I've started collecting complete foil sets of Magic cards. The cards are unplayed and are solely for collection purposes. The cards are all doubled sleeved using KMC perfect fits, clear Dragonshield sleeves, with Ultra Pro 18 pocket pages. I wanted to store them in nice 3 ring binders; I wanted something better than super cheap Avery binders, so i ended up getting several of these "Executive Binders" for about $18 - $22 each.
I loved them as they look great, but i can't seem to find any of them on sale anywhere, any more. Does anyone know where else they can be found, or at least an alternative of some other nice looking 3 ring binder to store my future sets in?
I am interested in collecting complete MTGO redeemed foil sets as the blocks come and go. I am curious as to when is it the ideal time to purchase them. Normally any cards in standard tend to drop in value directly after the block rotates out. This should affect redeemed sets too. Im guessing that people who play in standard MTGO will redeem their sets and supply will go up. But will there be a greater supply and a lower price around or shortly after the guaranteed redemption date? Is it better to pick up foil sets while its still in standard to avoid potential modern/legacy/edh price spikes of a suddenly discovered combination? Should i wait the nearly two years until the redemption cutoff date?
It seems like its found quite a bit in white, blue, followed by black. Its a tiny bit in red. Green has very little if you take away green effects that say "add mana of any color to your mana pool." Several multicolored cards and artifacts do play with colors. Heres a magiccard.info query that has what i think you are looking for:
You'll typically have to find them used on places like ebay. You can still purchase for new a CD storage cabinet; they have a similar construction but tend to be very shallow.
You can also purchase Apothecary Cabinets which are similar to library card catalogs, but they are generally almost always an Asian style furniture.
EDIT: Unfortunately, theres nothing in between cheap binders/cardboard box storage and relatively expensive not-designed-for-cards-but-kinda-works furniture.
Core sets are not set in any specific planes. Its part of the reason to allow them to reprint cards from any plane, as needed, for balance reasons. M14 had Rise of the Dark Realms featuring Liliana and practically alluding to Innistrad but at the same time also Darksteel Forge - very much a Phyrexian specific item. Cards talking about Thune, Xathrid, Evos Isle, and a few others are specific to Shandalar. I think its a fair point to make that most of the clearly plane specific cards are based on Shandalar, but its still only a handful of them.
The lack of a specific settings is one of the reasons that core sets come out rather bland and uncohesive from world building stand point. I generally don't even bother collecting core sets.
I'm surprisingly in the exact same situation. Been collecting full singleton foil sets since Scars of Mirrodin, suing the Ultra Pro Premium binders. I make small custom tags and i staple them to the edge to identify the binders easily. I was using about 2 binders per block (though more win INN and RTR being large, large, and small). With this change, a single binder for a whole 2-set block would be nice, but in the evnt a block happens to be large-large, it would have to be a very big binder.
I guess i'll still be using 2 binders per block either way. I havent found another solution just yet. Ring binders could work, and should actually be cheaper, but i kind of like the feel of the premiums as well as the consistent look of all of them.
I like TappedOut's playtesting features, but i dislike the site's aesthetics very much. I usually use deckstats.net as i find it much easier to organize and view stats about it. I'll occasionally copy it to tappedout to playtest a deck before purchasing singles.
Game mechanics aren't protected by copyright, but individual game design is. As a random example, the rules governing how a sudoku is solved is not copyrightable, but individual sudoku puzzles are.
Some of the Hex cards are so blatantly copied from Magic cards, that it's actually quite amazing. There's just no way they could claim coincidence, with so many details matching.
Take for instance "Droo's Colossal Walker" vs. : Both are artifacts, both are 8/8, both don't untap normally, and most damningly, with both you can pay exactly 8 life to untap it. Even the pictures are thematically similar, and even the name has a variation of "colossus" in it.
There's no way that the person who designed "Droo's Colossal Walker" didn't have in front of him when he did the design.
Your argument doesn't make much sense. I dont know what you mean by "individual game design" is copyrighted. As far as i know, you can't copyright or event patent a game design. The makers of Unreal most definitely played and took inspiration from Doom and Quake.
The only aspects protected by copyright are the card's art and text. So to start right off: They both have completely unique original art and frames. The text? The only words those cards share are "artifact", "can't", "pay", "your", and the number 8. In short, the majority of the text is not the same as each others.
Where, more specifically, is the copyright infringement? Again, text and art. The mechanics or any of its functional aspects are not a point of contention.
It's like having Coke and Pepsi together. Why not let the consumer base take their pick?
This is like Coke trying to copyright cola flavored soda.
No, this is like Coke trying to keep control over its proprietary design, research, and development practices. People have gone to jail for trying to circumvent this.
Stealing trade secrets is hardly the same as accusing another company for trade dress or copyright infringement. It would be much closer to saying Coke is trying to sue a company using a red can, white letters, and the word "Cola" on it. Nevermind that Coke would never win such a lawsuit.
