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.
Blame yourself. I witnessed you sell your Bant CB-Top deck to Eli for next to nothing. Control your emotions.Originally Posted by Hollywood
Im not sure where this average comes in. I spent a week on ebay and for $90 I bought myself LED-less dredge. Only suckers pay retail.
You look bored, I wish
everything about the danger
wouldnt make you such a stranger.
I just wanted to highlight this gentleman's post as he has been making excellent posts on various MTG sites regarding the issue (or non issue) that this thread highlights.
Keep up the good work Backseat.
It's a gentlemans post for a childs game. This game is meant for teenagers, it's become too cost prohibative for them to even build tier 2 decks.
You look bored, I wish
everything about the danger
wouldnt make you such a stranger.
I'm not sure if I understand the logic that prices skyrocketing means that Legacy is healthy. That's usually just the opposite of reality. Most people playing Legacy right now did not pay current prices for their decks. This is true even for people who got in a year ago, much less long-time players. It's nonsensical then to say that the past year's worth of price spikes represent format health. Just the opposite. The format is running out of room; this is why prices are spiking. And the market is not efficient. It's not going to sink prices back down once people who are currently playing gradually decide to get out of the game. And as current players gradually lose interest and new players decide that this hobby isn't worth several months' rent just to get into, Legacy will die.
I mean this is a basic economic force you have to understand. Underground Seas being $500 a playset doesn't meant that all or most or even a significant number of current players with a playset of Underground Seas are or were willing to pay $500 for those cards. It means that Underground Seas are nearly all picked up, no one wants to sell enough to meet demand, and dollars are chasing the few duals still floating out there.
Tournament attendance is a lagging indicator here. Card prices are going to be a leading indicator of what the format is doing. And right now it's already showing signs of decay.
Also, I'm not clear how Wizards releasing promos or a Master's Edition that would sell like gangbusters would hurt Magic shops. It seems like this is the opposite of reality.
Card values fluctuate. I don't see why someone who's sitting on 200 duals should be sheltered from economic realities at the cost of everyone else.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Do you have any links to tournament data to support this? SCG Tournaments seem to be doing pretty well.
Backseat_Critic sums up everything I would say in response to the OP and other critics, but in a much more civil manner.
In my words: When you are playing for money, you need to invest money.
If you are not playing in a competitive tournament, go ahead and proxy. No one is stopping you from playing the game - an Underground Sea from an Epson printer functions the same as one from Wizard.
When a person threatens to quit Magic or foretells that Legacy will die because "QQ I want everything to do reprinted into $10 cardboards" -- I am just glad that person will always go through life as someone who has no perception of how the free market operates.
I still think the poll is misleading because #3 in a nonoption. The closest we'll get to breaking the Reserved List for duals are snow duals (more on this in a second) and tweaked versions of cards like Tabernacle, Moat, Candelabra, etc. which would necessarily have pros and cons to them that set them apart from the originals. Depending on which version is better, the price of the originals may not be impacted at all.
A couple of weeks ago, Aaron Forsythe took questions on his Twitter account about various things Magic-related. I'm not going to dig it up here (it should still be there if you're willing to scroll), but there are a couple of things worth mentioning:
1) In addition to the Thunder Totem comment I previously quoted, Forsythe reiterated that the Reserved List is binding, not going anywhere, and that he can't comment on why the decision was made to strengthen it. The speculation is that WotC lawyers intervened to prevent its repeal, though for what reason is open-ended. We do know from accounts from both Blieweiss and Menendian (who were invited to Wizards to talk about the List) that both came out against it at the time.
2) Wizards has been considering the printing of snow duals as a way to help drop prices, or at least provide a viable alternative. The snow type makes them different enough that you're skirting the RL, but irrelevant enough that these will be the closest to the originals' power level that we can get without actual reprints. I'm paraphrasing here, but he said that the cards were a disappointment to all parties: those that do and those that don't want the original duals reprinted. He also added that Wizards was considering all options short of getting rid of the Reserved List.
