Yeah, it's nice to see new mechanics for a series of cards. It probably won't stick long term I'd almost bet money on that.
I think we can be confident that double-faced cards won't stick around.
For one specific reason.
Wizards decided that foil double-faced cards had to be foil on both sides.
This meant that they had to print all the double-faced cards on their own sheet, and put them in the boosters in their own slot, like the timeshifted cards from Time Spiral.
That automatically eliminates reprinting a handful of those cards in a future Core Set. It also means that if a future block were to have this type of card, it would have to have about the same number of double-faced cards in it - possibly a bit different if the rarity distribution is changed.
I don't think that repeating a special gimmick from a previous block is something Wizards is likely to do, and that's what this would be. They could choose to reprint a DFC in a Core Set as a flip card, but I'm pretty sure they won't do that either.
This is a big deal right now to some of us, including me. I mean seriously, look at all the pretty circles!!! Here's hoping they do Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, classical Greek, Cyrillic, and Sanskrit before the next blue moon.
Well, they are doing Russian. But Hebrew, Arabic, Classical Greek, and Sanskrit were just done for prerelease cards back in the day when Wizards was a bit uncomfortable with releasing cards early. So it is not likely that Wizards will be publishing Magic in those languages.
It would be nice if someday Magic were printed in additional languages, such as modern Greek and Hindi - but that would depend on the size of the potential market.
Well, it is true that the Reprint Policy merely states that Wizards may not print new tournament-legal copies of cards on the Reserved List.
They may print copies that "are not intended for regular game play", such as gold-bordered cards or oversized cards.
If they make gold-bordered cards tournament legal, they will not be printing new tournament-legal copies of cards on the Reserved List, but they certainly will be creating them.
And since that changes gold-bordered cards into cards that are intended for regular game play, in a sense, the Reprint Policy, while it was not violated at the time the Collectors' Edition and the Worlds' decks were printed, now turns out to have been violated then - unknown to those who decided to print those cards then. That's where "retroactively" comes in.
I am not sure about a couple of the cards in the banned list, but I think that they're going about things the right way to make a format that's fun and varied with a diverse meta. Sure, Zoo might dominate at your local table for a while - but after the netdeckers have something to work with, that won't last.
But the bannings do get in the way of one of the things I was hoping the format would do for Magic. With the exception of Tarmogoyf, this format isn't really a place to play your valuable old cards without having to get the original duals and play Legacy.
Thinking about it, though, instead of changing the format to accommodate this, the real answer may be two formats. Modern, with an active banlist, to make it a highly diverse format like Legacy - and Overextended, with a restricted list instead of a banned list, to make it a place to play your old cards... like Vintage.
Since first Vintage, and then Legacy, became too expensive due to the old cards becoming too rare, and both Vintage and Legacy performed useful functions for the game as a whole, perhaps what is needed, after Modern is well established as the new Legacy for the rest of us, is a second format that acts as the new Vintage for the rest of us.
I'm quite sure that making gold-bordered cards tournament legal is not an option. In effect, it would be a... retroactive... violation of the Reprint Policy.
However, printing a more useful series of gold-bordered cards for use as Vintage and Legacy proxies, and then having more liberalized rules for tournaments using that type of card only as proxies, is possible in theory. Although I don't believe Wizards will do that either, at least that would avoid violating the Reprint Policy.
I want to punch something every time I see someone say that this is an Extended replacement. It's not. This is meant to replace Legacy as the supported Eternal format, because there aren't enough cards in print to support the format. This does not mean Legacy will die. Vintage is still played, after all, and Vintage cards retain value. Legacy will see a similar fate-supported by third party organizers. It does mean, though, that Modern can be heavily supported by WoTC in a way that they are unable to support Legacy.
Right now there are far, far more players who WANT to play Legacy than CAN play Legacy due to the barrier to entry to the format.
I think it's a little of both.
I don't expect Wizards to cut support for Legacy after they've introduced Modern. Legacy is very popular now, and so I think that support for Legacy will continue. And, given that, Modern won't kill Legacy - people who do have the original duals will continue to play Legacy instead of Modern.
On the other hand, Extended has not been very popular, and changing the format to four sets didn't help improve its popularity. So I think that Modern could "replace" Extended in the sense of taking its slot. (I think there is a place for Extended in Magic, and so if it isn't kept around, in a better form, that will be a pity.)
That being said, yes, Modern is a replacement for Legacy in a functional sense. It's going to do for players, and Wizards, what Legacy should be doing.
Why does Wizards support eternal formats? The people who play them don't buy a lot of boosters? Think about it. Some people, at least, are scared away from spending money on Magic, because their cards won't be worth anything when they rotate out - if not of Standard, then certainly when they rotate out of Extended. If it wasn't for Legacy.
