Making a public complaint on the Reserved list

[Mr.C]

Not this shit again. They won't abolish that list, ever. Pleeeeeeeeeeeease accept that and move on. It doesn't matter how vocal you are about your butthurt sense of entitlement, you have absolutely no say in this matter.

And here we go again. Took a while, this time.

[prateta]

Not this shit again. They won't abolish that list, ever. Pleeeeeeeeeeeease accept that and move on. It doesn't matter how vocal you are about your butthurt sense of entitlement, you have absolutely no say in this matter.

Can't we be discussing the fact that reserved list is killing the Legacy format? The only butthurt in this topic is you.

[copywriter]

Even though I own Alpha Power I would love to see reprints. I want to play with my cards, not just look at them.

Tell me where to sign and how to spread the word.


- from Norway

[Luklinda]

Can't we be discussing the fact that reserved list is killing the Legacy format? The only butthurt in this topic is you.

I don't understand what you're talking about; legacy isn't being killed or dying off from anything. The format is still growing and larger than ever:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...nd_Prix_events

Attendance for GP's is through the roof and even if WotC is cutting back on legacy GP's next year, SCG is increasing the number of legacy tournaments.

Reserved list exists, the company has no reason to change/alter it so... flap away as much as you want but they're not gonna do anything about it. Might not be the best for players, but from the companies perspective there is absolutely zero incentive to produce reprints at this point. Especially with modern so young and WotC pushing that format.

[Malchar]

Why should I pay the biggest amount money for freaking footsoldiers? Lands are the basic stuff, it shouldn't be the most expensive part of the deck. It makes no sense. I'd love to see some old lands reprinted. Let away dual lands, at least Wastelands and lands like Karakas, Rishadan Port, City of Traitors etc...

Land aren't "footsoldiers". Mother of Runes, Delver of Secrets, Putrid Imp, Grim Lavamancer, and Llanowar Elves are footsoldiers. They also aren't "the basic stuff". Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest are the basic stuff, and the prices for those are actually very reasonable.

Dual lands aren't used in every deck. They are only used in specific multi-color decks. Even something as ubiquitous as Wasteland is only used in about 25% of decks at most. The other nonbasics are really only used in one or two specific archetypes, just like Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Imperial Recruiter, or Imperial Seal.

[Stan]

Why should I pay the biggest amount money for freaking footsoldiers? Lands are the basic stuff, it shouldn't be the most expensive part of the deck. It makes no sense. I'd love to see some old lands reprinted. Let away dual lands, at least Wastelands and lands like Karakas, Rishadan Port, City of Traitors etc...

Nothing personal against this person, but this is not a butthurt sense of entitlement? Boo hoo I want to play with the cool cards but they cost too much. I have a wife, an 11 month old son and I'm currently building a house, and I can play legacy. Get a job, it helps.

You're not petitioning a government, people. This is a private company. They decide their corporate policy, and they don't owe you an explanation for it. They heard who they wanted to hear about it, and if you are reading this and you are not Ben Bleiweis or Steve Menendian, you weren't invited because they don't really care about what you have to say.

Do I wish that they'd reprint duals? Of course. Do I have any delusions that whining and bitching about how I want that on an internet forum matters? Hell no. Their sales are booming, tournament attendance in every supported format, including Legacy is up, and shareholders are happy. Nobody cares what randominternetguy54986235 has to say about it. You're not fightin' da man, you're boring your fellow forumusers with the umpteenth thread about the same, useless topic. Grow up.

/endrant

[thecrav]

Dual lands aren't used in every deck. They are only used in specific multi-color decks.

Where "specific mult-color decks" means "all multi color decks that aren't affinity"

[stage]

It's pretty foolish to pretend Legacy is not an expensive format. Outside of a few fringe decks like Burn, Affinity, and Oops, All Spells!, you're playing an inexpensive deck if you "only" spend $800-1000. I don't know how this compares to other card games, but it's certainly a significant amount of money for most people, especially those who have dependents or don't have a full-time job.

The cost evidently isn't harming the format that much, though, judging by recent tournament attendance, and Wizards has made it pretty clear that they won't reprint Reserved List cards come hell or high water, no matter how many petitions.

It seems like there are many topics to debate which actually produce actionable conclusions, including the following:

1) Should Wizards reprint mid- to high-price staples, such as Wasteland, Karakas, Port, FoW, Tarmogoyf, fetches, Jace, TNN, and Show and Tell?
2) Should Wizards more systematically reprint expensive, lesser-used cards like Grim Tutor?
3) How extensive should reprints be? Should they be in English only, or multiple languages? Should they include foils?
4) Should Wizards set price targets (floors, or ceilings, or both) for cards, possibly depending on factors like rarity and date originally printed?
5) Should Wizards continue printing mythic rares?

