I was reading the thread on reasons to abolish the reserve list and considered all sides. The common arguments are always as follows. On one hand, it's expensive to buy into legacy and many more players want to play it. On the other hand, printing legacy cards would have them renege on their promise to collectors, devalue reserve list cards, and erode the trust of longtime collectors. On the other hand, counterfeits are becoming a real thing. Although its a risky gambit if implemented improperly, I think there is a possible a solution that could fix the reserve list issue: A reserve list buyback program.
Here's how it works - Wizards can announce that they will begin printing reserve list cards again but to appease reserve list collectors, any longtime collectors can opt to trade in their reserve list cards back to Wizards for a credit value up to their discretion. The credits can be used directly with Wizards or participating stores towards a brand new box of Eternal Masters 1 or 2, at which point will have functional reprints of many of the dual lands and other reserve list cards or may also used to by future product. Sounds crazy right? Here's why it just may work.
1. The value of existing cards would not drop. By trading back old reserve list cards to Wizards, artificial scarcity is created. Even if there were functional reprints of all the ABUR duals, the value of the originals would be maintained from a collectibility standpoint. Those who opt not to trade their cards back could still sentimentally hold onto the Tundra handed down to them by their older brother in the 90s. Those who held onto it for financial or functional reasons have little to lose from trading up their dual land binders for whole booster boxes or two of the new eternal masters or credit towards future sets.
2. The printing process isn't very costly The printing press doesn't care if it's printing a card valued at .10 or $100. It costs wizards essentially the same to print any card save for foils. Sure it would be an initial investment to have to trade whole boxes for one or two cards. I'm not doubting that this would be very costly initially, but it would be an investment future product. Imagine a commander set that came with true duals alongside those sol rings? Imagine an eternal masters 2 and 3 with true duals. Within one or two sets, the trade in program will likely have paid for itself with the hotcake like sales and potential future sales.
3. At last, accessibility for all. With the ratio of a few duals being traded for a box or two, there will be an inevitable flood of new cards on the market. Bringing the price of a true dual reprint down to that of a mere fetch land would finally make the game accessible to everyone who had financial reservations. Players of reserve list cards can peacefully play alongside new players with their reprinted counterparts.
That's not to say there aren't huge, huge issues that can occur.
1. Too many people opting into the program Maybe I'm underestimating the amount of reserve list cards still floating around out there but it could be potentially costly to find trade so many boxes of new product for old cards. Someone at Wizards could easily hit the panic button and put a stop to the program if it gets too costly.
2. Displeasure with the value that Wizards may assign in credit A full playset of Tundras for one box of Eternal masters? No thanks. It has to be fair a fair enough deal that people will want to opt in.
3. The problem of counterfeiters I assume Wizards will have to hire experts to assess and grade cards to designate credit values. I imagine there will be some portion of people sending counterfeits, either knowingly or unknowingly. Those who had counterfeits unknowingly will be upset to find that their cards were fake and that they get nothing. Some who make insanely realistic counterfeits to trade for boxes may occasionally squeak through and you've given someone something for nothing.
Definitely seems unlikely to happen but I'd like to think it may work. I'm welcome to any criticism, even if you think it's the worst idea you've ever heard
3. At last, accessibility for all. With the ratio of a few duals being traded for a box or two, there will be an inevitable flood of new cards on the market. Bringing the price of a true dual reprint down to that of a mere fetch land would finally make the game accessible to everyone who had financial reservations. Players of reserve list cards can peacefully play alongside new players with their reprinted counterparts.
Yes! Something must be done about this great unjustice! You see you are forcing someone else do something in order to benefit another party.
I like your initiative and talking about a buyback. It gets a dialogue started.
Here's my go at the RL discussion:
On a volunteer basis, trade in 2 of any RL card and get one (of the same) shiny new black-bordered RL card with the anti-counterfeit foil stamp.
Wizards destroys one of the RL cards you traded in and keeps one to put in a new "hidden treasures" pack...
maybe even trade in 3 of the RL card and maybe get a foil version?
Zendikar had hidden treasures and I was able to trade for a revised taiga that was opened in a zen pack.
So it is "possible" to do this in new release packs.
You are missing the underline issues the reservelist which colloctors will go blastic on. In order to apease them you may have to make the the product ONLY purchaseable via this trade on, and only once say 60% of all total resevers list cards (of each card type so no maxing out allt he 0.10 cards so we can get duals) have been traded in can these products be got with real money. Letting collectors get it first may bet he clincher, also Value is a thing it would HAVE to be a very strong value beucase keep in mind that you createing a market floor. every store is going to raise its buy prices higher then wizards otherwise wizards will gobbles up all the stock and stores like to keep invintory around.
So I sell 40 Duals, a Tabernacle and a set of City of Traitors. Wizards then print me about 9 thousand dollars worth of product and I and everyone else who has been playing for more than 5 years flood the market crashing the price. How does that help? I mean I understand you are trying to come up with solutions hear and I admire that, but this idea is not the answer.
It's funny because it's the new player base that created this problem. It's not my fault my $15 dual became $200+. Reprinting cards does not hurt me for value, it hurts the new player who payed the current $200+ price tag and was forced into this reserve list issue.
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I don't think the credit value trade is necessary. I think you can just do it by having an announcement that they'll discontinue the Reserved List and will buy back any Reserved List cards at a price equal to the value of that card the day before the announcement (or the day before the announcement is leaked, since that seems almost inevitable nowadays). While this could be expensive, I feel it would more than be offset by the flood of sales for packs including the newly printed ex-Reserved list cards. And the biggest thing is that it nullifies any "promissory estoppel" claims collectors could have against WOTC for going back on their promise of keeping up the Reserved List. In order to assert that claim, a party must have suffered a detriment by relying on the promise. Take away the detriment and you're all set.