But Legacy, both because of the (relatively) small number of players (due to the dual lands barrier to entry) and the large card pool, in which most current cards are overshadowed, doesn't really create much demand for most cards in current sets on the secondary market. Modern would do this better.
By depressing demand for the original duals, since people can play Modern, I think that Modern will actually delay the slow decline of Legacy, even if it causes a few people to leave Legacy up front.
Yes, Modern is scary to Legacy players. But even if there were no Modern format, Wizards still isn't going to reprint the original duals. If the Phyrexian Negator debacle didn't make that crystal clear, I don't know what would. So the Modern format won't decide the fate of Legacy, because the question of reprints is already decided.
I can't seem to see a thread about this, and so I hope I've chosen the right forum in which to start one.
Tom LaPille's article on the Wizards site today, at least as I understand it, now suggests that the Modern format, which is included in the Magic Online 2011 Community Cup, is, in fact, being seriously considered by Wizards as a new sanctioned format for physical card play.
The way he put it is that no decisions were being made, but that Wizards - not just Tom LaPille personally, wishes to hear what players would think about making it a full-fledged format.
This is a momentous event. I'm strongly in favor of such a format. I do have one caveat:
Any format, to be a success, needs to be fun, and a format similar to "Overextended" needs, beyond that, to approach the diversity of the Legacy meta. This means there can't be one best deck. That suggests a lot of cards need to be banned, such as Bitterblossom and the artifact lands.
But, in my opinion, the eternal formats benefit Wizards' bottom line by ensuring that cards don't become worthless when they rotate out of Standard and Extended. So banning Chrome Mox or Tarmogoyf or Jace, the Mind Sculptor would defeat the way in which the Modern format could benefit Wizards by indirectly making players feel more confident when spending money on cards for playing Standard.
I've made a bold, radical suggestion to ensure that the Modern format will work for Wizards and the players. I've suggested that not only should it have a banned list, but it should also, like Vintage, have a restricted list.
While it's true we can't be sure until the Comprehensive Rules are updated, it would seem to me that it's almost certain that, as far as color is concerned, a that is defined as being payable with either 2 life, or with one green mana, would behave the same as the existing hybrid mana symbol payable with either 2 colorless mana, or with one green mana.
While I think that Wizards would be hurt by doing anything drastic to collectors, I think that the Reserved List does pose problems.
But there are three different problems it poses.
1) Players are sad that they missed out on a chance to get the P9 from boosters.
Reprinting them as rares in regular-priced boosters would... destroy their value, so those who missed out wouldn't gain anything. (I have some silly ideas for addressing the issue in a novel symbolic way, but I won't bore people with them again. If you're curious, look up my blog on Wizards' forum.)
2) Some cards in Fallen Empires, for example, would be nice to have, because they're well-designed... and they're not worth lots of money at all, so reprinting them wouldn't hurt anyone.
Yes. Take those off the Reserved List. Give warning, have consultation, make it clear there won't be any irresponsible tampering with the Reserved List. But this isn't the urgent issue.
3) The price of the original duals is keeping people out of Legacy.
This is the killer issue, the one most people are discussing.
Unlike Vintage, for which you need the P9, Legacy is Magic at its best.
This is where we're between a rock and a hard place.
I think that Evan Erwin's "Overextended" is the next best thing to reprints - but apparently it's not good enough. I find it hard to believe that a quasi-Legacy can't be developed without the expensive cards - but it looks like Masques-forward will be at best an improved Extended.
I meant that there would be a 15 card subset of Homelands themed cards, not reprints.
There are a lot of interesting cards from Fallen Empires that are on the Reserved List. I wasn't sure that there were any in Homelands, except possibly Serrated Arrows.
However, while some people might not give the set a fair chance if it was on the same plane as Homelands, there was nothing wrong with Homelands' flavor.
Aside from the unfortunate man on the floor looking like he might be Baron Sengir, there is one other possible (yes, it's really reaching and speculating) indication that this set has something to do with Homelands.
The Innistrad logo, its name in silver, has a curved groove in it. That groove is in the shape of a circular arc. And the expansion symbol for Homelands was a globe.
Not to argue one side or the other but they both look like pretty bad mockups to me.
To me, the character artwork on the Mirrodin Pure stuff looks like a bad mockup, but the framed Mirrodin Pure name looks good... while the character artwork on the New Phyrexia stuff looks good, but the framed New Phyrexia name looks like a bad mockup.
