Haha in no way. Seeing DRS banned makes me see how much safer it is to buy Legacy cards. What's next on banhammer - Thoughtseize and Tiago? Karn? Pod? Fetches?
I wouldn't worry about losing an investment in a $15 card (DRS). It's not like fetches, Liliana, or Tarmogoyf were banned. Those staples are still awesome and expensive. Survival of the Fittest was banned in Legacy just after spiking to $60...Jace at $100 in Standard... No format is immune to bans on expensive cards.
(However you are correct that Legacy is a better investment, but this is because of the reserved list and Wizards' 'Disney Vault' of eternal format staples)
Anyways, if the DRS reprint is a pain on anyone's pockets, you should be complaining about the Thoughtseize reprint more.
I like the moves, but this is probably the last bit of attention I will pay to the game for a few months. The game is getting a little too far out of whack for my tastes. (and I just bought a Nintendo 3DS XL)
I hope everyone has fun with Wild Nacatl, BB, and $75 precons!
I was on the side of ignoring TNN, but now I have doubts. TNN is hurting the Legacy tournament turnouts. Many aggro players have faced the dilemma of joining the TNN wagon or find another aggro deck that can hate it out. Either way, TNN pretty much gives the middle finger to their deck and/or their investment. I do sympathize, when they mention the possibility of quitting Legacy since they don't like either options, the matter becomes serious.
I actually agree with this.
Sure, there are a lot of competetive players playing Legacy, but I feel like recent moves by Wizards have drastically decreased the appeal of Legacy to fringe players.
Legacy was more appealing when Zoo was a deck and when Maverick was a deck. When those decks died, people who only collected the Naya manabases were turned off to the (competitive) format. Not everyone buckled down and bought Bayous for Jund, and many of them probably kept their staples, so Legacy is -1 player for each of them.
If Goblins is dying right now because of True-Name Nemesis, my desire to pay >$30 to attend a major tournament will decline sharply. If so, I would be thrilled to see TNN banned.
'Metagaming' in Legacy takes a backseat to 'Variety' in value of importance. Without significant variety, Legacy metagaming becomes rock/paper/scissors like Vintage.
TL;DR - Legacy is a great format if you own all the staples, but interest is declining in the people who only collected one ridiculously expensive deck and don't want to play everything else. It used to be better.
A lot of people don't like it when you put a dollar value on cards, but it makes trading fair and easy. Whatever price increases the card experiences after that is your gain, but it is wrong to intentionally trade less immediate value for more immediate value, unless the parties involved are aware of the values of the card(s) and accept the difference between sides.
It's important to be careful with casual players...as their attachment to the game is largely emotional, and the feeling of being ripped off could cause a disconnect between them and the game.
The US income disparity is overplayed. I don't know of anyone starving or dying of thirst in the United States. Most people have enough capital to at least waste all of it on material desires and make ends meet with foodstamps.
The real problems are in Africa and parts of Asia. Between these regions exist serious ecological limitations which prevents their enormous populations from becoming comfortably modern. You really can't throw enough money at these regions to make things better, as they are poorly conceived or populations have grown beyond their capacity.
Regardless of whether or not we reign in the US elite class, there is still the global elite which is essentially also a part of the US elite. In the geo-political structure of the world, we are better off with the super-rich doing business here, as our lower classes are super-rich in return.
It sucks that there is not much room at the top, but even a modest salary in the United States is more splendid than all of Solomon's riches (unless you happened to find them today).
What needs to happen is that inflation and minimum wage increase proportionately to each other. This way, Old Money is obsoleted over time, while people have more incentive to work hard for New Money. The lower classes can continue enjoying their relative luxuries in comparison to millions people who live in daily fear and suffering.
I can't help but contribute, my methods are too unique.
I used to live in a room full of Magic cards, but now they are all neatly condensed into boxes under my desk.
First I separated what I deem good cards and bulk. I'll took anything that wasn't obviously limited chaff from the large box of randomness. These include Legacy/Modern/Standard/Pauper playable cards as well as all my Goblins.
The resulting box of jank and future hidden treasures remains unsorted, because it's just not worth the time.
