    Plateau 320

    Single set of each: 5,230

    Let's assume that every dual land ever printed still exists and in a condition worth paying said market price for; that creates a market value for the entire set of {dual lands} of about $1.3 billion.

    Let's assume that every year about 10% of those cards are sold on the secondary market. That puts the annual revenue of the market for dual lands at $130 million.

    Let's assume that Wizards is able to functionally, through whatever packaging/product product is uses, sell its reprint duals at 1/4 the current market price; that means we're talking about $32.5 million in annual revenue, which we are also assuming is a pure increase since it will only displace spending in the secondary market, and we're also assuming there are no negative knock-down effects from destabilizing the secondary market in this way that affect Wizards' overall Magic sales otherwise.

    So we're talking about a more or less one time gimmick to wrest maybe $32 million from the secondary market, and to be clear, based entirely on a set of insanely generous assumptions, with the real annual value of the secondary market for duals being almost certainly drastically less than aforementioned, even if we throw in the much higher priced but also dramatically rarer alpha/betas (unlimited also being dramatically rarer than revised but also way less expensive/prestige than a/b).

    Note that this does not mean, "Wizards will only sell $32 million worth of product containing duals," it just means that's the amount of said sales that are displaced from the existing dual secondary market, and not from the market of just, "other Magic the Gathering products."

    Now I mean $32 million isn't something I would sneeze at personally but Hasbro's games division, of which Magic is the primary driver, made $243 million in just the first quarter of 2019.

    So we again divide that 32 by a quarter and like, maybe quarterly sales experience a short-term boost of $8 million.

    So like, just as a starting premise can we look at the math involved (which again we're making a lot of really generous assumptions about) and discount the idea that there's any reality in which reprinting dual lands is some eureka genius idea that's just so obviously going to bolster their profits that they'd be fools not to? Because that's not the reality in which we live. This shit is at the very best case a pretty marginal and diminishing boost compared to like, say, the shit they're doing to boost Arena or brand recognition or improve their storylines, shit that actually has the potential to boost their profits and the value of the company long-term.
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  4. #104
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    You are like just literally doing the goose that laid the golden egg thing, or trying to get Wizards to do it. The Secondary Market isn't something standing in the way of Wizards' profits. It helps them. Its entire revenue is drastically below what Wizards itself makes but it bolsters confidence that these pieces of cardboard people are spending big bucks on are worth something. And the reserve list is a small but helpful bolster to that illusion. You know what cards aren't on the reserved list btw? Any of them printed this fucking century. Like I am going to my goddaughter's high school graduation this week and she wasn't fucking born when the last card went on the reserved list. So no, Wizards "handicaps" itself by not printing 10,000 Underground Seas that would go for $200 each and instead only sells a million copies of Ragavan that will go for $80 each.

    Because they're not a bunch of dumb monkeys.
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    And found I was for endurance made

  5. #105

    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin View Post
    You are like just literally doing the goose that laid the golden egg thing, or trying to get Wizards to do it. The Secondary Market isn't something standing in the way of Wizards' profits. It helps them. Its entire revenue is drastically below what Wizards itself makes but it bolsters confidence that these pieces of cardboard people are spending big bucks on are worth something. And the reserve list is a small but helpful bolster to that illusion.
    The reserved list only helps bolster the illusion for cards that wotc can't make any money off of, is the problem.
    The fact that the RL exists doesn't give me some magical confidence that the value of my scalding tarns is going to go up forever.

    You know what cards aren't on the reserved list btw? Any of them printed this fucking century. Like I am going to my goddaughter's high school graduation this week and she wasn't fucking born when the last card went on the reserved list.
    What does this have to do with anything

    So no, Wizards "handicaps" itself by not printing 10,000 Underground Seas that would go for $200 each and instead only sells a million copies of Ragavan that will go for $80 each.
    This shit is at the very best case a pretty marginal and diminishing boost compared to like, say, the shit they're doing to boost Arena or brand recognition or improve their storylines, shit that actually has the potential to boost their profits and the value of the company long-term.
    It's a false dilemma, even assuming your back-of-the-envelope calculation is correct there's still nothing stopping them from printing both duals and ragavans

    The "It's a 1-time emergency button and after they do it once it's all gone" idea also doesn't convince me because why do the prices for e.g. the fetchlands keep going up over time even with occasional reprints. It's not like "oh we reprinted this once in MM3 now nobody will want to buy it ever again"

    The entire approach to that calculation is also stupid:
    Like look at one of the secret lair that has just come out, they sell for about $30 right
    Lets say they sold idk, 100,000 of that? I have no idea what the actual numbers look like but surely it can't be that high
    Oh that's only $3M? A tiny fraction of Hasbro games division overall revenue? Why did they bother then

    So we again divide that 32 by a quarter and like, maybe quarterly sales experience a short-term boost of $8 million.
    Even if this is true I don't think you have made any good argument that there's any significant downside
    The only thing you have is the idea about "loss of prestige" right. Is there anything else?

