As a non-collector I ask: should the price and availability of Tarmogoyf really be an issue in a format where 90% of the decks require dual lands? At least it was printed in a good set, unlike Pithing Needle originally was.
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
If it cost GG, Tarmogoyf would be less splashable...although I guess it needs to be unfair to compare to the various other creatures in the format... Mongoose is a 3/3 Shroud for G, Ringleader is a walking FoF, Lackey is a re-usable Lotus, Confidant is a walking Phyrexian Arena, Exalted Angel is nuts .etc.
I should be open about my motive. I have a soft spot for green, and especially mono green.
It's the first color that all the newer players are drawn to. It's the beatdown color that you play because it's fun even when people laugh at just how weak monogreen really is. It's the budget color where you can use Llanowar Elves for your mana accleration needs rather than the Mox that all the other colors use and can use that mana to play juicy fatties. It's the color with freaking Rancor!
In legacy, monogreen was the one last thread of hope for budget players, the one last deck that you don't need $70 Piledrivers, $80 Sinkholes, $90 Sea Drakes, or $100 Dual Lands to build.
Before a few years ago, setting aside Vintage, most of the staples in the game (StP, Duress, Bolt etc) were cards that were printed as commons, and reprinted again and again so that every one could play with them. That was a good thing for magic.
It's a very good thing that players just starting out can readily find and get some of the most powerful and useful cards in the game.
You said it yourself. 90% of the decks in this format need dual lands. Goyf is the equivalent of duallands for that last 10% of decks that previously didn't need any uberexpensive rares.
Why do you think 9 Land Stompy was still so popular. It's certainly not because the deck is ubercompetitive I'll tell you that much. Now, with goyf, the deck finally has potential atleast. I run the deck, and I assure you that it suddenly got a hell of a lot better thanks to Goyf. But precisely the one deck that Goyf could help the most is the one that draws in the players that can't afford the card.
In someways, Goyf was a big screw you to all the people that bagged on green for so long. Goyf really is to Green what StP is to White. It almost by itself makes the color worth playing, or splashing.
So yeah, I would have preferred Goyf as a GG. But even as is, I like the card and definately think that mono green players, newer players, all the johnnys out there on a tight budget, deserve to play with the card. Not just the spikes that spent the past decade laughing at monogreen decks.
More importantly, just how many more outraogously overpriced staples that every serious player absolutely needs to get 4 copies of in every single format to be competitive do we need.
This isn't for personal reasons either. I preordered two playsets of Tarmogoyf within two weeks of when the card was leaked. I could easily have sold them off for 15x their original price if I wanted to. But I'm going to keep them as I absolutly love playing with them in both thresh and 9 land stompy. And I stand to lose as much as most if Goyf gets reprinted so that it's price goes down a little bit. I couldn't care less about that.
Tarmogoyf finally gave green it's staple card. White has StP, Black has Duress, Red has Lightning Bolt, and Blue has Brainstorm and so many other staples, from Daze to Mana Leak to Stifle to Counterspell to Misdiretion to FoW that Blue's doesn't fit this mold.
The problem with Goyf is that its price is way higher than a staple card that defines an entire color should be. Goyf should be played in just about every single deck with green just as StP should be played in just about every single deck with white, Duress in just about every deck that's black etc.
It's good that green has a staple. What's bad is that while all of the other color's staple cards are commons that were printed in atleast four different sets, Goyf is a chase rare that was only printed in one set. Staple cards that define an entire color shouldn't be chase rares and thats why I think we shouldn't be clamoring for Goyf to be banned. We should be clamoring to have it reprinted so that it's more readily available.
Tarmogoyf doesn't break any format. It's vulnerable to the removal that every deck should be playing already anyways. It's vulnerable to StP, Smother, Pyrokinesis, a Tarmogoyf on the Other side of the board, Spell Snare/Countermagic, Control Magic, and Veldalken Shackles.