Whatever they choose, they need to make a decision soon as the lag time for such a product to hit the market would be high - new art would need to be commissioned, the set would need to go to the printers and then be distributed, etc. If a paper Masters Edition-type set were released, WotC would presumably want to balance it for draft, which requires additional time and would break up the normal release schedule. A FtV set with snow duals would presumably take less time, but the print run would be small (so they would not be cheap given demand) and the foiling process would turn them into a marked-cards nightmare (FtV-foiled cards bend way more than normal foils). Wizards could instead release an entirely different product from what we've seen before, but again, the time lag could do serious damage to the format in the interim. The reality of prices is probably less important in the long run than perception of expense; UNL Power has been falling in price for years, for example.
Anything short of snow duals would fail to address the price issue as those cards would be vastly inferior to the original duals. We already have very powerful lands in the form of filter lands, Ravnica duals, painlands, and the like, and none of them are good enough to see play when you can just run the original duals.
I'm only addressing duals here because they, as a class, are by far the most ubiquitous expensive cards. Force, Vial, Wasteland, Tarmogoyf, and other recent high-value cards can all be reprinted at any time due to not being on the Reserved List. Moat, Candelabra, Tabernacle, and other high-value niche cards that see play in one or two decks are less offensive in the long run than staple mana sources; if you have the cards to build NO-CounterTop, Zoo, and Junk but can't afford the Candelabras to build High Tide, that's not nearly as bad as being unable to afford to build anything more pricey than Elves.
That's why I think they should ban the original duals and reprint what they can. It solves price problems in the near term and the replacements for the original duals are not clear-cut, but will depend on the kind of deck you have. It also prevents runaway speculation from turning off too many people to the format who would otherwise play if they felt they could afford to build [some deck not using Force, Vial, and Wasteland]. Finally, it requires relatively little effort or expense on WotC's part, although you could argue that player backlash would irreparably damage the format; I would argue that the public perception of Legacy being too expensive to get into is worse.
I have a family to support; I don't have the luxury of controlling emotions when it comes to buying and selling cards to make cash back on the fly. I can sustain losses because I have a great job, and believe it or not, I have an extensive collection of multiples which allows me to sell an entire deck at my leisure - if I needed the money then and there.
Spending money on cards is one thing. On gas, it's another. That was also at a time when Force was thirty-five dollars and Wasteland was fifteen.
Eli also gives me good deals - which he actually did believe it or not - because I do big business with him all the time. I have no problem selling cards back to him. I have a full set of Duals and Forces. That deck was approximately 90% extras upon sale. In the end, gas money is what winds up killing me on the trips to the events I attend. You figure you spend a good portion of your trip on gas, and assuming you Top Eight, you're just barely breaking even at any given advertised Legacy event posting decent prizes. How am I supposed to sustain that level of spending when I have no ability to really make cash off the trip anyways and can make more money selling cards and walking home with more bread?
I love when people that don't understand anything about economics start singing the gospel of what they believe to be "the free market."
Uh. I'm not sure how that doesn't support my point, part and parcel of which is Legacy getting more popular over the past few years. Most people playing now paid somewhere in the realm of $1-200 for a playset of duals. Those are the people that are going to tournaments for the most part. The lagging indicator is prices, which have spike dramatically not because the format is growing at a faster rate- attendance from what I've seen seems to have stabilized at around 180-240, or about half the Standard showing- but because duals are becoming unavailable, in addition to some other staple cards. What's amazing is that even at these spiked prices, Starcity is still almost sold out of duals entirely.
And to top this off, people still don't seem to grasp that Legacy is and has aspirations of being a global game. Legacy is limited to Europe and North America, since accessibility is even worse in Asia and South America. South American pros were bitching about Legacy getting a GP back when you could build nearly anything for $800 or less.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Like Chronicles?
A founding member of Team Bluff the Lotus - Bringing the crazy from Bob's Baseball Dugout
I wholeheartedly agree with you on this one. However, there are some aspects I would like to clarify about my earlier post related to your other point...
I agree with you in that better "2nd choice" fetchables would boost the amount of players moving from kitchen table proxies to small/local tournaments. This could solve the PRACTICAL problem of sustaining a Legacy community with new players joining, as there are reduced barriers of entry (lower costs & less effort required to get hands on the new fetchables).
