Allow Legacy to go the way of Vintage, becoming a niche format with little support.
Aggressively implement and promote Overextended as a replacement.
Break the reserve list and reprint promo versions of many of the worst offenders, price-wise.
Take a hatchet to the format, banning some of the worst offenders, price tag wise.
Sometimes it is whining. When I notice that child is whining, it is not that I am not interested in a conversation with the child or that I am incapable of a conversation with the child. Without a doubt, you have made an assumption that you know where this is headed. I think that you should not assume such things. It is rarely correct to assume that you know how things will pan out. For what its worth, it doesn't' make a lick of sense to say that there are not enough staples to sustain the current popularity of legacy. The current popularity of legacy is being sustained by the current population of legacy cards.
Because "whining" is a term used to refer to a complaint that is without legitimate redress, or to refer to any criticism or complaint made, no matter how legitimate, in order to dismiss it out of hand and thus avoid tackling the meat of the criticism.Originally Posted by Ertai's Familiar
Since there is meat to this criticism your use of the term would fall into the latter rather than the former category.
And if something is true of the moment it must be true forever, and it would be absolutely unprecedented and pointless to use our knowledge of past events, behavioral tendencies and principles of supply and demand to anticipate future events, or to determine that something is unsustainable.All I see is baseless opinion and speculation about what will happen to an already ridiculously popular Eternal format.
Making a prediction that may or may not be valid is not whining. This only underscores how you have no serious or legitimate purpose in using the term other than trying to avoid having to come up with an actual argument for why exactly you think that current trends are sustainable.
And no it isn't. There are a very large number of people that would like to play Legacy but are forced to play either low-tier decks or avoid the format altogether due to high cost in the US and Europe alone, and the situation is much worse in Asia and South America where early staples weren't sold significantly.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
What kind of poll is this? A joke? Two times a synonym for kill Legacy, one for mass-reprints and one for banning all? Seriously?
I don't think anyone got pissed As they announced the second Wasteland reprint as Judge Reward. I said it in several topics on the board: Reprints ARE ok ... but ... some people want them to drop prices drasticly that means doubling and tripling the existing number, resulting in a common-rarity-reprint of force of will for example.
Even the Forces might drop to 10$ and then the Next guy claims that they are still too expensive ... What then? Who are we to judge that 90$ per Force is a no-go and charging 10$ is ok in a free market?
What I find delightfully self-unaware is the pretense that it's the people asking Wizards to reprint cards that are asking for a favor.
They're not. The ones asking that the reserve list be kept are the ones asking Wizards to do something against its own interests. Wizards makes no money off of the secondary market for twelve year old cards. None at all. The natural thing for Wizards to do would be to reprint duals, Wasteland, Force, Mox Diamond, Tabernacle, etc.. in special sets or as promos. Imagine GP attendance if they gave away a dual just for showing up.
Wizards is instead being asked by people who don't want to reprint staples or do anything to lower prices to continue abandoning its own economic interests and the interests of a majority of its customers in order to prop up the value of a few peoples' collections.
So in fact it's the people accusing others of whining who are in fact asking for the continuing of an artificially maintained system of value that favors them at the expense of the general good, for no good reason at all.
And if you ever wondered why people vote Republican, congratulations, now you know.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Yeah, I don't think it's necessary to change the reserved list to Reprint some expensive cards, or at least other cards that may not be functionally identical, but will at least fill a similar enough strategic role.. there could be another very good free counterspell that still does the major things that make FoW a staple, while being a different enough card to perhaps promote slightly different strategies to what FoW decks look like now. It could be like how Bloodghast fills a similar role Ichorid does in Dredge, but lends to a Different strategy and playstyle without being strictly worse or strictly better. note that this doesn't reflect price at all as both cards, and the deck in question are quite cheap. but i mean, I'm young, unwise, and new the format, any wisdom out there?
I also wouldn't be too peeved if prices kept steadily climbing, because they're already high enough that I can only play cheap decks anyway, unless I borrow cards from people.
The poll is useless. Choice 3 won't happen so matter how much we want it to, Wizards already said they won't change their mind. :(
Choice 4 won't happen either, it would piss off way too many people and achieve nothing. Most of the expense of playing legacy comes from dual lands and fetchlands. Is Wizards going to ban those instead of simply printing viable replacements?