I was reading the thread on reasons to abolish the reserve list and considered all sides. The common arguments are always as follows. On one hand, it's expensive to buy into legacy and many more players want to play it. On the other hand, printing legacy cards would have them renege on their promise to collectors, devalue reserve list cards, and erode the trust of longtime collectors. On the other hand, counterfeits are becoming a real thing. Although its a risky gambit if implemented improperly, I think there is a possible a solution that could fix the reserve list issue: A reserve list buyback program.
Here's how it works - Wizards can announce that they will begin printing reserve list cards again but to appease reserve list collectors, any longtime collectors can opt to trade in their reserve list cards back to Wizards for a credit value up to their discretion. The credits can be used directly with Wizards or participating stores towards a brand new box of Eternal Masters 1 or 2, at which point will have functional reprints of many of the dual lands and other reserve list cards or may also used to by future product. Sounds crazy right? Here's why it just may work.
1. The value of existing cards would not drop. By trading back old reserve list cards to Wizards, artificial scarcity is created. Even if there were functional reprints of all the ABUR duals, the value of the originals would be maintained from a collectibility standpoint. Those who opt not to trade their cards back could still sentimentally hold onto the Tundra handed down to them by their older brother in the 90s. Those who held onto it for financial or functional reasons have little to lose from trading up their dual land binders for whole booster boxes or two of the new eternal masters or credit towards future sets.
2. The printing process isn't very costly The printing press doesn't care if it's printing a card valued at .10 or $100. It costs wizards essentially the same to print any card save for foils. Sure it would be an initial investment to have to trade whole boxes for one or two cards. I'm not doubting that this would be very costly initially, but it would be an investment future product. Imagine a commander set that came with true duals alongside those sol rings? Imagine an eternal masters 2 and 3 with true duals. Within one or two sets, the trade in program will likely have paid for itself with the hotcake like sales and potential future sales.
3. At last, accessibility for all. With the ratio of a few duals being traded for a box or two, there will be an inevitable flood of new cards on the market. Bringing the price of a true dual reprint down to that of a mere fetch land would finally make the game accessible to everyone who had financial reservations. Players of reserve list cards can peacefully play alongside new players with their reprinted counterparts.
That's not to say there aren't huge, huge issues that can occur.
1. Too many people opting into the program Maybe I'm underestimating the amount of reserve list cards still floating around out there but it could be potentially costly to find trade so many boxes of new product for old cards. Someone at Wizards could easily hit the panic button and put a stop to the program if it gets too costly.
2. Displeasure with the value that Wizards may assign in credit A full playset of Tundras for one box of Eternal masters? No thanks. It has to be fair a fair enough deal that people will want to opt in.
3. The problem of counterfeiters I assume Wizards will have to hire experts to assess and grade cards to designate credit values. I imagine there will be some portion of people sending counterfeits, either knowingly or unknowingly. Those who had counterfeits unknowingly will be upset to find that their cards were fake and that they get nothing. Some who make insanely realistic counterfeits to trade for boxes may occasionally squeak through and you've given someone something for nothing.
Definitely seems unlikely to happen but I'd like to think it may work. I'm welcome to any criticism, even if you think it's the worst idea you've ever heard
1. Value would absolutely drop. The value of duals is not due to collectors, it's due to players. There are a TON of duals out there, the print run of Revised in english alone was twice that of A/B/U COMBINED.
2. You have totally underestimated how many revised duals there are anyway. Revised's print run was 100,000,000 cards in English alone. You'd be pushing out so many boxes of product that whatever cards that box contained would be near worthless due to the extreme overprinting you'd have to do if WoTC got mailed even 10% of dual lands that existed. That overprinting would CRUSH the value of duals, whether you believe it due to collectibility or playability. Besides, why would I trade duals to get boxes of product containing duals? Why don't I just keep the duals I have? If the duals value is indeed crushed, I'd have to send in like, a playset of duals for a box that would probably contain less than I sent in. Or even if value doesn't take a hit, again, why would I send duals to get duals if I already have duals?
3. Yeaaaaaah, I don't know about that one. Mainly because 1 and 2 are not going to go as you'd like.
Thoughts on the problem section:
1) Yep, this could be a problem. The worst thing to do would be to have to hit the stop button, basically breaking your word about trade ins, RIGHT after you broke your word about the reserve list.
2) Not only that, but think about the differences in condition that need to be accounted for too. And market value. Volcanic Island is much different from a Badlands.
3) You're just inviting issues where even if a counterfeit is identified, the sender is going to claim that he sent the real thing and put WoTC in a super tough spot. If you're dishonest enough to send them counterfeits, you're dishonest enough to lie and say that's not your counterfeit, and you'd better send me my real cards back if you're not sending me my box.
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Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
The ultimate answer is the same as it has ever been: Wizards offers existing owners of dual lands a trade-in for unique art dual-lands which will never be reprinted. They're going to have to be as good as the expeditions lands with a commitment from WotC to never print full-art dual lands. Then reprint the duals after a respectable period too allow people to take advantage of the offer. Maybe 6 months, at which point the full-art duals are forever gone and the option to trade in for them is also.
The expeditions duals would be at least as valuable as the dual lands are now, maybe moreso - although there are a lot of duals out there so they wouldn't be mythic rare in the MtG economy the way the current expedition lands are. The new duals would lower the overall price of buying into eternal since they could be reprinted as needed, like the fetch lands and WotC could both control the price and benefit from the reprints.
This is what I said when WoTC initially told us the Reserve List was set in stone after re-considering the proposition. It's still the best answer.
