I don't believe that WotC is sticking to the Reserved List because of some promise made to the the players nearly 2 decades ago. And, I don't believe that WotC strengthened the Reserved List a few years ago to protect the monetary value of the customer collections.
I believe there are two real reasons for the Reserved List, and also not reprinting key high value cards not on the Reserved List; such as Force of Will or Wasteland. First, if Legacy was cheaper, many more people would play Legacy and ditch Standard. Second, they want to preserve the perception of Magic cards as a collectible.
I believe WotC likes Legacy to an extent. They want new players to aspire to play Legacy because that keeps them loyal. They also want to keep Legacy alive, but in check, because high value Legacy cards give legitimacy to MTG as a collectible.
WotC has traditionally been very reluctant to reprint high value cards regardless of the the Reserved List, but that stance seems to be changing in the last year or so. We may actually see a Judge Force of Will. But they don't want to lower the barrier of entry to Legacy so that the masses of Standard players can get into Legacy and leave Standard behind.
Finally, WotC will reprint everything at some point, but will probably only do so as a last gasp cash grab when it is clear the game is dying.
Personally, I believe this is what Maro means when he refers to Magic's 'equity'. The existence of these old expensive cards lends credibility to newer cards as collectible and likely to retain value.
While WotC maintains plausible deniability about their interest, or lack their of, in the secondary market, everyone knows they care greatly about the value of Magic cards in general and will go way out of their way to not crash the market on cards in order to maintain confidence in the market.
I believe this is also the real, 'secret', reason behind the Reversed List.
There are also probably other reasons they don't reprint say, Force of Will. One may be they aren't interested in expanding the Legacy player base.
Who knows, but if push ever comes to shove with Hasbro, it is very likely many of the expensive cards will be reprinted in order to simply make a bunch of money.
I suppose we may be seeing a change with Moderns Masters, and WotC wants to cool an overheated market to prevent it from crashing. We could see more of this, and it may extend to non-reserved Legacy and Vintage cards. We'll see.
People in here saying Todd isn't good or deathblade isn't good are obviously mad about something because both statements are obviously false.
However, I was also disappointed in watching him so many times. Could we have just seen the lands deck, and still watched the other two matches. If I wanted to watch the same deck over and over I would watch Standard.
SCG is usually great and the streams are almost always diverse. I am hoping this was an aberration.
I've debated about cashing out but these sudden price spikes are making the decision easier.
I am also quite concerned over these insane spikes. I keep a list of my more valuable cards on deckbox.org. Two weeks ago, my collection was worth, according to deckbox.org, 10k. Which is totally insane on it own, I can tell you that I didn't spend 1/3 of that on the cards in the first place. Today it is close 11k. A ~10% gain in two weeks on ~550 cards total.
Something has to give at some point. I am worried that, in the future, liquidity in the high end staple market will approach 0. If no one will buy at the inflated prices, and no one will sell for any less, then Legacy, and the MTG market in general is in big trouble.
I want to cash out now because liquidity and prices are high, but I really bought the cards to play with. I have a retirement account for savings.
Which brings me to a quick rant. I hate when people say I 'invested' in card X or Y. MTG cards are not an investment. We are for sure in a bubble. It is always easy to see a bubble from inside of it, but knowing when it will burst is the trick.
I have to agree with many of the others in this thread. You need to start with a mana base, and I suggest blue based mana. This means blue duals and fetches. I started buying into legacy quite some time ago, but did so very slowly. My highest priority has been to buy staple cards that produce mana. This strategy worked out quite well for me. Except it took me years to have a complete deck.
Besides mana producing cards, Force of Will and Tarmogoyf were the next priorities.
If you want to play as soon as possible, then I suggest picking a blue based deck, maybe RUG Delver, and try to get the mana base for it. it may take you a year, or longer, but it will be worth it in the long run.
Also, as an aside, I would stay away from cards that have been printed in the last ~3 years and are high priced unless you really need them. I believe that the print runs on the newer sets are so huge that they eventually have to come down. Magic has, by some estimations, tripled its player base in the last few years. I don't believe all these new players will continue playing indefinitely, and when they quit , the supply of these new cards will far out strip the demand.
Buy 1 or 2 cards a month and always find the cheapest possible in the best conditon. You'll see, in the end you'll end up with a nice cardpool which you can sell at double or triple the value in a couple of years.
This is how it should be done. I have been doing this, (although more like 4-5 cards a month), for about 6 years. I started with almost nothing, and now can build pretty much any deck that I want. However, I did go for almost 3 years without a playable deck. It is all about patience.