Choice 1 and 2 say the same thing. Overextended being aggressively marketed as a replacement will serve no purpose other than to make legacy a niche format with little support.
That would be a shame because modern legacy is easily the most diverse and varied format ever, in the history of magic. There are dozens of tier one decks and literally hundreds of viable tier two strategies and decks capable of winning a tournament in the right metagame.
There is one and only viable route that Wizards can take...
The bulk of legacy's expense comes from the manabase (duals and fetches). Power creep has made most other staples not as essential as they once were.
The easy fix is to print more fetchable dual lands that are near the same powerlevel, or at the same powerlevel as the original duals.
There's a million ways to do it.
New Underground Sea comes into play tapped unless you reveal one card in your hand to your opponent.
New Badlands comes into play tapped unless you lose a life.
New Tundra comes into play tapped unless you have an opponent gain a life.
Wizards actually has printed lands similar to all those examples. However the problem is that those wanna be dual lands they printed do not interact well with fetchlands at all (the Ravnica duals don't because Lightning Bolting yourself everytime you play a land is a horrible idea against any remotely aggressive deck.)
All they would need to do is print strong capable duals that interact with fetchlands and duals won't become a neccessity. You could shave hundreds off dollars off the price of the average legacy deck.
Yes, dual lands will always be technically superior to something like...
Island Swamp
As New Secluded Glen enters the battlefield, you may reveal a black or blue card from your hand. If you don't, New Secluded Glen enters the battlefield tapped. New Secluded Glen is both a swamp and an island.
This has a draw back over the original duals in that they make you vulnerable to Cabal Therapy and will often give your opponent a fairly good idea of what matchup they're facing as soon as you lay down a land. However, neither drawback is as devastating as lightning bolting yourself each land drop though.
However, the weakness to playing those instead of Underground Seas would be so minimal that it really wouldn't significantly weaken your deck in order to do so.
The Ravnica duals came the closest to achieving the same thing, because those were the only duals wizards printed since that interact with fetchlands. However, they are a horrible substitute because Lightning Bolting yourself each time you play a land is an autoloss against burn and aggro decks.
It doesn't have to be that way. Wizards could and should print more duals like Secluded Glen that you can also bring out with fetchlands. Printing such a land won't cripple standard. Anyone who thinks it will is losing perspective.
Reprinting the crap out of the fetchlands will also drive down costs and make the entry price into legacy more palatable.
To sum up...
1. Print viable replacements for the dual lands, for example, by making lands like Secluded Glen and Graven Cairns fetchable. If those two lands functioned with fetchlands, they would certainly see a lot more play.
2. Reprint cards not on the reserved list like fetchlands, tarmogoyf, force of will and wasteland, in a legacy specific release. Commandeer is a legacy/vintage specific set, these cards could and should show up in that set.
As much hate as the reserved list gets, other than the duals none of the overpriced must play legacy staples are actually on the reserved list. It's not the reason that card prices are unreasonable. And it can be worked around if Wizards prints viable alternatives to the duals.
Last edited by Clark Kant; 04-12-2011 at 09:50 AM.
I think an interesting case study would be to review the data from MTGO's gradual release of Eternal playables via Master's Edition.
Up until ME3, the choke point was Force of Will (from a terribly undersold set ME1), Lion's Eye Diamond (same time period), and the duals. USea was trading for about 45 tix. ME4 came about, addressed the shortage of duals, and now USea is at a steady <20.
The Magic Online Eternal community has had this discussion numerous times, and the best conclusion to each quarter's discussion resulting in promo releases of staple cards. Visualize a foil promo new frame Force of Will if you will. This is very simple matter to "program" online, but has not been implemented. I'm of the opinion that promo reprints (including, but not limited to GP attendance or even PTQs) would be the best avenue to not only introduce more copies into circulation, but also increase attendance at events.
This option results in a win/win/win scenario for WotC:
1. It appeases players on making OOP cards available without a high cost.
2. Increases tournament attendance, which typically translates into a competitive "bug" (read: repeated attendance)
3. Allows the singles market (dealers/ shop owners) to have a larger, and more broad market.
Is this plan feasible? Is it in the better interests of both the publisher and the consumer of Magic: the Gathering? Perhaps someone with better understanding of the commercial enterprise could fill in details that I may have overlooked or missed.