But you can't reprint the duals in any way, shape or form, full art or not. Either way you are making functionally identical reprints, which violates the reserve list. If you're going to violate the reserve list, you may s well just break it entirely, which is not going to happen. Even if you could make full art duals that didn't violate the reserve list, "trading in" old duals for the new ones wouldn't increase the supply any wouldn't solve any problems since you're just swapping dual for dual. Besides that, you need to take condition into account. Can I throw any beat up, mangled dual land at WoTC and they'd send me a shiny new one? Would Wizards now be tasked with grading trade-ins and assigning them secondary market values (something WoTC doesn't try to involve itself in directly or control through anything other than reprints). WotC has never assigned cards a monetary value of any sort and stays clear of what stores want to set their prices at, so this would be them putting their nose where it doesn't belong. A trade-in program is not viable.
The only thing that we can count on is that there are a finite number of duals, and as the demand to play Legacy increases their prices, they hit a point where the demand stops and the prices correct and lower to meet the lower demand that resulted from higher prices. Once the price dips enough, demand for Legacy bounces back up; it's a self correcting market based on supply and demand, and as long as there are people willing to meet the demand at $250+ pricing, then dual lands are appropriately priced, whether most people can afford them or not. It's not about making the cards affordable to most people, it's about the cards being affordable to enough people to keep selling them.
Duals are not some mystical, unattainable diamond. Players with enough skill and interest in the Legacy format can get them, it's not like there's a supply issue. It's simply a matter of are they willing to stop buying a playset of standard mythics with every new set and invest that money into a more slowly built, but more permanent deck. When I actively participated in Standard, I would take all my unused standard rares/mythics and stuff I got from draft, along with whatever random trade fodder I'd picked up, and take it all down to a GP. Even though I'm particular about the condition of my duals, I took home usually 2-3 duals or similar money cards from vendors every time with minimal cash spent after I traded it all in. People willing to settle on lesser condition ones or FWB could do even better. There are very few cards I would ever pay more than $50 for, TOPS, and yet I have a complete set of blue duals, and a smattering of others for EDH and whatnot just because I'm not willing to be the guy that still has 4x Huntmaster of the Fells in his binder post-rotation. MOVE. YOUR. STANDARD. FOR. LEGACY. BEFORE. ROTATION. Or play your Tier 1 standard deck till the last day it's legal and suffer the consequences. I can't tell you how many people have a binder full of cards that, when hot, were worth an easy couple hundred bucks at least, but then complain about dual pricing when they had more than enough to move to any vendor and get whatever they wanted.
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Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Somehow, a Tundra at $140 is an unachievable travesty, but in related hobbies like paintball, a case of paint and a field rental fee will set you back $60 for a day's worth of fun. If you go paintballing three times a month, you're spending more than the same amount of money as one dual land. For PC gaming, a video card, RAM, and processor can set you back $1000, and that doesn't cover cooling, non-durable components like mice and keyboards, or a monitor. Skiing requires skis, ski poles, protective clothing, lift fees, and transportation to the lodge.
Of course, you need more than one dual to play Legacy (one is fine for EDH, though). Still, it's easy to see how a year's worth of other hobbies are comparable in cost.
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These days, some wizards are finding they have a little too much deck left at the end of their $$$.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
Somehow, a Tundra at $140 is an unachievable travesty, but in related hobbies like paintball, a case of paint and a field rental fee will set you back $60 for a day's worth of fun. If you go paintballing three times a month, you're spending more than the same amount of money as one dual land. For PC gaming, a video card, RAM, and processor can set you back $1000, and that doesn't cover cooling, non-durable components like mice and keyboards, or a monitor. Skiing requires skis, ski poles, protective clothing, lift fees, and transportation to the lodge.
Of course, you need more than one dual to play Legacy (one is fine for EDH, though). Still, it's easy to see how a year's worth of other hobbies are comparable in cost.
These types of posts are unavoidable if you spend time on the internet. There's always someone out there who's entitled and doesn't understand the cost of recreational hobbies.
You went paintballing two or three times a month for more or less the cost of a tundra..what did you pay for the gun itself? You wanted a nice 'tier 1' gun? Bam, there's your miracles deck. (just to use your example).
I think you missed my point completely. A drop in current price doesn't affect the "value of the card" for an older player. If I invested $10 on a card and it goes to $11 I made money just like if it spikes to $100 and then drops to $11.
The newer player is the person deciding to pay the over inflated price. For whatever reason that amount is paid maintains the idea that the value of that card is high. The benefit to being an older player is that there is a higher profit margin.
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Whether or not it's feasible, I like the idea this thread brings up, because it just may work, or it gets the ball rolling towards a plan that will work better, and who knows, the people at WotC may see it and they may come up with something as well.
STATISTICS.
All of these "Let's eliminate bad cards" crusades are simply ignorant. And when they start to devolve into "WotC is conspiring to give us crappy cards," they just become embarrassing. MATH is conspiring to give you crappy cards.
Depends on how you define "collector". Someone who has a bunch of these old cards to play with? Someone who has a full set of Unlimited? Hoarders who have a stash of this stuff hidden away for value that don't even play?
This is the Legacy subforum, most people in here I'd like to imagine have at least some RL cards and competitive decks containing duals and such.
But anyway, a "dual land" buyback program has too many hurdles to overcome, and the RL might not be the smallest one for once. As someone who does have a bunch of old, now expensive stuff, here's my thoughts:
I would like to see more people able to access this format, not because I need more opponents, or because I think the format is "dying" (I don't, for the record). Not because increased interest will further increase the desirability of the cards I own. But because Magic is a fun game, I think Legacy is one of the most fun formats, and everyone should get to enjoy playing with truly powerful cards that enable more strategies than "turn dudes sideways and watch the cards rotate."
But I'd also like to see everyone driving to events in 1957 Corvettes. I'd like to everyone at events wearing nice suits and drinking high dollar martinis between rounds. We'd all like that. But it's not always a good idea to give players what they want, most players have NO idea the ramifications of violating the reserve list, or instituting a buyback program would cause. Even I don't, but I can at least give it more thought than many.
If the RL did not exist and WoTC started reprinting my stuff, my reaction would be a lot like when EMA came out. "Oh hey, looks like I might lose some value on my Karakas and Mana crypt. Oh well, them's the breaks. more people needed a crypt for their EDH decks anyway."
