Make an announcement that all lands that produce mana will be removed from the reserve list because THE card type that is absolutely, fundamentally necessary to play the game must be reasonably accessible to all players old and new. Vintage is all but dead and Legacy will follow in its footsteps if steps aren't made to bridge new players into an old format.
Then print the ABUR duals in Eternal Masters II and things like Volrath's Stronghold in Commander and FTV type products.
Once this change is implemented and well received, and everyone sees how good it is for the game, WotC could do away with the reserved list entirely without financial risk.
EDIT: Also, they could use the reasoning that old, valuable cards like duals and loti can be, have been, are being and will be counterfeited so they might as well be reprinted legitimately.
Strictly betters are allowed. Only functional reprints are disallowed (which is considered to be same rules text and a different name or creature type).
This should be obvious to anyone who realizes that Wood Elemental is on the reserved list. If strictly-betters were forbidden, then basically every */* green creature printed since would be illegal.
Abolish the reserved list and then reprint all the lands! And when I say this I'm mostly referring to the ABUR dual lands that just should never have been 100+ usd per to begin with and probably not tournament legal now that wizards has decided on what kinds of lands they actually want to print. The original dual lands sort of fall into the P9 category. Prices will crash on a ton of stuff simply because the prices are only holding due to scarcity. Volrath's Stronghold and the ABUR duals could literally be printed in commander products as I recall before the RL the stronghold was like 2-3 dollars and most duals were around shocks?
Let me ask you what cards WERE ment to be 100+ USD? that is a steep road to go down, Why $100 why not $3 (the price of a pack ) or even less since we may give value to commons/uncommons? I mean at that instance why not print whole sets for resale at 0.23 cents per card in the set (but you get the whole set) thats about what a card averages to from pack price.
Okay, we're going down the rabbit hole again.
Going to repost what I put in the frontier thread that is relevant to this (even though I was actually being a little snarky in my original post)
The secondary market is basically a death spiral for the game and any cards that enter it because of how the trading of cards works. The truth is price memory is a myth. What really happens is that a seller runs out of a card, so they put a buylist up to get the cards. Players who bought the card expect a certain amount of value back from the card, so the seller has to set their buylist price high enough to get people to sell them the card. Once the seller gets the card, they have to sell that card at a profit so they increase the price accordingly. Once they run out of cards again the pattern repeats with having to rebuy the same card back from the people they likely sold to. This just keeps repeating constantly until a dollar Sensei's Divining Top reaches 20+ usd or a Chalice of the Void reaches 60+ usd.
Then wizards does a reprint. Well, two things happen:
1) Some sellers start panic selling their cards off asap before people know about the reprint (and usually fail)
2) Others plan on buying up as many cheap copies as they can in an effort to manipulate the market and keep the prices high. This is especially true of mythics since they have a limited supply and with a deep enough pockets and credit rating it is totally possible to do it.
Originally, there was a third party that would also buy up a significant amount of sealed product to sit on since the promise of lotto tickets and high value cards will lead to the box value rising steadily over time, but ever since the Eternal Masters debacle and mass box printings that market has cooled significantly.
So how do you stop this from happening? Easy, you reprint the cards regularly to keep prices in check. Does wizards do this? Technically, they are doing it with modern masters and other masters sets, but the trouble is they aren't doing it for the purpose of market stabilization. Wizards is doing it more so to profit off of the slow perpetual death cycle. It's basically like the plot of Crow Fall: They are the visitors to a dying world gathering resources before the darkness consumes the realm and the lands are fallow.
So then we have the RL. Well, we got the death spiral pattern happening except wizards can't actually reprint the card, so even if the demand is only such that people need maybe one per deck, because they can never reprint them and people who have them have the cards super glued to their bodies, the asking price is huge on the cards.
So at the end of the day, I can't even tell you what a card should be worth and neither is the secondary market. The one who SHOULD be telling people what a card is worth is WoTC given they are supporting standard and modern, both of which are constructed formats. However, they don't and instead leave the pricing to the worst people imaginable like SCG and Channel Fireball. And the reality is this is all because they don't want to spend the money to build a first party support structure for constructed deck building and gameplay. They are far too busy doing cost cutting as is evident with HOU singles and packaging, as well as underpay their employees and force them to pay out of pocket for benefits according to various company reviewing sites, leaving the fate of constructed to the secondary market, which is just hilariously bad in the paper game due to lack of controls.