West side
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Thats completely retarded. Duals are pretty obviously too good, as they are strcitly better than basics unless the meta is developed enough to have nonbasic hate for them. Wizards shouldn't warp and gut standard/extended/whatever to manipulate the card prices of this one format. Unless they print new cards that are like, media inserts that arent t2 legal.
I will make use of every tool that fate presents.
How exactly would my proposed new duals warp/gut standard. If anything, it would make standard much more diverse and make significantly more strategies viable.
Because dual lands are too good. There should be consequences of playing multiple colors, and those consequences are a weakened manabase. When basic lands are nearly obsolete in standard, something is wrong
I will make use of every tool that fate presents.
That's basically going the way of EDH, which is MUCH worse than going the way of Vintage.
@Reprinting alternative-duals: They would not be released as Standard legal sets in Standard sets obviously. It will be released in the so-called 'EDH packs' or potentially what WotC may start printing as 'Eternal packs'. Visualize a pack of Tempest/Stronghold/Saga collection of 15 cards, with its commons/uncommons/rares, with both crap rares and uncommons and commons. Not sure how this will pan out, but I don't think it should present much issue except to the people who are sensitive to the Reserved List.
Decks that I care about:
Steel Stompy
UWx Landstill
Dreadstalker
DDFT (10% practice)
Mangara on MWS? You must be masochistic. -kiblast
Given that option #3 is out of the question, I chose option #4.
For reference, from Aaron Forsythe's Random Card Comment of the Day on Thunder Totem:
Given this comment and others by Wizards, #3 is a nice - perhaps even ideal - option that is off the table. Yes, in theory, there is a nonzero chance that these cards could be reprinted, but given popular opinion about the Reserved List in the past, the opinions of R&D luminaries like Forsythe and Rosewater, and the actions of the company despite those opinions, I would argue that it's sort of like saying that we can solve an environmental crisis by waiting for aliens to come give us their cold fusion technology so that we can have infinite clean energy forever. Perfect solution, ruined by impracticality.
That said, I would vote to ban the dual lands and reprint what can be reprinted (Force, Waste, Vial, etc). Banning the duals actually makes mana base construction more interesting in that there are real sacrifices to being greedy, and there are also real choices to be made (Rav duals? Shadowmoor filter lands? Painlands? Vivid lands with Reflecting Pool? And so on). Duals are also a large part of the cost associated with any multicolored deck. Random old cards like Moat and Candelabra will still be expensive, but they go in only a small portion of decks, and aren't necessary to build the vast majority of the available options; duals, on the other hand, appear in many decks which are otherwise rather reasonable to build in terms of cost.
Keep in mind that there are still plenty of cheap - and viable - options for the format. Affinity, Elves, Dredge, and mono-red Goblins all spring to mind (the latter not so much now because of Wastelands, but Ghost Quarter seems like a reasonable substitute), and Goblins is usually at least a solid deck, and sometimes the best deck.
Arguably, this is what WotC has been doing all along. Why haven't these lands become commonplace? Because the originals are marginally - but strictly - better. Ceteribus paribus, that small difference is the essence of at least mirror match success/failure rate on very competitive levels.
Secluded Glen
Blood Crypt
Grove of the Burnwillows
Arguably, even if the drawbacks were smaller, the cards' inherent inferiority would still keep the duals' prices high.
Supposing that the WotC reprint and price elasticity policy will follow a Vintage-ish assumption of ceteribus paribus = doing nothing at all, the prices of mana bases will climb higher until Legacy = Vintage 2.0 (price-wise). I just can't realistically predict anything other than that happening for the dual prices, which is why I voted for option #1.
Although with combo decks becoming more and more viable, lands such as Gemstone Mine, Scars block of lands, City of Brass, Pain land cycle (Sulfurous Springs etc.) are starting to look very much like duals. In a non-blue = non-Brainstorm, non-Daze decks they could already replace the fetches + duals package at only a small margin of the overall manabase cost.
Ironically, with Wasteland price going higher as well, at some point it may well start paying off to go all-nonbasics because most people can not afford the Wastelands (although there are still Moon effects, Back to Basics, etc.).