To be fair, I got my cards at a MUCH lower price than they're worth today. The people you gotta watch out for are the ones who look to the promise of that Reserve List made so many years ago, and last week blew their bonus check on a Legacy deck and paid full price under the premise that the promise stood then, it still stands now, it's a guarantee that I can spend this much money to play this game, and it's safe. Expensive, but safe. I would be livid.
I feel no sympathy for people who invested heavily in anything not on the RL, myself included. Everything not RL is fair game. Fine, print whatever, I would love to see people playing more Karakas (have 1 Legends) in legacy, more Mana Crypt in EDH (have 2 judge foils), and I love Force of Will's new art (have 4x Alliances).
But if you instituted a buyback program, you'd send an unintentional shockwave throughout the market. Look at what happened when a loophole got used to reprint Mox Diamond. That was a pretty fast "We're sorry, we're closing the loophole, and we won't do THAT again." If you announced a buyback program for fresh duals, you're violating the reserve list, and that means that everything on that list is now fair game. And then you get into allllll the other problems I pointed out above.
You can't do it, even if you could, it's a logistical nightmare that would require WoTC to stick its nose into the secondary market on a level they NEVER have before and be the ones assigning monetary values to cards, which I'm pretty sure NObody wants. Then there's counterfeiting issues and dealing with that. And then there's printing god knows how much product to support this program (the Revised print run was 100,000,000 in English alone). And so on.
Even if you could do it, and overcome the logistical hurdles that are quite frankly mammoth, there's no telling what this might do to the secondary market. Like I said, at this point you may as well just throw the damn list in the trash, that's what everyone's going to think you've done with it anyway, and start printing Black Lotuses in "Super Secret Hidden Mysteries of the Return to the Return to Zendikar" set instead of tip cards.
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Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
I think you missed my point completely. A drop in current price doesn't affect the "value of the card" for an older player. If I invested $10 on a card and it goes to $11 I made money just like if it spikes to $100 and then drops to $11.
The newer player is the person deciding to pay the over inflated price. For whatever reason that amount is paid maintains the idea that the value of that card is high. The benefit to being an older player is that there is a higher profit margin.
No,I get your point, but you're missing mine. Its not about who is responsible for the reserve list problem (new players, old players, collectors etc) , its not that simple. Obviously Wotc does see it as part of a contract with collectors, and the collectors obviously have something to gain from the reserve list or it wouldn't exist, would it? The fact that some collector may have bought his set of black bordered beta duals for 10 percent of what its worth now, doesn't exclude that a reprint could lower it to even less than what he bought it for, not to mention that the possibility of selling your collection for much higher than you bought it is an intersting prospect to many collectors, and violating the reserve list would destroy that prospect.
2. You have totally underestimated how many revised duals there are anyway. Revised's print run was 100,000,000 cards in English alone. You'd be pushing out so many boxes of product that whatever cards that box contained would be near worthless due to the extreme overprinting you'd have to do if WoTC got mailed even 10% of dual lands that existed. That overprinting would CRUSH the value of duals, whether you believe it due to collectibility or playability. Besides, why would I trade duals to get boxes of product containing duals? Why don't I just keep the duals I have? If the duals value is indeed crushed, I'd have to send in like, a playset of duals for a box that would probably contain less than I sent in. Or even if value doesn't take a hit, again, why would I send duals to get duals if I already have duals?
Well, theres always the possibility of selling your boxes without opening them. Ofc it depends on the value of the boxes themselves, but they would be in high demand, most likely, since they would contain many expensive (albeit devalued) cards.
If they're devalued, then they're not expensive.
So let's clarify: This set containing dual lands...I assume that it would have at least a normal print run to begin with. Maybe an EMA-esque print run, but the general public will be able to go to an LGS and buy packs. So we'll have the normal run, and then we'll have the trade-in run to supply boxes for the trade ins. If we value this set and price it similarly to EMA, then you're looking at trading a box of cards on a 1 for 1 basis for a single dual land in some cases when WoTC starts assigning values to USea vs the MSRP of this trade-in set. WoTC has to be realistic in their assessment of the real-world value of duals, if they say a USea is only worth $80, I'll just keep my Useas for that price thank you very much. I'm not gonna trade 2-4 of them for a box of mystery set.
"But...mystery set could have anything! It could even have an Underground Sea!"
"Then I'll just keep the Seas I already have, thanks.
Ok, so instead WoTC assigns realistic values to duals based on current market prices. Again, I want to stress that WoTC has NEVER given ANY magic card a monetary value. They set rarity and print the cards and that's it. But let's say they broke this rule, since they've already broken the reserve list and assign realistic values to duals for trades.
Well, firstly you have to take condition into account.
Then there's counterfeits, both intentional fraud and unintentional fakes getting sent in to be processed.
Then there's actual redemptions, which will take your EMA-esque print run and turn it into something much, much more massive if it's to be successful. And if it's not going to be successful, or has to be done on a small scale, why do it to begin with?
Finally, if we're sending in dual lands, then we're taking duals OFF the market, not adding to it, unless a box of "dual land masters" has dual lands at a rare, not mythic, at the very least. If they were mythic, you'd be taking duals off the market and shipping boxes in exchange that might not even have a dual land, and then you're actually making them RARER.
I mean, I could literally keep going with the myriad of issues that would occur and why this is a logistical nightmare, but I think I've made my point. This will not happen.
It would require violation of two major rules WoTC has never broken at the bare minimum- the Reserve List and the assignment of monetary value to cards.
It would be a logistical nightmare handling tradeins of varying condition and authenticity.
It would either require printing on a massive scale and wreck the values of duals defeating the purpose, or would in the opposite scenario of too small of a print run, end up taking more duals OFF the market via redemption.