The answers to it are all cards that are so versatile and strong that you lose nothing by playing them.
But I see no reason to think his price will do anything but go up unless Wizards wises up to the fact that Goyf is now green's staple card in every single format and reprints him in atleast one more set like they did with Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, Duress, and Brainstorm. They have the perfect justification to do it too. Tarmogoyf is future shifted after all. I just hope they get rid of the cards idiotic reminder text.
Just wait until Planeswalkers see print. I'm certain that they will be good enough that they too will see play in all the formats. So Goyf is just going to cost that much more.
In many ways, Tarmogoyf now defines greens role in the format. Thresh creatures were always limited because you need a heavy cantrip engine to use them. With goyf, you don't really need to alter most decklists that splash him much at all. And in most cases, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by splashing him into any deck that can support him.
Staple cards like Tarmogoyf that are staples in every magic format need to made available in sufficient quantities that all the serious players are able to get a playset. Otherwise, Wizards will only be detering the players that can't get that staple card from playing the game.
Maybe we should write to MaRo (using the feedback button at the end of his articles) with our thoughts about the card perhaps being reprinted.
"I honestly cant think of a Monocolored deck that is viable in 1.5 right now outside of Sui Black."
I thought goblins was mono-colored and was something like one of the best deck s in legacymaybe. you think
Who were you quoting exactly? I couldn't find the post you were referring to.
If that was a response to my post. Goblins isn't exactly budget. Wastelands, Piledrivers etc, the deck will run you a couple of hundred easy.
Sui Black isn't very good with 4 Wasteland, 4 Sinkhole, 4 Negator and 4 Shade either, so it too costs a pretty penny. And even that deck gets better with a light green splash for Goyf, Rancor, and maybe Berserk.
If Tarmogoyf stays in the meta and is not reprinted it will be just as expensive as Sea Drakes and Force of Will and all the other cards that are Legacy staples and not in print.
There was a goblin deck that ran 4 Tarmogoyf in the sideboard. That was an interesting choice, given the other things goblins likes to do with the sideboards to counter some matchups.Originally Posted by Bane of the Living
Doubt so., At least, not for a long while. Force of Will is a Vintage Staple, and Sea Drake is from freaking Portal... While Future Sight is quite a recent set with some good cards.
Yea this comparison isn't really fair.
Both of those cards have been oop for nearly 10 years. Force of Will to begin with isn't going for a whole lot more than Tarmogoyf, its like ~$20 vs ~$15, but still its a staple thats been in T1-1.5 for a long while and is respected as being the most one of the strongest cards in the format.
Tarmogoyf while great, is a brand new card, and readily available, its in demand for all formats - block, T2, Extended, Legacy, etc, of coarse its going to be expensive now, all T2 chase rares are expensive when people are trying to grab play sets of them. But once it roles out of print there will tons more of them out compared to a card that was last printed in 95 or 98, and there will be a bunch of T2 players looking to move them.
Sea Drake is just completely incomparable because it comes from a set that wasn't part of the tournament spectrum for 10 years of the game. People for the most part ignored Portal cards except for reprints of Wrath of God, Armageddon, a couple others, the set couldn't have sold near as well as other sets were at the time, and probably the vast majority of Portal cards aren't in circulation, due to the fact they weren't playable and retired players who are ebaying old collections know that Moxes, Force of Wills, Mana Drains, and Duals and stuff are money cards, unless they have been following the Legacy metagame probably they wouldn't think that a Portal: Second Age, uncommon, Sea Drake is fetching w/e like $40.