That is an interesting perspective (I don't know about or play fronter so I did know about your post) Wizards has the most power in the came though, They control the tournament through bannings and controlling what enters it each season. Also can't we deter-man what a "card" is worth based on wizards pricing then? take the pack price and work the math out to determan how much money it would take to get a full set, Deter-man a base via the "rarenss" so Mythics being 8x rarer then rares are worth 8x the vlaue of a rare, uncommons a fraction of a rare and commons even less. ? Effectively that is the price wizars has determaned each card is worth (over the long hall where each mythic is equivalent to all the others and each rare all the others ect.
Abolish the reserved list and then reprint all the lands! And when I say this I'm mostly referring to the ABUR dual lands that just should never have been 100+ usd per to begin with and probably not tournament legal now that wizards has decided on what kinds of lands they actually want to print. The original dual lands sort of fall into the P9 category. Prices will crash on a ton of stuff simply because the prices are only holding due to scarcity. Volrath's Stronghold and the ABUR duals could literally be printed in commander products as I recall before the RL the stronghold was like 2-3 dollars and most duals were around shocks?
Let me ask you what cards WERE ment to be 100+ USD? that is a steep road to go down, Why $100 why not $3 (the price of a pack ) or even less since we may give value to commons/uncommons? I mean at that instance why not print whole sets for resale at 0.23 cents per card in the set (but you get the whole set) thats about what a card averages to from pack price.
Okay, we're going down the rabbit hole again.
Going to repost what I put in the frontier thread that is relevant to this (even though I was actually being a little snarky in my original post)
The secondary market is basically a death spiral for the game and any cards that enter it because of how the trading of cards works. The truth is price memory is a myth. What really happens is that a seller runs out of a card, so they put a buylist up to get the cards. Players who bought the card expect a certain amount of value back from the card, so the seller has to set their buylist price high enough to get people to sell them the card. Once the seller gets the card, they have to sell that card at a profit so they increase the price accordingly. Once they run out of cards again the pattern repeats with having to rebuy the same card back from the people they likely sold to. This just keeps repeating constantly until a dollar Sensei's Divining Top reaches 20+ usd or a Chalice of the Void reaches 60+ usd.
Then wizards does a reprint. Well, two things happen:
1) Some sellers start panic selling their cards off asap before people know about the reprint (and usually fail)
2) Others plan on buying up as many cheap copies as they can in an effort to manipulate the market and keep the prices high. This is especially true of mythics since they have a limited supply and with a deep enough pockets and credit rating it is totally possible to do it.
Originally, there was a third party that would also buy up a significant amount of sealed product to sit on since the promise of lotto tickets and high value cards will lead to the box value rising steadily over time, but ever since the Eternal Masters debacle and mass box printings that market has cooled significantly.
So how do you stop this from happening? Easy, you reprint the cards regularly to keep prices in check. Does wizards do this? Technically, they are doing it with modern masters and other masters sets, but the trouble is they aren't doing it for the purpose of market stabilization. Wizards is doing it more so to profit off of the slow perpetual death cycle. It's basically like the plot of Crow Fall: They are the visitors to a dying world gathering resources before the darkness consumes the realm and the lands are fallow.
So then we have the RL. Well, we got the death spiral pattern happening except wizards can't actually reprint the card, so even if the demand is only such that people need maybe one per deck, because they can never reprint them and people who have them have the cards super glued to their bodies, the asking price is huge on the cards.
So at the end of the day, I can't even tell you what a card should be worth and neither is the secondary market. The one who SHOULD be telling people what a card is worth is WoTC given they are supporting standard and modern, both of which are constructed formats. However, they don't and instead leave the pricing to the worst people imaginable like SCG and Channel Fireball. And the reality is this is all because they don't want to spend the money to build a first party support structure for constructed deck building and gameplay. They are far too busy doing cost cutting as is evident with HOU singles and packaging, as well as underpay their employees and force them to pay out of pocket for benefits according to various company reviewing sites, leaving the fate of constructed to the secondary market, which is just hilariously bad in the paper game due to lack of controls.