No, I don't have it backwards at all. I don't honestly care what the law has to say on the subject, my personal feelings aren't going to be changed by it. Which goes back to "they're hiding behind the law to do something I don't approve of because they can". It isn't them using some vague concepts of Magic, it's them using everything but it's aesthetics when it comes to the worlds they do to make the game. For all intents and purposes, you could print "Hex" as a new set in Magic and with the terminology changed no one would bat an eye.
At the very least, it might encourage WOTC to step up their game from their horrible client. Regardless of your opinion, its perfectly fine for someone to copy MTG's mechanics, even if its verbatim or not.
I still don't see how this is a bad thing for consumers.
Copy right applies to the cards design, and there are several Hex cards that are word-for-word copies of MTG cards.
The card's theatrical elements ARE copyrighted.
The copyright would apply to the art, and it would apply to the text, and nothing else. The art for every Hex card is original and the borders are very different. This leads to some cards sharing the same text. However, the text they share tends to be common words found in any dictionary, rather than words like "Planeswalker."
These two are probably the closest cards that i could find between the two:
The circumstantial evidence test for copyright infringement by unauthorized copying has three parts:
1. Did the accused infringer have ‘access’ to the work that is said to have been infringed so that copying was possible?
2. Is the defendant actually guilty of ‘copying’ part of the plaintiff’s protectable expression from the plaintiff’s work?
3. Is the accused work ‘substantially similar’ to the work the plaintiff says was copied.
1. This is a pretty clear yes.
2. Considering only the words "murder", "destroy" and "target" are the only similarities, then its a maybe at best.
3. Similar to #2. The most important elements are very clearly different. Its really hard to claim they are "substantially similar" when you don't take into account that they function identically. This is a no.
Granted, this is only a single card from each game. The only real similarities in Hex vs MTG, from a copyright perspective, exist in similarities of their text. And most of those similarities are of very common words in the first place.
While i think there is a case to be made, i'm a little doubtful WOTC will actually win this.
I personally think WotC case is strong. I'd be surprised if they didn't win.
What makes you think that? Keep in mind the mechanics and functional aspects are no longer under protection. What copyrightable aspects do you feel that Hex infringes?
exact theatrical game-play elements. The game plays out in a very similar fashion to that of MTG.
EDIT: each card listed in the revised complaint performs the same exact role in the same exact manner as the MTG equivalent.
Copyrights don't apply to game mechanics. Patents do and the patent no longer applies.
I personally think WotC case is strong. I'd be surprised if they didn't win.
What makes you think that? Keep in mind the mechanics and functional aspects are no longer under protection. What copyrightable aspects do you feel that Hex infringes?
How is not using Magic's rules? From what I've seen it looks virtually identical in that regard. Is putting new names on them various parts enough of a difference, even though they do the same thing and combine to create the same experience?
You can copyright the rules text (basically the manual), but that doesn't mean that the mechanics behind those rules are protected by copyright. A movie can copyright a script, but not the idea of, say, a movie about a boy meeting a girl and falling in love. If the script (or manual) isn't pretty much identical, then its not copyright infringement, even if the ideas are the same.
You can patent game mechanics, like tapping. But MTG's patent for mechanics has expired.
WOTC's claim of copyright infringement is weak at best. WOTC's claims of patent infringements may have some merit, but any damages would have been valid up to June 22, 2014 when the patent expired. WOTC's claim for trade dress is arguably the only real point of contention. Does Hex look close enough to MTG that people would have confused the game as if it were MTG? The important thing here is that Hex has to look like MTG, not necessarily play like MTG. Trade dress laws cover non-functional aspects while patents cover functional aspects.
I'm pretty sure that most gamers would not say that Hex looks so similar to MTG as to be considered an MTG product. But considering this case will be done by a jury, would, say, a grandma tell the difference? Not sure.
I think it could be good for Magic in the sense that it shows that they will attack those who make such blatant rip-offs. This isn't a different game with a few similarities, it is the same game slightly re-skinned with a few tweaks (and the tweaks aren't even creative, they are simply derivatives of other online products that can be applied in the TCG space). Win or lose, Magic is saying "we can and will sue for this so think twice".
If Magic were a big company doing this abusively to suppress competition I would take issue. But realistically that isn't the case. They don't go after the games that draw a few elements from Magic but have significant unique game play that makes the game "not Magic" (i.e. countless other TCG's). But this case really is one where they were blatantly copied.
Well the big issue is this: What is it that Hex has copied that WOTC has under copyright? Game mechanics aren't copyrightable. They can be patented, but Magic's patent has expired very recently. Game's rules can be copyright but Hex isn't using Magic's rules (e.g., lands, the stack, declaring, phases, etc.). Resource costs, common word names (like "Murder), power/toughness, activating cards, etc. are not ideas exclusive to WOTC.
