1) Lands is not always a deck to beat in Legacy with regards to power level in the same way Miracles/Delver is.
2) Lands is harder to play than Miracles/Delver
3) Wizards could easily print a better creature-taxing land in a supplemental set like Commander 2016. If this happens, the card craters hard. They can't do that with stuff like power or duals.
1) One of the only reasons Lands isn't a "deck to beat" in the same way miracles/delver is is due to the pricetag/availability of Tabernacle. Tabernacle is a GOOD card, and required for that deck, and that's what's propelling its price.
2) Harder than Delver? Maybe. Harder than Miracles? Not really. Legacy is a format where people play way more challenging decks than Lands.
3) Wizards would need to print something better than Tabernacle? That's pretty wild. You're talking about WoTC printing something more powerful than an uncounterable, difficult to kill, 0 mana cost permanent that taxes every creature on the board for the entire game. What're you going to do, make it tap for mana too? If you've ever played with Tabernacle, the card is waaaay more absurd than it looks on paper. It's mean on its own, and when combined with Armageddon effects or wastelands and ports, it makes the game incredibly hostile to keep any meaningful threat present. And WoTC wants games to be interactive and fun, creature based slugfests with the occasional haymaker spells, not ground out suppression tactics that don't let your opponents play. Which I personally find fun, and I'd like to see more strategies boil down to more than "turn dudes sideways" but that's besides the point. I mean, you could throw it in Commander, but that's even worse than throwing it in standard considering WoTC's definition of fun for EDH based on what they're currently including in commander. Notice how countermagic is dialed back, resource denial isn't really present, and griefer cards are notably absent. They're full of synergystic creatures, big timmy cards, a few cute johnny combos, and the occasional bone thrown to spike in the form of a classic beater or just generally goodstuff type card. Remember what happened the last time they printed something kinda spikey in the form of True-Name Nemesis, or Flusterstorm? Remember how impossible those decks were to find? They won't print a card that's that competitive in eternal formats and make it exclusive to commander. That would be an earth-shatteringly poor decision.
Magus of the Tabernacle is an incredibly poor substitute. Even if you took away its mana cost, and maybe even gave it hexproof, it still has to pay for itself to stay on the board. This is not desirable. The "fairest" version of the card is Pendrell Mists. Even though it's more mortal than Tabernacle, the appropriate mana cost is still 3U. That says a lot about how strong the card actually is.
Remember what happened the last time they printed something kinda spikey in the form of True-Name Nemesis, or Flusterstorm? Remember how impossible those decks were to find? They won't print a card that's that competitive in eternal formats and make it exclusive to commander. That would be an earth-shatteringly poor decision.
Super minor nitpick: The Zedruu deck with Flusterstorm (and, also expensive at the time, Chaos Warp), was not very hard to find; they were everywhere as the deck wasn't nearly as appealing as the Heavenly Inferno deck (Kaalia). Nearly a year later I was still able to find Flusterstorm.dek in stores, meanwhile most every other deck was sold out.
Reprints the one card that people point to when saying that art objectifies women.
Well done Wizards.
Liliana does not objectify women in any way at all. We have gotten to a point in our society that every single picture of a women must be objectifying a women in some negative way......blah blah blah.. That is not the case. (((Sarcasm)))Picture of a girl drinking a milk shake, must be sex related and putting women down, picture of girl sitting on a beach, picture of a girl driving a car, picture of a girl on the moon at a new space station.)))
You have a picture of an attractive strong power women who girls dress up as for anime conventions. What more do you want? The picture is fine, happy to see a reprint. Sick of of seeing people claim that everything in existence must be putting women down. Then all I have to do is replace the word "women" with anything else to get the same mentality; fish, cats, arabs, blacks, jews, men, environment, whites, chinese, old people, etc. It doesn't matter what word I put in. Stop sucking life out of everything man. That artwork of her is awesome. Stop putting stuff down man. Just stop. If the picture was really as negative as you claim she would totally nude, in a kitchen, making sandwiches and giving blow jobs. Her abilities would be horrible as well. +1 do nothing -2 do nothing -6 do nothing. Instead liliana of the veil is an amazing planeswalker comparable to jace, the mind sculpter with great art to appreciate.
My suggestion listen to some comedy radio for a while, pandora is free, youtube is free there is something out there for you. ***** go make fun of somebody. The whole world is so serious and campaigning for some cause, or someones rights, everything is a hate crime, racist, sexist. blah blah blah.
