My playgroup has been using proxies and alternate arts for some time now, but it's beginning to get out of hand. When we first started down this road, it began as simply printing out alternate arts for cards that we liked and using those instead of the actual cards. It started off primarily being alternates for our commanders, but like everything in Magic, it started a slippery slope and now things are starting to get out of hand.
We started with a house rule of, "if you have a card that costs more than $15, you could proxy a card rather than buying it over and over for multiple decks." Unfortunately, this slowly turned into "I have multiple blue decks, so I might as well put Fierce Guardianship, Cyclonic Rift, Mana Drain, Force of Negation, etc. into every deck since it's within the house rules." This is happening with all good cards for each color, not exclusively blue.
This is creating an environment where some players are pushing to optimize their decks with strong, expensive spells that make it difficult for others (admittedly myself in this category) to enjoy the game and feel that they have a chance of winning. It is also beginning to limit the uniqueness of decks as more of them are beginning to put the same cards in all of their decks for the sake of being stronger. I myself try my best to avoid this. To me commander is meant to be casual and fun, not about having the best cards in each deck. That's what competitive EDH is for.
So how does your playgroup deal with proxying cards? Do you allow unlimited numbers of the good stuff, or have rules to keep it in check? What do you think of my situation?
I've played in plenty of casual groups and every single one was against proxies. And even when a particular group is OK with them, the individual players feel awkward using them. There's this notion that "casual" players just don't care about these things, aren't as financially invested as tournament grinders, and just have an anything goes attitude. In my personal experience all of those are categorically false. Almost every casual player I know are sticklers for the rules, particularly construction rules, are extremely proud of their collections, and spend way more money on the game than they ought to. With all that in mind, proxies are looked upon as cheating. Their attitudes are play what you own, and if that means moving cards around from deck to deck then so be it. Magic cards are like a little micro economy, and proxies are viewed as counterfeits (with the exception of proxying up cards for a test run). The basic attitude is if you need it, buy it, but don't bring that fake garbage around here. And these are people who are cool with silver-bordered cards in decks.
I know many casual players will disagree with this take on proxies, and I'm personally fine with responsible use of them, but using proxies will almost certainly degenerate into what you're currently experiencing. I would advise that you suggest to your group to roll back on or forego using them altogether, at least for a while. They've become a crutch for your groups deck building, time to walk without the crutch me thinks.
We added a new player to our group earlier this year. He was brand new to the game. At one point he purchased a bunch of powerful proxies just so he could keep up with the rest of us. He no longer uses those proxies, he feels like he's cheating even though the rest of us are cool with it.
Proxying cards you already own on the other hand feels different, not cheating, just efficiency of deck construction. So it'll be harder to convince them they should give up the practice. Maybe try to get them to see the beauty in having decks with varying power levels, a jank fest can be fun.
I sort of have the opposite situation. I refuse to play with proxies when I can manage it (sometimes I will use them when the cards are in the mail or when I am testing cards) but for the most part, I don't play with proxies.
My decks still end up having similar cards to one another, though I make a conscious decision to try to keep the overall "feel" of the decks distinct. So, all my blue decks play Cyclonic Rift and Mana Drain for example. And, again, none of these are proxies so it isn't like allowing for proxies is pushing things in my decks to be degenerate; I have the cards to build whatever I want and I want those two cards because they are good (Rift especially being a sort of "get out of jail" type card).
So, with that being said about what I do with proxies, I have done my best to really encourage proxies in my group. There is one player who proxies his entire deck which I am fine with. And others play generally lower powered stuff because they don't want to use proxies, which is also fine. But I keep trying to push for the "proxies are ok" mentality because it shouldn't lead anyone to any particular playstyle.
Maybe things are a little homogenous as players start out, and maybe they don't evolve from there but that is a playgroup issue and seems like it is a weird thing to accept and/or advocate. That is, it seems like your point is that players would dive more into homogeny and optimization except they are simply priced out of doing so. Which....I guess I don't see the point. Plenty of cheap cards offer homogeny; plenty of powerful cards are cheap due to reprints. To suggest that you don't want to see too many Scroll Racks simply because it is expensive while you are fine with Kinnan combo simply because it is cheap (enough pieces are anyway) seems sort of backwards.
I have a feeling that if you really cracked down on proxies, at least from the "too powerful" or "optimized" category, and then someone like me showed up to your group and played every blue deck I had which includes all the stuff your group has said was not ok to proxy, I imagine it would feel sort of unfair. I mean, what is really the difference between proxying a Rift for every blue deck and simply buying it from a play perspective? You force someone to spend money, sure, but your games are the exact same as they would be with proxies.