That is an interesting perspective (I don't know about or play fronter so I did know about your post) Wizards has the most power in the came though, They control the tournament through bannings and controlling what enters it each season. Also can't we deter-man what a "card" is worth based on wizards pricing then? take the pack price and work the math out to determan how much money it would take to get a full set, Deter-man a base via the "rarenss" so Mythics being 8x rarer then rares are worth 8x the vlaue of a rare, uncommons a fraction of a rare and commons even less. ? Effectively that is the price wizars has determaned each card is worth (over the long hall where each mythic is equivalent to all the others and each rare all the others ect.
Wizards doesn't care about singles costs and has never done proper price control on singles in the paper market. All the math in the world based on pack EV is not the same thing as the company setting a cap on the cost of what certain cards should be at. I could go on for a paragraph about the current reprint strategies they have and their penchant for over-pricing products that contain the reprints, as if demand on the cards themselves isn't going to push prices up thanks to that relentless inbred trading cycle the game has.
TCGs should have value in the cards, but they shouldn't have gotten to the point of Karn Liberated and now Noble Heirarch and Snapcaster Mage. It's just the parent company is completely inept at handling and maintaining singles prices on the paper market, and have proven this year after year since moderns inception.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Make an announcement that all lands that produce mana will be removed from the reserve list because THE card type that is absolutely, fundamentally necessary to play the game must be reasonably accessible to all players old and new.
I like this.
While I would happily see the whole list go, I have been advocating for removal of ABUR duals as a compromise. This would open up a lot of deck options in Legacy.
Your idea is even better because it unleashes Cradle and City. This clears the path for Elves, Sneak Show, and Eldrazi (plus other Stompy variants like MUD, Big Red, Moon Stompy, etc). This opens up almost the entire format!
Going one step further, they could remove all lands and all mana producers. This would give us Tabernacle and LED, which is pretty much everything Legacy needs except for obscure stuff like Drop Of Honey (sigh) and Legends enchantments. They might specifically exclude P9 from this though. If they are going to remove Moxen and Lotus, they might as well kill the whole RL.
Low level stuff can immediately go into standard product where it fits flavor-wise. New art and all that.
Mid-level stuff into supplemental products, maybe one or two in each deck of a Duel Deck package. Nothing crazy, but something nice to help sell the product.
High level stuff in a masters product.
After a while, you could start doing all of them at Masterpiece rarity in standard products, especially the dual lands.
Lots of people seem to believe that advance warning for investors is a generally good idea, though I'm seeing a lot of people saying one year in particular. Is that just a bit of impatience on our part or does everyone here think that's a perfectly reasonable period of time for the news to reach folks who've invested in cards but don't play anymore?
Obviously, someone who doesn't follow the game at all may never get this news with 100 years of advanced notice. Even so, the appearance of providing a "reasonable" period of time for investors may be what saves Hasbro from dozens and dozens of lawsuits spread over decades as old collectors try to sell off cards and realize that the reserved list was broken.
Ähm no. There is the "spirit of the reserved list" that seems to forbid things like legendary or snowcovered dual lands.
Snow covered is actually different enough to print, they almost did once, but they were going to dump them into commander decks and didnt want legacy players to buy up all the product so they were left on the cutting room floor.
Ähm no. There is the "spirit of the reserved list" that seems to forbid things like legendary or snowcovered dual lands.
Snow covered is actually different enough to print, they almost did once, but they were going to dump them into commander decks and didnt want legacy players to buy up all the product so they were left on the cutting room floor.
Gota call bs on this.... No company ever has said "lets not make this product because it will sell to well" if you antispate high sales and problems from it you just PRINT more.
Ähm no. There is the "spirit of the reserved list" that seems to forbid things like legendary or snowcovered dual lands.
Snow covered is actually different enough to print, they almost did once, but they were going to dump them into commander decks and didnt want legacy players to buy up all the product so they were left on the cutting room floor.