"O no mcdonalds must be slandering a hate crime against skinny people every time they make a big mac." hahaha jeeze You're just someone perpetuating another groups negative perspective that they've made you believe is correct. Look at the picture for a hour and tell me what's wrong with it? I don't see anything.
I have heard vague rumors of a moustache-dispensing vending machine in a distant laundromat, across the street from a tattoo parlor. However, this information is shaky, and time is of the essence.
1) One of the only reasons Lands isn't a "deck to beat" in the same way miracles/delver is is due to the pricetag/availability of Tabernacle. Tabernacle is a GOOD card, and required for that deck, and that's what's propelling its price.
The Decks to Beat rankings on The Source are based on Top 8s, not the total % of the meta. In general, the top players like Joe Lossett and Brian Braun-Duin can play any deck they want and get the cards on loan from a major store that sponsors them. Lands is STILL not a deck to beat under these criteria.
3) Wizards would need to print something better than Tabernacle? That's pretty wild. You're talking about WoTC printing something more powerful than an uncounterable, difficult to kill, 0 mana cost permanent that taxes every creature on the board for the entire game. What're you going to do, make it tap for mana too? If you've ever played with Tabernacle, the card is waaaay more absurd than it looks on paper. It's mean on its own, and when combined with Armageddon effects or wastelands and ports, it makes the game incredibly hostile to keep any meaningful threat present. And WoTC wants games to be interactive and fun, creature based slugfests with the occasional haymaker spells, not ground out suppression tactics that don't let your opponents play. Which I personally find fun, and I'd like to see more strategies boil down to more than "turn dudes sideways" but that's besides the point. I mean, you could throw it in Commander, but that's even worse than throwing it in standard considering WoTC's definition of fun for EDH based on what they're currently including in commander. Notice how countermagic is dialed back, resource denial isn't really present, and griefer cards are notably absent. They're full of synergystic creatures, big timmy cards, a few cute johnny combos, and the occasional bone thrown to spike in the form of a classic beater or just generally goodstuff type card. Remember what happened the last time they printed something kinda spikey in the form of True-Name Nemesis, or Flusterstorm? Remember how impossible those decks were to find? They won't print a card that's that competitive in eternal formats and make it exclusive to commander. That would be an earth-shatteringly poor decision.
Keep in mind that my post was intended as an investment guide. Uncertainty is the enemy of any investment. Would making a better Tabernacle be an earth-shatteringly poor decision? No doubt. However, Wizards makes earth-shatteringly poor decisions in Legacy routinely.
The question is whether you trust R&D enough to shell out $14,000 for ten copies of Tabernacle to resell later knowing that there's about a 1% chance the card could be obsoleted by a supplemental set. Duals and power don't have this risk.
These days, some wizards are finding they have a little too much deck left at the end of their $$$.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
1) One of the only reasons Lands isn't a "deck to beat" in the same way miracles/delver is is due to the pricetag/availability of Tabernacle. Tabernacle is a GOOD card, and required for that deck, and that's what's propelling its price.
The Decks to Beat rankings on The Source are based on Top 8s, not the total % of the meta. In general, the top players like Joe Lossett and Brian Braun-Duin can play any deck they want and get the cards on loan from a major store that sponsors them. Lands is STILL not a deck to beat under these criteria.
2) Harder than Delver? Maybe. Harder than Miracles? Not really. Legacy is a format where people play way more challenging decks than Lands.
This is a pretty subjective point, so I won't debate it further.
I have to comment on these 2 points. Joe Lossett was one of the first to play Miracles, per se. UW Control was not quite the same thing. He is known by many as the "creator" of the Legacy Miracles deck, so I doubt that he has to borrow the deck from someone. (unless he decided to do so after selling his own cards) BBD, believe it or not, probably has his own deck as well. Sure, he can borrow what he needs. He has those outlets, but you would be surprised at how many cards he owns himself. I know some people who know him personally.
