Marshall was being a bit obtuse there. Marshall Sutcliffe hosts a podcast along with Brian Wong called "Limited Resources." It is a fantastic resource and is all about becoming a better limited player. It has been around for a while (Brian is the third co-host, the previous two have been hired by Wizards) so it has sort of developed its own lingo.
One of the biggest things Limited Resources does is an in depth, card by card, analysis of new limited formats. They go over EVERY SINGLE CARD and talk about how it stacks up against other cards and plays in the format. Occasionally when Marshall is reviewing a card he humorously says: "well this card certainly passes the groan test. When you see your opponent play it you let out a groan."
That's all it is. It's not very scientific, nor very useful, and just a bit of color Marshall probably threw in there and probably left a lot of people like you confused thinking it was a more real precise thing!
The only rule I would change is the mulligan rule. Everything else is too easily abusable.
My proposed change would be this:
Each hand you look at is seven cards. Then you place a number of cards back on top of the library equal to whatever mulligan it is.
You have the same number of cards as in the normal mulligans we do now, but each successive mulligan isn't as bad as it usually is. Especially the dreaded mull to 5. The combined loss of card advantage AND information about how your hand will play out is usually what causes these mulligan death spirals.
It may be too strong though, a mull to 6 is now vastly better than before. If this helps too many combo decks it probably is too good. But if it only helps degenerate corner case combos then maybe those would end up being banned.
But changing the functions of lands and spells in order to never be screwed or flooded is misguided. If you don't like the game being determined by a missed 4th land drop...play a different format. Less intense formats like casual or limited allow you to build decks that don't fold immediately to screw or flood.
DOTP isn't spying. VAC is spying. WotC isn't getting your info. Valve is. Going after WotC for what Valve's software does doesn't make sense. Wasting Maro's time everyday seems like some personal issue.
So under this scheme there will be LESS rares because the mythic slots are repeats?? And now a certain subset of rares are easier to obtain than others? How is this an improvement?
I get it, buying expensive cards sucks and good cards at high rarities cost more but that's what makes mtg a CCG.
If you want mythics to be cheap ask wizards to make all their rares constructed unplayable, you'll afford them then.
Why?
Yeah you can do 14 jank cards + 1 staple = $4.00 and "wring it out"
Or you can do 1 staple = $3.00, but since they probably don't want to sell singles directly:
15 staples = 3x15 = $45 minus a bit of a bulk discount / reduce sticker shock = $35
also offer 15 modern jank cards = $1
Or a whole fat pack of staples gets a little bit more of a discount = $250
Or whatever. Not wringing it out, but still getting same revenue. Not that hard.
(this is for reprints I'm talking about, not new sets)
There's no mystical law of the universe that says packs have to be $4 no matter what's in them.
I'm sorry I don't think I quite understand what you're talking about.
I'm talking about reprints of modern staples in random sealed standard legal product.
This is a terrible idea. You buy a pack of the latest set, the cards should be playable in standard. Breaking that is done so rarely, I can only imagine two instances: Modern Masters and the NPH event deck (which had stoneforge mystics). Wizards almost didn't ban stoneforge because it was in the event deck. They even gave it a special "un-banning" clause if you're deck was the event deck exactly. That's how seriously they take the idea of "if its being sold, it should be able to be played at FNM."
I get it, you want cheap modern cards. I want a pony. We're not going to get it, because having expensive rares is how Wizards makes money. They are not going to just hand you a stack of every modern staple. They're going to wring out the full value of each by featuring them singly in standard sets and supplemental products.
I mean... I hate to sound rude, but the MTG market is a bubble surrounding a product with no inherent value.....
Your new approach was mine from the get-go wrt to legacy. Obtain, trade, sell. Keep one deck at a time and the 'assets' as liquid as possible.
Magic is not in a bubble. There are not enough speculators in Magic to make it a bubble. The vast vast majority of people buying cards and holding them are to play with them, NOT to resell later for profit.
I dislike the methods, but this is hardly surprising given WOTC's absurd reprint policies.
Magic cards are just like any other commodity. If demand reaches a high enough point, and you are intentionally refusing to increase supply, then people will find another supplier. Even if they have to do business with the lowest scum of the earth to do so.