  6. #106

    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    The discussion around them getting rid of the reserve list or makes duals that are superior to the OG duals is a waste of time. Neither is going to happen.
    Quote Originally Posted by Grizzlenasty View Post
    I'd absolutely give them a try if I was on budget or just buying in. Sure, not every deck could get away with these - I feel like Delver or Storm decks might have problems including these, but most midrange and control decks couldn't cares less about the drawback.
    Just my initial thought on these. I find them pretty well designed to be honest.
    Thank you. That was precisely the goal, to design duals that do not violate the reserve list but whose drawback is so insignificant that players wouldn't mind using them in place of the OG duals. I think those cards walk that line well but there are other ways to do this as well.

    So does anyone have any other ideas for duals with very slight drawbacks that will neither violate the reserve list nor cost people games... Basically duals like these?

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    Would anyone here mind if Wizards printed the following cards into a legacy and commander only set such as Commander Legends 2?

    Selesnya Garden
    Forest Plains
    When ~ etb, it enters tapped unless you either have each opponent gain a life or reveal a card at random from your hand to everyone

    Boros Garden
    Mountain Plains
    When ~ etb, it enters tapped unless you either have each opponent gain a life or reveal a card at random from your hand to everyone

    Golgari Garden
    Swamp Forest
    When ~ etb, it enters tapped unless you either have each opponent gain a life or reveal a card at random from your hand to everyone

    Izzet Garden
    Island Mountain
    When ~ etb, it enters tapped unless you either have each opponent gain a life or reveal a card at random from your hand to everyone

    Dimir Garden
    Swamp Island
    When ~ etb, it enters tapped unless you either have each opponent gain a life or reveal a card at random from your hand to everyone

    And a cycle of these same lands for the other 5 guilds as well.

    With duals that close to the originals in power level, I wouldn't even bother taking my duals out of their binder. Why play with $1000 cards and risk getting them damaged or stolen when $2 alternatives exist that are 99.9% as good.

    Does anyone think doing so would violate the reserve list in any way? If not, then why aren't we asking Wizards to do just that?

  7. #107
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    I mean as I made clear, I'm not making the time to explain why it's a risky (I don't say clearly bad) idea for Wizards, from a purely financial perspective; I've already done that and that wasn't the point of that post.

    The point of that post was that the only money Wizards is theoretically "losing" to the secondary market on duals is a pretty small fraction of what they are currently making selling Magic cards.

    I am specifically leaving open as a separate question whether or not it would be pure unbridled profit to break the reserve list or entail risk, because that's a separate question. The point I was making that you don't seem to really have an argument against is that while it sounds impressive to say, oh, an individual dual land can sell for up to a thousand dollars, more in the cases of A/B, that's with a pretty miniscule volume. Again, every assumption I made was pretty heavily weighted in your favor and the annual revenue of the secondary dual market is still pretty small potatoes in the best case scenario.
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  8. #108
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    In other words if we're having a pros vs cons conversation I think it's fair and true to say that the cons are a lot smaller than a lot of people want to suggest, at least in most iterations, but like, the pros are pretty fucking small too and I haven't seen any really compelling argument otherwise, not from a Wizards' fiduciary perspective.
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  9. #109
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Also I don't have numbers one this but intuitively it feels to me like recent (meaning like at least the past decade+) Magic design philosophy has not included a lot more mana fixing land cycles that are equal to or above the painlands but worse than the OG duals, it's also just emphasized a lot more splash mana costing. It just feels like you see a lot less double, triple same color costs overall than you used to.
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  10. #110

    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin View Post
    I mean as I made clear, I'm not making the time to explain why it's a risky (I don't say clearly bad) idea for Wizards, from a purely financial perspective; I've already done that and that wasn't the point of that post.

    The point of that post was that the only money Wizards is theoretically "losing" to the secondary market on duals is a pretty small fraction of what they are currently making selling Magic cards.