Theres not much WOTC can go after copyright infringement because there's nothing there that actually does infringe. There may be a case for the mechanics, but their patent has expired and can likely only claim damages of a few month's worth the Hex's development. The trade dress accusation is a little on the weak side because trade dress does not protect "functional elements" like patents do.
Personally, I hope Hex does succeed. At the very least it may motivate WOTC to do better with their MTGO client. More competition in this space can only be a good thing for consumers.
So, after reading this, if you have a game with a resource system and have cards which cost things you're going to get sued? Because of course, if you have cards and draw etc, it's going to end up similar
Not quite. Look at Hearthstone, which also has a resource system, and cards that cost things. But the game differs enough from Magic to be called it's own entity.
Hex, however, appears to have 5 colors, costs that are paid in mana of any color + specific colored mana, the exact same abilities but worded slightly difference (Flying -> Flight, Trample -> Crush), and a LOT of cards that are EXACTLY the same as Magic. Furthermore, they seem to have Creatures (Troop), Sorceries (Basic Action), Instants (Quick Action), Enchantments (Constant) and Artifacts (Same name, but that's forgivable). They also use the same Species - Job description that Magic does (Human Warrior - Shroomkin Mutant).
There's "basing yourself upon" a different cardgame. Hex literally copy-pasted Magic, slathered a few different words on it and called it a day. Hearthstone, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon TCG and Magic are all (online) TCG's that fall in the same catagory, but are different enough from one another to ensure they don't really copy one another.
The resource system is actually different than magic despite looking similar at a glance. Hex's system is designed that if you have 1 Ruby (Red) and 4 of any other color(s), you can still cast 5 red spells (if they all only cost 1 red). Putting down a shard (land) of a specific color essentially "unlocks" the use of cards needed to use that many shards. If a card is, say 4 mana with 2 Blood (Black), you would've needed to put down at least two Blood shards at some point, even though you can pay its 4 mana cost with any color.
You can almost consider it as though every single card in the game is colorless with a clause of "you may only cast this spell if you own at least X many shard of Y color". It doesn't matter what colors you actually use to pay for it with.
In any case, the real root of the argument is whether this is actual infringement of copyright, especially since the patent on MTG's mechanics have expired. There's a clearcut case of copyright infringementif hex just took one of MTG's art and used it as their own. But you can't copyright mechanics like flying, trample, etc.
WoTC's main argument relies on the more nebulous "trade dress]" argument in that the game's similarities are so close that people would confuse Hex with Magic. I think that WoTC would actually have a fair argument at this very point in time. However, as you delve deeper into the game, it makes the argument harder to make when hex has things like socketed cards, cards that level up and transform multiple times, PvE specific cards and mechanics (raids, dungeons, etc), cards that insert cards into people's decks, equipment that is specific and unique to every card.
Eitherway, i don't think that this legal battle is good for anyone.
I loved them as they look great, but i can't seem to find any of them on sale anywhere, any more. Does anyone know where else they can be found, or at least an alternative of some other nice looking 3 ring binder to store my future sets in?
http://bit.ly/1D5L8mr
Im using bit.ly to shorten the url otherwise it wont play nice with the formatting.
You'll typically have to find them used on places like ebay. You can still purchase for new a CD storage cabinet; they have a similar construction but tend to be very shallow.
You can also purchase Apothecary Cabinets which are similar to library card catalogs, but they are generally almost always an Asian style furniture.
EDIT: Unfortunately, theres nothing in between cheap binders/cardboard box storage and relatively expensive not-designed-for-cards-but-kinda-works furniture.
The lack of a specific settings is one of the reasons that core sets come out rather bland and uncohesive from world building stand point. I generally don't even bother collecting core sets.
I guess i'll still be using 2 binders per block either way. I havent found another solution just yet. Ring binders could work, and should actually be cheaper, but i kind of like the feel of the premiums as well as the consistent look of all of them.
Your argument doesn't make much sense. I dont know what you mean by "individual game design" is copyrighted. As far as i know, you can't copyright or event patent a game design. The makers of Unreal most definitely played and took inspiration from Doom and Quake.
The only aspects protected by copyright are the card's art and text. So to start right off: They both have completely unique original art and frames. The text? The only words those cards share are "artifact", "can't", "pay", "your", and the number 8. In short, the majority of the text is not the same as each others.
Where, more specifically, is the copyright infringement? Again, text and art. The mechanics or any of its functional aspects are not a point of contention.
Stealing trade secrets is hardly the same as accusing another company for trade dress or copyright infringement. It would be much closer to saying Coke is trying to sue a company using a red can, white letters, and the word "Cola" on it. Nevermind that Coke would never win such a lawsuit.