Regarding how hard the deck is to play, yes, it is subjective. I want to give my 2 cents here since I've been testing the heck out of Miracles, Lands, Elves, and Shardless BUG the past month. Miracles, in my opinion, is definitely tougher to play than Lands. Lands has tougher mulligan calls because Miracles VERY rarely will mulligan. But in game decisions are tougher for Miracles. Often, Lands decision is Dredge 3, cast Life from the Loam, choose which lands to get based on board state. Don't get me wrong, Lands is very tough to play. But in my opinion, Miracles is the toughest Legacy deck I've ever played.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Speculation on why Pros choose the decks they choose is a shot in the dark, but at the SCG Dallas Open last weekend, Lands T8'd. Two versions made T8 in an SCG Qualifier on the 19th in Dallas, another one T8d a qualifier on the 18th in Bernardsville. Lands frequently (especially for its smaller representation in the field) performs well enough to find itself in the T8 on a semi-routine basis. So if we want to talk about T8ing, Lands does so. It's a competitive deck that is probably underrepresented due to the expense of Tabernacle. I don't know why more pros don't play it, maybe because they gravitate towards the hottest, newest versions of more popular archetypes, I can only speculate.
Yeah, WoTC makes bad decision for Legacy all the time, but all the cards you've mentioned were printed in standard, and don't necessarily go against the grain of making standard "fun" and interactive. We're told we won't see 4 mana wraths again, no land destruction at 3cmc or less, actual hard counterspell won't ever make it to standard, Winter Orb and other mana denial simply hasn't been printed in years in standard. This is all because WoTC wants newcomers to the game to actually be able to play the most popular format, and not sit under an oppressive wall of "you can't play the game". The closest we get are cards like Vryn Wingmare and the new Thalia, which players are already cursing before the set even launches just because their stuff comes in tapped. Imagine the reaction if they had to pay upkeep for it!
The spells you mentioned were terrible mistakes, but none of them actively prevented you from playing the game. Well, Mental Misstep took away your ability to play a 1CMC spell, but everything else drove the game to a conclusion, not a stalled board state of spell denial. Granted, it did so in a broken way 'cuz....Ancestral Recall.....but still, you see my point.
Even if someone with a wild hair up their butt decided to throw a better Tabernacle into the next set, even if the reserve list were gone tomorrow and they could just print the damn thing, it wouldn't find its way into standard because that's not the direction they want the game to go. The only place you could print a "better tabernacle" would be in commander sets, and that's an environment even less welcoming to mana/resource denial.
WoTC has deemed the "fair" cost for this effect to be 4CMC with Pendrell Mists, so I can say with a pretty fair degree of certainty it would require an unprecedented amount of power creep for a better Tabernacle to see the light of day.
To that end, if we ever reached a point where this could occur, I think we'd see a point of WoTC reconsidering their stance on the reserve list first, in which case all bets are off the table. I don't know about $1400 being a very good "buy in" price, though, so as far as investments go, I think there are better uses you could put $1400 on that would grow more quickly, namely some of the cheaper duals that still have some room to gain.
Lands is a tedious deck, and it does have some degree of skill, but in a world full of Doomsday lists, the Past in Flames and Tutor chains of Storm decks, and the hilariously technical aspects to playing Miracles well, Lands is probably one of the least complex decks.
1) Play some lands.
2) Use Crop Rotation/Life from the Loam/Crucible of Worlds to establish locks/deal with threats
3) Marit Lage people or punishing fire them till they quit.
Sometimes you skip step 2 and just Marit Lage people. Obviously this is an oversimplification, but most of the decisions are knowing what lands you're looking for when you Gamble/Crop Rotation/Life from the Loam. There are no Brainstorm tricks, no Sensei's Top every turn, no bazillion triggers, and no calculating of mana/storm needed to kill.
Tabernacle, as an investment, is a blue chip stock. I think its major gains are over for a little while, but I think we can safely expect to see it continue climbing, albeit slowly. It may not be the BEST investment in the world as far as returns go,but it's a safe one with a pretty certain future.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Yeah, hard to say; the card saw a big spike a year or two ago, but then it settled back down -- pretty far down, actually. The card was like, $15-20. Then spiked to $40 (that's when I traded my FTV copy away). It then settled back down around $20.
Reprints the one card that people point to when saying that art objectifies women.
Well done Wizards.
Liliana does not objectify women in any way at all. We have gotten to a point in our society that every single picture of a women must be objectifying a women in some negative way......blah blah blah.. That is not the case. (((Sarcasm)))Picture of a girl drinking a milk shake, must be sex related and putting women down, picture of girl sitting on a beach, picture of a girl driving a car, picture of a girl on the moon at a new space station.)))