Mother of Runes looks so bad in the new frame. Look at how badly the artwork was washed out to match the new border color. Needless to say, I strongly prefer the old frame. The title font is hard to read, but coveys so much more flavor! I suppose the new frames have slightly bigger art boxes, so that is good.
I, for one, will never buy anything from SCG ever again if they stop supporting Legacy in favor of Modern. More specifically, if they stop airing live Legacy streams at least 2 times a month, then I will never do business with the company again. My business might not mean much to them, but I have purchased several thousand dollars worth of stuff from them over the years.
Also, for the record, Modern sucks. The great thing about Legacy is that it is nearly self correcting. The card pool is so deep and powerful that it is very difficult for a single strategy to dominate the format. In modern they just have to ban stuff. Also, the lack of card selection in Modern makes it too variable. Some variance is fun, too much and the game becomes luck. No one wants to play Legacy-Lite except people who can't afford Legacy.
That said, it is probably inevitable, if they can get enough people to play the format. With the reserved list not likely going away, SCG and WotC both stand to make way more money by selling modern reprints that WotC doles out a few at a time over multiple Masters sets.
But, I believe, the most dedicated players will always gravitate toward Legacy, and hopefully that will be enough to keep the format in some kind of spotlight for the foreseeable future.
Bottom line is wizards would not want to kill a format. If the modern masters turns out it could lead to legacy masters. If wizards can get that far and honor the reserve list they have found a way to print money.
They have already found a way to print money. That is the big secret Maro can't ever talk about related to the the reserved list. The value of current and future cards is tied to the "magic equity" of the reserved list cards, psuedo-resevred list cards (i.e Force, Waste, etc.) and the general promise not to explode the market with cheap copies of expensive cards.
They want Legacy (and Vintage) to exist to give credibility to Standard and Modern, but they don't want them too popular because then no one wants to play Standard.
At the same time they know that gofys, seizes, confidants, are too expensive. MM is intended to cool the market, and test what kind of effects it has on the market. They want to be able to sell Modern reprints a few at a time for a long time.
Hasbro is basically printing money, they don't want to mess that up. But, when they do mess it up, and they will, then you will see your duals and moxes reprinted for one last cash grab. Hopefully, they don't break the game before this happens, but they probably will.
On the other hand, why would they make Modern an FNM format if they wanted to keep it on the sidelines?
Although it's worth noting that Modern isn't actually an Eternal format. It's just a non-rotating one. There is a difference.
That is why I put "eternal" in quotes.
Wizards also has a vested interest in promoting parts of the game as elitist. IIRC, the average Standard player only plays a single rotation before quitting due to all their cards rotating. If an average new player watches a Modern match at an FMN they might think, oh wow these players are so good and their decks are so cool, I just have to get enough Standard cards to trade into Modern.
In my opinion, Wizards can't hurt the Modern format by releasing this product in large quantities, as it will make Modern much cheaper for everyone.
Yes, but they can hurt Standard. Wizards has a vested interest in keeping "eternal" formats out of the reach of new players. Otherwise, why would anyone play Standard if they can just jump into Modern cheap?
I still think that this is a dumb, and ultimately futile, move by Hasbro. And, I still think Cockatrice does not technically infringe, but probably does in spirit.
And, I still think that the copyright laws we are currently dealing with are unfair, and have been warped from their original constitutional basis. However, it probably isn't going to change anytime soon while we live in plutocratic corporatocracy.
In either case, Cockatrice or another program like will continue on, and either Hasbro will get with the times and offer a legit alternative, or they will fight in perpetuity against this type of thing. I can only hope that, maybe, these type of fights will bankrupt them; seeing as Magic is basically their only profitable division. But, probably not.
The time to bash Hasbro is over ... The time to bash the system is over ...
Yeah, I guess we should just let the most powerful among us do whatever they want. There is no point to discussing alternatives. I'll just bow to anyone who has more lobbyist and lawyers than I do.
I believe that I have stated my arguments clearly, and I believe that both sides have merits.
However, regardless of law, Hasbro is fighting a losing battle. Eventually Magic will be playable by everyone using Cockatrice or a similar, better, program. Hasbro cannot stop it. This is because Magic is now bigger than Hasbro. They would be better served in the long run, and gain the moral high ground, by allowing Cockatrice as fair use. They will not do this because their sight does not extend beyond Q1 2014. But it will happen one way or the other. Good luck protecting something that you spread on the internet for free via Gatherer!