If there is an issue with power or whatever then talk to your group. Encourage diversity but don't do it through some sort of gatekeeping based entirely on personal budget or finances.
In short, I think there is plenty of degeneracy that can occur without proxies; that is a player issue, not a budget issue.
For my Commander decks, I personally only proxy cards that I own - and after losing my first Gilded Drake, I will never put a real copy on the table again. I will say I am about to break my stance and proxy one card I don't own, but that's because there is only one legal Grixis commander for my Tiny Leaders cube, and I'm not going to spend $70 on a card I don't even like; the instant they print another cmc=3 Grixis commander, I'm swapping it.
Most of the people I play with also only proxy cards they own.
But occasionally we get someone who plays several, and we don't make a big deal of it, so long as they are legible. We did have someone once who scribbled card names on other cards for 50+% of the deck, and we told them after we wouldn't play that again.
It really just depends on why people are proxying. If they want to play without paying anything, that's a problem; you can build budget decks that are still fun. If it's to run a card in more than one deck without wasting time swapping sleeves, I completely understand. If it's to abuse the proxies and run all the most powerful cards - well, those people don't sound all that fun to play with anyway.
People in my group don’t really proxy. I am probably the only one who does, and I have known rules for when I do.
1. Proxy with the intent to purchase.
2. Proxy duplicates to avoid Mass card swapping between decks and games.
Example 1: I am fleshing out a new commander like Rikku and know I am going to want an Imperial Recruiter. I will proxy for a session or two while it is on order. If I don’t intend on buying it (for whatever reason) I don’t proxy it in the first place.
Example 2: Time Spirals are difficult to find, and expensive. I own a copy already and intend to buy another one months down the road. I will proxy it to save time swapping cards from one deck to another between games.
Generally my group has never really had an issue with this as they know I tend to only have the proxy for a play session or two. Way back when, this was how my initial group handled things as well, proxies were never meant to be a permanent thing. If someone wanted and Underground Sea but had no intention of purchasing one, they just never proxied it. There is something about being prideful about the curation and ownership of a Commander deck, that many players silently acknowledge and want others to aspire to. If you genuinely feel like you cannot keep up because you don’t want to shell out for a Cradle - then you need to have an honest conversation with your group and with yourself, about what you want from commander. If it is getting out of control in your group, you should all agree to some basic rules, either like mine above, or cap the number of proxies. I personally find that half of the fun is actually collecting the cards to play with them.
All that being said, I think most people who have played the format long enough, probably just don’t care if you proxy or not.
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LEGACY|UWStonebladeCOMMANDER|UBGThe Mimeoplsm Ooze & Aghhs!MODERN|UWAzorius Control THE JUICE[BOX]³ CUBE
Likewise as above, my playgroup allows the following proxies:
Proxy cards you own, in order to not need to swap between multiple decks.
Proxy cards you have purchased/plan to purchase, but haven't arrived yet.
Proxy cards you may want to purchase, but want to be sure of before making an investment.
The third is perhaps a bit more unique, but everyone has their budget, and some card might represent a fair portion of that budget. Sometimes you want to be sure the card you're thinking of will work the way you hope before pulling the trigger on a significant investment.
We've been talking about opening up our proxy acceptance though, in order to try to even out the playing field between certain players, but nothing has come of that yet.
So beyond just being careful with MTG cards a lot of players have EDH / Commander decks. If you're five color and you have one of each ABU Dual Land, one of each Fetch Land, and you know Gaea's Cradle and a few other cards particularly those that are highly played in Legacy and Modern, it isn't hard for the monetary value of your EDH / Commander deck to go over $10,000+. So that's crazy, imagine carrying a briefcase with $10,000+ in physical cash with you to a shady Local Game Store (LGS) and you wonder why the need for running proxies in EDH / Commander is now more important than ever to reduce the high risk of theft. Now it might seem unethical at first on the aspect of the principle of "Pay to Win" or "Pay to Play" (no pun intended) but you sort of get the idea of what I'm getting at here. I don't have a problem with players within my playgroup running proxies of expensive cards they actually own in their personal card collections and for those who fully proxy their decks due to the barrier of entry for the format being extraordinarily high right now due to the ongoing pandemic, I honestly don't blame them for it.