You have a picture of an attractive strong power women who girls dress up as for anime conventions. What more do you want? The picture is fine, happy to see a reprint. Sick of of seeing people claim that everything in existence must be putting women down. Then all I have to do is replace the word "women" with anything else to get the same mentality; fish, cats, arabs, blacks, jews, men, environment, whites, chinese, old people, etc. It doesn't matter what word I put in. Stop sucking life out of everything man. That artwork of her is awesome. Stop putting stuff down man. Just stop. If the picture was really as negative as you claim she would totally nude, in a kitchen, making sandwiches and giving blow jobs. Her abilities would be horrible as well. +1 do nothing -2 do nothing -6 do nothing. Instead liliana of the veil is an amazing planeswalker comparable to jace, the mind sculpter with great art to appreciate.
My suggestion listen to some comedy radio for a while, pandora is free, youtube is free there is something out there for you. ***** go make fun of somebody. The whole world is so serious and campaigning for some cause, or someones rights, everything is a hate crime, racist, sexist. blah blah blah.
"O no mcdonalds must be slandering a hate crime against skinny people every time they make a big mac." hahaha jeeze You're just someone perpetuating another groups negative perspective that they've made you believe is correct. Look at the picture for a hour and tell me what's wrong with it? I don't see anything.
I have heard vague rumors of a moustache-dispensing vending machine in a distant laundromat, across the street from a tattoo parlor. However, this information is shaky, and time is of the essence.
Ancient Tomb was $20 6 years ago when I got my playset for Stax. Back then decks that used 4 sol lands were more viable, with stuff like MUD and Stax being popular. Everything went to crap with the printing of Abrupt Decay and AT has been on the decline ever since, until the spike this week. It was long overdue if you ask me, although there wasn't much of a chance of it even catching up with Wasteland which is an uncommon int he same set, even with all the reprints over the years.
Ancient Tomb was $20 6 years ago when I got my playset for Stax. Back then decks that used 4 sol lands were more viable, with stuff like MUD and Stax being popular. Everything went to crap with the printing of Abrupt Decay and AT has been on the decline ever since, until the spike this week. It was long overdue if you ask me, although there wasn't much of a chance of it even catching up with Wasteland which is an uncommon int he same set, even with all the reprints over the years.
Ancient Tomb is played in tons of stuff - most Show and Tell decks run it, and Eldrazi decks have picked it up recently, bringing the "Stompy" decktype to tier 1.
FTV Realms depressed the price a little, but you are correct that it's pretty insane how stagnant the price has been.
Do note that Wasteland is played about 5x as much though.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My Moderator Helpdesk
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
Craig Berry- the Moat guy- struck again last night with a daring raid that pushed Lion's Eye Diamond to $250.
I'd call him the Shkreli of Magic but you know that he would treat it as a complement.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
These days, some wizards are finding they have a little too much deck left at the end of their $$$.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
Yeah we know WotC R&D would have to get hit by a train before they print a card of similar power level to LED with the black lotus effect. Buyout isn't the most surprising considering how powerful it is though and how essential the card is in the decks that do play it.
Printing a better tabernacle at pendrell vale will never happen. The card is very oppressive to play against in its current iteration. To make a better version would violate the 'spirit' of the reserved list and the amount of backlash in comparison to the negator's, reverberates, etc. etc. would make those seem like flea bites in comparison to taking a rocket launcher head on. Not to mention let's say they did print a better tabernacle with a different name. The chances that they would be played alongside each other would be astronomically high as I imagine lands players have wet dreams about making people pay 2 per creature each upkeep.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
Yeah we know WotC R&D would have to get hit by a train before they print a card of similar power level to LED with the black lotus effect. Buyout isn't the most surprising considering how powerful it is though and how essential the card is in the decks that do play it.
Printing a better tabernacle at pendrell vale will never happen. The card is very oppressive to play against in its current iteration. To make a better version would violate the 'spirit' of the reserved list and the amount of backlash in comparison to the negator's, reverberates, etc. etc. would make those seem like flea bites in comparison to taking a rocket launcher head on. Not to mention let's say they did print a better tabernacle with a different name. The chances that they would be played alongside each other would be astronomically high as I imagine lands players have wet dreams about making people pay 2 per creature each upkeep.
The obvious solution is to make a non-Legendary Tabernacle - you can also make a few other changes (like changing from destroy to sacrifice) to make it not a direct reprint either.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My Moderator Helpdesk
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
The chances that they would be played alongside each other would be astronomically high as I imagine lands players have wet dreams about making people pay 2 per creature each upkeep.