My opinion (response to (1)-(4))

I think the goal should be to minimize the financial barrier to entry for competitive Legacy while minimizing the relative decrease in the values of current collections. I believe Wizards should reprint mid- to high-price staples fairly extensively in English nonfoil with relatively very limited, if any, foil or foreign reprints. Wizards would promise to fairly strictly adhere to price targets for staples based on rarity and time since original printing, and would issue reprints semifrequently with quantities depending on cards' deviation from these targets. Reprints would be in great enough quantity that their wholesale price would far exceed average cost of production, so Wizards and players would both be able to benefit from this system.

[Higgs]

I've seen this idea of reprinting non-reserve list staples come up several times and it seems to make a lot of sense at first sight. However what most people are missing is that, easier access to these staples would increase the demand for this format and therefore put a higher strain on the prices of reserve list cards. You'd have more people with FoWs and Jaces who'd want to build Brainstorm decks but the amount of blue duals would remain the same. I think this would stretch the availability problems way too much and end up actually harming the format.

Btw Stan, very good post. I wished this forum had a like button.

[Julian23]

While the thought itself follows some kind of logic, I can't agree with the conclusion.

What you are basically saying is: the more people play Legacy, the worse.

[Higgs]

Not really. For more people to play Legacy you have to give them all. If you give people half and not give the other half, then there'll be an even greater demand for the not given half and that half will still put the upper cap on the amount of people who can play the format as they like. Pivotal reserve list cards, such as dual lands, will still dictate the availability. What good is Jace and FoW without U. Seas or Tundras?

[Julian23]

Not really. For more people to play Legacy you have to give them all. If you give people half and not give the other half, then there'll be an even greater demand for the not given half and that half will still put the upper cap on the amount of people who can play the format as they like. Pivotal reserve list cards, such as dual lands, will still dictate the availability. What good is Jace and FoW without U. Seas or Tundras?

I draw the opposite conclusion here. The more people that want to play the format, the better for the format. If this means prices rising, it also means that more people are actually playing the format...and that's the most important part in the first place. If prices are not rising, there's had probably been no influx of new players to the format.

On another note, even if dual lands were to rise in pricd due to additional interest to play the format, the initial cost to break into it would still be lower than now if WotC were to reprint non-reserved list staples such as Fetchlands, Force etc.

[Higgs]

I think our main focus is we want more people to play the format instead of wanting more people to want to play the format. Printing non-reserved list staples would definitely increase interest in the format but the bottleneck would still be the duals lands. If you increase the supply of everything else and increase the demand, that bottleneck would get even tighter. Obviously there could be an argument here in which the decrease in the prices of reprinted staples could outweigh the increase in the prices of dual lands. But honestly I don't know if it's possible to hit that optimal sweet spot where the overall cost of decks would actually be lower and I sure don't have the background to be able to elaborate on the economics of it all. However my gut feeling says that duals would double in price, everyone would latch onto their existing duals as if it's their last breath and there would be crowds of people who had all these fancy legacy staples without the appropriate manabase to pair with.

[JanoschEausH]

Well they could reprint alot of Legacy's staples. For example Force of Will. I think Force of Will could easily be printed in a new expansion because it would't be good in Standard. Force of Will is only good when degenerate things happen.

[Julian23]

Well they could reprint alot of Legacy's staples. For example Force of Will. I think Force of Will could easily be printed in a new expansion because it would't be good in Standard. Force of Will is only good when degenerate things happen.

In the current Standard, I feel Force of Will would be a really good card for UW and Esper. Having watched the coverage of the latest GPs, I feel card advantage is so disgustingly unimportant to the format, it makes me cry. Players that are able to Sphinx Revelation for 5 without dying on the next turn should never lose.

Other than that, FoW is still a fair card that could easily be printed into Standard. If they make it Mythic though, prices won't really be affected at all.

[Barook]

In the current Standard, I feel Force of Will would be a really good card for UW and Esper. Having watched the coverage of the latest GPs, I feel card advantage is so disgustingly unimportant to the format, it makes me cry. Players that are able to Sphinx Revelation for 5 without dying on the next turn should never lose.

Other than that, FoW is still a fair card that could easily be printed into Standard. If they make it Mythic though, prices won't really be affected at all.