Thus there is a moderate supply of cards like Force of Will and players getting out of the game know they can unload the card for money, there is a moderate demand for the card as its only playable in two formats that aren't very much of the games player base, which keeps the card's price in check. Being a brand new card there is a high supply and currently a very high demand for Tarmogoyf, resulting in a large price tag, when it rotates there will still be a ton of them floating around for a while and alot less people needing them, his price will drop, no doubt 10 years down the line it will be a harder card to find, but alot of other cards like Force will be oop for 20yrs so who knows what prices will be like. And for Sea Drake, there is probably next to no supply and some demand which is likely why it's so expensive, only vintage players at all care about this card, and likely they are the only ones who know its worth anything, for a card that probably didn't have that many in circulation, to not be well known as valuable means the ones that people are going to be selling they know they can get alot for. At the same time if you stumbled into some random card shop that happened to have a Portal: Second Age binder or box of commons and uncommons and you got lucky finding some in there you could probably score them for really cheap for the same reason. Like when the change was made and random online suppliers had them for $0.50 or something, they either sold out of them crazy fast or noticed people buying them and looked into the situation, and inflated the price tags.
Either way I don't think the sky is falling if a T2 legal card is "expensive". It may end up getting reprinted, but even if it doesn't I don't think Tarmogoyf's price tag will remain as high as it is nor does it's current price tag even seem that inhibitive (its no more expensive then Pithing Needle, Chrome Mox, Meddling Mage, Rishadan Port, etc were when they were/are T2 legal).
You have to balance that out with the fact that both FoW and Sea Drake were uncommons, and both are cards that are only legal in Vintage and Legacy, the two least played formats in the game. And you have to also consider that Sea Drake only function is one and only one very rogue deck, Fairie Stompy. Any deck that can support its rather significant drawback well has to have a very specific manabase.
I assure you that Tarmogoyf will stay the single most prevalent card in the competitive decks of every single format that it is legal in and in multiplayer as well. Just give it time. And it will be even more prevalent if Planeswalkers are playable which is what Wizards is aiming for.
More importantly, do you guys realize how important multiplayer is to the long term health of the game. 3/4s of the players I know got into magic by first joining casual multiplayer games with a deck someone lent them. They only started playing duels much later. But if you make the most common, most powerful, most likable, most splashable multiplayer staple one that's so impossible to get, they will make multiplayer less appealing to the bazillion people that simply can't get a hold of Tarmogoyf and to newer players alike.
People will be looking back at this time in magic and talking about how wizards dealt with Goyf. If they opt to never reprint it because it's a powerful card, rather than going the smart route by simply printing some of the better removal spells (Smother etc.) alongside it in standard, they will be making a mistake. All they will have done is made Green's staple card one that's near impossible to get. In time, it will be everybit as impossible to find as Sea Drake, probably more so, because it goes into so many different decks in so many different formats where as Sea Drake, an uncommon, still only works well in one rogue deck in the least played format in magic due to it's drawback
But a decision to not reprint Tarmogoyf will have long term effects on the game even more significant than the fact that Mana Drain and Force of Will were only printed in one set, albeit as an uncommon. I argue that these two cards are a major reason why people with smaller collections are driven away from playing blue. By making greens staple one that is so rare that only the pros can get it, you will be driving newer and casual players away from their favorite color, green. Even newer players won't want to play green if they can't get the very best and coolest creature in green. That will be a very bad thing for the game. People want to atleast think that their deck plays the best cards that it should. But its obvious to even the newest players that their green deck isn't the first time a pro beats them down with Goyf.
I think the key to this is that rares used in competitive decks are expensive, anyone who commits to playing competitively in this game, regardless of the format does so knowing that to play a competitive deck you have to shell out cash for the rare staples. Yea, you can pick up 4 Brainstorms for less then $1, you could probably pick up 4 Rancors for that too, they are commons.
New players can get interested in a game without having the absolute best cards, it seems foolish to bother collecting if you can walk into the game and have the most powerful cards be reprinted to the point that they hold no value. The game is a collectible card game, the idea being that you collect the cards, building up to having better ones, with some sense of progression from being the a new player and using mostly commons and junk, to getting to a competitive level and having a competitive tournament level deck.
By this arguement should Black Lotus, Moxes, and Ancestral Recall be reprinted into oblivion, since they are among the "most powerful, most likable, most splashable" cards in their format?
