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

  1. #221
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Just dropping by to say that we had tons of paper tournament data from the SCG years and it was rare to ever see a shockland in a top 8 or 32. The difference does matter.

  2. #222

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

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    If WotC starts printing RL cards then RL cards become "actual magic product"
    Do you not think WotC is already marketing towards non-proxy edh players
    Yeah, but who wants that "actual magic product", who is it for and what would it cost? The people who want duals to play with, and are actually willing to spend the money for them is very small. Based on precedence they wouldn't just dump a bunch of cheap duals onto the market, that would be foolish and greedy hasbro would never leave money on the table so WOTC would milk the whales for market-ish price like every other staple reprint they have done. For the average edh player, would they rather buy a dual land, or all of the commander product released that year with all those super cool timmy and johnny cards, plus upgrades for those products? So that leads to wotc, who are making record profits yoy, breaking the reserve list to print something like a super expensive cash grab secret lair almost exclusively for rich collector whales, which optically is about 1000x worse than when they decided to do the fetchland secret lairs.

    Quote Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin View Post
    Yeah I made this point repeatedly and I feel it's been overlooked but Wizards doesn't just have to analyze the risk v reward of breaking the RL at all vs. never, but of breaking it now vs later.

    It's not clear why now would be a good time to reprint duals but it's easy to imagine a future scenario where you break open that piggy bank. Like, when sales are declining instead of growing enormously for example.
    Pretty much this, I think I made a similar post at the start of the thread. As far as the card availability issue goes, wotc probably feels like mtgo is a satisfactory solution. If you want to play without dumping thousands of dollars on lands, play online. If you want to play with friends, play with proxies.

  3. #223

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Watersaw View Post
    Just dropping by to say that we had tons of paper tournament data from the SCG years and it was rare to ever see a shockland in a top 8 or 32. The difference does matter.
    The difference in price has never been this high. Even before scg dropped legacy

  4. #224

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Cire View Post
    It would probably make them money, but by not doing it they clearly looked at their options and see that expected time and cost of settling nuisance level law suits outweighs or cuts into the profit that they could generate above and beyond just printing other stuff.
    Did you read the rest of the post or did you stop after that sentence

    Yeah, but who wants that "actual magic product", who is it for and what would it cost? The people who want duals to play with, and are actually willing to spend the money for them is very small. Based on precedence they wouldn't just dump a bunch of cheap duals onto the market, that would be foolish and greedy hasbro would never leave money on the table so WOTC would milk the whales for market-ish price like every other staple reprint they have done. For the average edh player, would they rather buy a dual land, or all of the commander product released that year with all those super cool timmy and johnny cards, plus upgrades for those products? So that leads to wotc, who are making record profits yoy, breaking the reserve list to print something like a super expensive cash grab secret lair almost exclusively for rich collector whales, which optically is about 1000x worse than when they decided to do the fetchland secret lairs.
    Breaking the RL would not be bad optics (outside of potential lawsuits from big collectors) no matter what the prices were. The only people buying RL cards now are essentially rich collector whales anyway. Worst case scenario for players is the cards are still worth almost the same as they were before. Would some % of the playerbase be upset that Underground Sea is reprinted but they can't buy it for $2? Sure. But people already did (do) that with Scalding Tarn now and the drama about the fetchland secretlairs was forgotten in like a week.

    Your argument is also predicated on the idea that WotC would maximise profit by keeping the price of duals (almost) exactly the same, which is a significant assumption

    Pretty much this, I think I made a similar post at the start of the thread. As far as the card availability issue goes, wotc probably feels ... satisfactory solution.... proxies.
    Ok buddy

  5. #225

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    If one player starts each game at 16-18 life while everyone else starts at 20 life, the 16-18 life player is going to have a much harder time winning a tournament than the players that start at 20 life.
    But aren’t the vast majority of players immediately dropping themselves four to six life points a game because of a higher density of fetchlands in their decks? And what about Ancient Tomb decks just recklessly blowing their own life totals out? You really can’t use that as an argument because most decks in Legacy can win the game long before the damage from a single shock (or two) becomes relevant, and Legacy in a vacuum is a format with high risk, high reward - hence the reason why people aren’t afraid to plug their own life totals to win.