    I am specifically leaving open as a separate question whether or not it would be pure unbridled profit to break the reserve list or entail risk, because that's a separate question. The point I was making that you don't seem to really have an argument against is that while it sounds impressive to say, oh, an individual dual land can sell for up to a thousand dollars, more in the cases of A/B, that's with a pretty miniscule volume. Again, every assumption I made was pretty heavily weighted in your favor and the annual revenue of the secondary dual market is still pretty small potatoes in the best case scenario.
    Sure I don't disagree that if the reprint supply is so scarce that the price stays the same/similar that the total revenue from duals is likely to be small compared to other wotc products, whether that's from direct 'secretlair style' sales or some kind of rare booster insert / masterpiece (like when they put actual old copies of power in very few packs of Zendikar 1)

    I just don't believe it entails risk (except for the legal issue), AND there is potentially a point of lower price / higher supply where they can move a lot more of them and overall make more than your estimation

    In other words if we're having a pros vs cons conversation I think it's fair and true to say that the cons are a lot smaller than a lot of people want to suggest, at least in most iterations, but like, the pros are pretty fucking small too and I haven't seen any really compelling argument otherwise, not from a Wizards' fiduciary perspective.
    Yeah this is fair
    I just think that the cons are close to 0 where the upside is much clearer

  11. #111

    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    I think that
    (a) Wizards has figured out that Legacy and Vintage and other old-time formats are good for Wizards, as long as Wizards doesn’t need to do anything to support them, since they enhance the brand and help keep players in the fold, so to speak; and
    (b) they don’t need to do anything to support Legacy and Vintage; and
    (c) they can sell packs containing Urza’s Saga / Ragavan / Endurance to Legacy and Vintage players without rocking the boat; and
    (d) they could sell packs containing Underground Sea to Legacy and Vintage players, but that would rock the boat; and
    (e) they could take some other creative steps like the ones outlined in this thread to reduce the barrier to entry for Legacy and Vintage, but that would involve doing something, and see item (b).

    Why should Wizards care that Legacy has a high cost of entry?

    I don’t mean to be a cynic. I have the same instinct to try to fix Legacy and I have loads of ideas. But it won’t come from Wizards. All you’ll get from Wizards is more Ragavans. If you want a better Eternal format you’ll just need to make up your own rules and convince your friends to get on board.

  12. #112
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Well the risk of harm to the prestige/allure of expensive old Magic cards is... nebulous to say the least. I would certainly say that part of the reason that any legal issue is a non-threat is that it's pretty well established that collectible value is just dependent upon an iteration, and this is true across numerous collectible fields- you're not going to get anywhere suing DC for printing collections or new editions of Action Comics #1, you can't sue whoever makes baseball cards for printing a new Mickey Mantle, not successfully. Ty can and does make new versions of Radar etc.. So you'd have to make the case that the Reserve List itself represents some kind of binding legal contract, and that's a pretty wildly novel and I'd say frivolous argument.

    But again, the biggest downside is that you're just wasting a rainy day fund when the sun is shining. Magic is making plenty of money, right now you'd just be priming a pump that's already gushing. Save something like reprinting duals until you're actually dealing with declining sales/interests.

    I mean again that's from Wizards' fiduciary perspective, I would like them to make the game overall way more accessible, including Legacy, but I don't think that's really profitable for them.
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  13. #113

    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    That was precisely the goal, to design duals that do not violate the reserve list but whose drawback is so insignificant that players wouldn't mind using them in place of the OG duals. I think those cards walk that line well but there are other ways to do this as well.

    So does anyone have any other ideas for duals with very slight drawbacks that will neither violate the reserve list nor cost people games...
    To put them even closer to ABUR duals in powerlevel while not exceeding them, they could add a negative "Once upon a time" style clause. - If it's your first landdrop of the game, opponent gains live, may scry1, you reveal the top card of your library, exile the top card of your library face down.. yadayada.. thousand possibilities with little to no drawback while 1) not violating reserve and 2) not outright costing you games like shocks and 3) technically still being worse then real duals

  14. #114
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    I mean if they want to they could do “drawbacks” like “when this etb, mill three” or “when this etb, each player gains 2 life” or “etb tapped unless you discard a card” that would just be better than duals in certain decks

    But again if we’re asking what Wizard will do the question is why would Wizards want to do that?

    Like consider formats like Historic, Modern, and Pioneer without duals. People have multi hundred dollar mana bases for their decks based around fast lands, shocks, pain lands, filters, checks, etc.. What does it do to those formats if they just print lands that obsolete those manabases? That’s not a rhetorical question really. Does that help Wizards? But if so, how?

    Again it kind of feels like people are working backwards from the assumption that Wizards wants dual lands running around all over, and the reserved list is some big bad meanie to be overcome or tricked to get to that end.