The exorbitant prices of those cards were the reason that Vintage was created in the first place. It was the reason that legacy was split away from vintage.
Do you honestly think that the banning of cards like Illusionary Mask in legacy had anything at all to do with the card's actual power level. Do you really think that if Illusionary Mask was made in legacy, that it would even cause a shift in the format. No, the card was banned almost entirely for monetary reasons as were several other cards, including I would argue Mana Drain.
Honestly the moxen aren't even that powerful. Being able to play 4 Chrome Mox, 4 Lotus Petal and 4 Mox Diamond is a lot more acceleration than the 5 Moxen provided in Vintage. So I would argue that even the Moxen as 1 ofs weren't banned from legacy for power reasons as much as they were for monetary reasons.
If the Moxen were reprinted in several base sets rather than being stopped at Unlimited, I don't think the cards would be banned today. I think every deck would be using them in a manner similar to how some decks use 4 copies of Chrome Mox today.
Many people are saying Tarmogoyf should be banned not because it's that hard to deal with but because for a staple, it's so expensive to get a hold of.
So I really don't see how my argument about just how prevalent a card being closely tied to how badly people want the card banned doesn't hold water, especially considering the fate of Illusionary Mask in legacy.
Right, but Tarmogoyf is like a $15 rare, its not on the price level like Illusionary Mask, or Mana Drain, or Workshop. Those cards were printed in smaller numbers, and likely a great deal of them have been taken out of circulation by players quitting, and the fact that 10+ years have gone past since their last printings.
Sea Drake or Berserk or something would make a lot stronger argument for cards that would be in danger of getting banned based on price/availability. Both of these cases are fairly unique to the format though. They were cards that weren't available to be used in Legacy/1.5 for a long time and weren't as widely available to begin with compared to a current set's rare, and they were both recently 9+ years after their last printings welcomed into the format as x4 ofs. It's a huge spike in demand compared to the supply that was available.
A card like Tarmogoyf will likely hold some value for a long time, but I don't see a reason to think its going to spike like either of the above mentioned cards.
Anyway this is pretty off topic at this point, the conversation could probably continue in the other thread, since its more related to that one.
I will close my posts here about this subtopic related to Tarmogoyf with this.
I agree with much of your arguement.
But I guess the main point I am making, and one that you haven't really addressed is that I think it would be a good thing for the game if Wizards does reprint Tarmagoyf along with good removal cards like Smother in standard.
My argument isn't that Wizards is required to reprint the card.
My arguement is that it is a very good thing for both Legacy and Magic in general that Swords to Plowshares, Duress, Brainstorm, and Lightning Bolt are not expensive chase rares but rather easy to get commons.
And my arguement is that Goyf has a lot more in common with these cards than it does with many of the chase rares out there. Goyf almost universally belongs in virtually every single green deck just as the above cards belong in virtually every single deck of their respective color. It doesn't matter whether the deck is monocolored green or threshold, extended or standard, a duel or a multiplayer game. The same can't be said of chase rares like Meddling Mage and Sea Drake which are very deck and format specific.
That's why I think it would be a good thing, for Tarmagoyf atleast to be reprinted. It really isn't hard to keep the card in check in standard. Reprinting Goyf doesn't break Standard either. There are already plenty of answers to the card including Temporal Isolation. This is why some of the best decks in standard include that monoblue lockdown deck, the dredge deck and that mono black control deck, all of which can deal with Goyf effictively. Standard is perfectly healthy with the card.
So Wizard should be focusing on the long term a bit more. They should take a second to think about how different the game might be, how many fewer players may have gotten into competitive magic in the first place, if Swords to Plowshares, Brainstorm, Duress, and Lightning Bolt were all impossible to find chase rares.