However, when it comes to the PHILOSOPHICAL issue of "not affording old duals -> poor performance in mirror match in TOP TIER events":
There would be unequality on top tournament level because of the hefty price tag of the strictly better original duals. Given otherwise equal decks, skill and luck (which may be an improbable assumption in itself), this smallish difference would decide the mirror match winner in top tier games. All in all, this approach IMO only dilutes the problem we currently have. It can be argued that diluting instead of solving is good enough for practical terms (as I attempted to clarify above), but philosophically the same problem still exists: there are two tiers of people, like there are now - those with and without access to cards which are superior to their counterparts.
...and if there was to be something which is alternative to old duals instead of strictly worse, these new lands could be run alongside old duals instead of replacing them to create some currently unfathomable strategic advantage over the people who can not get their hands on both (dodging Extirpate hitting all of XY producing lands by diversifying between old dual and new dual is the first, although not the best, example to come to my mind). Which once again does not philosophically solve the issue.
In my previous post, I argued that if things progress as they are, Legacy will turn Vintage-ish. By this I meant e.g. high price of entry, maximum practical player amount gets reached at some point, new players almost completely cease to enter because of barriers of entry and low level of events.
It was pointed out that I was merely stating the current state of Legacy, which should be obvious to people reading this thread, and that this is not sufficient unless I suggest remedies (although by reading through the responses I think the situation is not yet evident to some people, and that the facts should be even more explicitly rubbed into their face). I would like to comply.
Firstly, one of the main points I had earlier (but which was promptly ignored) was the following: If you have a deck which does not greatly benefit from shuffling the deck mechanic of fetches (Brainstorm, S.D.Top, etc.), there are almost enough alternative lands to build up a completely non-basic land suite for a 2-color deck. Hopefully with future lands, 3-color deck. This is an alternative instead of being strictly worse in these specific kinds of deck strategies only (limitation #1 to keep in mind), because they have an alternative cost to mana fixing (something else than losing life), which is simultaneously both an advantage and a disadvantage (limitation #2: I consider the fetching advantage of "thinning" to be small enough to be negligible in the average course of 1 Legacy game to have real effects on game result). However, fetching for basics to dodge non-basic hate is something these decks can not do, which further limits them to being alternatives to completely-non-basic-land-base-fetch-dual-builds. Which is limitation #3, and which is the main problem of this strategy at least as long as Wasteland and other non-basic hate remains commonplace. This manabase option suits quite a narrow amount of current Legacy deck builds, I agree, but as new 2-3 color nonfetchable lands with alternative downsides are printed, should come about and perhaps even get popular eventually.
For the next few options, I beg to go out-of-the-box, and most certainly outside the extremely limited scope of the poll options.
2) As Legacy is not THAT serious as a GP/PT format and not-that-well supported by WotC to begin with, I personally can see future Legacy events being run like many Vintage events have been in the past: by allowing some proxies into the tournaments (strict limitation rules apply). I don't care about the practical implementation as such (proxy 5/10/X cards maximum, or proxy duals/lands only), which is up to the tournament organizer. The MAJOR downside of this approach IN THE PAST was that unsanctioned = no player rewards (which the players wanted very much). With the player reward program abolished, the current downsides are not having Eternal Rating affected, and "purists" with large collection complaining about letting players with less money to enter the tournament. Firstly, I choose to personally consider Eternal rating qualifying to WotC-hosted events as a secondary issue; but I acknowledge that eternal rating is a personal development goal or internet penis measurement to some players. Secondly, "purists" complaining in small tournaments should not be a problem, because in many communities there are generous players who borrow cards from their collection for free just to keep the local Legacy community alive. Also, not having to buy the most expensive cards can seriously affect the total price of investment, and make it more encouraging to invest in at least some cheaper Legacy staples and spread the hobby.
3) Ban fetchlands. Why fetches rather than duals? Because fetches can fetch basics and avoid non-basic hate, but running all-dual manabase to avoid mana screw would have a more concrete downside (vulnerability to non-basic hate), making duals much less good. I have not given sufficient thought to the implications of this approach. Most likely, I am advocating something completely unfeasible here, because it would be bad for counterbalance, which in turn has historically kept the combo archetype in check. Furthermore, it would advocate more mono-color builds which is most likely good for the budget but possibly "less subjectively fun" than the current format where multicolored decks are the norm rather than exception. But hey, it's a brainstormed concept. Someone could run some tournaments with that deckbuilding rule in place. I think the results would be interesting.