What does WoTC even stand to gain from this? The destruction of faith that major vendors have in WoTC so that more people can get a Badlands for their Kaalia decks? Because major vendors, the ones hit hardest from this, are the ones that have a bunch of duals in inventory, and do so because their playerbase is large enough to support it, which in turn means they probably sell a pretty large amount of sealed product. Some STORES will lose thousands and tens of thousands in inventory alone if the price of dual lands tanks. I mean, collectors being pissed off aside, STORES will be hurt by this, and I don't know if you know this or not, but running an LGS is usually not a super profitable venture to begin with. When "dual land masters" is gone from the store shelves, where does that leave an LGS? Exactly how much product would an LGS have to sell to even break even on the loss they would take from dual lands tanking? How much product would they even receive to begin with? Would they need to price this set so high you might as well be buying actual packs of Revised?
The questions don't stop, they keep coming, and they're ALL tough questions. This is not a feasible solution. At all.
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Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
The solution to the reserve list "problem" is not in shrinking it or getting rid of it all together but in expanding it. You cannot generate more of the cards on the list but you can create a higher demand for other cards and by doing so, increase the value of the game. Reprinting cards ad nauseum only reduces the value of the game. People are so worried about the cost that fail to see that to lower that cost they also are hurting the value. If you increase the value, sure the cost will not drop but what you buy will have and retain more value.
Honestly though, I think a lot of the ABU stuff is bs. You can run a deck and have it be 99% as effective with shocks as with ABU Duals. ABU Duals are akin to the Eddie Bauer edition truck. It's the same thing as the one that costs significantly less, except it's got the name gimmick going on. Seriously, what is 2 life against decks that blow up turn 2 or 3 or sooner?
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Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Pardon me, but, frankly, why the **** would anyone care about the "value of the game"? It's a game. We care about the FUN of it. ****, reprint all my cards into oblivion tomorrow, I and many are not here to get "value" but to have fun. I did not spend all of this money, time and effort in purchasing cards and winning tournaments with good prizes to get value, I did it to have fun, and I am here to maximize my fun by increasing the variety of decks and of players, and if the price one has to pay is to "reduce the value of the game" then that is an easy and immediate price to pay. If all my duals, leds, etc, etc, etc lose 90% of their value by tomorrow but we get 50% more players into the game, I will be a happy player.
Want value? Get into bonds, stocks or long-term investments. Not into a game.
EDIT: Also, your statement on 2 life is ridiculous and shows you know little of this format. It is an immense difference. Those 2 damage, should there be no ABU duals, would generate an entirely different (and far worse) format.
/Barn. My collection is easily in the $15-20k range. I would be thrilled to see the reserved list abolished and tank that number if it gave more people the opportunity to play the game. I didn't buy cards with the expectation that they were going to support me in my old age, I bought them to use.
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[Pr]Jaya | Estrid | A rotating cast of decks built out of my box.
If the game has no value, the game will cease to be, its only a matter of time. Things with no value are disposable. Sure they could reprint all your cards into oblivion tomorrow but have fun playing with yourself. Everything in life is an investment. We invest time, money and emotion into a lot of different things. Value is what we get in return. If you wanna invest a bunch of money to pass the time and then have absolutely zero chance on any kind of return beyond "the fun of it" be my guest and see how far that goes. I would, however suggest a pass time like become an alcoholic if that is all your going for. At least you might get laid out of it. Further, how are the Yugioh numbers these days? Lots of tournaments? Huge payouts? Is doing as well as magic? That I doubt.
Yes it's immensely diverse but what is two life against sneak show or reanimator or dredge? They're dealing massive amounts of damage quickly. When's the last time shock saw play in Legacy? Ever? All ABU's are is status symbols. Either saying hey I got money or hey I was around at the beginning. Are they advantageous, sure, but the times they are is far and few and to most light tournament players and casual players it will be negligible.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Saying that monetary value is the only thing that you can get out of the game is ridiculous. Listening to music or watching movies has zero return on investment besides entertainment or personal growth, but that doesn't mean that all money spent on those things is wasted. You can fill all of your nutritional needs with a restricted diet, but most people spend more money to get variety or to have food prepared for them. Equating spending money on anything transient as wasted money makes no sense. I've gotten many hours of entertainment out of my cards, I've met new people, I've traveled. Saying that all of that is worth nothing is a very cynical view at best.
There's also a significant difference between the state of the game as it is now and having no value. WotC has already demonstrated that they can reprint things in a responsible fashion. There's nothing in their business practices over the last several years to suggest that they would deviate from that. Saying that I would be OK with the value of my collection being trashed tomorrow doesn't mean that I think it would actually happen. We can also look at the value of cards several years ago. The game wasn't any worse for having dual lands available at half or a third of their current prices. The growth of the game in the following years has very little to do with rising card prices. I would guess that almost no one is coming to the game, seeing that duals are worth hundreds, and deciding to buy in. I've seen the opposite happen several times.
For the two life, you've mentioned 3 decks that make up about 10% of the meta at best. That's about the same meta share as Grixis delver alone, which runs 0 basics, 4 Daze some number of wastelands, and wins in largely 3 damage increments. Miracles wouldn't really care one way or another, but Eldrazi wins with smaller increments of damage. ANT sees less cards off of its namesake spell (though it's less played now than it used to be). UR delver frequently runs Price of Progress and wins with incremental damage. DnT wins with incremental damage. In legacy's immense variety there are plenty of decks that grind out wins. Nonbasic hate is hugely relevant for shocks instead of duals. Daze is borderline unplayable with shocks instead of duals. If decks running shocks instead of duals were 99% as effective, wouldn't we see them in tournament results from time to time? The majority of the cost of a delver list is in the manabase. Surely there are some talented enough players out there to make up the 1% difference and save their money.
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[Pr]Jaya | Estrid | A rotating cast of decks built out of my box.