Actually if they were to introduce those in the next block it would still be fairly sane since the Zendikar fetches are rotating out of standard, would be about as good as Ravnica duals were when Extended was well Extended. Honestly a lot of these cards could be reprinted without too much hard to the Standard or Extended format. Force of Will would be strong, but not format breaking since strong control decks generally don't run enough blue to support it, Wasteland would be unfun possibly but would keep new duals in check. Force of Will is one I want to comment on a bit more though. Force I think would be perfect in the next standard, without any real combo decks, stronger aggro decks, that would punish Force based control, it could be a simple blip. In extended it would still not do too much, since the next era will reflect the past standard in which decks like Jund were extremely popular. I do believe for standard at least if they reprinted Force that Mana Leak would have to leave the format as well, but Spell pierce is leaving as well, so where is the harm. What cards does a typical blue based deck have in it that it would be willing to pitch, Preordain? If they rotated out Mana Leak, did not reprint Spellpierce, and hell Jace, the Mindsculptor would be gone as well, there is barely any real blue cards, that would probably just be suboptimal to play, that would make Force strong in standard. I am sure decks like Grand Architect with Trinket and Treasure Mages would pop up, but those can easily be beat, and new strategies naturally can come up. Force of Will was strong in its Standard era because it was a combo filled era, against an aggro format, it is no where near as game breaking. And who knows, maybe they will accidentally create a combo that needs Force in the format.
Also functional, but not identical, reprints would be just fine, since fetches are going to be out of Standard, though in Extended, but you would not have them together in the format that they really care about, so it would not be that game breaking.
Also I voted to abolish the Reserved list, though that was most likely an order from someone at Hasbro, not within Wizards itself. From a business standpoint, I am a business student, it makes sense as it probably conflicted with some overall company policy about promises to customers, and might have been a result of any sort of class action lawsuit they might have faced if they had abolished it. I can see a few scenarios that would create that decision, and uphold it. I do not agree with that decision, but if the potential loss on the lawsuit was bigger than the potential gains they would get from selling the reprints, I can understand the point of upholding the Reserved List.
Overall I think the prices should plateau soon however. While the format has grown significantly, I believe we are reaching our critical mass, and prices are beginning to reflect that. With the best cards in the format that are not lands coming out of new sets these days it is much easier to assemble the shell of a deck, minus the manabase typically. Also fetches should not be considered a problem as their price is not prohibitive in any ways and were recently expanded upon in Zendikar. So what we really need are things like a reprint of Force of Will, perfectly hunky dory with Wizards, preferably in a Standard Block so the surge in availability is huge instead of minute A promo version of wasteland in some kind of duel deck, event deck etc etc, and functional, but not identical, reprints of duals. I believe that would solve most of the problem with Legacy, ignore the Reserved list, and make Wizards a ton of money.
I didn't vote. Assuming that $1500 decks are unsustainable is not an assumption I'm willing to make. If deck prices actually were unsustainable, I would hope they just push overextended. I like the reserve list and I think banning due to price is asinine.
This doomsday scenario appears to be predicated on two phenomena: a substantial fraction of Legacy staples collecting dust in the shoeboxes of former players who don't want to sell for whatever reason, AND potential new players avoiding the format due to cost/scarcity. (Please correct me if I've misread your argument.) I think both are unlikely.
A substantial fraction of Legacy staples are already collecting dust in the shoeboxes of former players. As prices go up, the rate of shoeboxes hitting Ebay should go up relative to the rate of current decks entering shoeboxes. Heck, look at threads on this site for the anecdotes. Some of the big collectors are talking about selling everything (or everything but one deck, or everything but 40 duals. Still, selling). On the whole, Legacy staples are coming out of shoeboxes, not going into them. The cardpool is growing.
Some potential new players will be discouraged when they decide that the best deck is out of their price range. For them, "play tier 2 decks" is not a solution. Plenty of others will play a tournament with an unmodified Standard/Extended deck and then begin upgrading. Others will start playing competitive Magic for the first time, decide that Legacy is the format for them, and put together a cheap Tier 2 deck. Yes, these new players will be very slow to migrate to stronger decks, perhaps even slower than they have been historically. Yes, local metagames will be full of bad decks, perhaps even moreso than today. That is hardly heralding the death of the format.
Your point about Legacy in Asia and South America is probably correct, though. If there isn't already a Legacy scene, then new players won't bother.
I said that the popularity of the format is being sustained by the population of the cards. How is this not true. Is refers to the present tense, which was the tense of your assertion you originally made. You inserted the word trend in your response, I didn't, in reference to sustainability.