Gota call bs on this.... No company ever has said "lets not make this product because it will sell to well" if you antispate high sales and problems from it you just PRINT more.
I will refer you to Commander's Arsenal. The LGS I went to in Texas (one of the largest in the country, which regularly broke regional prerelease attendance records) was allotted a grand total of 3 copies.
Lots of people seem to believe that advance warning for investors is a generally good idea, though I'm seeing a lot of people saying one year in particular. Is that just a bit of impatience on our part or does everyone here think that's a perfectly reasonable period of time for the news to reach folks who've invested in cards but don't play anymore?
Obviously, someone who doesn't follow the game at all may never get this news with 100 years of advanced notice. Even so, the appearance of providing a "reasonable" period of time for investors may be what saves Hasbro from dozens and dozens of lawsuits spread over decades as old collectors try to sell off cards and realize that the reserved list was broken.
So, is one year enough?
It doesn't matter one lick.
People seem to be assuming some sort of notice will help collectors recoup some of their value.
It won't work that way. It doesn't mean all the cards will be reprinted in a year. To me, the question isn't if prices will drop if the RL is abolished, but rather how they'll drop.
The MtG market is very fickle and lame brained investors tend to drive prices for high profile cards. I think a great example of a better representation of player driven forces are with cards like Force of Will. Reprinted several times, the price pattern (not price levels) are what I expect for that card. Another are the ABUR Duals. The pricing pattern between them is what I expect (again not price levels) since their player demand isn't tempered by reprints but rather the vast number of alternate Duals printed.
An example of a card completely out of control is Drop of Honey, since the Lands deck is making rounds, prices for this card skyrocketed to obscene levels. Yet the most recent iteration of this deck to place 2nd at MZM doesn't use it.
They can't reprint the RL in paper.
Legacy is the best format for many people, it is not aimed at keeping new players in unlike Standard- with little support the game has thrived for years, Vintage and Legacy is also the format where people suffer the least from rotation and once they have their deck(s) they need to buy the fewest new cards of all Mtg-ers It would be a terrible business decision by wotc, one I only expect to see if the game is near dead after all else has failed and they want to come back for a last pay day while they can. To reprint them in any other way would be shooting themselves in the foot long term- the equivalent of someone selling their collection- short term boost, long term they are out of the game. Why give players the option of playing the game and buying fewer of their Standard boosters?
The only way you can see these cards appearing in packs is with the original Zen set- as not actually reprinted "treasure" or as non Mtg legal cards (i.e. with no Mtg back, similar to Gold border cards).
You might as well change the title to "how do Ferrari make me an exclusive car that lasts for 20 years and costs £1000".
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
1) Put the Dual lands and all expensive cards (or just all cards) on the RL on every bannlist for every format, so all those cards are unplayable everywhere now.
2) Prices drop drasticaly
3) Reprint those cards en'masse (Make $$$)
4) (Optional:) Pay out those few souls that sue on the now low prices
5) Remove those cards from Bannlists
Solved.
I was going to suggest this as well. Banning them would cause demand to drop and thus prices too.
They key is to absolutely crash the market on the very expensive cards.
Give one year's advance notice:
"The Reserved List has failed to achieve its purpose. It was intended to have game pieces keep their collector value, but instead the scarcity has driven these pieces unaffordable to a section of players who desire them for casual play as well. As of X, 201X, we will be reprinting the dual lands and a series of other cards in a Masters Edition set. The token and basic land slot in this set will be replaced by a very high value card instead. As an example, you might open a Black Lotus in that slot instead of a token or basic land."
They know they will be sued, they prep for this accordingly. Prices would plummet, many of these cards would lose worth and specs would turn to Modern playable items. They can make the rarity relevant by having less Moxen and so on printed than duals.
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The "Crazy One", playing casual magic and occasionally dipping his toes into regular play since 1994.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
If I was going to do it, I would have set up the notice that I'm doing it last year and have the Masterpieces in Dominaria be Power, Dual Lands, Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, ect.
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That was pretty interesting. But dropping a warship on me is cheating. Take it back!
They can't reprint the RL in paper.