If you honestly think intellectual property laws are going to be enough keep the consumer market in check when the company isnt trying to fulfill the demand themselves... good luck with that. I hear that legal restrictions worked great with alcohol prohibition and the war on drugs... or maybe not.
The way to shut down any black market is to provide people with a legitimate and reasonable alternative.
If they would just print the cards, these criminals would be driven back under the rocks they crawled out from.
The whole nonsense about "protecting collectors" has been BS from the start. Its perfectly possible to print cards that are distinct from previous collectable cards and dont hurt collectable value. Thats why you can buy a Shivan Dragon for 30 cents or 800 dollars depending on which printing you want.
What motive does Wizards have in maintaining the reserve list? Why do they do it? What the is the real reason?
I'm a competitive player and proxies can't be used in sanctioned events. An undetectable unofficial reprint can be used in sanctioned events, as there's no way to verify that it's not real.
Flooding the market with unofficial reprints doesn't reduce the collectability of MTG. There are still tens of thousands of different cards to collect, and many different ways to collect them (by set, by artist, foils, etc). It just drives the speculators (who contribute nothing) out of the game. If you're collecting Magic simply because it's exclusive and other people can't do it, then your motives are pretty amoral.
Unofficial reprint? LOL
You want to play in a sanctioned event that doesn't allow proxies.
So you buy cheap undetectable PROXIES with the intention of deceiving the sanctioned event, and your opponents that had to pay for real cards. You don't find any of this immoral?
Do you think Wizards will sanction events if they know they are flooded with undetectable counterfeits?
Do you think tournaments will continue if Wizards doesn't sanction them?
Do you think Legacy will even be a thing if there are no Legacy tournaments?
As a side note by "collectability" I meant the fact that some cards are rarer and worth more than others. Not the card hoarder boogeyman that never plays with them and are blamed for rising prices.
Okay, imagine the market is flooded with about 100,000 copies of each Dual land. Prices plummet to $10-20 for Revised duals, $1 for the counterfeits. Do you think Standard players would just ignore this? Do you think they would feel comfortable paying serious money for cards? Do you think they would shrug it off with "Eh, they're only making counterfeits of those old cards, these ones will never be affected"? Do you really think the rest of the secondary market would be unaffected?
This is exactly the point everyone is missing. Crashing the secondary market anywhere in Magic undermines the whole legitimacy of the game. If I see Vintage players slamming 1$ black lotuses, I'm going to wonder what's next. If the most valuable cards in Magic can become worth nothing, then nothing in Magic is worth anything.
I'll be honest: I'm rooting hard for the makers of these cards and hope their products only get widely distributed and more identical to the real thing.
The prices on Magic singles are simply absurd for a cardboard game piece. There are millions of people around the world who would like to play Magic, but are priced out of the game. If we can lower the price of singles to the point where a Tier 1 Modern or Legacy deck is worth $20 or so, the number of players at events would increase exponentially. I don't believe that tournaments would be adversely affected, either- the game pieces for chess and poker cost $20 or less, and both of those games have much larger competitive scenes than Magic.
Right now, some of these decks cost more than an older used car. That's ridiculous. There are countless speculators out there who contribute nothing and drive up the price of cards to enrich themselves. Why not cut these people out of the market and let the people play the cards of their dreams?
Play with proxies then. These counterfeits are made to steal money away from the MTG community and enrich the counterfeiters, nothing more.
If you think the prices are too ridiculous and your playgroup does too, then play with proxies which will be assuredly cheaper.
The collectability of MTG is one of the reasons for its popularity and success. It may seem counterintuitive that the fact one of the game pieces is expensive and hard to get, but I assure you if Magic was printed like a LCG it wouldn't be as popular as it is right now.
I hate high card prices too. But I'm not going to participate with scammers and crash a secondary market just so I can play Legacy.
I buy exclusively from eBay, frequently finding very good deals. To my knowledge I haven't received counterfeit cards. But if I have, and I haven't noticed, and there is no chance this will affect me at all (again, because these are apparently apocalyptically good), why should I care?