One of my friends runs alters of ABU Dual Lands including a lot of the fast mana rocks like Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, and Mox Diamond because the overall power creep of the format is demanding it now more than ever. There's simply not enough supply to meet the demand of much needed reprints in the format to help circumvent the cost to play If you're being pressured to keep up with cEDH decks where it seems as though the format is morphing into something that's no longer what we would perceive to be as "kitchen table casual". If your deck isn't able to stop one of your opponents from winning on turn 5 or earlier especially since you'll be tapped out on lands most of the time then that cuts you off from being able to actually play the game and this is why proxies can make the difference between needing the cards necessary to stop those scenarios from occurring instead of creating a massive paywall to actually get there. It's got less to do with the EDH Rules Committee fixing this problem when the design team at Wizards of the Coast are purposely increasing the speed of the format just to sell more product.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
There's this notion that "casual" players just don't care about these things, aren't as financially invested as tournament grinders, and just have an anything goes attitude. In my personal experience all of those are categorically false. Almost every casual player I know are sticklers for the rules, particularly construction rules, are extremely proud of their collections, and spend way more money on the game than they ought to.
In particular, I think I'm the first sentence but actually I'm the second sentence. Perodequeso has held a mirror up to my soul and I can't look away.
There's this notion that "casual" players just don't care about these things, aren't as financially invested as tournament grinders, and just have an anything goes attitude. In my personal experience all of those are categorically false. Almost every casual player I know are sticklers for the rules, particularly construction rules, are extremely proud of their collections, and spend way more money on the game than they ought to.
In particular, I think I'm the first sentence but actually I'm the second sentence. Perodequeso has held a mirror up to my soul and I can't look away.
That's the same mirror we're all looking into. Anyone who doesn't believe it is in denial. LOL!!!
I think, due to the increasing cost of the game, that proxies should be normalized as being ok. I've been actively trying to get people to proxy expensive cards they are thinking about, but haven't purchased yet, as it would suck if the card wasn't as good as they hoped. I do understand why some people don't use them, though.
I think, due to the increasing cost of the game, that proxies should be normalized as being ok. I've been actively trying to get people to proxy expensive cards they are thinking about, but haven't purchased yet, as it would suck if the card wasn't as good as they hoped. I do understand why some people don't use them, though.
The increasing cost of the game is mostly due to market inflation within the antiques & collectibles trade due to companies and corporate conglomerates actively trying to phase out (no pun intended) print media in favor of digital media because the less tangible the product is the more control they have over the consumer. Then you also have to factor in the pandemic's impact on this as well where everything has transitioned online to where the idea of running your own Local Game Store (LGS) is nothing more than a ponzi dream (not to be confused with ponzi scheme). Think of it as like opening up a museum where everyone comes up to it where it has all these awesome video games, comic books, or tabletop games where consumers pay an admission fee to see and partake with these items in person and possibly spend money at your gift shop or whatever else you need to keep that establishment afloat is what is considered to be a ponzi dream.
Now it can work legitimately If the right capitalized people go into that business model with the right approach and usually that's the U.S. Government. That's why the Smithsonian is one of the most successful museums operated by the U.S. Government. Individuals don't own the Smithsonian, they don't own the Philadelphia Art Museum because those establishments are run by the U.S. Government. Now do you see the difference when a person takes on these types of feats especially when we're talking about museums, when we're talking about these visions of grandeur that a lot of these collectors have? Now there are some success stories which are less than 5% however they most likely fail because the profit margins just aren't there or are abysmally small to operate. The same thing is happening with mom-and-pop stores and brick-and-mortar retail right now especially with Local Game Stores (LGSs). Now If you think you can take advantage of the geography of opening up a store near a prestigious college by buying up a big collection and expect to make a fortune you're wrong.
You won't succeed because most of your clientele aren't going to sell it to you at a reduced price when they can pull out their smartphone, take a picture of the item, list it on eBay, and get top dollar. Let's be realistic here, the person whose going to sell to you would have to be extremely desperate in this day and age to be willing to part with an item they know they can flip right online for roughly 80, 90, to 100% of it's value rather than to sell it to you for 20, 30, 40, or 50% of it's value. So that's the current mindset. Another thing to keep in mind is that resellers who go to pawn shops, flea markets, LGSs, and yard sales are going to struggle even more post-COVID to get inventory and the reason is because all those people that sold you their items at these retail businesses are going to get a taste for selling online by getting top dollar while cutting the middle man. If it was already hard for you to get products to flip or sell on eBay going forward it's going to be a lot harder.
If you're an LGS owner or employee how much money would you forgo just to say to yourself that you're self-employed? Is what I do worth said amount of money or whether it's someone else paying you to do the work? What is the opportunity cost for you doing the current job you're in?
