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

[Clark Kant]

The whole point of this endeavor is to make large sanctioned paper legacy a possibility again, with stores getting wotc rewards for hosting legacy tournaments. That will never happen as long as a) wotc refuses to acknowledge legacy events with legal proxies and b) duals (which practically every legacy deck requires) cost $500+ per land and rising every year and c) the duals remain substantially superior to all alternatives, so much so that players playing shocks instead of duals lose 10% of the games they play purely due to not being able to afford duals.

You can tackle any of those 3 issues, a) asking wotc to sanction and reward stores for holding legacy tournaments even if they allow proxies, b) asking for the reserve list to be done away with, or c) asking for new duals that are much closer in powerlevel to the original duals (they make your opponent gain a life or peek at a random card in your hand when they enter the battlefield untapped) or as Mr. Safety proposed below, asking that the fastlands be errataed to be made fetchable.

I would prefer a and b but wotc has not budged on either issue for the past two decades. They strenghtened the reserve list in 2010 so it's not going anywhere. This thread is about c, either asking wotc print new duals that are much closer in powerlevel to the abur duals and make them uncommons so that people can readily access them, or errata existing duals to make them fetchable.

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.

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?

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 alternatives exist that are 99.9% as good. I am sure lots of other players will find these duals close enough to the originals that they wouldn't feel like they are handicapping themselves by playing them instead of the $500-1000 duals, where as Shocklands costing you 10% of your life total each time was an actual drawback that costs people games fairly often.

Another approach is...

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

Thats a great idea. A minor drawback that only occurs the first time you cast a land of that type, or better yet, a minor drawback that only occurs if that land is your first landdrop of the game.

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).

Yet another...

...option would be to errata all of the different dual lands to their corresponding land types, ie Woodland Cemetery is now a Forest Swamp. Honestly, it would make a lot of sense to do this, it's a logical move. It wouldn't be perfect, but a land like Blooming Marsh would be practically identical to Bayou because legacy runs on such a low land count.

Fetchable fastlands will never be quite as good as duals, but a list with a 1 of fetchable fastland along with 4 on color fetches, 4 prismatic vista and 5 basics will perform just as well as an identical list with reserve list duals instead of fastlands 99% of the time. And that will be good enough for people on a budget.

Do you think Wizards should errata some of the older lands to make them fetchable, and would that make legacy friendlier to cheaper non reserve list manabases?

I actually really love the idea to errata some of the other dual lands to have the land types added to them.

Changing all the infect creatures and Inkmoth Nexus to make them Phyrexians is a functional errata. It makes them all die to Engineer.

If that is okay, then erratating Blooming Marsh to be a forest swamp is no different.

If they’re willing to errata all the infect creatures for flavor reasons, even if it hurts infect players, they could easily errata these lands to make them more playable and useful in the eternal formats.

The main reason not to would be because they wont make as much money as they would selling players new duals and secret lair shocks every few years. But if the players demand them to, they *might* just to make the players happy.

It wont violate the reserve list and will have zero impact on the price of duals but it will make everyones non dual lands more useful.

That will make...

1. A lot of wotc customers happy.
2. Bridge the gap between the powerlevel of budget legacy/modern decks and nonbudget decks.
3. Make a lot of the nonreserve list duals lands from core sets that stores are sitting on more valuable and increase their sellable inventory.
4. Lead to some modern and pioneer players trying their hand at legacy and potentially rejuvenate an eternal format.

I dont know why people keep claiming wizards doesnt care about legacy. Yes they wont violate the reserve list due to fear of a lawsuit, but thats not evidence that they dont care about legacy.

Legacy players are among Magics longest and most loyal customers.

Legacy, Vintage and commander are the only eternal formats. God knows Vintage is never going to be a paper format again but Legacy very well could. The majority of legacy decks do not require any reserve list cards to build, except for the dual lands.

Eternal formats show the history of the game and people are more willing to spend money in older games and in older formats that they grew up with. MtG being a 30 yr old game is precisely why people are willing to spend more money on it than they would be into a 5 yr old tcg. So a errata like this that could make legacy far more accessible to more players without violating the reserve list would be a wonderful thing for both the format’s accessibility and also for hasbro in the long run.

Making loyal long term customers happy is a good thing for a company like hasbro to do every once in a while.

Old Discussion:

Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are significantly more powerful than the shock lands or triomes?