I keep playsets of playables in penny sleeves...two sets per sleeve, storing them in boxes within a larger box. I've found that it makes the deck tinkering process a lot easier for me. I don't like moving cards to and from a binder to make decks. I become overly concerned with the aesthetics of the binder and waste time managing it.
I usually don't have much more for trade than a penny sleeve stuffed to the breaking point with my best standard rares that I happened to get. I might consider getting one in the future so I can express better etiquette at drafts and that is all.
I've also taken the time to separate all of my basic lands into one box. I can stand the thought of pockets of basic lands in my jank box. I'd much rather know that I have access to all my older art lands at demand.
That always made me chuckle... and shake my head at the same time. I mean, we've already got plenty of expensive cards that aren't on the reserve list that are extremely expensive (Goyf, Bob, Clique, Wasteland, Force, Jace, fetches, etc.), and yet people think that abolishing the reserve list will somehow immediately bring the prices down somehow. In all likelihood, Wizards would handle reserve list cards the same way they've been handling most of the other "money" cards... as one-ofs in low print-run products like FTV and judge foils, or as mythics in supplementary sets like Modern Masters.
This exchange has been enlightening to me.
I support the reserved list, not because I'm sitting on an enormous mass of expensive staples, but because I think the game is better off with the eternal-formats being pricey and collectable, providing long-term playability for short-term expenses.
I like that eternal-formats are rare and 'special'. The fact that you're playing with classic Magic masterpieces is cool. The exclusivity of the formats adds to their appeal...but players are more exceptionally welcome to play eternal-formats as long as they have cards. Being starved for players, more people understand that being kind and understanding towards others is important to the health of the format. The eternal-format player base is generally less toxic than the more played, pro-tour circuit formats where individual players are more or less replaceable and competition more fierce.
On the other hand, I think inexperienced eternal-format players are toxic to the Standard environment. Especially new ones. If eternal -formats were reprinted in large numbers, I can imagine a lot of LGS's torn up by new kids with power and the format demographics would be disrupted in a harmful way. I suppose I shouldn't be so sociological about things, but I have noticed certain trends.
BUT, given that I wouldn't pay the current prices for eternal format staples, I think they deserve to come down a little. Unfortunately, they will never break their promise, and Legacy is 'doomed' to be the second Vintage. That's why the format must continue to appeal to current players rather than cycle new players interests in and out of it. Legacy's playerbase can be sustained as it is sustained right now: by strong tournament scenes in-between two large centers of population to enable regular Legacy tournaments of meaningful scale.
No matter what they do, it'll be a PR nightmare from one faction of their customers or another, which is why I'm glad that they have a more progressive approach in marketing the game. As long as the game as a whole remains healthy, there will be no business incentive for them to break their promise and Magic will not adopt the Yu-Gi-Oh model of regular format-implosion.
TL;DR - My personal preferences has been for a while that they print duals in Chinese to grow the game internationally, but now I understand why their business model depends on eternal-format scarcity. I just get sick of hear people wanting to reverse the current order of thing, which would negatively affect the high-quality of the product in a number of unimaginable ways.
I'm feeling Chenjesu is saying. My interpretation of things are a bit more wild, so I won't divulge too much again. I feel like when we understand more about sub-atomic particles, particularly the Higgs Boson, and the Higgs field, more can be inferred, but it will still be difficult to come to any conclusions.
Remember everyone, the Higgs boson has mass hundreds of times greater than the protons they are part of. That's freaking amazing an practically proves the existence of extra-dimensions. Am I wrong about that, no one else seems as amazed?
Sub-atomic particles oscillate between dimensions, bringing all matter through time at a certain pace. A an atom moves through space-time, the qualities of the sub-atomic particles change in each direction. They behave a lot like imaginary numbers, being two things at once. This is how things moving in one direction act like they have greater mass than the side opposite the force vector.
These contractions and expansions of the sub-atomic particles also account for how time 'slows down' and 'speeds up' depending on how fast an object is moving. If an object moves at the rate that sub-atomic particles move, light speed, time stops because the subatomic particle is no longer oscillating - it has become a sphere.