    Attrition-based matchups are truer to your argument, and I agree it does add up. The fact is dual lands are the gold standard, and the only way to print something of equal footing would be lands that add two or more colors and aren’t heavily conditional. Fetches make shocks better because you can search up a land in the end step of an opponent when you’re out a turn one play, but if you’re jamming Brainstorm, then there’s no argument even trying to justify using shocks because your Brainstorm costs you potentially two life and you’re likely keeping your fetch up for that shock in your opponent’s turn to find something - or even as a sorcery, but it’s still two life.

    What it really comes down to is money. If you can’t afford duals and you’re playing paper, no one is forcing you to play duals - run shocks. Just keep in mind it’s very rare in 2021 for anyone in Legacy to stay at 20 life their first or second turn.

  6. #226

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

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Breaking the RL would not be bad optics (outside of potential lawsuits from big collectors) no matter what the prices were. The only people buying RL cards now are essentially rich collector whales anyway. Worst case scenario for players is the cards are still worth almost the same as they were before. Would some % of the playerbase be upset that Underground Sea is reprinted but they can't buy it for $2? Sure. But people already did (do) that with Scalding Tarn now and the drama about the fetchland secretlairs was forgotten in like a week.

    Your argument is also predicated on the idea that WotC would maximise profit by keeping the price of duals (almost) exactly the same, which is a significant assumption
    How can you say that it would not be bad optics, when every outcome of WOTC attempting to circumvent the reserve list ended up with WOTC further restricting their interpretation of that promise they made?

    I never said anything about the prices of the current cards changing so I am not sure what point you are trying to make regarding that. Based on the history of WOTC reprinting cards, I would say that it is the most likely possibility if they were to be reprinted. Duals would never go into a regular set, they haven't released a secret lair drop costing more than 50$, and any other set they get released in would get scalped, which means they are obliged to charge those prices anyways so they see the profit instead of a scalper. Your comparison with Tarn doesn't make sense since it isn't reserve list and it had been teased that it would be reprinted for years now so there was always an expectation that they would be reprinted, and on top of that WOTC went in the other direction and made the fetch lands the type of card that would not be printed in regular sets again because they had become so expensive. If they won't even do that on cards that are less than 100$ and can be reprinted without reserve list issues, why do you have an expectation that they would do it for cards that are many times more expensive and on the reserve list?

    You also say people have forgotten about the fetchland secret lairs which is true because apparently it did so poorly and had such backlash that they backed off completely and released a completely benign second ultimate edition instead of something like finishing the rest of the fetches.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    Ok buddy
    I don't think it is a stretch, WOTC has explicitly decided that they want absolutely nothing to do with getting rid of the reserve list, this is a fact and isn't up for debate of interpretation. Since they aren't touching the reserve list, making legacy and vintage playable on mtgo is the only way they can make cards in those formats accessible. If you have another solution for them to print even more money that avoids their reserve list restrictions then you should probably let WOTC know because I'm sure they would love to hear it.

  7. #227

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

    Quote Originally Posted by phonics View Post
    How can you say that it would not be bad optics, when every outcome of WOTC attempting to circumvent the reserve list ended up with WOTC further restricting their interpretation of that promise they made?
    This is why I added the "outside of potential lawsuits from big collectors" parenthetical. I mean "not be bad optics" in terms of "the general playerbase / broader community" however you might like to define it, in terms of affecting their present-day retail business operations and not any tangential courtroom shenanigans. If what you are saying is "the reason why they don't print RL cards is because of the threat of lawsuits from megawhales" then I agree with you, this has been my position on it from the beginning

    they haven't released a secret lair drop costing more than 50$
    They don't have many non-RL cards on the secondary market that cost much more than $50

    You also say people have forgotten about the fetchland secret lairs which is true because apparently it did so poorly and had such backlash that they backed off completely and released a completely benign second ultimate edition instead of something like finishing the rest of the fetches.
    "We have printed this card in some kind of cheaper product before in recent memory but we are now selling it for a high premium" is a different proposition to "We weren't making this product available at all (in 25 years +) before but now we are selling it for a high premium"