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America Bless Christ Jesus
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
My personal take is you could proxy but not use counterfeit. The proxy should be obvious. I don't use proxies personally. But i'd want to know you are playing one.
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My playgroup has been using proxies and alternate arts for some time now, but it's beginning to get out of hand. When we first started down this road, it began as simply printing out alternate arts for cards that we liked and using those instead of the actual cards. It started off primarily being alternates for our commanders, but like everything in Magic, it started a slippery slope and now things are starting to get out of hand.
We started with a house rule of, "if you have a card that costs more than $15, you could proxy a card rather than buying it over and over for multiple decks." Unfortunately, this slowly turned into "I have multiple blue decks, so I might as well put Fierce Guardianship, Cyclonic Rift, Mana Drain, Force of Negation, etc. into every deck since it's within the house rules." This is happening with all good cards for each color, not exclusively blue.
This is creating an environment where some players are pushing to optimize their decks with strong, expensive spells that make it difficult for others (admittedly myself in this category) to enjoy the game and feel that they have a chance of winning. It is also beginning to limit the uniqueness of decks as more of them are beginning to put the same cards in all of their decks for the sake of being stronger. I myself try my best to avoid this. To me commander is meant to be casual and fun, not about having the best cards in each deck. That's what competitive EDH is for.
So how does your playgroup deal with proxying cards? Do you allow unlimited numbers of the good stuff, or have rules to keep it in check? What do you think of my situation?
I know many casual players will disagree with this take on proxies, and I'm personally fine with responsible use of them, but using proxies will almost certainly degenerate into what you're currently experiencing. I would advise that you suggest to your group to roll back on or forego using them altogether, at least for a while. They've become a crutch for your groups deck building, time to walk without the crutch me thinks.
We added a new player to our group earlier this year. He was brand new to the game. At one point he purchased a bunch of powerful proxies just so he could keep up with the rest of us. He no longer uses those proxies, he feels like he's cheating even though the rest of us are cool with it.
Proxying cards you already own on the other hand feels different, not cheating, just efficiency of deck construction. So it'll be harder to convince them they should give up the practice. Maybe try to get them to see the beauty in having decks with varying power levels, a jank fest can be fun.
My decks still end up having similar cards to one another, though I make a conscious decision to try to keep the overall "feel" of the decks distinct. So, all my blue decks play Cyclonic Rift and Mana Drain for example. And, again, none of these are proxies so it isn't like allowing for proxies is pushing things in my decks to be degenerate; I have the cards to build whatever I want and I want those two cards because they are good (Rift especially being a sort of "get out of jail" type card).
So, with that being said about what I do with proxies, I have done my best to really encourage proxies in my group. There is one player who proxies his entire deck which I am fine with. And others play generally lower powered stuff because they don't want to use proxies, which is also fine. But I keep trying to push for the "proxies are ok" mentality because it shouldn't lead anyone to any particular playstyle.
Maybe things are a little homogenous as players start out, and maybe they don't evolve from there but that is a playgroup issue and seems like it is a weird thing to accept and/or advocate. That is, it seems like your point is that players would dive more into homogeny and optimization except they are simply priced out of doing so. Which....I guess I don't see the point. Plenty of cheap cards offer homogeny; plenty of powerful cards are cheap due to reprints. To suggest that you don't want to see too many Scroll Racks simply because it is expensive while you are fine with Kinnan combo simply because it is cheap (enough pieces are anyway) seems sort of backwards.
I have a feeling that if you really cracked down on proxies, at least from the "too powerful" or "optimized" category, and then someone like me showed up to your group and played every blue deck I had which includes all the stuff your group has said was not ok to proxy, I imagine it would feel sort of unfair. I mean, what is really the difference between proxying a Rift for every blue deck and simply buying it from a play perspective? You force someone to spend money, sure, but your games are the exact same as they would be with proxies.
If there is an issue with power or whatever then talk to your group. Encourage diversity but don't do it through some sort of gatekeeping based entirely on personal budget or finances.
In short, I think there is plenty of degeneracy that can occur without proxies; that is a player issue, not a budget issue.
Most of the people I play with also only proxy cards they own.
But occasionally we get someone who plays several, and we don't make a big deal of it, so long as they are legible. We did have someone once who scribbled card names on other cards for 50+% of the deck, and we told them after we wouldn't play that again.
It really just depends on why people are proxying. If they want to play without paying anything, that's a problem; you can build budget decks that are still fun. If it's to run a card in more than one deck without wasting time swapping sleeves, I completely understand. If it's to abuse the proxies and run all the most powerful cards - well, those people don't sound all that fun to play with anyway.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
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1. Proxy with the intent to purchase.