In turn, consciousness is tied to sub-atomic processes. The ability of brained-life to retain it's identity from one moment to the next exhibits a mastery of time that out idea of atoms and energy do not express. Our ability to analyze and imagine change in reality also takes something greater than chemical reactions. Consciousness is firmly integrated into the highest levels of reality, the expression of dimensions greater than Euclidean physics.
All these extra dimensions are probably kind of boring rules-governing dimensions that just make our reality what it is. I don't believe in 4-D, 5-D people, other than the possibility that we are those people because 3-D people are impossible.
@ ccggenius12 - I've been trying for years to get that point across...you said it so well.
@ Crimeo - If you don't want to play the same deck for ten years, stay the heck away from Legacy.
Legacy is partly about 'going infinite' in constructed Magic. If that were easier to achieve, there would be significantly less incentive to play any other constructed format. Whether you're stuck with one or two decks or can never play blue decks, Legacy is still such a great and classic format that recent standards can't compare in terms of quality of play and competitive diversity. If Legacy and Modern staples cost what Standard staples do, the game would lose profits year after year.
The only reason Yu-Gi-Oh still makes money is because it's basically Legacy with massive power creep. You need to get new expensive cards every year regardless of what format you're playing to be at the top of the competitive game. Some sick people might like to see that continue to happen to Legacy ala-TNN, but I'm sure plenty of older player would quit if more key staples were obsoleted by cash-grab replacements.
Counterfeits concern me, but not too much. The idea that they will be sold 10% bellow mid sounds very accurate. They will go down in value, sure, but at least some of the people posting here will get screwed over buying fake cards.
I'll be ok with my cards losing value, but I expect Magic to become a worse game as a result.. It's not like I was going to sell them anyways. I just understand why they are expensive. I worked hard and bought a collectable I like and want it to stay the way it is.
I just thought I'd add something a little more productive for the last of the Reserved List talk.
If you really want to know whether your idea would float with Wizards, got to Maro's Blogatog thing that I'm sure everyone knows about, dress up your profile with magic themes, and ask him if they are possible in the current direction that Magic is going.
He might answer your question or he might not. If he doesn't, the answer is probably no, but don't blame him, he's below like hundreds of people where he works. I'm pretty sure Maro gets harassed all the time with these types of player comments on his Tumblr. You can see it in the comments section whenever the reserved list is a topic.
Eternal formats are a luxury to retain old players. Type 2 was created because they couldn't sell cards is Black Lotus was the standard forever. The life cycle of standard is the primary reason they are in business. Eternal formats are secondary. It's important to have meet demand at a certain level that they do not overlap into mainstream magic too much.
...go to wall mart and load up your pockets like some gypsy highwayman, do whatever I don't care just please for the love of God stop complaining so god damn much. Thank You
Yes, that is what this thread is actually supposed to be about. People stealing Wizards intellectual property and buying/selling it for cheap.
If anything, counterfeiters do nothing to encourage Wizards to reprint Legacy staples...only to abandon Modern and Legacy in favor of their new hologram frame formats. The hassle of weeding out fakes from authentic magic cards would be too much of a hassle for Wizards to put up with.
I'm not aware...but is this guy even selling ABUR duals that people covet so dearly? It'd be kind of hard to fake a 20 year old card, imo. This hurts Modern a whole lot more than it hurts Legacy, although it hurts both. Legacy cards are quite organic, causing people to look at them more deeply. Regardless, the deck-checks will be fierce and unpleasant in the coming months.
I don't blame Wizards for these counterfeiters. I do think they've made countless mistakes with the Modern format. It does not please the people. Their insatiable hunger for more and more eternal format is not satisfied. Unfortunately, what they really have to do is make people happy with standard, so I'm hoping it gets better soon.
Also, someone in this thread compared Foil Hymn to Legacy staples when talking about trading down with standard. That's just a silly pimp move. The only deals that matter are ones for duals and 'Legacy Power' - FoW, LED, Wasteland, duals, Jace, Goyf, etc. The only people in their right mind who would trade these things for standard cards are those who cannot use them because they can't afford the $3000 worth of cards around them in order to be competitive. Those people are few and far in between.
Some people will never understand why non-rotating formats have to be limited in supply.