Chronicles sank a few cards that were underprinted and played for novelty value, also largely due to being over-printed. Does anyone honestly think that there would be even the slightest chance of this happening if Wizards began, say, a series of 5 Duel Decks, where each deck had one dual in it?
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Chronicles caused a huge backlash from dealers that eventually brought about the reserved list, and no I can't see wizards making that mistake again (i.e. No reprints for expensive old cards on the list).
A founding member of Team Bluff the Lotus - Bringing the crazy from Bob's Baseball Dugout
I think an idea I had a while ago is the best solution: the reserve list will be composed of cards that were only printed in english.
Problem solved. It would be the stuff that didn't make it to revised, antiquities and arabian nights, plus half a dozen cards from starter. Collectors are happy, players too.
Please wizards? Pretty please?
Sorry I'm not following the order of this thread whatsoever, but I just wanted to make one point:
Part of getting more people in the format requires distributing playable cards and decks to new players (aside from reprints which are at Wizard's discretion). We're reaching a point where it's not easy to casually switch between flavor-of-the-month or pet decks without a significant investment. This is okay by me if it means tournament attendance continues to grow. It's a sacrifice we'll all going to have to make.
Unlike 1994, no dealer today lives under the delusion that they should or can be sheltered from fluctuations in card values. Dealers also stand to benefit from any reprint of duals etc.., and other cards, many of which aren't even on the list like Goyf, Force and Wasteland.
I think the word you may mean here is "speculators", which, again, fuck 'em. Magic isn't your 401k.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I think there's a solution that helps everyone out without pissing off too many people and giving the most cards to the most people.
My thoughts are this:
You release a Timeshifted-esque set along with an expansion (ex. the next block in September). In each pack, you have 1-5 (not sure how many you'd need so that the price of the packs doesn't become infinite) cards from an alternate set, like Timeshifted. But, they aren't legal in any format except Legacy or Vintage.
You print 100 offenders of equal rarity in the set to drive the cost down of certain staples. By distributing in Standard legal sets, Standard players have the opportunity to either build staples to get into Legacy, or sell them to other players, thus increasing distribution of staples.
You'd also have to print these packs on mass so as to not have huge market shortages worse than they'd already be: you'd have to imagine "Hidden Treasures" scenario, but larger. Print the hell out of the set, thereby devaluing the cards in it (literally, they'd be printing money).
It'd be win-win for Wizards: you print cards that offend, but aren't necessarily on the reserve list, plus you sell a ton of packs.
Cards could be old art with new frame (with whiteborder?) to keep some demand for older, original, blackborder versions and thus, slightly higher prices (maybe $20 Whiteborder vs. $25 blackborder original?)
Cards that should see print: Rishadan Port, Wasteland, Force of Will, Top, Aether Vial, Brainstorm, Swords, Lord of Atlantis, Piledriver, Lackey, and the list goes on. Equal rarity would mean you wouldn't have a huge shortage of Forces or Wastes compared to Lord of Atlantis.
OR:
Release it as a stand-alone promotional set, not attached to a standard product, but with the same idea, with the same limitations.
--
Personally, I own a lot of duals and staples, but I'd be glad to see if they reprinted duals in whiteborder for more people to get into the game. Beta duals or Pimp copies wouldn't take a hit with a reprint, since a reprint isn't a beta dual. Reprinting in blackborder would be a worse idea, in theory, especially if you wanted to reprint duals. True, Magic isn't a 401k, and I stand to lose thousands of dollars if they reprint, but I DON'T CARE. I didn't get into this game almost ten years ago to retire. I got into it to have fun, and right now, when a child can't save their allowance to play a game, that sickens me, because I was in that children's boat not THAT long ago.
Thoughts?
-Matt
That's like saying the first time you had awkward virgin sex something went awry and went counter to a person's expectations in teenage land. Did that stop said people from trying again and again? "Practice makes perfect" as seen with the rise of the From the Vault series and other random shenanigans that have met with much praise.
From what the nets have been saying about where a few years ago WoTC summonsed a whole slew of people that sold cards on the secondary and primary market said that the reserved list hurt more than it helped. Considering many dealers such as Starcity deal with primary and secondary markets, the increase in new product cycles such as selling and eventually reselling good product brings in profits. There is also the factor of creating a huge niche format, and frankly it's something that chokes out new players.