    But it’s not. Wizards has the power here. The reserved list is just an excuse because they don’t want to do the thing (right now at least)
    For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
    And found I was for endurance made

  15. #115

    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by Grizzlenasty View Post
    To put them even closer to ABUR duals in powerlevel while not exceeding them, they could add a negative "Once upon a time" style clause. - If it's your first landdrop of the game, opponent gains live, may scry1, you reveal the top card of your library, exile the top card of your library face down.. yadayada.. thousand possibilities with little to no drawback while 1) not violating reserve and 2) not outright costing you games like shocks and 3) technically still being worse then real duals
    Yes. Thats a great idea. A minor drawback that only occurs the first time you cast a land of that type, or a minor drawback that only occurs if you do not have any other lands in play.

    This would be a great way to ensure the prestige format of magic, legacy can continue to exist as a paper format with sanctioned events and a healthy player base with annual growth, rather than a stagnant player base that will eventually cause the format to die out entirely the way that vintage has, all while also making wotc some money (legacy players buy cards and secret lairs as well).

  16. #116

    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin View Post
    I mean if they want to they could do “drawbacks” like “when this etb, mill three” or “when this etb, each player gains 2 life” or “etb tapped unless you discard a card” that would just be better than duals in certain decks

    But again if we’re asking what Wizard will do the question is why would Wizards want to do that?

    Like consider formats like Historic, Modern, and Pioneer without duals. People have multi hundred dollar mana bases for their decks based around fast lands, shocks, pain lands, filters, checks, etc.. What does it do to those formats if they just print lands that obsolete those manabases? That’s not a rhetorical question really. Does that help Wizards? But if so, how?

    Again it kind of feels like people are working backwards from the assumption that Wizards wants dual lands running around all over, and the reserved list is some big bad meanie to be overcome or tricked to get to that end.

    But it’s not. Wizards has the power here. The reserved list is just an excuse because they don’t want to do the thing (right now at least)
    Lands like that would probably be either straight up better versions of duals, like the mill land - which would impede with the prestigious appeal from real duals, or would be as bad as shocks playpatternwise - the lifegain one. Abur duals are not only rare but also the best option available. It would need to stay that way if RL is supposed to stay. We no care for modern historic pioneer... Wizard could simply print them into a Commander set in a weak year.. 5 to 10 years from now maybe.


    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    Yes. Thats a great idea. A minor drawback that only occurs the first time you cast a land of that type, or a minor drawback that only occurs if you do not have any other lands in play.
    I'm pretty high on the "OUAT" style clause. If your first land is a fetch, the drawback doesn't matter, if you later pick it up via daze or Scryb/Quirion Ranger and replay it as your only land in play from hand or via Crucible/Ramunap effect, it doesn't matter. If your opponent plays a bazillion wastelands and forces you to play your land as your only one again and again the reoccurring drawback isn't screwing you over even more than your opp is already doing.
    This ensures these duals are an estimated 99% as playable as the ABUR ones, as the build in drawback only occurs every so and so many games just once. Most Legacy play patterns should basically be unaffected by this. And Commander players wouldn't be sad about such lands either. It's a very fine line between making them viable while not printing the next broken thing. I.e. Enters tapped unless you get half a bazaar :D

    Now we just have to negotiate which drawback it should be and open up the thread:"Will Wizards ever employ us and give us enough trust and power to change everything"

  17. #117
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by Grizzlenasty View Post
    Lands like that would probably be either straight up better versions of duals, like the mill land - which would impede with the prestigious appeal from real duals, or would be as bad as shocks playpatternwise - the lifegain one. Abur duals are not only rare but also the best option available. It would need to stay that way if RL is supposed to stay. We no care for modern historic pioneer... Wizard could simply print them into a Commander set in a weak year.. 5 to 10 years from now maybe.
    I am really fucking confused as to what you want at this point, much less what you think Wizards would plausibly do

    If they want to get around the reserved list without breaking the reserved list- and I don't see any reason for them to actually want this- they would do what I said. But the point is that there's no reason for them to do this.

    If they want to do away with the reserved list they'd just do that. If they want to keep the reserved list and keep making duals that are worse than the original duals but still playable in other formats they'd... do that because that's what they've been doing. See again the Luxury Suite cycle which perfectly demonstrates how easy it is to just insert duals into commander products.

    You seem to want... duals that are worse than the original duals, but just like. Barely. Well okay, what about this card:

    Badder Lands
    Land- Swamp Mountain
    When ~ etb, flip ten coins. If you lose all ten flips, lose 1 life.