2. Proxy duplicates to avoid Mass card swapping between decks and games.
Example 1: I am fleshing out a new commander like Rikku and know I am going to want an Imperial Recruiter. I will proxy for a session or two while it is on order. If I don’t intend on buying it (for whatever reason) I don’t proxy it in the first place.
Example 2: Time Spirals are difficult to find, and expensive. I own a copy already and intend to buy another one months down the road. I will proxy it to save time swapping cards from one deck to another between games.
Generally my group has never really had an issue with this as they know I tend to only have the proxy for a play session or two. Way back when, this was how my initial group handled things as well, proxies were never meant to be a permanent thing. If someone wanted and Underground Sea but had no intention of purchasing one, they just never proxied it. There is something about being prideful about the curation and ownership of a Commander deck, that many players silently acknowledge and want others to aspire to. If you genuinely feel like you cannot keep up because you don’t want to shell out for a Cradle - then you need to have an honest conversation with your group and with yourself, about what you want from commander. If it is getting out of control in your group, you should all agree to some basic rules, either like mine above, or cap the number of proxies. I personally find that half of the fun is actually collecting the cards to play with them.
All that being said, I think most people who have played the format long enough, probably just don’t care if you proxy or not.
THE JUICE[BOX]³ CUBE
The third is perhaps a bit more unique, but everyone has their budget, and some card might represent a fair portion of that budget. Sometimes you want to be sure the card you're thinking of will work the way you hope before pulling the trigger on a significant investment.
We've been talking about opening up our proxy acceptance though, in order to try to even out the playing field between certain players, but nothing has come of that yet.
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
One of my friends runs alters of ABU Dual Lands including a lot of the fast mana rocks like Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, and Mox Diamond because the overall power creep of the format is demanding it now more than ever. There's simply not enough supply to meet the demand of much needed reprints in the format to help circumvent the cost to play If you're being pressured to keep up with cEDH decks where it seems as though the format is morphing into something that's no longer what we would perceive to be as "kitchen table casual". If your deck isn't able to stop one of your opponents from winning on turn 5 or earlier especially since you'll be tapped out on lands most of the time then that cuts you off from being able to actually play the game and this is why proxies can make the difference between needing the cards necessary to stop those scenarios from occurring instead of creating a massive paywall to actually get there. It's got less to do with the EDH Rules Committee fixing this problem when the design team at Wizards of the Coast are purposely increasing the speed of the format just to sell more product.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
In particular, I think I'm the first sentence but actually I'm the second sentence. Perodequeso has held a mirror up to my soul and I can't look away.
That's the same mirror we're all looking into. Anyone who doesn't believe it is in denial. LOL!!!
Now it can work legitimately If the right capitalized people go into that business model with the right approach and usually that's the U.S. Government. That's why the Smithsonian is one of the most successful museums operated by the U.S. Government. Individuals don't own the Smithsonian, they don't own the Philadelphia Art Museum because those establishments are run by the U.S. Government. Now do you see the difference when a person takes on these types of feats especially when we're talking about museums, when we're talking about these visions of grandeur that a lot of these collectors have? Now there are some success stories which are less than 5% however they most likely fail because the profit margins just aren't there or are abysmally small to operate. The same thing is happening with mom-and-pop stores and brick-and-mortar retail right now especially with Local Game Stores (LGSs). Now If you think you can take advantage of the geography of opening up a store near a prestigious college by buying up a big collection and expect to make a fortune you're wrong.
You won't succeed because most of your clientele aren't going to sell it to you at a reduced price when they can pull out their smartphone, take a picture of the item, list it on eBay, and get top dollar. Let's be realistic here, the person whose going to sell to you would have to be extremely desperate in this day and age to be willing to part with an item they know they can flip right online for roughly 80, 90, to 100% of it's value rather than to sell it to you for 20, 30, 40, or 50% of it's value. So that's the current mindset. Another thing to keep in mind is that resellers who go to pawn shops, flea markets, LGSs, and yard sales are going to struggle even more post-COVID to get inventory and the reason is because all those people that sold you their items at these retail businesses are going to get a taste for selling online by getting top dollar while cutting the middle man. If it was already hard for you to get products to flip or sell on eBay going forward it's going to be a lot harder.
If you're an LGS owner or employee how much money would you forgo just to say to yourself that you're self-employed? Is what I do worth said amount of money or whether it's someone else paying you to do the work? What is the opportunity cost for you doing the current job you're in?
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VALgm1qkeFE
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own