Legacy is the best format for many people, it is not aimed at keeping new players in unlike Standard- with little support the game has thrived for years, Vintage and Legacy is also the format where people suffer the least from rotation and once they have their deck(s) they need to buy the fewest new cards of all Mtg-ers It would be a terrible business decision by wotc, one I only expect to see if the game is near dead after all else has failed and they want to come back for a last pay day while they can. To reprint them in any other way would be shooting themselves in the foot long term- the equivalent of someone selling their collection- short term boost, long term they are out of the game. Why give players the option of playing the game and buying fewer of their Standard boosters?
The only way you can see these cards appearing in packs is with the original Zen set- as not actually reprinted "treasure" or as non Mtg legal cards (i.e. with no Mtg back, similar to Gold border cards).
You might as well change the title to "how do Ferrari make me an exclusive car that lasts for 20 years and costs £1000".
It doesn't hurt anyone to have the legacy cards reprinted. People will always desire new experiences and move on from old ones except for nostalgia. Legacy decks don't change much with time and just don't have the same draw that new mechanics and worlds have when playing standard. The vast majority of MtG players can not wrap their heads around legacy decks anyway. There are pauper decks that can literally stomp all over T1 modern decks loaded for bear and those are generally budget legacy.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
They can't reprint the RL in paper.
Legacy is the best format for many people, it is not aimed at keeping new players in unlike Standard- with little support the game has thrived for years, Vintage and Legacy is also the format where people suffer the least from rotation and once they have their deck(s) they need to buy the fewest new cards of all Mtg-ers It would be a terrible business decision by wotc, one I only expect to see if the game is near dead after all else has failed and they want to come back for a last pay day while they can. To reprint them in any other way would be shooting themselves in the foot long term- the equivalent of someone selling their collection- short term boost, long term they are out of the game. Why give players the option of playing the game and buying fewer of their Standard boosters?
The only way you can see these cards appearing in packs is with the original Zen set- as not actually reprinted "treasure" or as non Mtg legal cards (i.e. with no Mtg back, similar to Gold border cards).
You might as well change the title to "how do Ferrari make me an exclusive car that lasts for 20 years and costs £1000".
It doesn't hurt anyone to have the legacy cards reprinted. People will always desire new experiences and move on from old ones except for nostalgia. Legacy decks don't change much with time and just don't have the same draw that new mechanics and worlds have when playing standard. The vast majority of MtG players can not wrap their heads around legacy decks anyway. There are pauper decks that can literally stomp all over T1 modern decks loaded for bear and those are generally budget legacy.
I have never heard anyone say that about MtG players not being able to wrap their heads around legacy decks before. I've read the discussions of Vintage/Legacy vs whatever and I admit some of the interactions take a little thought, but you'ryou're literally saying that Legacy decks are more complicated than Modern?
What is the percentage of Modern cards that make up the Legacy pool? I don't have my computer crunch numbers right now but maybe.... 60% of the pool? Maybe more due to reprints.... MtG players actually can't grok that last 40% of cards?
Honestly Legacy is well within the compass of any Modern player, the two biggest myths are that it is harder than Modern and that its a t1/2 format. You learn the interactions very quickly- Death Rite is not a mana ability as it is targetted and can thus be Pithing Needled, Trinisphere makes a "free" force of will cost 3, Rest in Peace + helm is a combo, Painter's Servant applies even after Humility removes the ability due to the layering, Humility is circumvented by Inkmoth Nexus and other manlands, Blood Moon works the way you want with Urborg, Copying a basic saves Thespian Stage from Wasteland etc. You also learn what cards go in what decks, as with any format- there is as much variety of deck choice as there is in Modern, although the archetypes are different.
What is different is you get more control over your deck, and the decks interact more- even storm can be interacted with, and not just with permanents but also with spells from the hand. There is a lot more bluff and there are more decisions- when to fetch is very important- but you soon pick up on them.
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
It doesn't hurt anyone to have the legacy cards reprinted. People will always desire new experiences and move on from old ones except for nostalgia. Legacy decks don't change much with time and just don't have the same draw that new mechanics and worlds have when playing standard. The vast majority of MtG players can not wrap their heads around legacy decks anyway. There are pauper decks that can literally stomp all over T1 modern decks loaded for bear and those are generally budget legacy.