I used to use shocks in led storm and it was OKAY but sometimes the life loss really hurts how much you can draw with ad nauseam. I don't know about other decks. they're definitely status symbols too but they are needed in some decks.
my problem is finding people to play with; i have no problem acquiring the cards.
i find all the non reserve list legacy reprints odd and wish wizards would make some kind of statement as to what they intend to do with legacy or a possible no reserve list legacy. i feel the format is in an odd place
Okay, you understand that every card that has any monetary value whatsoever is based on essentially a three legged stool platform. Scarcity, play desirability and pre existing price points. Any time you fiddle with the legs of the stool you risk dropping the seat.
Lol. "Saying that I would be OK with the value of my collection being trashed tomorrow doesn't mean that I think it would actually happen." Maybe you should think about it in terms that it could, because it has. Then we can talk.
And I hate to tell you this but those tournaments you're talking about. That is the 1%. Those are the best players playing against the best players and in those cases ABU's are warranted.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
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Here's how it works - Wizards can announce that they will begin printing reserve list cards again but to appease reserve list collectors, any longtime collectors can opt to trade in their reserve list cards back to Wizards for a credit value up to their discretion. The credits can be used directly with Wizards or participating stores towards a brand new box of Eternal Masters 1 or 2, at which point will have functional reprints of many of the dual lands and other reserve list cards or may also used to by future product. Sounds crazy right? Here's why it just may work.
1. The value of existing cards would not drop. By trading back old reserve list cards to Wizards, artificial scarcity is created. Even if there were functional reprints of all the ABUR duals, the value of the originals would be maintained from a collectibility standpoint. Those who opt not to trade their cards back could still sentimentally hold onto the Tundra handed down to them by their older brother in the 90s. Those who held onto it for financial or functional reasons have little to lose from trading up their dual land binders for whole booster boxes or two of the new eternal masters or credit towards future sets.
2. The printing process isn't very costly The printing press doesn't care if it's printing a card valued at .10 or $100. It costs wizards essentially the same to print any card save for foils. Sure it would be an initial investment to have to trade whole boxes for one or two cards. I'm not doubting that this would be very costly initially, but it would be an investment future product. Imagine a commander set that came with true duals alongside those sol rings? Imagine an eternal masters 2 and 3 with true duals. Within one or two sets, the trade in program will likely have paid for itself with the hotcake like sales and potential future sales.
3. At last, accessibility for all. With the ratio of a few duals being traded for a box or two, there will be an inevitable flood of new cards on the market. Bringing the price of a true dual reprint down to that of a mere fetch land would finally make the game accessible to everyone who had financial reservations. Players of reserve list cards can peacefully play alongside new players with their reprinted counterparts.
That's not to say there aren't huge, huge issues that can occur.
1. Too many people opting into the program Maybe I'm underestimating the amount of reserve list cards still floating around out there but it could be potentially costly to find trade so many boxes of new product for old cards. Someone at Wizards could easily hit the panic button and put a stop to the program if it gets too costly.
2. Displeasure with the value that Wizards may assign in credit A full playset of Tundras for one box of Eternal masters? No thanks. It has to be fair a fair enough deal that people will want to opt in.
3. The problem of counterfeiters I assume Wizards will have to hire experts to assess and grade cards to designate credit values. I imagine there will be some portion of people sending counterfeits, either knowingly or unknowingly. Those who had counterfeits unknowingly will be upset to find that their cards were fake and that they get nothing. Some who make insanely realistic counterfeits to trade for boxes may occasionally squeak through and you've given someone something for nothing.
Definitely seems unlikely to happen but I'd like to think it may work. I'm welcome to any criticism, even if you think it's the worst idea you've ever heard
Yes! Something must be done about this great unjustice! You see you are forcing someone else do something in order to benefit another party.
C Long Live Eldrazi C
Here's my go at the RL discussion:
On a volunteer basis, trade in 2 of any RL card and get one (of the same) shiny new black-bordered RL card with the anti-counterfeit foil stamp.
Wizards destroys one of the RL cards you traded in and keeps one to put in a new "hidden treasures" pack...
maybe even trade in 3 of the RL card and maybe get a foil version?
Zendikar had hidden treasures and I was able to trade for a revised taiga that was opened in a zen pack.
So it is "possible" to do this in new release packs.
Current decks of choice:
Vintage: Shops.
Legacy: Lands.
Modern: Lantern.
-----The Legacy Flowchart-----
Tiny Leaders Overlord
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
1. Value would absolutely drop. The value of duals is not due to collectors, it's due to players. There are a TON of duals out there, the print run of Revised in english alone was twice that of A/B/U COMBINED.
2. You have totally underestimated how many revised duals there are anyway. Revised's print run was 100,000,000 cards in English alone. You'd be pushing out so many boxes of product that whatever cards that box contained would be near worthless due to the extreme overprinting you'd have to do if WoTC got mailed even 10% of dual lands that existed. That overprinting would CRUSH the value of duals, whether you believe it due to collectibility or playability. Besides, why would I trade duals to get boxes of product containing duals? Why don't I just keep the duals I have? If the duals value is indeed crushed, I'd have to send in like, a playset of duals for a box that would probably contain less than I sent in. Or even if value doesn't take a hit, again, why would I send duals to get duals if I already have duals?
3. Yeaaaaaah, I don't know about that one. Mainly because 1 and 2 are not going to go as you'd like.
Thoughts on the problem section:
1) Yep, this could be a problem. The worst thing to do would be to have to hit the stop button, basically breaking your word about trade ins, RIGHT after you broke your word about the reserve list.
2) Not only that, but think about the differences in condition that need to be accounted for too. And market value. Volcanic Island is much different from a Badlands.