    I don't think it is a stretch, WOTC has explicitly decided that they want absolutely nothing to do with getting rid of the reserve list, this is a fact and isn't up for debate of interpretation. Since they aren't touching the reserve list, making legacy and vintage playable on mtgo is the only way they can make cards in those formats accessible. If you have another solution for them to print even more money that avoids their reserve list restrictions then you should probably let WOTC know because I'm sure they would love to hear it.
    The idea that they like the idea of people playing with proxies is ridiculous. They have "explicitly decided that they want absolutely nothing to do with getting rid of the reserve list", yes I agree with this observation: I am trying to make the point that the threat of lawsuits is the only sensible remaining explanation. Things like "They aren't reprinting duals because they want legacy to die so that everybody only plays standard" don't hold up to scrutiny

  8. #228
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by Michael Keller View Post
    But aren’t the vast majority of players immediately dropping themselves four to six life points a game because of a higher density of fetchlands in their decks? And what about Ancient Tomb decks just recklessly blowing their own life totals out? You really can’t use that as an argument because most decks in Legacy can win the game long before the damage from a single shock (or two) becomes relevant, and Legacy in a vacuum is a format with high risk, high reward - hence the reason why people aren’t afraid to plug their own life totals to win.

    Attrition-based matchups are truer to your argument, and I agree it does add up. The fact is dual lands are the gold standard, and the only way to print something of equal footing would be lands that add two or more colors and aren’t heavily conditional. Fetches make shocks better because you can search up a land in the end step of an opponent when you’re out a turn one play, but if you’re jamming Brainstorm, then there’s no argument even trying to justify using shocks because your Brainstorm costs you potentially two life and you’re likely keeping your fetch up for that shock in your opponent’s turn to find something - or even as a sorcery, but it’s still two life.

    What it really comes down to is money. If you can’t afford duals and you’re playing paper, no one is forcing you to play duals - run shocks. Just keep in mind it’s very rare in 2021 for anyone in Legacy to stay at 20 life their first or second turn.
    There is also a bunch of tag-along lifegain added to many new cards, Uro being the best example.
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  9. #229
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Safety View Post
    There is also a bunch of tag-along lifegain added to many new cards, Uro being the best example.
    Right, but if I can't draw 3 cards with Sylvan Library for turn after turn, what is even the point? Might as well go play standard jump off a bridge.
    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWhale View Post
    Gross, other formats. I puked in my mouth a little.

  10. #230
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by Michael Keller View Post
    But aren’t the vast majority of players immediately dropping themselves four to six life points a game because of a higher density of fetchlands in their decks? And what about Ancient Tomb decks just recklessly blowing their own life totals out? You really can’t use that as an argument because most decks in Legacy can win the game long before the damage from a single shock (or two) becomes relevant, and Legacy in a vacuum is a format with high risk, high reward - hence the reason why people aren’t afraid to plug their own life totals to win.
    This argument feels a bit disingenuous to me. Ancient Tomb into Generic Artifact just lets you lock people out of the game on the first turn; fetches, duals, and shocks don't without dedicated support. So the difference isn't between "lose 1 (or 3) life and play some card" and "lose 2 life and play some card"; it's between "lose 1 (or 3) life and play some card" and "lose 2 life and win the game." The same is true to an even greater degree with Agadeem's Awakening, which regularly reads, "lose 3 life and win the game." I also think it's important to note that Ancient Tomb is factually way better than the comparable lands that don't cost life to use. That's not true of shocks vs. duals.

    So in your examples, the worst thing you can be doing is playing shocklands (barring a specific deck choice). You're bleeding yourself for 1 Storm to only maybe do as well as other reactive players with deeper pockets.
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  11. #231
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    Re: Do you think Wizards will ever again print dual lands that are better than shocks

    Quote Originally Posted by Michael Keller View Post
    But aren’t the vast majority of players immediately dropping themselves four to six life points a game because of a higher density of fetchlands in their decks? And what about Ancient Tomb decks just recklessly blowing their own life totals out? You really can’t use that as an argument because most decks in Legacy can win the game long before the damage from a single shock (or two) becomes relevant, and Legacy in a vacuum is a format with high risk, high reward - hence the reason why people aren’t afraid to plug their own life totals to win.