In any case, I am done with this thread. I will attempt to use my Force of Will to not post on this thread again. Instead, I will spend my night drooling on my paper playsets of goyfs, duals, and forces, and, since I have no one to play with locally, play Cockatrice.
If not for trademark and copyright MTG never would have existed, no one would have spent the $$ it takes to produce the game, and if those protections went away. MTG would vanish overnight.
No one made games before the advent of modern IP laws?
And Hasbro deserve that income if people play it. In paper or digital form. You have no right to enjoy their hard work and not compensate them for it.
Constitutionally, any argument made in favor of copyright laws must be framed in the context of promoting science and the useful arts. No one deserves, or has the right, to profit indefinitely off of the exclusivity of their works.
As long as they choose to enforce their trademark by actively producing new content. If they stop making MTG cards, and let their trademarks expire, the works would transfer to the public domain and you could make all the cards you want.
It costs over $150 million dollars to develop and launch a single new drug. And for every successful drug launch, an average of 10 R&D efforts never make it out of clinical trials, at an average sunk cost of $10 million each.
The company is granted the privilege of exclusivity for a limited time in order to promote, and, in this case, incentivise their efforts. I was suggesting that the companies are working toward increasing the length of time the maintain their exclusivity privilege as a means to increase their profits. This is in direct conflict with the good of everyone else except them.
I believe there are two real reasons for the Reserved List, and also not reprinting key high value cards not on the Reserved List; such as Force of Will or Wasteland. First, if Legacy was cheaper, many more people would play Legacy and ditch Standard. Second, they want to preserve the perception of Magic cards as a collectible.
I believe WotC likes Legacy to an extent. They want new players to aspire to play Legacy because that keeps them loyal. They also want to keep Legacy alive, but in check, because high value Legacy cards give legitimacy to MTG as a collectible.
WotC has traditionally been very reluctant to reprint high value cards regardless of the the Reserved List, but that stance seems to be changing in the last year or so. We may actually see a Judge Force of Will. But they don't want to lower the barrier of entry to Legacy so that the masses of Standard players can get into Legacy and leave Standard behind.
Finally, WotC will reprint everything at some point, but will probably only do so as a last gasp cash grab when it is clear the game is dying.
While WotC maintains plausible deniability about their interest, or lack their of, in the secondary market, everyone knows they care greatly about the value of Magic cards in general and will go way out of their way to not crash the market on cards in order to maintain confidence in the market.
I believe this is also the real, 'secret', reason behind the Reversed List.
There are also probably other reasons they don't reprint say, Force of Will. One may be they aren't interested in expanding the Legacy player base.
Who knows, but if push ever comes to shove with Hasbro, it is very likely many of the expensive cards will be reprinted in order to simply make a bunch of money.
I suppose we may be seeing a change with Moderns Masters, and WotC wants to cool an overheated market to prevent it from crashing. We could see more of this, and it may extend to non-reserved Legacy and Vintage cards. We'll see.
However, I was also disappointed in watching him so many times. Could we have just seen the lands deck, and still watched the other two matches. If I wanted to watch the same deck over and over I would watch Standard.
SCG is usually great and the streams are almost always diverse. I am hoping this was an aberration.
I am also quite concerned over these insane spikes. I keep a list of my more valuable cards on deckbox.org. Two weeks ago, my collection was worth, according to deckbox.org, 10k. Which is totally insane on it own, I can tell you that I didn't spend 1/3 of that on the cards in the first place. Today it is close 11k. A ~10% gain in two weeks on ~550 cards total.
Something has to give at some point. I am worried that, in the future, liquidity in the high end staple market will approach 0. If no one will buy at the inflated prices, and no one will sell for any less, then Legacy, and the MTG market in general is in big trouble.
I want to cash out now because liquidity and prices are high, but I really bought the cards to play with. I have a retirement account for savings.
Which brings me to a quick rant. I hate when people say I 'invested' in card X or Y. MTG cards are not an investment. We are for sure in a bubble. It is always easy to see a bubble from inside of it, but knowing when it will burst is the trick.
Besides mana producing cards, Force of Will and Tarmogoyf were the next priorities.
If you want to play as soon as possible, then I suggest picking a blue based deck, maybe RUG Delver, and try to get the mana base for it. it may take you a year, or longer, but it will be worth it in the long run.
Also, as an aside, I would stay away from cards that have been printed in the last ~3 years and are high priced unless you really need them. I believe that the print runs on the newer sets are so huge that they eventually have to come down. Magic has, by some estimations, tripled its player base in the last few years. I don't believe all these new players will continue playing indefinitely, and when they quit , the supply of these new cards will far out strip the demand.