Wrong. If you expect a reprint of legacy cards to drop prices, then it will hurt people like me. While i can affort to bind my money in legacy staples for the time being, i cannot afford to lose it. A little maybe, but not too much. Without the reserved list, i wouldn´t have put that kind of money into playing cards (which i got to play, nonethteless, not as speculation, but with the confidance, that they won´t lose a big amount of value overnight).
Thats why the reserved list promise is important to me. If it were broken, i would have to cash out, and probably quit magic completly (beside one or two commander decks maybe).
And well, some legacy decks are more complicated than anything you can find in modern, but the whole game and matchups become more complex, because legacy has a lot of good answers, and it is never a good idea to just ignore your opponent, while i think thats often the case in modern.
If you are getting "hurt" by losing value in cards you bought for a card game that is suggesting a whole lot about your spending and investments. I don't really care if the value of the cards I own drop in price. If swords of feast and famine dropped to 5 dollars I'm not going to bat an eyelash, and if the cost of dual lands drops from 100+ to like, 5 dollars, I'd similarly not care. Why? Because I never treated these as investment purchases. I put money into a carefully planned out array of stocks, an IRA, and other resources for that purpose. Investing in something like mtg is just insane.
Furthermore, if you "invested" in mtg, then you have to accept the risks as well as the potential rewards. Nothing goes up forever: eventually the RL will probably come down or MTG becomes irrelevant. You have to make a decision when the time is right to sell out and go into other investments. There is very little difference between people who do this via monetary value or do it via trading for cards.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Some people can only affored to put that kind of money in a game if its not wasted. If thats not the case with you, good for you.
I honestly can't express in a very polite way just how completely bonkers that is. Magic is not now nor was it ever an "investment" or an asset. Until the day you liquidate, magic can only ever be considered a liability. If you can't afford to permanently part with that money then you honestly have no business "investing" your money in that manner.
I'm sorry I can't offer you any sympathy if card prices crash.
If you wish to put my post in context, I prefer real estate with a small selection of stocks and a simple retirement plan. ALL of my hobbies, including Magic, are liabilities. So those Duals I purchased last month are already written off as losses. I don't expect or plan to recoup my costs. I wouldn't want it to happen, but if my collection is destroyed tomorrow, it won't weep over the lost money.
After I kick the bucket and my kids decide to sell my collection of Magic, video games and antique tools for a new home or a trip to Europe, or hand it off to my grandkids, more power to them.
Your money is already lost, you've spent it. My baseball cards aren't worth jack, good thing I don't need to turn them for a profit. If these cards are your investment and your investment loses value, tough break. You're no different than an owner of Blockbuster stock and deserve no special treatment. Go flip houses.
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I know he thinks I'm impressed by a 102 MPH fastball in the 9th inning... Ok, I'm impressed, but that doesn't mean I can't crush it.
Then print the ABUR duals in Eternal Masters II and things like Volrath's Stronghold in Commander and FTV type products.
Once this change is implemented and well received, and everyone sees how good it is for the game, WotC could do away with the reserved list entirely without financial risk.
EDIT: Also, they could use the reasoning that old, valuable cards like duals and loti can be, have been, are being and will be counterfeited so they might as well be reprinted legitimately.
I mean, Dauntless Dourbark costs the same and counts forests too... but it also counts treefolk, and can gain trample. Dungrove Elder costs 1 less and has hexproof. Kalonian Twingrove makes a copy of itself. Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer and Ulvenwald Hydra both count all lands, not just forests, and have another ability.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
That is an interesting perspective (I don't know about or play fronter so I did know about your post) Wizards has the most power in the came though, They control the tournament through bannings and controlling what enters it each season. Also can't we deter-man what a "card" is worth based on wizards pricing then? take the pack price and work the math out to determan how much money it would take to get a full set, Deter-man a base via the "rarenss" so Mythics being 8x rarer then rares are worth 8x the vlaue of a rare, uncommons a fraction of a rare and commons even less. ? Effectively that is the price wizars has determaned each card is worth (over the long hall where each mythic is equivalent to all the others and each rare all the others ect.