Timmy Mouthbreather won't like it when his overcosted Standard Junk fatty gets countered for free. Hell, Counterspell is considered "too good" - and FoW is the overall better counterspell, CA be damned when it's pitched. FoW would probably see quite some hardcasting, too, considering how slow Standard is + the lack of mana disruption.

[nedleeds]

Seconded

Thirded but make them Alara Foil pack style packs and all foil, English and new border so I'd want no fucking part of them.

[PirateKing]

Thirded but make them Alara Foil pack style packs and all foil, English and new border so I'd want no fucking part of them.

New border like purple or something, like timeshift rarity color style? That would be disgusting, I approve.

[TsumiBand]

Thirded but make them Alara Foil pack style packs and all foil, English and new border so I'd want no fucking part of them.

For serious, this is all it would take.

If the promise is strictly founded on the notion that functional reprints necessarily devalue the originals, I would still argue that from a collector's standpoint, there is a mile-wide difference between an original Beta Scrubland and a theoretical m15 Scrubland. It's the same with damn near any genuine collectible; if I go melt down a bunch of tin cans and cars and flagpoles and construct a perfect replica of the Model A, it isn't the genuine article -- and it's that status as 'genuine original' that provokes the collectible aspect of it, not its content or its in-game function. The words on the pages of Action Comics #1 are not what make it collectible; if it were so, I could simply print the words onto a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper and have it insured for $1m USD.

I will take a new border foil dual with ugly expansion symbols all goddamned day, if it would mean modifying or otherwise dissolving the Reprint Policy. Collectors don't care, because new-border, 20 years after the fact, and so on. Players get their cards.

The people who might 'lose' I guess are players who 'care about their investment' but also want to play those cards regularly. Of the groups described here, IMHO these are the people who seem to have the most sense of entitlement. There are precious few things you can buy and use regularly that maintain their value unless you can repair them. Like, a house -- buy a piece of shit house/car/etc, fix it up, turn it over for more than you bought it for. You can't do that with a Magic card; its condition cannot be improved, its deterioration is guaranteed. I don't care how many sleeves you put on that card, or how gingerly you shuffle it, or how pissed you get when your opponent riffles your deck for you when it's pretty much right there in the floor rules that it is expected to do so. Expecting to be able to regularly haul out your 'prized possessions' and then expect them to increase in value as you continue to use them and continue to mangle them -- however microscopically -- that is wanting your cake and eating it too. It's comparable to taking your Shelby Cobra for a Sunday drive every weekend, and then getting pissed off when it depreciates. You used it, hurp.

[Stan]

For serious, this is all it would take.

If the promise is strictly founded on the notion that functional reprints necessarily devalue the originals, I would still argue that from a collector's standpoint, there is a mile-wide difference between an original Beta Scrubland and a theoretical m15 Scrubland. It's the same with damn near any genuine collectible; if I go melt down a bunch of tin cans and cars and flagpoles and construct a perfect replica of the Model A, it isn't the genuine article -- and it's that status as 'genuine original' that provokes the collectible aspect of it, not its content or its in-game function. The words on the pages of Action Comics #1 are not what make it collectible; if it were so, I could simply print the words onto a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper and have it insured for $1m USD.

I will take a new border foil dual with ugly expansion symbols all goddamned day, if it would mean modifying or otherwise dissolving the Reprint Policy. Collectors don't care, because new-border, 20 years after the fact, and so on. Players get their cards.

The people who might 'lose' I guess are players who 'care about their investment' but also want to play those cards regularly. Of the groups described here, IMHO these are the people who seem to have the most sense of entitlement. There are precious few things you can buy and use regularly that maintain their value unless you can repair them. Like, a house -- buy a piece of shit house/car/etc, fix it up, turn it over for more than you bought it for. You can't do that with a Magic card; its condition cannot be improved, its deterioration is guaranteed. I don't care how many sleeves you put on that card, or how gingerly you shuffle it, or how pissed you get when your opponent riffles your deck for you when it's pretty much right there in the floor rules that it is expected to do so. Expecting to be able to regularly haul out your 'prized possessions' and then expect them to increase in value as you continue to use them and continue to mangle them -- however microscopically -- that is wanting your cake and eating it too. It's comparable to taking your Shelby Cobra for a Sunday drive every weekend, and then getting pissed off when it depreciates. You used it, hurp.

Why? Those people bought cards while being explicitly assured by WotC that those cards wouldn't be reprinted, ever. Their no-reprint expectztion is legitimate. It's the people who insist that this unfortunate promise be broken because they want to play with those cards without having to pay the current market price for them that have entitlement issues. If you want reprints, wait until the copyright expires in the 2060s or 2070s.