You connected the point that you made an assumption with my comment regarding how people whine. I did not say that your assumption about the future was whining, I said that asking for reprints or bans was. I am just tired of hearing people complain when they know, if they thought about it, that their opinion has been heard, many times over, by the people who make the decisions. Wizards is not going to reprint dual lands, ever. You are mistaken if you think otherwise. Don't even hope for it.
I enjoyed that you cherry picked my examples of new cards that have changed the format. It was not an authoritative list. It was neither exhaustive nor suggestive that each card was amazing. The point is that Wizards has, in total, dramatically changed the face of legacy over the last few years through the printing of new card designs. There is a lot of freedom that wizards has even given the restrictions imposed by the reserved list. I did suggest that the yet to be released card is good against combo. It is in my opinion. Why don't we wait and see if it sees play.
Take this down by itself.
You have made an assumption of how this format will develop assuming the other options are not what occurs. Your assertion of the future state is that it will go the way of vintage. I do not see this being true. Care to elaborate? Remember that I can say that Legacy is popular and that attendance in tournaments is high. It would be silly if you were to assert that the card pool cannot support large weekly tournaments. What more could you want as evidence that there are a lot of Legacy cards. Vintage was never as popular as legacy is now, and the legacy tournaments are no proxy. Yes, there is a finite number of legacy cards. Yes, they are getting more expensive. However, tournament attendance is higher that anyone here imagined a few years ago.
There are enough legacy cards to support one of the largest tournament circuits in magics long history. The circuit is all over the United States, from coast to coast, running weekly events in excess of 100 participants.
To increase the popularity of legacy, there is only one card that wizards needs to reprint en masse http://magiccards.info/tp/en/71.html
I will make use of every tool that fate presents.
Perm you are made of win.
But seriously people, the solution is simple, and hopefully Wizards takes some of our suggestions to heart and thinks of new ways to help us out, while making money. Also stop taking things so personally, the original assumption is one being made across the board, so it is good to analyze it in that way. It is also good to bring in new perspectives, just don't get uppity because someone disagrees or has a different point of view on it. Be an adult, make your statements and see if we can cohesively come up with some good ideas. Wizards probably checks things like this forum for potential solutions anyways, so try to come up with some ideas.
On the note that reprints with a downside would still keep the original prices high, they could also spawn more diverse strategies. Grove of the Burnwillows + Punishing Fire is actually quite good against an aggro meta, trick is you can't fetch for a Grove, so why not make a fetchable version. I know I would at the very least test it, and probably play it if I were expecting lots of Goblins, Merfolk, etc. Taking some of the currently used drawbacks, and simply making them fetchable is not a bad idea, sometimes it could be preferred. For instance take the drawback of the current M11 duals, and simply make them fetchable, it means a basic is already in play, which means you are building a solid manabase anyways, work jsut as good as the original duals, and doesn't have lasting effects that benefit the opponent, like 2 damage from the shock duals or a constant +1 life from Grove of the Burnwillows. Instead of thinking in a state of Ceteris Peribus, which is crap by the way even from an economist's point of view, instead think of how to change things. All things staying the same only lasts for 3-4 months anyways. Who knows what cards the next set will bring and how it will change the format. Cards like Iona, half of Alara block, Tarmogoyf, Zendikar fetches, Stoneforge Mystic, Vengevine, all change the game, change how things are structured and how the format evolves. If you want change then try to help plan it ahead, and give some good ideas to Wizards, if it is good enough, and would benefit them, I do not believe they would ignore it.
Also be mindful of how your changes would affect not only this format, but others as well, though most of us do that anyways.
I see people discuss the reserve list and explain how it is so unreasonable and how it is there only to protect the interest of a small few. I don't agree with the reserve list as a player at all. I would prefer for prices to be reasonable for all cards and by reasonable I do mean cheap.
But I do think there is a reason for it to be there. It is there to reward those players who supported the company in the very early days. Those that bought the cards when the game was a completely unknown. There was no realistic expectation of future value there. But these customers supported the company at a critical time and their reward, especially if they held on to their cards, is financial value. It might not make a lot of sense to present and future earnings but it does help customer confidence in the product on a long term basis. And Magic as a whole being a success in the long term is most important thing for Wizards and Hasbro, not just one format.
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