Wizards doesn't care about singles costs and has never done proper price control on singles in the paper market. All the math in the world based on pack EV is not the same thing as the company setting a cap on the cost of what certain cards should be at. I could go on for a paragraph about the current reprint strategies they have and their penchant for over-pricing products that contain the reprints, as if demand on the cards themselves isn't going to push prices up thanks to that relentless inbred trading cycle the game has.
TCGs should have value in the cards, but they shouldn't have gotten to the point of Karn Liberated and now Noble Heirarch and Snapcaster Mage. It's just the parent company is completely inept at handling and maintaining singles prices on the paper market, and have proven this year after year since moderns inception.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
While I would happily see the whole list go, I have been advocating for removal of ABUR duals as a compromise. This would open up a lot of deck options in Legacy.
Your idea is even better because it unleashes Cradle and City. This clears the path for Elves, Sneak Show, and Eldrazi (plus other Stompy variants like MUD, Big Red, Moon Stompy, etc). This opens up almost the entire format!
Going one step further, they could remove all lands and all mana producers. This would give us Tabernacle and LED, which is pretty much everything Legacy needs except for obscure stuff like Drop Of Honey (sigh) and Legends enchantments. They might specifically exclude P9 from this though. If they are going to remove Moxen and Lotus, they might as well kill the whole RL.
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RUGLegacy Lands.dec
RUGBLegacy Lands.dec
RGLegacy Lands.dec
WUBRG EDH Lands.dec
UBR EDH Artificer Prodigy
B EDH Relentless Rats
Low level stuff can immediately go into standard product where it fits flavor-wise. New art and all that.
Mid-level stuff into supplemental products, maybe one or two in each deck of a Duel Deck package. Nothing crazy, but something nice to help sell the product.
High level stuff in a masters product.
After a while, you could start doing all of them at Masterpiece rarity in standard products, especially the dual lands.
Lots of people seem to believe that advance warning for investors is a generally good idea, though I'm seeing a lot of people saying one year in particular. Is that just a bit of impatience on our part or does everyone here think that's a perfectly reasonable period of time for the news to reach folks who've invested in cards but don't play anymore?
Obviously, someone who doesn't follow the game at all may never get this news with 100 years of advanced notice. Even so, the appearance of providing a "reasonable" period of time for investors may be what saves Hasbro from dozens and dozens of lawsuits spread over decades as old collectors try to sell off cards and realize that the reserved list was broken.
So, is one year enough?
Snow covered is actually different enough to print, they almost did once, but they were going to dump them into commander decks and didnt want legacy players to buy up all the product so they were left on the cutting room floor.
Gota call bs on this.... No company ever has said "lets not make this product because it will sell to well" if you antispate high sales and problems from it you just PRINT more.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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Vintage Masters $19.99 MSRP Per Booster Pack
It doesn't matter one lick.
People seem to be assuming some sort of notice will help collectors recoup some of their value.
It won't work that way. It doesn't mean all the cards will be reprinted in a year. To me, the question isn't if prices will drop if the RL is abolished, but rather how they'll drop.
The MtG market is very fickle and lame brained investors tend to drive prices for high profile cards. I think a great example of a better representation of player driven forces are with cards like Force of Will. Reprinted several times, the price pattern (not price levels) are what I expect for that card. Another are the ABUR Duals. The pricing pattern between them is what I expect (again not price levels) since their player demand isn't tempered by reprints but rather the vast number of alternate Duals printed.
An example of a card completely out of control is Drop of Honey, since the Lands deck is making rounds, prices for this card skyrocketed to obscene levels. Yet the most recent iteration of this deck to place 2nd at MZM doesn't use it.
Legacy is the best format for many people, it is not aimed at keeping new players in unlike Standard- with little support the game has thrived for years, Vintage and Legacy is also the format where people suffer the least from rotation and once they have their deck(s) they need to buy the fewest new cards of all Mtg-ers It would be a terrible business decision by wotc, one I only expect to see if the game is near dead after all else has failed and they want to come back for a last pay day while they can. To reprint them in any other way would be shooting themselves in the foot long term- the equivalent of someone selling their collection- short term boost, long term they are out of the game. Why give players the option of playing the game and buying fewer of their Standard boosters?