The obvious solution is to make a non-Legendary Tabernacle - you can also make a few other changes (like changing from destroy to sacrifice) to make it not a direct reprint either.
As a Lands player I'd love to have multiple Tabernacles in play without violating the Legend rule. I'm not sure that would be good for the game though.
WotC has set the precedent that color shifts are not "functional reprints" in regards to the RL (Null Profusion, Donate, Twincast), so we can expect color shifted RL cards in the future, and I'm fine with it. Anything to placate the demand for such cards that are in very limited supply nowadays is welcome.
As for reprinting a non functional facsimile of Tabernacle, I don't see how it could be done. Maybe shift a card type like they did with Null Rod, and make it a legendary artifact or enchantment for 2 mana, although that still wouldn't make it playable for lands, but would make Stax and MUD much more accessible (I'd love to have such a card!). My gut tells me that Magus of the Tabernacle will be the closest we will ever get to a Tabernacle reprint, and I'm still fine with that. Italian copies are still relatively affordable, and MP/HP cards are even lower. You can still get constructed playable Taberbacles for less than $300, and that's a reasonable cost as it would only represent 1/6 to 1/8 of the cost of the whole deck, and you will only need one ever. Same with Moat. You simply don't need an English NM copy to be able to play if that's all you will ever do with the card.
Because of what I just said I think the RL can be reasonably kept and still allow for a healthy and growing format. Except for the Dual lands. There's simply no way to get around this huge bottleneck unless everyone ends up playing monocolored decks in the future. They're relatively buyout-proof because of the huge numbers from the Revised plus FWB printings, but that still doesn't make them okay to be in the RL. I don't think collectors (as opposed to speculators) even care that much about white bordered, washed out pieces of cardboard and we can all safely agree that A/B/U and FBB printings would hardly budge in price in the event of a reprint. OG Mana Crypt hasn't changed at all for example, because any self respecting paper Vintage player would frown at the idea of using EMA Crypt, so collectability shouldn't even be a problem. New printings mainly are for people who want a card but wouldn't buy the expensive version anyways (for EDH and Cube mainly), so demand for the old card doesn't really change. Just take the Duals out of the list and 90% of the woes of the community will be dealt with. You can build decks without CoT, or Mox Diamond, or LED (these three cards plus Cradle account for the bulk of the RL use in the modern Legacy format), but you can't reasonably expect a varied metagame without duals. Same with my Tabernacle example, people who buy such cards for playing usually buy the cheapest version available just so they can play with them, so expensive versions of the same card would never have the same amount of demand placed on them anyways, they would simply not buy the card at all. Unlike Tabernacle which you will only need one of, you need multiple up to a couple dozen in order to have a flexible enough pool to enjoy the format at its fullest, and having to pay a mean $120 for each of them is simply outrageous.
I have a sizable amount of REV Duals and I would gladly have them all reprinted, even if they crash in price. Revised duals aren't collector's items, I have my UNL copies and other people will have Beta and FBB if we want to look at bling. UNL will likely lower considerably in proce but would still stay relatively stable. But Beta? please, if people are already willing to spend 3000 dollars for a piece of cardboard I don't think the cheapest copies being $60 as opposed to $150 will have anything to do with it.
Who the hell is selling Constructed-playable Tabernacles for $300? The counterfeiters? Link me.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
These days, some wizards are finding they have a little too much deck left at the end of their $$$.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
I have a sizable amount of REV Duals and I would gladly have them all reprinted, even if they crash in price. Revised duals aren't collector's items
First off - this is a pricing thread. Not a place to complain about the reserve list. There is already a thread about that.
Second off - you are wrong on the above point. Your opinion may be that they are not collectors pieces, but many others who don't have $25k to drop on beta duals but still want to collect them disagree with you. What is collectible to one person is worthless to another. It's not something you can translate over to everyone who plays the game.
To be fair, in the traditional sense of the word revised dual lands derive most of their value not from collectibility- their print run is far too massive to be that in the truest sense of the word,-but rather their playability which leads players to collect them for a different reason than one might seek out a Beta Volcanic Island. They're still collectibles, but not in the same sense that we think of Black Lotus. Duals are not a super rare diamond, though their pricetags might make you think that. They're collectible, sure, but not in the same sense we might equate to a Mickey Mantle or rare stamp or something. What makes Lotus and and freidns special is that they ARE on this level, they became icons due to their playability but now, their playability is almost nonexistent and what's leftover is the equivalent of the examples given earlier. If dual lands got banned from EDH and Legacy, you'd see the prices sink like a stone.