So, for the sake of quality packaging, they should change the name of Action from New Phyrexia to Mirrodin Pure at the last minute, while keeping the actual set with the New Phyrexia expansion symbol on the cards and the Phyrexian theme. Oh, wait, that would be even worse.
Either side can still come out on top. And not releasing the new set name is something of a marketing ploy.
This is true.
Of course, ever since Jason Todd died, this kind of conclusion is foregone.
What I think is that they will make the announcement of which set it is just before they start shipping product. No point letting it be scooped by a leak.
The fact that the set has 264 cards in it instead of 249 has led me to various speculations.
I'm confident that they won't simply have seven versions of the artwork for each basic land.
The first thing I tried to work out was if there would have been some way, given the constraint of fitting the cards into sheets of 121, to do what many people have asked for, and abolish the Mythic rarity.
For example, if the rare sheet had one copy of each of 75 rares, and 3 copies each of 15 uncommons, with the uncommon sheet having 2 copies each of 60 uncommons, they could have 75 rares and 75 uncommons without having to complicate printing by making an extra sheet.
None of those worked out.
They could go in the opposite direction; have a second rare sheet, with 15 different Mythics. So that one pack in 8 has a Mythic, but now a Mythic is four times as rare as a regular rare. Adds 15 cards, but that would have people quite upset. (Never mind the thought that they might put nine really good cards in at that higher rarity... why would they have a Great Designer Search if Magic is doomed?)
Finally, therefore, I have come to the conclusion that they're not permanently changing the large set structure, which is intact in Magic: 2012, but they're having 15 cards that are like the timeshifted cards in Time Spiral - and probably like what 30 cards in the third set of the Scars block are going to be like as well.
Fifteen is kind of a small number for that, and so maybe not every pack will have a card in this extra rarity in it. (In that case, they'll have to be careful about disrupting Limited, though.)
Well, yes. That's what I meant. They're only releasing either "New Phyrexia" or "Mirrodin Pure", not both. I didn't mean by that to imply that they designed and playtested two complete sets, but will only release one. I did mean that only one of the two hypothetical named sets actually exists - and so only one of them will be published at the release date for the one new set which we now only know of as "Action".
Basically, when Wizards made the announcement of the set, and said that it could have the name "Mirrodin Pure" or the name "New Phyrexia", that announcement created two imaginary objects - a set called Mirrodin Pure, and a set called New Phyrexia.
Meanwhile, the hard work of Magic R&D prior to that announcement had created one real object - a set of 175 cards. In that set, one of the two factions predominates, so the real object corresponds to one of the imaginary objects - and therefore that imaginary object's name is the one the real object will have when it becomes available.
Well, they've definitely stated that they're only releasing one of the two sets.
I figure that they will make an official announcement of what the name of the set is (at the very latest) the day before Preview Week starts. And then they will preview the set normally. They're simply keeping the name of the set secret now, until the official announcement - not up until the Prerelease.
In fact, I think they won't wait till Preview Week. They will make the announcement as soon as product starts shipping. Otherwise, they would risk being scooped by an unofficial leak. (Somebody's going to peek in those boxes labelled "Action"!) So, yes, they're keeping it very secret now to build excitement, but that's no reason to conclude they'll try to keep it secret longer than... is possible.
Now, while they've definitely stated that they won't print both sets, though, the fact that there's 30 extra cards in this set, and the fact that they used faction packs in the Mirrodin Besieged Prerelease and Launch Party... could mean that something strange will happen.
By "something strange", I mean that perhaps they won't quite print both sets, but somehow they'll do something weird that's sort of in between just printing one set in the ordinary way, and publishing both sets simultaneously. I don't know how they would do this, and I'm not saying this is likely, but some sort of gimmick so that they almost printed both sets, and yet they didn't lie when they said they'd print just one... is still not impossible.
For one specific reason.
Wizards decided that foil double-faced cards had to be foil on both sides.
This meant that they had to print all the double-faced cards on their own sheet, and put them in the boosters in their own slot, like the timeshifted cards from Time Spiral.
That automatically eliminates reprinting a handful of those cards in a future Core Set. It also means that if a future block were to have this type of card, it would have to have about the same number of double-faced cards in it - possibly a bit different if the rarity distribution is changed.
I don't think that repeating a special gimmick from a previous block is something Wizards is likely to do, and that's what this would be. They could choose to reprint a DFC in a Core Set as a flip card, but I'm pretty sure they won't do that either.
Well, they are doing Russian. But Hebrew, Arabic, Classical Greek, and Sanskrit were just done for prerelease cards back in the day when Wizards was a bit uncomfortable with releasing cards early. So it is not likely that Wizards will be publishing Magic in those languages.