3) You're just inviting issues where even if a counterfeit is identified, the sender is going to claim that he sent the real thing and put WoTC in a super tough spot. If you're dishonest enough to send them counterfeits, you're dishonest enough to lie and say that's not your counterfeit, and you'd better send me my real cards back if you're not sending me my box.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
The expeditions duals would be at least as valuable as the dual lands are now, maybe moreso - although there are a lot of duals out there so they wouldn't be mythic rare in the MtG economy the way the current expedition lands are. The new duals would lower the overall price of buying into eternal since they could be reprinted as needed, like the fetch lands and WotC could both control the price and benefit from the reprints.
This is what I said when WoTC initially told us the Reserve List was set in stone after re-considering the proposition. It's still the best answer.
The only thing that we can count on is that there are a finite number of duals, and as the demand to play Legacy increases their prices, they hit a point where the demand stops and the prices correct and lower to meet the lower demand that resulted from higher prices. Once the price dips enough, demand for Legacy bounces back up; it's a self correcting market based on supply and demand, and as long as there are people willing to meet the demand at $250+ pricing, then dual lands are appropriately priced, whether most people can afford them or not. It's not about making the cards affordable to most people, it's about the cards being affordable to enough people to keep selling them.
Duals are not some mystical, unattainable diamond. Players with enough skill and interest in the Legacy format can get them, it's not like there's a supply issue. It's simply a matter of are they willing to stop buying a playset of standard mythics with every new set and invest that money into a more slowly built, but more permanent deck. When I actively participated in Standard, I would take all my unused standard rares/mythics and stuff I got from draft, along with whatever random trade fodder I'd picked up, and take it all down to a GP. Even though I'm particular about the condition of my duals, I took home usually 2-3 duals or similar money cards from vendors every time with minimal cash spent after I traded it all in. People willing to settle on lesser condition ones or FWB could do even better. There are very few cards I would ever pay more than $50 for, TOPS, and yet I have a complete set of blue duals, and a smattering of others for EDH and whatnot just because I'm not willing to be the guy that still has 4x Huntmaster of the Fells in his binder post-rotation. MOVE. YOUR. STANDARD. FOR. LEGACY. BEFORE. ROTATION. Or play your Tier 1 standard deck till the last day it's legal and suffer the consequences. I can't tell you how many people have a binder full of cards that, when hot, were worth an easy couple hundred bucks at least, but then complain about dual pricing when they had more than enough to move to any vendor and get whatever they wanted.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Of course, you need more than one dual to play Legacy (one is fine for EDH, though). Still, it's easy to see how a year's worth of other hobbies are comparable in cost.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
These types of posts are unavoidable if you spend time on the internet. There's always someone out there who's entitled and doesn't understand the cost of recreational hobbies.
You went paintballing two or three times a month for more or less the cost of a tundra..what did you pay for the gun itself? You wanted a nice 'tier 1' gun? Bam, there's your miracles deck. (just to use your example).
The newer player is the person deciding to pay the over inflated price. For whatever reason that amount is paid maintains the idea that the value of that card is high. The benefit to being an older player is that there is a higher profit margin.
-----The Legacy Flowchart-----
Tiny Leaders Overlord
This is the Legacy subforum, most people in here I'd like to imagine have at least some RL cards and competitive decks containing duals and such.
But anyway, a "dual land" buyback program has too many hurdles to overcome, and the RL might not be the smallest one for once. As someone who does have a bunch of old, now expensive stuff, here's my thoughts:
I would like to see more people able to access this format, not because I need more opponents, or because I think the format is "dying" (I don't, for the record). Not because increased interest will further increase the desirability of the cards I own. But because Magic is a fun game, I think Legacy is one of the most fun formats, and everyone should get to enjoy playing with truly powerful cards that enable more strategies than "turn dudes sideways and watch the cards rotate."
But I'd also like to see everyone driving to events in 1957 Corvettes. I'd like to everyone at events wearing nice suits and drinking high dollar martinis between rounds. We'd all like that. But it's not always a good idea to give players what they want, most players have NO idea the ramifications of violating the reserve list, or instituting a buyback program would cause. Even I don't, but I can at least give it more thought than many.
If the RL did not exist and WoTC started reprinting my stuff, my reaction would be a lot like when EMA came out. "Oh hey, looks like I might lose some value on my Karakas and Mana crypt. Oh well, them's the breaks. more people needed a crypt for their EDH decks anyway."
To be fair, I got my cards at a MUCH lower price than they're worth today. The people you gotta watch out for are the ones who look to the promise of that Reserve List made so many years ago, and last week blew their bonus check on a Legacy deck and paid full price under the premise that the promise stood then, it still stands now, it's a guarantee that I can spend this much money to play this game, and it's safe. Expensive, but safe. I would be livid.
I feel no sympathy for people who invested heavily in anything not on the RL, myself included. Everything not RL is fair game. Fine, print whatever, I would love to see people playing more Karakas (have 1 Legends) in legacy, more Mana Crypt in EDH (have 2 judge foils), and I love Force of Will's new art (have 4x Alliances).
But if you instituted a buyback program, you'd send an unintentional shockwave throughout the market. Look at what happened when a loophole got used to reprint Mox Diamond. That was a pretty fast "We're sorry, we're closing the loophole, and we won't do THAT again." If you announced a buyback program for fresh duals, you're violating the reserve list, and that means that everything on that list is now fair game. And then you get into allllll the other problems I pointed out above.
You can't do it, even if you could, it's a logistical nightmare that would require WoTC to stick its nose into the secondary market on a level they NEVER have before and be the ones assigning monetary values to cards, which I'm pretty sure NObody wants. Then there's counterfeiting issues and dealing with that. And then there's printing god knows how much product to support this program (the Revised print run was 100,000,000 in English alone). And so on.
Even if you could do it, and overcome the logistical hurdles that are quite frankly mammoth, there's no telling what this might do to the secondary market. Like I said, at this point you may as well just throw the damn list in the trash, that's what everyone's going to think you've done with it anyway, and start printing Black Lotuses in "Super Secret Hidden Mysteries of the Return to the Return to Zendikar" set instead of tip cards.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
If they're devalued, then they're not expensive.