A printer is a printer.
Only if you don't look at consequences or chain of events you shouldn't care. (or reduce the issue down to assuage your guilt)
But if you can use logical reasoning you should care.
Every single's price is a function of it's demand and the price of packs. Packs are opened. People pay for them and the singles come out of that. The pack price influences the single price. You can see this in how mythic rares cost more because more packs must be opened to supply them.
Every time you buy a legitimate single you are taking part in the economic chain that drives pack sales. More voracious single buying will drive more pack sales.
If you are buying counterfeit, you are outside that chain. Wizards isn't making any money, some Chinese thieves are. You satisfy your card buying but Wizards see no benefit. It is as if they lost a customer.
If wizards folds then the whole things folds. You may think we could survive trading around the existing remnants of the game, but without new players or sets most of the commercial secondary sellers, LGS, and communities will just give up and leave. Kill Wizards and you kill the game.
Counterfeiting cards for profit is wrong (and I won't publicly announce my stance on proxies for the fear of sanctions). With that out of the way, some food for thought:
1) What is the virtue of a genuine card vs. a counterfeit card?
Assuming you don't know your card is a fake and it is good enough, what is the difference in a casual setting?
How about in a tournament setting? Can you get sanctioned as in, is it every player's responsibility to verify the authenticity of each of their registered card? Do people really do that?
2) MTG cards are WotC's intellectual property and MTG community are their customers. Their customers have spoken out quite loudly and clearly about WotC's policy on reprints and the reserve list etc. and WotC has made it clear that it does not care at all*.
I, personally, wouldn't care if WotC got burned by these. Badly even. They make the game I like and, on some level, I'm grateful for them for that. Sure. But they've made it clear that what players want does not matter one bit and I think that they have thus brought this on themselves.
They've aimed to increase the popularity of the game, while limiting people's access to the most interesting part of the game and instead have been trying to force players to content with their substandard replacements (aka Standard and Modern). They knowingly created the friction so, morally, counterfeits are becoming fair game.
I still don't advocate actually ordering counterfeit cards. I'm just saying that part of the reason counterfeit cards exist is that it is a solution to a problem WotC has very deliberately created for the players.
*yeah, Modern Master does not count one little bit. It was fine for what it was, but it had nothing to do with lowering the price threshold.
I can't believe the lengths twisting ideas to rationalize that wizards deserves this. Everyone should be opposed to counterfeits both legally and logically. Eternal formats WOULD NOT EXIST if Wizards went out of business.
Thinking that because Wizards doesn't reprint dual lands for you that means it is ok for companies to steal their profits is incredibly immoral and entitled. And thinking that Wizards isn't trying to create a great game every release is a bizarre stance to take. You think they're deliberately trying to create a "substandard experience" with each limited set they release? I'm glad we have high and mighty legacy players to tell us how all other formats are terrible.
I'm hopefully glad you are the minority. You come a hair's breath away from condoning counterfeits. Counterfeits are wrong. Morally and for the health of the game.
I'm anal about pronouns. I'll make sure to use the correct one for different creatures and it bothers me when my opponent doesn't. I don't complain, but it does bother me.
One of the biggest things Limited Resources does is an in depth, card by card, analysis of new limited formats. They go over EVERY SINGLE CARD and talk about how it stacks up against other cards and plays in the format. Occasionally when Marshall is reviewing a card he humorously says: "well this card certainly passes the groan test. When you see your opponent play it you let out a groan."
That's all it is. It's not very scientific, nor very useful, and just a bit of color Marshall probably threw in there and probably left a lot of people like you confused thinking it was a more real precise thing!
My proposed change would be this:
Each hand you look at is seven cards. Then you place a number of cards back on top of the library equal to whatever mulligan it is.
You have the same number of cards as in the normal mulligans we do now, but each successive mulligan isn't as bad as it usually is. Especially the dreaded mull to 5. The combined loss of card advantage AND information about how your hand will play out is usually what causes these mulligan death spirals.
It may be too strong though, a mull to 6 is now vastly better than before. If this helps too many combo decks it probably is too good. But if it only helps degenerate corner case combos then maybe those would end up being banned.