It would be nice if someday Magic were printed in additional languages, such as modern Greek and Hindi - but that would depend on the size of the potential market.
Yes, that's what the rules allow. But I suppose Wizards could put the rules text in Esperanto in very tiny printing on all cards in all languages...
They may print copies that "are not intended for regular game play", such as gold-bordered cards or oversized cards.
If they make gold-bordered cards tournament legal, they will not be printing new tournament-legal copies of cards on the Reserved List, but they certainly will be creating them.
And since that changes gold-bordered cards into cards that are intended for regular game play, in a sense, the Reprint Policy, while it was not violated at the time the Collectors' Edition and the Worlds' decks were printed, now turns out to have been violated then - unknown to those who decided to print those cards then. That's where "retroactively" comes in.
But the bannings do get in the way of one of the things I was hoping the format would do for Magic. With the exception of Tarmogoyf, this format isn't really a place to play your valuable old cards without having to get the original duals and play Legacy.
Thinking about it, though, instead of changing the format to accommodate this, the real answer may be two formats. Modern, with an active banlist, to make it a highly diverse format like Legacy - and Overextended, with a restricted list instead of a banned list, to make it a place to play your old cards... like Vintage.
Since first Vintage, and then Legacy, became too expensive due to the old cards becoming too rare, and both Vintage and Legacy performed useful functions for the game as a whole, perhaps what is needed, after Modern is well established as the new Legacy for the rest of us, is a second format that acts as the new Vintage for the rest of us.
However, printing a more useful series of gold-bordered cards for use as Vintage and Legacy proxies, and then having more liberalized rules for tournaments using that type of card only as proxies, is possible in theory. Although I don't believe Wizards will do that either, at least that would avoid violating the Reprint Policy.
I don't expect Wizards to cut support for Legacy after they've introduced Modern. Legacy is very popular now, and so I think that support for Legacy will continue. And, given that, Modern won't kill Legacy - people who do have the original duals will continue to play Legacy instead of Modern.
On the other hand, Extended has not been very popular, and changing the format to four sets didn't help improve its popularity. So I think that Modern could "replace" Extended in the sense of taking its slot. (I think there is a place for Extended in Magic, and so if it isn't kept around, in a better form, that will be a pity.)
That being said, yes, Modern is a replacement for Legacy in a functional sense. It's going to do for players, and Wizards, what Legacy should be doing.
Why does Wizards support eternal formats? The people who play them don't buy a lot of boosters? Think about it. Some people, at least, are scared away from spending money on Magic, because their cards won't be worth anything when they rotate out - if not of Standard, then certainly when they rotate out of Extended. If it wasn't for Legacy.
But Legacy, both because of the (relatively) small number of players (due to the dual lands barrier to entry) and the large card pool, in which most current cards are overshadowed, doesn't really create much demand for most cards in current sets on the secondary market. Modern would do this better.
By depressing demand for the original duals, since people can play Modern, I think that Modern will actually delay the slow decline of Legacy, even if it causes a few people to leave Legacy up front.
Yes, Modern is scary to Legacy players. But even if there were no Modern format, Wizards still isn't going to reprint the original duals. If the Phyrexian Negator debacle didn't make that crystal clear, I don't know what would. So the Modern format won't decide the fate of Legacy, because the question of reprints is already decided.
Tom LaPille's article on the Wizards site today, at least as I understand it, now suggests that the Modern format, which is included in the Magic Online 2011 Community Cup, is, in fact, being seriously considered by Wizards as a new sanctioned format for physical card play.
The way he put it is that no decisions were being made, but that Wizards - not just Tom LaPille personally, wishes to hear what players would think about making it a full-fledged format.
This is a momentous event. I'm strongly in favor of such a format. I do have one caveat:
Any format, to be a success, needs to be fun, and a format similar to "Overextended" needs, beyond that, to approach the diversity of the Legacy meta. This means there can't be one best deck. That suggests a lot of cards need to be banned, such as Bitterblossom and the artifact lands.
But, in my opinion, the eternal formats benefit Wizards' bottom line by ensuring that cards don't become worthless when they rotate out of Standard and Extended. So banning Chrome Mox or Tarmogoyf or Jace, the Mind Sculptor would defeat the way in which the Modern format could benefit Wizards by indirectly making players feel more confident when spending money on cards for playing Standard.
I've made a bold, radical suggestion to ensure that the Modern format will work for Wizards and the players. I've suggested that not only should it have a banned list, but it should also, like Vintage, have a restricted list.
But there are three different problems it poses.
1) Players are sad that they missed out on a chance to get the P9 from boosters.