I think Tarmogoyf is going to be in almost every aggro control deck if it stays legal in Legacy. It's just too good not to be there. And it allows those decks to use Krosan Grip also, which is an excellent secondary control card as a two of in green. Berserk might even see a comback as a one or two of given it's synergy with Tarmogoyf and the fact that it can really piss off your opponent when they lose their Meddling Mage or Dark Confidant trying to beat you for a few early on.
Yea Wizard's can take two paths with Goyf pretty clearly. He can become a reprint staple, much like maybe Birds of Paradise or Wrath of God. Admittedly Goyf seems a bit more auto include then either of those, but they are powerful rares that are color staples that see play in several formats.
Or he can be a one shot deal. Not see reprinting.
This will probably come down to how Wizards chooses to direct the future of Standard. Goyf at the moment is a pretty defining card, which clearly means he's great, but also limits choices in forcing people to deal with him.
Reprinting him, means the quantity of the card will increase, he will be more available to the masses, along with this his stay in Standard and Extended will also be longer. This is a double edged sword, giving Green a reprinted staple is nice for new players, but as agreed he is a power house and format defining meaning a longer duration of Standard will be defined by Goyf / anti-Goyf.
By not reprinting him, it means a card to add to the list of rare expensive-ish Legacy staples. It also means that more room will be given to Wizard's pet format Type 2, and they will have a new open format, where new cards will dominate and be defining. I think as far as money Legacy staples go there are several others that the "shit will hit the fan" on before the issue of Goyf's monetary cost being too much for the format to sustain comes up. Dual Lands, Force of Will, Sac Lands, etc. so far all have not seen reprinting- these are all atleast of equal importance to the format as Goyf, and are further out of print then he will be.
Since a larger portion of the player base is involved in Type 2 I think it's probably safe to assume that whatever choice they make on reprinting him it will largely be influenced by what sort of impact he would have on that format. I think the risk of his value banning him from Legacy is minimal atleast for a long time to come.
Why do you guys assume Goyf will be $20 forever? It will probably drop to $12ish when it leaves Standard and drop to $10 when it leaves Extended in 3-4 years.
There is no way goyf is going to become a staple card on par with BOP or Wrath. It is way too complicated for that. You're looking at it with incredibly thick Legacy-blinders on.
I don't know who this was directed to but assuming myself and Suckerpunch since we were the two who were mostly discussing it, but I agreed with you that it will drop in value: "A card like Tarmogoyf will likely hold some value for a long time", "Being a brand new card there is a high supply and currently a very high demand for Tarmogoyf, resulting in a large price tag, when it rotates there will still be a ton of them floating around for a while and alot less people needing them, his price will drop", etc.
I was implying they may see fit to print it in a core set. In which case it would likely fall into the price range like BoP and Wrath, powerful cards that are staples to the color, but don't have high price tags as they are generally in-print with them being reprinted in core sets. I don't follow what is way to complicated for what.
My whole last post was saying that whether the card would be reprinted was far more dependent on the state of Standard and that Eternal wouldn't play much part in whether WoC would reprint the creature.
Actually, it already is more of a staple than either card.
I'm not looking at this with legacy blinders on. Just look at the recent top 8s not just of legacy, but of extended, standard, and block. Goyf was a huge force all three formats. So many peopemain le copies of goyf see play in tourney winning decks than do BOP and Wrath.
Goyf is a lot more of a staple than BOP certainly, and Wrath very likely as wll.
Where it differs is, both BOP and Wrath were printed in a whole bunch of editions, and yet remain very expensive. Thats why I dont see it as a stretch to say Goyf will always be crazy expensive if it's not reprinted.
Both BoP and Wrath are pricy despite the huge number of times they were reprinted and the limited number of decks that use them. When was the last time you saw BoP in legacy or vintage. Few extended decks run it either.
Goyf is a rare just like those cards, but it was only printed in one set and something like half the decks in every single format in magic play 4 copies of him.
Last edited by SuckerPunch; 08-20-2007 at 10:13 PM.
I say they reprint him uncommon.
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