To the guy who suggested printing a non-legendary Tabernacle:
Yes! Please let me have multiple Tabernacles in play at the same time! And I can still play the normal one as well? Cool!
Also, your EDH playgroups would probably burn their cards in angst if you could play two Tabernacles on top of Pendrell Mists.
1) One of the only reasons Lands isn't a "deck to beat" in the same way miracles/delver is is due to the pricetag/availability of Tabernacle. Tabernacle is a GOOD card, and required for that deck, and that's what's propelling its price.
2) Harder than Delver? Maybe. Harder than Miracles? Not really. Legacy is a format where people play way more challenging decks than Lands.
3) Wizards would need to print something better than Tabernacle? That's pretty wild. You're talking about WoTC printing something more powerful than an uncounterable, difficult to kill, 0 mana cost permanent that taxes every creature on the board for the entire game. What're you going to do, make it tap for mana too? If you've ever played with Tabernacle, the card is waaaay more absurd than it looks on paper. It's mean on its own, and when combined with Armageddon effects or wastelands and ports, it makes the game incredibly hostile to keep any meaningful threat present. And WoTC wants games to be interactive and fun, creature based slugfests with the occasional haymaker spells, not ground out suppression tactics that don't let your opponents play. Which I personally find fun, and I'd like to see more strategies boil down to more than "turn dudes sideways" but that's besides the point. I mean, you could throw it in Commander, but that's even worse than throwing it in standard considering WoTC's definition of fun for EDH based on what they're currently including in commander. Notice how countermagic is dialed back, resource denial isn't really present, and griefer cards are notably absent. They're full of synergystic creatures, big timmy cards, a few cute johnny combos, and the occasional bone thrown to spike in the form of a classic beater or just generally goodstuff type card. Remember what happened the last time they printed something kinda spikey in the form of True-Name Nemesis, or Flusterstorm? Remember how impossible those decks were to find? They won't print a card that's that competitive in eternal formats and make it exclusive to commander. That would be an earth-shatteringly poor decision.
Magus of the Tabernacle is an incredibly poor substitute. Even if you took away its mana cost, and maybe even gave it hexproof, it still has to pay for itself to stay on the board. This is not desirable. The "fairest" version of the card is Pendrell Mists. Even though it's more mortal than Tabernacle, the appropriate mana cost is still 3U. That says a lot about how strong the card actually is.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Super minor nitpick: The Zedruu deck with Flusterstorm (and, also expensive at the time, Chaos Warp), was not very hard to find; they were everywhere as the deck wasn't nearly as appealing as the Heavenly Inferno deck (Kaalia). Nearly a year later I was still able to find Flusterstorm.dek in stores, meanwhile most every other deck was sold out.
I agree with everything else you said though.
The Decks to Beat rankings on The Source are based on Top 8s, not the total % of the meta. In general, the top players like Joe Lossett and Brian Braun-Duin can play any deck they want and get the cards on loan from a major store that sponsors them. Lands is STILL not a deck to beat under these criteria.
This is a pretty subjective point, so I won't debate it further.
Keep in mind that my post was intended as an investment guide. Uncertainty is the enemy of any investment. Would making a better Tabernacle be an earth-shatteringly poor decision? No doubt. However, Wizards makes earth-shatteringly poor decisions in Legacy routinely.
Treasure Cruise
Dig Through Time
Mental Misstep
The question is whether you trust R&D enough to shell out $14,000 for ten copies of Tabernacle to resell later knowing that there's about a 1% chance the card could be obsoleted by a supplemental set. Duals and power don't have this risk.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
I have to comment on these 2 points. Joe Lossett was one of the first to play Miracles, per se. UW Control was not quite the same thing. He is known by many as the "creator" of the Legacy Miracles deck, so I doubt that he has to borrow the deck from someone. (unless he decided to do so after selling his own cards) BBD, believe it or not, probably has his own deck as well. Sure, he can borrow what he needs. He has those outlets, but you would be surprised at how many cards he owns himself. I know some people who know him personally.