The only way you can see these cards appearing in packs is with the original Zen set- as not actually reprinted "treasure" or as non Mtg legal cards (i.e. with no Mtg back, similar to Gold border cards).
You might as well change the title to "how do Ferrari make me an exclusive car that lasts for 20 years and costs £1000".
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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I was going to suggest this as well. Banning them would cause demand to drop and thus prices too.
Give one year's advance notice:
"The Reserved List has failed to achieve its purpose. It was intended to have game pieces keep their collector value, but instead the scarcity has driven these pieces unaffordable to a section of players who desire them for casual play as well. As of X, 201X, we will be reprinting the dual lands and a series of other cards in a Masters Edition set. The token and basic land slot in this set will be replaced by a very high value card instead. As an example, you might open a Black Lotus in that slot instead of a token or basic land."
They know they will be sued, they prep for this accordingly. Prices would plummet, many of these cards would lose worth and specs would turn to Modern playable items. They can make the rarity relevant by having less Moxen and so on printed than duals.
Currently focusing on Pre-Modern (Mono-Black Discard Control) and Modern (Azorious Control, Temur Rhinos).
Find me at the Wizard's Tower in Ottawa every second Saturday afternoons.
It doesn't hurt anyone to have the legacy cards reprinted. People will always desire new experiences and move on from old ones except for nostalgia. Legacy decks don't change much with time and just don't have the same draw that new mechanics and worlds have when playing standard. The vast majority of MtG players can not wrap their heads around legacy decks anyway. There are pauper decks that can literally stomp all over T1 modern decks loaded for bear and those are generally budget legacy.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I have never heard anyone say that about MtG players not being able to wrap their heads around legacy decks before. I've read the discussions of Vintage/Legacy vs whatever and I admit some of the interactions take a little thought, but you'ryou're literally saying that Legacy decks are more complicated than Modern?
What is the percentage of Modern cards that make up the Legacy pool? I don't have my computer crunch numbers right now but maybe.... 60% of the pool? Maybe more due to reprints.... MtG players actually can't grok that last 40% of cards?
What is different is you get more control over your deck, and the decks interact more- even storm can be interacted with, and not just with permanents but also with spells from the hand. There is a lot more bluff and there are more decisions- when to fetch is very important- but you soon pick up on them.
If you are getting "hurt" by losing value in cards you bought for a card game that is suggesting a whole lot about your spending and investments. I don't really care if the value of the cards I own drop in price. If swords of feast and famine dropped to 5 dollars I'm not going to bat an eyelash, and if the cost of dual lands drops from 100+ to like, 5 dollars, I'd similarly not care. Why? Because I never treated these as investment purchases. I put money into a carefully planned out array of stocks, an IRA, and other resources for that purpose. Investing in something like mtg is just insane.
Furthermore, if you "invested" in mtg, then you have to accept the risks as well as the potential rewards. Nothing goes up forever: eventually the RL will probably come down or MTG becomes irrelevant. You have to make a decision when the time is right to sell out and go into other investments. There is very little difference between people who do this via monetary value or do it via trading for cards.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
I honestly can't express in a very polite way just how completely bonkers that is. Magic is not now nor was it ever an "investment" or an asset. Until the day you liquidate, magic can only ever be considered a liability. If you can't afford to permanently part with that money then you honestly have no business "investing" your money in that manner.
I'm sorry I can't offer you any sympathy if card prices crash.
If you wish to put my post in context, I prefer real estate with a small selection of stocks and a simple retirement plan. ALL of my hobbies, including Magic, are liabilities. So those Duals I purchased last month are already written off as losses. I don't expect or plan to recoup my costs. I wouldn't want it to happen, but if my collection is destroyed tomorrow, it won't weep over the lost money.
After I kick the bucket and my kids decide to sell my collection of Magic, video games and antique tools for a new home or a trip to Europe, or hand it off to my grandkids, more power to them.
But presuming they can do that, just say "yo, in two years we're cancelling the reserved list."
Then print whatever they heck they like.