    Attrition-based matchups are truer to your argument, and I agree it does add up. The fact is dual lands are the gold standard, and the only way to print something of equal footing would be lands that add two or more colors and aren’t heavily conditional. Fetches make shocks better because you can search up a land in the end step of an opponent when you’re out a turn one play, but if you’re jamming Brainstorm, then there’s no argument even trying to justify using shocks because your Brainstorm costs you potentially two life and you’re likely keeping your fetch up for that shock in your opponent’s turn to find something - or even as a sorcery, but it’s still two life.

    What it really comes down to is money. If you can’t afford duals and you’re playing paper, no one is forcing you to play duals - run shocks. Just keep in mind it’s very rare in 2021 for anyone in Legacy to stay at 20 life their first or second turn.
    Starting at a lower life total than your opponent sucks whether they start at 20 or 14. And Anchient Tomb decks regularly lose gutting themselves on their own manabase.

    Quote Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit View Post
    The difference in price has never been this high. Even before scg dropped legacy
    So what? People rightfully bitched and doomsayed about prices when Volcanics were what, $200? The point is there was such a large data set that if shocklands were real cards we would have seen them at the top tables.

  12. #232

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

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    This is why I added the "outside of potential lawsuits from big collectors" parenthetical. I mean "not be bad optics" in terms of "the general playerbase / broader community" however you might like to define it, in terms of affecting their present-day retail business operations and not any tangential courtroom shenanigans. If what you are saying is "the reason why they don't print RL cards is because of the threat of lawsuits from megawhales" then I agree with you, this has been my position on it from the beginning
    From my experience, "the general player base" doesn't really care about the reserve list, so while it may be true that they don't think of it in a bad light, it is more of the case that they don't think about it at all, with the exception of a fairly small minority. So while the lawsuit guys are a small minority of the general magic population, they are probably a larger, significant proportion of the demographic that does care about the issue, they are also by nature much more invested in said issue than others.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    They don't have many non-RL cards on the secondary market that cost much more than $50
    Yes but they do have a fairly good non-rl analog for duals in fetchlands, there is essentially nothing stopping them from printing them into the ground or releasing a regular secret lair drop with all 10 or even 5 for $39.99. I would say that some kind of similar policy change that demonstrates that WOTC is disregarding secondary market prices for expensive cards would have to happen before anyone would even consider reserve list cards getting reprinted in a way that would alleviate card availability.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    "We have printed this card in some kind of cheaper product before in recent memory but we are now selling it for a high premium" is a different proposition to "We weren't making this product available at all (in 25 years +) before but now we are selling it for a high premium"
    Both still give the message that they can print things much cheaper but choose not to for monetary reasons, which is what upset people in the first place. That was why WOTC had to announce that enemy fetches were getting reprinted in the near future after the ultimate series set.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    The idea that they like the idea of people playing with proxies is ridiculous. They have "explicitly decided that they want absolutely nothing to do with getting rid of the reserve list", yes I agree with this observation: I am trying to make the point that the threat of lawsuits is the only sensible remaining explanation. Things like "They aren't reprinting duals because they want legacy to die so that everybody only plays standard" don't hold up to scrutiny
    I was never making that argument, and if they wanted legacy to die they wouldn't have made eternal sets for mtgo to fill out the card pools. Whether or not wotc likes people playing with proxies isn't really relevant since that doesn't strictly apply to eternal formats for card availability reasons, people that proxy aren't buying cards in the way wotc wants anyways so they aren't the type of consumer that is worth marketing towards. This is also probably the case with the people who complain about the game a lot. It is much easier to convince their habitual consumers to buy more cards (which is probably why they release so many sets now) than it is to convince someone who proxies (either because they cant afford them or they are disgruntled) to spend more of their money on cardboard. Those habitual consumers are the type of consumer they care about and design/ market for, and from the data shown it is working very well. I would say it is a combination of collector influence and the apathy of the general magic population towards the issue means they have no incentive to reneg on their promise regarding the reserve list. I think because this is a legacy oriented forum people over exaggerate the degree to which this is an issue for magic, wotc seems perfectly content in having legacy and vintage be known as weird esoteric formats inhabited by nostalgic boomers. There aren't very high costs in this for them to maintain the status quo, they can always reneg in the future when they actually need to.