At the very least, it might encourage WOTC to step up their game from their horrible client. Regardless of your opinion, its perfectly fine for someone to copy MTG's mechanics, even if its verbatim or not.
I still don't see how this is a bad thing for consumers.
The copyright would apply to the art, and it would apply to the text, and nothing else. The art for every Hex card is original and the borders are very different. This leads to some cards sharing the same text. However, the text they share tends to be common words found in any dictionary, rather than words like "Planeswalker."
These two are probably the closest cards that i could find between the two:
The circumstantial evidence test for copyright infringement by unauthorized copying has three parts:
1. Did the accused infringer have ‘access’ to the work that is said to have been infringed so that copying was possible?
2. Is the defendant actually guilty of ‘copying’ part of the plaintiff’s protectable expression from the plaintiff’s work?
3. Is the accused work ‘substantially similar’ to the work the plaintiff says was copied.
1. This is a pretty clear yes.
2. Considering only the words "murder", "destroy" and "target" are the only similarities, then its a maybe at best.
3. Similar to #2. The most important elements are very clearly different. Its really hard to claim they are "substantially similar" when you don't take into account that they function identically. This is a no.
Granted, this is only a single card from each game. The only real similarities in Hex vs MTG, from a copyright perspective, exist in similarities of their text. And most of those similarities are of very common words in the first place.
While i think there is a case to be made, i'm a little doubtful WOTC will actually win this.
Copyrights don't apply to game mechanics. Patents do and the patent no longer applies.
What makes you think that? Keep in mind the mechanics and functional aspects are no longer under protection. What copyrightable aspects do you feel that Hex infringes?
You can copyright the rules text (basically the manual), but that doesn't mean that the mechanics behind those rules are protected by copyright. A movie can copyright a script, but not the idea of, say, a movie about a boy meeting a girl and falling in love. If the script (or manual) isn't pretty much identical, then its not copyright infringement, even if the ideas are the same.
You can patent game mechanics, like tapping. But MTG's patent for mechanics has expired.
WOTC's claim of copyright infringement is weak at best. WOTC's claims of patent infringements may have some merit, but any damages would have been valid up to June 22, 2014 when the patent expired. WOTC's claim for trade dress is arguably the only real point of contention. Does Hex look close enough to MTG that people would have confused the game as if it were MTG? The important thing here is that Hex has to look like MTG, not necessarily play like MTG. Trade dress laws cover non-functional aspects while patents cover functional aspects.
I'm pretty sure that most gamers would not say that Hex looks so similar to MTG as to be considered an MTG product. But considering this case will be done by a jury, would, say, a grandma tell the difference? Not sure.
Well the big issue is this: What is it that Hex has copied that WOTC has under copyright? Game mechanics aren't copyrightable. They can be patented, but Magic's patent has expired very recently. Game's rules can be copyright but Hex isn't using Magic's rules (e.g., lands, the stack, declaring, phases, etc.). Resource costs, common word names (like "Murder), power/toughness, activating cards, etc. are not ideas exclusive to WOTC.
Theres not much WOTC can go after copyright infringement because there's nothing there that actually does infringe. There may be a case for the mechanics, but their patent has expired and can likely only claim damages of a few month's worth the Hex's development. The trade dress accusation is a little on the weak side because trade dress does not protect "functional elements" like patents do.
Personally, I hope Hex does succeed. At the very least it may motivate WOTC to do better with their MTGO client. More competition in this space can only be a good thing for consumers.
The resource system is actually different than magic despite looking similar at a glance. Hex's system is designed that if you have 1 Ruby (Red) and 4 of any other color(s), you can still cast 5 red spells (if they all only cost 1 red). Putting down a shard (land) of a specific color essentially "unlocks" the use of cards needed to use that many shards. If a card is, say 4 mana with 2 Blood (Black), you would've needed to put down at least two Blood shards at some point, even though you can pay its 4 mana cost with any color.
You can almost consider it as though every single card in the game is colorless with a clause of "you may only cast this spell if you own at least X many shard of Y color". It doesn't matter what colors you actually use to pay for it with.
In any case, the real root of the argument is whether this is actual infringement of copyright, especially since the patent on MTG's mechanics have expired. There's a clearcut case of copyright infringementif hex just took one of MTG's art and used it as their own. But you can't copyright mechanics like flying, trample, etc.
WoTC's main argument relies on the more nebulous "trade dress]" argument in that the game's similarities are so close that people would confuse Hex with Magic. I think that WoTC would actually have a fair argument at this very point in time. However, as you delve deeper into the game, it makes the argument harder to make when hex has things like socketed cards, cards that level up and transform multiple times, PvE specific cards and mechanics (raids, dungeons, etc), cards that insert cards into people's decks, equipment that is specific and unique to every card.
Eitherway, i don't think that this legal battle is good for anyone.