Reprinting them as rares in regular-priced boosters would... destroy their value, so those who missed out wouldn't gain anything. (I have some silly ideas for addressing the issue in a novel symbolic way, but I won't bore people with them again. If you're curious, look up my blog on Wizards' forum.)
2) Some cards in Fallen Empires, for example, would be nice to have, because they're well-designed... and they're not worth lots of money at all, so reprinting them wouldn't hurt anyone.
Yes. Take those off the Reserved List. Give warning, have consultation, make it clear there won't be any irresponsible tampering with the Reserved List. But this isn't the urgent issue.
3) The price of the original duals is keeping people out of Legacy.
This is the killer issue, the one most people are discussing.
Unlike Vintage, for which you need the P9, Legacy is Magic at its best.
This is where we're between a rock and a hard place.
I think that Evan Erwin's "Overextended" is the next best thing to reprints - but apparently it's not good enough. I find it hard to believe that a quasi-Legacy can't be developed without the expensive cards - but it looks like Masques-forward will be at best an improved Extended.
However, while some people might not give the set a fair chance if it was on the same plane as Homelands, there was nothing wrong with Homelands' flavor.
Aside from the unfortunate man on the floor looking like he might be Baron Sengir, there is one other possible (yes, it's really reaching and speculating) indication that this set has something to do with Homelands.
The Innistrad logo, its name in silver, has a curved groove in it. That groove is in the shape of a circular arc. And the expansion symbol for Homelands was a globe.
So, for the sake of quality packaging, they should change the name of Action from New Phyrexia to Mirrodin Pure at the last minute, while keeping the actual set with the New Phyrexia expansion symbol on the cards and the Phyrexian theme. Oh, wait, that would be even worse.
Of course, ever since Jason Todd died, this kind of conclusion is foregone.
What I think is that they will make the announcement of which set it is just before they start shipping product. No point letting it be scooped by a leak.
I'm confident that they won't simply have seven versions of the artwork for each basic land.
The first thing I tried to work out was if there would have been some way, given the constraint of fitting the cards into sheets of 121, to do what many people have asked for, and abolish the Mythic rarity.
For example, if the rare sheet had one copy of each of 75 rares, and 3 copies each of 15 uncommons, with the uncommon sheet having 2 copies each of 60 uncommons, they could have 75 rares and 75 uncommons without having to complicate printing by making an extra sheet.
None of those worked out.
They could go in the opposite direction; have a second rare sheet, with 15 different Mythics. So that one pack in 8 has a Mythic, but now a Mythic is four times as rare as a regular rare. Adds 15 cards, but that would have people quite upset. (Never mind the thought that they might put nine really good cards in at that higher rarity... why would they have a Great Designer Search if Magic is doomed?)
Finally, therefore, I have come to the conclusion that they're not permanently changing the large set structure, which is intact in Magic: 2012, but they're having 15 cards that are like the timeshifted cards in Time Spiral - and probably like what 30 cards in the third set of the Scars block are going to be like as well.
Fifteen is kind of a small number for that, and so maybe not every pack will have a card in this extra rarity in it. (In that case, they'll have to be careful about disrupting Limited, though.)
Basically, when Wizards made the announcement of the set, and said that it could have the name "Mirrodin Pure" or the name "New Phyrexia", that announcement created two imaginary objects - a set called Mirrodin Pure, and a set called New Phyrexia.
Meanwhile, the hard work of Magic R&D prior to that announcement had created one real object - a set of 175 cards. In that set, one of the two factions predominates, so the real object corresponds to one of the imaginary objects - and therefore that imaginary object's name is the one the real object will have when it becomes available.
I figure that they will make an official announcement of what the name of the set is (at the very latest) the day before Preview Week starts. And then they will preview the set normally. They're simply keeping the name of the set secret now, until the official announcement - not up until the Prerelease.
In fact, I think they won't wait till Preview Week. They will make the announcement as soon as product starts shipping. Otherwise, they would risk being scooped by an unofficial leak. (Somebody's going to peek in those boxes labelled "Action"!) So, yes, they're keeping it very secret now to build excitement, but that's no reason to conclude they'll try to keep it secret longer than... is possible.
Now, while they've definitely stated that they won't print both sets, though, the fact that there's 30 extra cards in this set, and the fact that they used faction packs in the Mirrodin Besieged Prerelease and Launch Party... could mean that something strange will happen.
By "something strange", I mean that perhaps they won't quite print both sets, but somehow they'll do something weird that's sort of in between just printing one set in the ordinary way, and publishing both sets simultaneously. I don't know how they would do this, and I'm not saying this is likely, but some sort of gimmick so that they almost printed both sets, and yet they didn't lie when they said they'd print just one... is still not impossible.