  13. #233

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Watersaw View Post
    So what? People rightfully bitched and doomsayed about prices when Volcanics were what, $200? The point is there was such a large data set that if shocklands were real cards we would have seen them at the top tables.
    So in 2010 I could take a risk on duals when they were just over 200 and I could make it all back if I cashed the weekly SCG. Nowadays the risk to pay off those thousand dollar Seas is so high that it isn't worth it. And Since the delta between these two cards became so high something else happened: People stopped playing paper magic. If you wanted to play legacy you'd play online and there the price of duals is much lower, less than 10bux each. But also you're baking a false dichotomy into your premise:
    The options are not "play shocks" or "play duals" they're:
    Play shocks, play duals, play something else, or not play at all. Players are not required to play legacy, and players told "duals are best, yeah, but you'll only lose 3% more if you played a shock over them" are still not going to build a deck with shocks. They'll just not play legacy.
    Except one other thing: We do see shocks at the top tables. Death's Shadow became a deck and every primer and article about it cites how you can build it without duals!

    Also, because it appears I have to do your homework here's three decks that played Watery Grave and weren't Shadow.
    https://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=29767&iddeck=250259 3 of 72 Reanimator using Watery Grave over Underground Sea
    https://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=29533&iddeck=246966 8 of 52 Using Both Watery Grave and Blood Crypt
    https://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=30390&iddeck=257410 7 of 47 Again with shocks.

  14. #234

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

    Quote Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit View Post
    So in 2010 I could take a risk on duals when they were just over 200 and I could make it all back if I cashed the weekly SCG. Nowadays the risk to pay off those thousand dollar Seas is so high that it isn't worth it. And Since the delta between these two cards became so high something else happened: People stopped playing paper magic. If you wanted to play legacy you'd play online and there the price of duals is much lower, less than 10bux each. But also you're baking a false dichotomy into your premise:
    The options are not "play shocks" or "play duals" they're:
    Play shocks, play duals, play something else, or not play at all. Players are not required to play legacy, and players told "duals are best, yeah, but you'll only lose 3% more if you played a shock over them" are still not going to build a deck with shocks. They'll just not play legacy.
    Except one other thing: We do see shocks at the top tables. Death's Shadow became a deck and every primer and article about it cites how you can build it without duals!

    Also, because it appears I have to do your homework here's three decks that played Watery Grave and weren't Shadow.
    https://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=29767&iddeck=250259 3 of 72 Reanimator using Watery Grave over Underground Sea
    https://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=29533&iddeck=246966 8 of 52 Using Both Watery Grave and Blood Crypt
    https://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=30390&iddeck=257410 7 of 47 Again with shocks.
    Excellent Point!

    Cheaper alternatives to duals would be exactly what paper legacy needs in order to survive. The original duals will always be the vintage and most valuable cards. The more popular legacy gets, the more the price of duals soar, even if these lands were availabile.

    But pilots like the players above could have competed on a budget.

  15. #235

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

    Its really shocking how shocks remain the only reasonable alternative to duals in legacy.

    By now, at the very least I would have expected that a commander set would have released shocks that only deal you 1 damage rather than 2 for legacy and commander use.

  16. #236

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    Its really shocking how shocks remain the only reasonable alternative to duals in legacy.
    Not really, there isn't really a need for untapped dual lands with land types because the primary market is Commander for most paper cards at this point, and those players will happily buy up any dual land variant given.

    (The real surprise is that indestructible etbt dual lands with land types haven't been printed.)

  17. #237

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

    Typed Fast Lands I think are in the realm of possibility but the issue is that they can't be too good because you shouldn't have 8 duals in the format/deck.
    So either you reprint duals, make something almost as good and ban the originals.
    Or let the format die (theyre choosing this one)

  18. #238

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

    I dont think 8 duals in the format is really a big deal.

    I don't think 90% of decks would ever use more than 4 duals, and the ones that do will be even more vulnerable to Blood Moon, Wasteland, Back to Basics, Choke etc than they already are.

    There really is no reason not to print typed fast lands or something similar that makes duals (and $1000 manabases) no longer an absolute necessity to play Legacy.

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