Regarding how hard the deck is to play, yes, it is subjective. I want to give my 2 cents here since I've been testing the heck out of Miracles, Lands, Elves, and Shardless BUG the past month. Miracles, in my opinion, is definitely tougher to play than Lands. Lands has tougher mulligan calls because Miracles VERY rarely will mulligan. But in game decisions are tougher for Miracles. Often, Lands decision is Dredge 3, cast Life from the Loam, choose which lands to get based on board state. Don't get me wrong, Lands is very tough to play. But in my opinion, Miracles is the toughest Legacy deck I've ever played.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Yeah, WoTC makes bad decision for Legacy all the time, but all the cards you've mentioned were printed in standard, and don't necessarily go against the grain of making standard "fun" and interactive. We're told we won't see 4 mana wraths again, no land destruction at 3cmc or less, actual hard counterspell won't ever make it to standard, Winter Orb and other mana denial simply hasn't been printed in years in standard. This is all because WoTC wants newcomers to the game to actually be able to play the most popular format, and not sit under an oppressive wall of "you can't play the game". The closest we get are cards like Vryn Wingmare and the new Thalia, which players are already cursing before the set even launches just because their stuff comes in tapped. Imagine the reaction if they had to pay upkeep for it!
The spells you mentioned were terrible mistakes, but none of them actively prevented you from playing the game. Well, Mental Misstep took away your ability to play a 1CMC spell, but everything else drove the game to a conclusion, not a stalled board state of spell denial. Granted, it did so in a broken way 'cuz....Ancestral Recall.....but still, you see my point.
Even if someone with a wild hair up their butt decided to throw a better Tabernacle into the next set, even if the reserve list were gone tomorrow and they could just print the damn thing, it wouldn't find its way into standard because that's not the direction they want the game to go. The only place you could print a "better tabernacle" would be in commander sets, and that's an environment even less welcoming to mana/resource denial.
WoTC has deemed the "fair" cost for this effect to be 4CMC with Pendrell Mists, so I can say with a pretty fair degree of certainty it would require an unprecedented amount of power creep for a better Tabernacle to see the light of day.
To that end, if we ever reached a point where this could occur, I think we'd see a point of WoTC reconsidering their stance on the reserve list first, in which case all bets are off the table. I don't know about $1400 being a very good "buy in" price, though, so as far as investments go, I think there are better uses you could put $1400 on that would grow more quickly, namely some of the cheaper duals that still have some room to gain.
Lands is a tedious deck, and it does have some degree of skill, but in a world full of Doomsday lists, the Past in Flames and Tutor chains of Storm decks, and the hilariously technical aspects to playing Miracles well, Lands is probably one of the least complex decks.
1) Play some lands.
2) Use Crop Rotation/Life from the Loam/Crucible of Worlds to establish locks/deal with threats
3) Marit Lage people or punishing fire them till they quit.
Sometimes you skip step 2 and just Marit Lage people. Obviously this is an oversimplification, but most of the decisions are knowing what lands you're looking for when you Gamble/Crop Rotation/Life from the Loam. There are no Brainstorm tricks, no Sensei's Top every turn, no bazillion triggers, and no calculating of mana/storm needed to kill.
Tabernacle, as an investment, is a blue chip stock. I think its major gains are over for a little while, but I think we can safely expect to see it continue climbing, albeit slowly. It may not be the BEST investment in the world as far as returns go,but it's a safe one with a pretty certain future.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
WGURBLands!WGURB
WGUInfectWGU
Legacy Lands Primer
Top 8 SCG Oakland 2014
Helpdesk
My Cube on CubeTutor
WGURBLands!WGURB
WGUInfectWGU
Legacy Lands Primer
Top 8 SCG Oakland 2014
Helpdesk
My Cube on CubeTutor
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Active Player: 1994-1999, 2016-
Sign & Share Petition To Fix MTG: Arena's Economy: https://goo.gl/z8fop8
Ancient Tomb is played in tons of stuff - most Show and Tell decks run it, and Eldrazi decks have picked it up recently, bringing the "Stompy" decktype to tier 1.
FTV Realms depressed the price a little, but you are correct that it's pretty insane how stagnant the price has been.
Do note that Wasteland is played about 5x as much though.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
I'd call him the Shkreli of Magic but you know that he would treat it as a complement.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
Printing a better tabernacle at pendrell vale will never happen. The card is very oppressive to play against in its current iteration. To make a better version would violate the 'spirit' of the reserved list and the amount of backlash in comparison to the negator's, reverberates, etc. etc. would make those seem like flea bites in comparison to taking a rocket launcher head on. Not to mention let's say they did print a better tabernacle with a different name. The chances that they would be played alongside each other would be astronomically high as I imagine lands players have wet dreams about making people pay 2 per creature each upkeep.