Legacy is dying, in a large part because dual lands cost $500+ and the only other fetchable lands that come close (shock lands), make you sacrifice 10% of your starting life total every time you play one untapped. Commander decks also cost massive amounts due in large part to requiring $500 duals. No, the issue isn't simply the reserve list. More than half of all legacy viable decks do not require any reserve list cards except for the duals. If Wizards ever releases duals that are not as devastating to your life total as shocklands are, they would lower the barrier of entry for legacy quite significantly. Players on a budget won't mind playing slightly inferior dual lands as long as the deck doesn't end up losing a large percentage of games due to the budget card. Where as losing 2 life every time you play a land is going to decrease your win percentage substantially. Having your opponent gain 1 life (or take a peek at a random card in your hand) every time you play a land is not going to cost you anywhere near as many games.

Yes Wizards promised to never reprint dual lands. But that doesn't mean that they can't print duals that are a lot more powerful than the shocklands in some product that is only legal in legacy and commander, such as one of the universe beyond sets.

How about a legacy and commander only fetchable shockland that only shocks you for 1 life to play untapped? Or better yet, one that makes your opponent gain a life? Or makes your opponent scry a card, or reveals the top card of your library to your opponent in order to play it untapped? Or perhaps fetchable triome lands that can be played untapped by having your opponent gain 3 life? The options are literally limitless. And all of these would be significant upgrades to the shocklands and closer to dual lands in power level. They would also be extremely affordable since the whales and investors would prefer the superior duals even if they cost 20x as much as these lands. So these lands would strictly be sought after by players looking to enter legacy or commander on a tight budget.

Is there anything stopping Wizards from releasing such lands in a Universes beyond (legacy and commander only) set? If not, I think it's just a matter of when, rather than if. Do you agree?

What fetch able lands would you like to see?

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

What fetch able lands would you like to see?

None fetches are a bad design decision

[Clark Kant]

Universes beyond cards only being legal in legacy and commander seems like a huge sign than Wotc actively cares about these formats, atleast enough to design an annual set of cards just for them. Printing reasonable dual alternatives would be an even bigger sign that they want to see legacy as a format be affordable once again.

None fetches are a bad design decision

I think you misunderstood the question. I am not asking what fetchlands would you like to see. I am asking what duals would you like to see that are much closer in powerlevel to the reserve list duals while not being identical (in order to provide an entry point to legacy for newer players).

Edit:

I think you misunderstood the answer. I do not want more lands that can be fetched and make fetchlands more powerful.

This reasoning doesn't make sense. None of the current legacy decks play all 4 copies of any dual land. So whether 4 fetchable duals exist or 8, fetches would not be any more powerful and there is absolutely no reason to think that the number of duals and fetches in decks would increase.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

I think you misunderstood the question. I am not asking what fetchlands would you like to see. I am asking what duals would you like to see that are much closer in powerlevel to the reserve list duals while not being identical (in order to provide an entry point to legacy for newer players).

I think you misunderstood the answer. I do not want more lands that can be fetched and make fetchlands more powerful.

[kombatkiwi]

I think you misunderstood the question. I am not asking what fetchlands would you like to see. I am asking what duals would you like to see that are much closer in powerlevel to the reserve list duals while not being identical (in order to provide an entry point to legacy for newer players).

You already got the answer to this from user "Purple Blood" in the MH2 preview thread, why do you need to make another thread about it

I don't see how that is a solution. When it comes to competitive play, its obviously not a solution because no matter what its a competitive disadvantage. When it comes to non-competitive play, proxies are already commonplace so this changes nothing as anyone would rather just proxy a dual than play with suboptimal cards.

[Goaswerfraiejen]

Yes, they will--when sales start to flag.

But really, there's no reason why they couldn't make better duals--e.g. ETB gain 1 life, ETB mill you or your opponent, ETB scry 1, or a 1/1 dual creature with haste (well, that may not be better, but it's interesting and close to Dryad Arbor's model).

[Zoid]

There is no reason for WotC to cater to the non-modern eternal community because it's small and they don't make much money from them since they buy singles only.
You can see it pretty clearly that they just port everything in legacy they like to modern in MH2.
Just like vintage, legacy will die/become a proxy/big boys only format.
For commander it's not so much of an issue since there are already a shit load of other lands available and it's a singleton format.
If it ever comes to it, I'd rather think they just ban the reserved list since there are a few cards on that which are stupidly priced.

[Barook]

Universes beyond cards only being legal in legacy and commander seems like a huge sign than Wotc actively cares about these formats, atleast enough to design an annual set of cards just for them.

You got that wrong. Commander is the most popular format by far and thus they're catering to their cash cow. High-powered Commander products also being Eternal-legal is just a side effect, not a sign that they actively care about Eternal.