This is how it should be done. I have been doing this, (although more like 4-5 cards a month), for about 6 years. I started with almost nothing, and now can build pretty much any deck that I want. However, I did go for almost 3 years without a playable deck. It is all about patience.
Also, for the record, Modern sucks. The great thing about Legacy is that it is nearly self correcting. The card pool is so deep and powerful that it is very difficult for a single strategy to dominate the format. In modern they just have to ban stuff. Also, the lack of card selection in Modern makes it too variable. Some variance is fun, too much and the game becomes luck. No one wants to play Legacy-Lite except people who can't afford Legacy.
That said, it is probably inevitable, if they can get enough people to play the format. With the reserved list not likely going away, SCG and WotC both stand to make way more money by selling modern reprints that WotC doles out a few at a time over multiple Masters sets.
But, I believe, the most dedicated players will always gravitate toward Legacy, and hopefully that will be enough to keep the format in some kind of spotlight for the foreseeable future.
They have already found a way to print money. That is the big secret Maro can't ever talk about related to the the reserved list. The value of current and future cards is tied to the "magic equity" of the reserved list cards, psuedo-resevred list cards (i.e Force, Waste, etc.) and the general promise not to explode the market with cheap copies of expensive cards.
They want Legacy (and Vintage) to exist to give credibility to Standard and Modern, but they don't want them too popular because then no one wants to play Standard.
At the same time they know that gofys, seizes, confidants, are too expensive. MM is intended to cool the market, and test what kind of effects it has on the market. They want to be able to sell Modern reprints a few at a time for a long time.
Hasbro is basically printing money, they don't want to mess that up. But, when they do mess it up, and they will, then you will see your duals and moxes reprinted for one last cash grab. Hopefully, they don't break the game before this happens, but they probably will.
That is why I put "eternal" in quotes.
Wizards also has a vested interest in promoting parts of the game as elitist. IIRC, the average Standard player only plays a single rotation before quitting due to all their cards rotating. If an average new player watches a Modern match at an FMN they might think, oh wow these players are so good and their decks are so cool, I just have to get enough Standard cards to trade into Modern.
Yes, but they can hurt Standard. Wizards has a vested interest in keeping "eternal" formats out of the reach of new players. Otherwise, why would anyone play Standard if they can just jump into Modern cheap?
I still think that this is a dumb, and ultimately futile, move by Hasbro. And, I still think Cockatrice does not technically infringe, but probably does in spirit.
And, I still think that the copyright laws we are currently dealing with are unfair, and have been warped from their original constitutional basis. However, it probably isn't going to change anytime soon while we live in plutocratic corporatocracy.
In either case, Cockatrice or another program like will continue on, and either Hasbro will get with the times and offer a legit alternative, or they will fight in perpetuity against this type of thing. I can only hope that, maybe, these type of fights will bankrupt them; seeing as Magic is basically their only profitable division. But, probably not.
See you guys on the new server! Have fun!
Yeah, I guess we should just let the most powerful among us do whatever they want. There is no point to discussing alternatives. I'll just bow to anyone who has more lobbyist and lawyers than I do.
I believe that I have stated my arguments clearly, and I believe that both sides have merits.
However, regardless of law, Hasbro is fighting a losing battle. Eventually Magic will be playable by everyone using Cockatrice or a similar, better, program. Hasbro cannot stop it. This is because Magic is now bigger than Hasbro. They would be better served in the long run, and gain the moral high ground, by allowing Cockatrice as fair use. They will not do this because their sight does not extend beyond Q1 2014. But it will happen one way or the other. Good luck protecting something that you spread on the internet for free via Gatherer!
In any case, I am done with this thread. I will attempt to use my Force of Will to not post on this thread again. Instead, I will spend my night drooling on my paper playsets of goyfs, duals, and forces, and, since I have no one to play with locally, play Cockatrice.
Thanks for the stimulating discussion.
I believe that the legal defined period of time is excessive.
No one made games before the advent of modern IP laws?
Constitutionally, any argument made in favor of copyright laws must be framed in the context of promoting science and the useful arts. No one deserves, or has the right, to profit indefinitely off of the exclusivity of their works.
So never?
The company is granted the privilege of exclusivity for a limited time in order to promote, and, in this case, incentivise their efforts. I was suggesting that the companies are working toward increasing the length of time the maintain their exclusivity privilege as a means to increase their profits. This is in direct conflict with the good of everyone else except them.
I am sure that large pharma and tech companies are working to increase that length of time as a way to encourage future innovation!