The faster rotation in extended has hurt extended's popularity, and increased Vintage as a place where "your shit doesn't rotate." I feel that the only other direction is to reprint specific staples like Force of Will and create new staples through the mechanics offered in upcoming sets. This would probably warp the game a bit, but the power level has reached with creatures and spells have weakened a bit. Shuffling around to print new staples with new mechanics would add in more competition for prices.
The other issue might be to ban some of the speed demon key cards to slow down the format. That means getting rid of the some of the mana accelerators and some of the larger staples like Tarmogoyf that kill off specific two casting cost creatures. The format goes for efficiency, perhaps too much efficiency. Slow down the format a step, increases the amount of candidates possible for exploitation. The larger card pool would then cycle back into popularizing more formally second tier decks into 1.0 and 1.5. I realize it might not be totally sexy, but splitting the format into non accelerated and accelerated would probably be better than "overextended." It would still create a rift between people that enjoy the current stamina, and others that do not. It would also create an additional format where dual lands would again be necessary, though.
I mean think of it this way, rather than just having Goblins and Merfolk as the sine qua non of tribal decks, slowing down the format would open up the format to Kithkin, more soldier decks, knights, maybe some rebel variants, vampires, and other competitive deck types that have since rotated out of other formats. While I doubt if we'd ever see a deck built around abusing Lin Sivvi in top tier, that doesn't mean that a vampires variant smoking goblins from time to time wouldn't be a bad thing.
The slower the format, the more cards that are competitive, the cheaper decks are, the more people play them. Ideally perhaps going back to the tempo of old extended when the Dual Lands were still legal in the format. Granted at that point there were a lot of quick decks, but curves were not as aggressive as today and there were far more creatures for specific slots. I would add into this playing with the entire banned list and putting back into the format:
Land Tax
Mind Twist
The other direction is to develop a restricted list such as putting dual lands into the restricted list for both Legacy and Vintage and follow up with an aggressive reprint policy on mana pool cards for the format. Perhaps adding some of the Moxes, Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond, and ect. to that restricted list for the format. This would equally enable people to play both Commander and Legacy concurrently with specific power cards. It would artificially slow down the price grab for staples, but long term as we have seen with Vintage prices they will continue to creep up.
Speaking quite frankly, I feel a slower format is probably a better format. This would allow more Extended decks to better compete in the mainstay, and would cycle in new deck types and open up more cross format hopping. So someone starts in Type 2, upgrades their collections through the intervening years in extended, and then rotate to the eternals. The question is how to slow down the format without emasculating what attracts people to it. That would allow some of the pricier cards to still exist in the format and some of the slower power cards to also rise in price, but there would be enough options to build a "cheap tier 1 or 1.5 deck" and win a tournament.
It would also encourage a higher amount of card cycles and paradigm shifts in the format as new card pools are introduced. One of the main drawbacks for WoTC is that for us in this format we don't really have to buy as much new product, but equally we do not get to play as many newer deck types that cycle through the years since some of the standard decks land themselves directly to the bottom tier by fiat of the format's speed. So the wider choice field for more slots would allow more comings and goings for specific decks.
So in short:
1. The format is too fast and efficient and thus has a smaller card pool
2. The smaller card pool drives up entry level
3. Slow down the format, increase the card pool, stabilize or give new credible options for beginners that can compete with older decks
4. Design would also need to be a bit more active in thinking up "specifically Legacy cards" that can be carried into the format
My main objections to a fast format are:
1. It slims down the eternal formats to just the most efficient cards versus how large the overall card pool actually is
2. Surgical bans would invite more players that have specific decks that are "good enough" in a slower environment, but too low tier to be truly competitive in this format
3. The current format encourages faster and faster cards to replace the fastest cards in the format, where as functionality and interaction rather than pure speed focus would open up deck building opportunities and new deck variants and more newer cards being tournament worthy.
Collectors aren't killing the format, why is their preference for collection and that type of value better or worse than yours? the answer is, it isn't. They are free to value the cards personally as they choose. As an economics graduate, complaints about speculation in general make me l-o-l, so don't even get me started there.
I will make use of every tool that fate presents.
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