So let's clarify: This set containing dual lands...I assume that it would have at least a normal print run to begin with. Maybe an EMA-esque print run, but the general public will be able to go to an LGS and buy packs. So we'll have the normal run, and then we'll have the trade-in run to supply boxes for the trade ins. If we value this set and price it similarly to EMA, then you're looking at trading a box of cards on a 1 for 1 basis for a single dual land in some cases when WoTC starts assigning values to USea vs the MSRP of this trade-in set. WoTC has to be realistic in their assessment of the real-world value of duals, if they say a USea is only worth $80, I'll just keep my Useas for that price thank you very much. I'm not gonna trade 2-4 of them for a box of mystery set.
"But...mystery set could have anything! It could even have an Underground Sea!"
"Then I'll just keep the Seas I already have, thanks.
Ok, so instead WoTC assigns realistic values to duals based on current market prices. Again, I want to stress that WoTC has NEVER given ANY magic card a monetary value. They set rarity and print the cards and that's it. But let's say they broke this rule, since they've already broken the reserve list and assign realistic values to duals for trades.
Well, firstly you have to take condition into account.
Then there's counterfeits, both intentional fraud and unintentional fakes getting sent in to be processed.
Then there's actual redemptions, which will take your EMA-esque print run and turn it into something much, much more massive if it's to be successful. And if it's not going to be successful, or has to be done on a small scale, why do it to begin with?
Finally, if we're sending in dual lands, then we're taking duals OFF the market, not adding to it, unless a box of "dual land masters" has dual lands at a rare, not mythic, at the very least. If they were mythic, you'd be taking duals off the market and shipping boxes in exchange that might not even have a dual land, and then you're actually making them RARER.
I mean, I could literally keep going with the myriad of issues that would occur and why this is a logistical nightmare, but I think I've made my point. This will not happen.
It would require violation of two major rules WoTC has never broken at the bare minimum- the Reserve List and the assignment of monetary value to cards.
It would be a logistical nightmare handling tradeins of varying condition and authenticity.
It would either require printing on a massive scale and wreck the values of duals defeating the purpose, or would in the opposite scenario of too small of a print run, end up taking more duals OFF the market via redemption.
What does WoTC even stand to gain from this? The destruction of faith that major vendors have in WoTC so that more people can get a Badlands for their Kaalia decks? Because major vendors, the ones hit hardest from this, are the ones that have a bunch of duals in inventory, and do so because their playerbase is large enough to support it, which in turn means they probably sell a pretty large amount of sealed product. Some STORES will lose thousands and tens of thousands in inventory alone if the price of dual lands tanks. I mean, collectors being pissed off aside, STORES will be hurt by this, and I don't know if you know this or not, but running an LGS is usually not a super profitable venture to begin with. When "dual land masters" is gone from the store shelves, where does that leave an LGS? Exactly how much product would an LGS have to sell to even break even on the loss they would take from dual lands tanking? How much product would they even receive to begin with? Would they need to price this set so high you might as well be buying actual packs of Revised?
The questions don't stop, they keep coming, and they're ALL tough questions. This is not a feasible solution. At all.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Honestly though, I think a lot of the ABU stuff is bs. You can run a deck and have it be 99% as effective with shocks as with ABU Duals. ABU Duals are akin to the Eddie Bauer edition truck. It's the same thing as the one that costs significantly less, except it's got the name gimmick going on. Seriously, what is 2 life against decks that blow up turn 2 or 3 or sooner?
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Yes it's immensely diverse but what is two life against sneak show or reanimator or dredge? They're dealing massive amounts of damage quickly. When's the last time shock saw play in Legacy? Ever? All ABU's are is status symbols. Either saying hey I got money or hey I was around at the beginning. Are they advantageous, sure, but the times they are is far and few and to most light tournament players and casual players it will be negligible.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
There's also a significant difference between the state of the game as it is now and having no value. WotC has already demonstrated that they can reprint things in a responsible fashion. There's nothing in their business practices over the last several years to suggest that they would deviate from that. Saying that I would be OK with the value of my collection being trashed tomorrow doesn't mean that I think it would actually happen. We can also look at the value of cards several years ago. The game wasn't any worse for having dual lands available at half or a third of their current prices. The growth of the game in the following years has very little to do with rising card prices. I would guess that almost no one is coming to the game, seeing that duals are worth hundreds, and deciding to buy in. I've seen the opposite happen several times.
For the two life, you've mentioned 3 decks that make up about 10% of the meta at best. That's about the same meta share as Grixis delver alone, which runs 0 basics, 4 Daze some number of wastelands, and wins in largely 3 damage increments. Miracles wouldn't really care one way or another, but Eldrazi wins with smaller increments of damage. ANT sees less cards off of its namesake spell (though it's less played now than it used to be). UR delver frequently runs Price of Progress and wins with incremental damage. DnT wins with incremental damage. In legacy's immense variety there are plenty of decks that grind out wins. Nonbasic hate is hugely relevant for shocks instead of duals. Daze is borderline unplayable with shocks instead of duals. If decks running shocks instead of duals were 99% as effective, wouldn't we see them in tournament results from time to time? The majority of the cost of a delver list is in the manabase. Surely there are some talented enough players out there to make up the 1% difference and save their money.
my problem is finding people to play with; i have no problem acquiring the cards.
i find all the non reserve list legacy reprints odd and wish wizards would make some kind of statement as to what they intend to do with legacy or a possible no reserve list legacy. i feel the format is in an odd place
Lol. "Saying that I would be OK with the value of my collection being trashed tomorrow doesn't mean that I think it would actually happen." Maybe you should think about it in terms that it could, because it has. Then we can talk.
And I hate to tell you this but those tournaments you're talking about. That is the 1%. Those are the best players playing against the best players and in those cases ABU's are warranted.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.