    There it's strictly worse than Badlands in everything except a Chance Encounter deck. But... is there a reason to print this card? No. Like. Why would there be?

    Now we just have to negotiate which drawback it should be and open up the thread:"Will Wizards ever employ us and give us enough trust and power to change everything"
    Well no because you don't seem to understand that card design and development has to cater to specifications of what Wizards is actually trying to do with its products, so you'd be a bad employee from their perspective.
    For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
    And found I was for endurance made

  18. #118

    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin View Post
    Again it kind of feels like people are working backwards from the assumption that Wizards wants dual lands running around all over, and the reserved list is some big bad meanie to be overcome or tricked to get to that end.
    What we are doing is asking "assuming the reserved list did not exist, would it benefit wotc to be able to print reserved list cards" and coming up with ideas like
    - It seems like it would allow them to make some money easily
    - It would be consistent with their overall strategy of reprinting chase cards every now and then with premium versions like in Secret Lairs or Modern Horizons
    - It would be an overwhelmingly popular thing for them to do (in terms of absolute number of people for / against)

    Reasons for them not doing it seem to be things like
    - It could hurt the prestige / value of the MTG brand?

    and on balance of these things it would seem like printing RL cards would be a good idea
    Then we have to ask if that is the case, why have they not done it? And the most straightforward answer is that they can't, because the RL exists

    You are doing the same kind of "working backwards" that you claim
    You see that WotC isn't printing RL cards, and work backwards from the assumption that it must be because they have identified it's a correct business decision for them not to.
    Once you start from that position then any argument in favour of removing the RL can be disregarded, because if it were true then WotC would already be printing RL cards.
    So you end up arguing in favour of any nonsense you can come up with that justifies the RLs continued existence like "Legacy/Vintage is a prestige/luxury experience that makes wotc money by giving whales an environment where they can exclude the poors" or "they are too busy making money from modern horizons cards to have any room in their schedule for anything else"

    But it’s not. Wizards has the power here. The reserved list is just an excuse because they don’t want to do the thing (right now at least)
    This is a far, far bigger assumption than anything I have said which is why I keep insisting that if people want to make this argument they provide their legal qualifications/experience

    Like consider formats like Historic, Modern, and Pioneer without duals. People have multi hundred dollar mana bases for their decks based around fast lands, shocks, pain lands, filters, checks, etc.. What does it do to those formats if they just print lands that obsolete those manabases? That’s not a rhetorical question really. Does that help Wizards? But if so, how?
    As someone else has already pointed out, the "they could just print them in a supplementary set that's only legal in legacy/vintage/commander" is such an obvious solution that it feels like you are concern trolling

  19. #119

    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    As someone else has already pointed out, the "they could just print them in a supplementary set that's only legal in legacy/vintage/commander" is such an obvious solution that it feels like you are concern trolling
    Yes it seems pretty clear to me that he is concern trolling at this point. Why else keep reasking the same questions that people already answered multiple times, including in the OP where it's suggested these lands be introduced in Commander Legends 2 or a similar legacy and commander only set.

    And why without any legal education, make claims that Wizards would face zero legal risks or consequences if they straight up abandoned the reserve list promise they made earlier and strengthened again just a decade ago, despite not being a legal expert qualified to make such a claim.

    Quote Originally Posted by Grizzlenasty View Post
    I'm pretty high on the "OUAT" style clause. If your first land is a fetch, the drawback doesn't matter, if you later pick it up via daze or Scryb/Quirion Ranger and replay it as your only land in play from hand or via Crucible/Ramunap effect, it doesn't matter. If your opponent plays a bazillion wastelands and forces you to play your land as your only one again and again the reoccurring drawback isn't screwing you over even more than your opp is already doing.
    This ensures these duals are an estimated 99% as playable as the ABUR ones, as the build in drawback only occurs every so and so many games just once. Most Legacy play patterns should basically be unaffected by this. And Commander players wouldn't be sad about such lands either. It's a very fine line between making them viable while not printing the next broken thing. I.e. Enters tapped unless you get half a bazaar :D

    Now we just have to negotiate which drawback it should be and open up the thread:"Will Wizards ever employ us and give us enough trust and power to change everything"
    Yes, the more I think about it, the more the OUAT clause makes sense. It's could have a substantial drawback to normal duals, but just have the drawback only apply if it's the first land you played that game. Even the same exact drawback as the shocklands (lose 10% of your life) wouldn't be a big deal if you could avoid the drawback by playing a fetchland as your first land of the game and then use it to fetch this new weaker dual land out.

  20. #120

    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin View Post
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