Currently Playing:
Retired
The obvious solution is to make a non-Legendary Tabernacle - you can also make a few other changes (like changing from destroy to sacrifice) to make it not a direct reprint either.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
WGURBLands!WGURB
WGUInfectWGU
Legacy Lands Primer
Top 8 SCG Oakland 2014
Helpdesk
My Cube on CubeTutor
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com/
RUGLegacy Lands.dec
RUGBLegacy Lands.dec
RGLegacy Lands.dec
WUBRG EDH Lands.dec
UBR EDH Artificer Prodigy
B EDH Relentless Rats
As for reprinting a non functional facsimile of Tabernacle, I don't see how it could be done. Maybe shift a card type like they did with Null Rod, and make it a legendary artifact or enchantment for 2 mana, although that still wouldn't make it playable for lands, but would make Stax and MUD much more accessible (I'd love to have such a card!). My gut tells me that Magus of the Tabernacle will be the closest we will ever get to a Tabernacle reprint, and I'm still fine with that. Italian copies are still relatively affordable, and MP/HP cards are even lower. You can still get constructed playable Taberbacles for less than $300, and that's a reasonable cost as it would only represent 1/6 to 1/8 of the cost of the whole deck, and you will only need one ever. Same with Moat. You simply don't need an English NM copy to be able to play if that's all you will ever do with the card.
Because of what I just said I think the RL can be reasonably kept and still allow for a healthy and growing format. Except for the Dual lands. There's simply no way to get around this huge bottleneck unless everyone ends up playing monocolored decks in the future. They're relatively buyout-proof because of the huge numbers from the Revised plus FWB printings, but that still doesn't make them okay to be in the RL. I don't think collectors (as opposed to speculators) even care that much about white bordered, washed out pieces of cardboard and we can all safely agree that A/B/U and FBB printings would hardly budge in price in the event of a reprint. OG Mana Crypt hasn't changed at all for example, because any self respecting paper Vintage player would frown at the idea of using EMA Crypt, so collectability shouldn't even be a problem. New printings mainly are for people who want a card but wouldn't buy the expensive version anyways (for EDH and Cube mainly), so demand for the old card doesn't really change. Just take the Duals out of the list and 90% of the woes of the community will be dealt with. You can build decks without CoT, or Mox Diamond, or LED (these three cards plus Cradle account for the bulk of the RL use in the modern Legacy format), but you can't reasonably expect a varied metagame without duals. Same with my Tabernacle example, people who buy such cards for playing usually buy the cheapest version available just so they can play with them, so expensive versions of the same card would never have the same amount of demand placed on them anyways, they would simply not buy the card at all. Unlike Tabernacle which you will only need one of, you need multiple up to a couple dozen in order to have a flexible enough pool to enjoy the format at its fullest, and having to pay a mean $120 for each of them is simply outrageous.
I have a sizable amount of REV Duals and I would gladly have them all reprinted, even if they crash in price. Revised duals aren't collector's items, I have my UNL copies and other people will have Beta and FBB if we want to look at bling. UNL will likely lower considerably in proce but would still stay relatively stable. But Beta? please, if people are already willing to spend 3000 dollars for a piece of cardboard I don't think the cheapest copies being $60 as opposed to $150 will have anything to do with it.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
First off - this is a pricing thread. Not a place to complain about the reserve list. There is already a thread about that.
Second off - you are wrong on the above point. Your opinion may be that they are not collectors pieces, but many others who don't have $25k to drop on beta duals but still want to collect them disagree with you. What is collectible to one person is worthless to another. It's not something you can translate over to everyone who plays the game.
To the guy who suggested printing a non-legendary Tabernacle:
Yes! Please let me have multiple Tabernacles in play at the same time! And I can still play the normal one as well? Cool!
Also, your EDH playgroups would probably burn their cards in angst if you could play two Tabernacles on top of Pendrell Mists.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com/
RUGLegacy Lands.dec
RUGBLegacy Lands.dec
RGLegacy Lands.dec
WUBRG EDH Lands.dec
UBR EDH Artificer Prodigy
B EDH Relentless Rats
WGURBLands!WGURB
WGUInfectWGU
Legacy Lands Primer
Top 8 SCG Oakland 2014
Helpdesk
My Cube on CubeTutor