But changing the functions of lands and spells in order to never be screwed or flooded is misguided. If you don't like the game being determined by a missed 4th land drop...play a different format. Less intense formats like casual or limited allow you to build decks that don't fold immediately to screw or flood.
I get it, buying expensive cards sucks and good cards at high rarities cost more but that's what makes mtg a CCG.
If you want mythics to be cheap ask wizards to make all their rares constructed unplayable, you'll afford them then.
I'm sorry I don't think I quite understand what you're talking about.
I'm talking about reprints of modern staples in random sealed standard legal product.
I get it, you want cheap modern cards. I want a pony. We're not going to get it, because having expensive rares is how Wizards makes money. They are not going to just hand you a stack of every modern staple. They're going to wring out the full value of each by featuring them singly in standard sets and supplemental products.
Magic is not in a bubble. There are not enough speculators in Magic to make it a bubble. The vast vast majority of people buying cards and holding them are to play with them, NOT to resell later for profit.
What motive does Wizards have in maintaining the reserve list? Why do they do it? What the is the real reason?
Unofficial reprint? LOL
You want to play in a sanctioned event that doesn't allow proxies.
So you buy cheap undetectable PROXIES with the intention of deceiving the sanctioned event, and your opponents that had to pay for real cards. You don't find any of this immoral?
Do you think Wizards will sanction events if they know they are flooded with undetectable counterfeits?
Do you think tournaments will continue if Wizards doesn't sanction them?
Do you think Legacy will even be a thing if there are no Legacy tournaments?
As a side note by "collectability" I meant the fact that some cards are rarer and worth more than others. Not the card hoarder boogeyman that never plays with them and are blamed for rising prices.
This is exactly the point everyone is missing. Crashing the secondary market anywhere in Magic undermines the whole legitimacy of the game. If I see Vintage players slamming 1$ black lotuses, I'm going to wonder what's next. If the most valuable cards in Magic can become worth nothing, then nothing in Magic is worth anything.
Play with proxies then. These counterfeits are made to steal money away from the MTG community and enrich the counterfeiters, nothing more.
If you think the prices are too ridiculous and your playgroup does too, then play with proxies which will be assuredly cheaper.
The collectability of MTG is one of the reasons for its popularity and success. It may seem counterintuitive that the fact one of the game pieces is expensive and hard to get, but I assure you if Magic was printed like a LCG it wouldn't be as popular as it is right now.
I hate high card prices too. But I'm not going to participate with scammers and crash a secondary market just so I can play Legacy.
Only if you don't look at consequences or chain of events you shouldn't care. (or reduce the issue down to assuage your guilt)
But if you can use logical reasoning you should care.
Every single's price is a function of it's demand and the price of packs. Packs are opened. People pay for them and the singles come out of that. The pack price influences the single price. You can see this in how mythic rares cost more because more packs must be opened to supply them.
Every time you buy a legitimate single you are taking part in the economic chain that drives pack sales. More voracious single buying will drive more pack sales.
If you are buying counterfeit, you are outside that chain. Wizards isn't making any money, some Chinese thieves are. You satisfy your card buying but Wizards see no benefit. It is as if they lost a customer.
If wizards folds then the whole things folds. You may think we could survive trading around the existing remnants of the game, but without new players or sets most of the commercial secondary sellers, LGS, and communities will just give up and leave. Kill Wizards and you kill the game.
I can't believe the lengths twisting ideas to rationalize that wizards deserves this. Everyone should be opposed to counterfeits both legally and logically. Eternal formats WOULD NOT EXIST if Wizards went out of business.
Thinking that because Wizards doesn't reprint dual lands for you that means it is ok for companies to steal their profits is incredibly immoral and entitled. And thinking that Wizards isn't trying to create a great game every release is a bizarre stance to take. You think they're deliberately trying to create a "substandard experience" with each limited set they release? I'm glad we have high and mighty legacy players to tell us how all other formats are terrible.
I'm hopefully glad you are the minority. You come a hair's breath away from condoning counterfeits. Counterfeits are wrong. Morally and for the health of the game.