I hate pre-determined draws. I've had pre-determined draws ruin THREE FNM experiences.
My first was my first Legacy tournament where I was asked to draw since we were both going on to the 'final round' so I said yeah to be a good sport but we played a game anyways and one handily. Ok, maybe nerves played into that one. Anyways, I got paired up against Belcher and somehow beat Belcher. Got paired up against the opponent I drew against and let him split the prize. I knew I was going to beat him anyways (very good MU). I wasn't there for the (small) prize, but for the experience, the glory.
In this situation, I wish I didn't have the option to draw, because all that drawing took away from my first semi-formal Legacy experience.
The second time was at a draft. I suppose everyone wanted to go home, so they organized a draw for first place between me and somebody else. I was rocking the greatest draft deck I will ever draft, and I was extremely disappointment not to play for first.
In this situation, I wish I had the choice. After my first experience and knowing how busted my deck was, I had confidence in playing for first.
The third time was at my first trip to my super-LGS. It was the second round and my opponent knew I drafted Pack Rat and he was upset and conceded. What a lame move. There were only three rounds and I ended up losing the third, so and otherwise pleasant draft turned out to be five games of Magic one Pyrewild Elder.
In this situation, I wish people would just man up and play the games. It threatens the integrity of the tournaments in ways I wouldn't be able to touch on in a single post.
I thought this was fake but was incredibly surprised to to see it was real. Mere days after announcing $75 precons, Wizards of the Coast seeks to harness the collectable nature of their playerbase and channel it to the elaborate 'buy silver' schemes that have become popular as of late.
If silver is so awesome, why do they want my dollars for this? Nonetheless, it would be sweet to pick up one of these, as silver dealers I have browsed require you to fork over $500+ dollars minimum. I just want $100-200 to see if it can outrace my Wastelands.
Unfortunately, I think the lame JTMS picture* and limited supply is going to inflate the price of these silver products to unreasonable proportions, so getting it at the fair price of silver is probably out of the picture.
(The only silver I have is a $7 dime someone spent at my job a couple years back)
Threads like these keep people away from MTG. My bad teeth keep people away from MTG. Jon Finkel's bald spot keep people away from MTG. The alternative-lifestyle people keep others away from MTG. Your small member keeps people away from MTG. (wave of sarcasm)
Personally, I think the alpha-nerd mentality and the idea that magic is a game of skill and that there is no greater purpose to the game other than to display your incredible talent at memorizing the rules and talent buying new cards keeps people away from Magic more than the people playing it do.
Hypocritical, judgmental calling out of other players is more damaging to the game than anything else. I've never been to an LGS that hasn't required deodorant, but not everyone is perfect. Everybody poops. It's too bad that eugenics thing from the early 20th century didn't catch on with the non-fascists. Only perfect people would play MTG and all would be well.
I'm no expert on the topic, but I've thought about it a lot and this is what I've come up with:
In North America, Magic is most popular on the East Coast, particularly the colder areas. Where I am from in New England, there are very few towns too small to have a standard FNM. Also, I've heard that most of the Vintage old fogey's live in the area between Boston, upstate New York, and Philadelphia.
I believe California has a lot of players due to sheer volume of population, but the weather and attitude in California enables people to do plenty of other things besides Magic. This might also apply to Florida. They might have large, centralized tournaments given the centralized nature of the states, but they might have fewer small-scale operations.
Other places are the ones where you hear stories from people who have to drive two hours to play standard. That's laughable in my area, I just have to walk five minutes or go to an even bigger tournament a half-hour away.
I wouldn't worry about losing an investment in a $15 card (DRS). It's not like fetches, Liliana, or Tarmogoyf were banned. Those staples are still awesome and expensive. Survival of the Fittest was banned in Legacy just after spiking to $60...Jace at $100 in Standard... No format is immune to bans on expensive cards.
(However you are correct that Legacy is a better investment, but this is because of the reserved list and Wizards' 'Disney Vault' of eternal format staples)
Anyways, if the DRS reprint is a pain on anyone's pockets, you should be complaining about the Thoughtseize reprint more.
I like the moves, but this is probably the last bit of attention I will pay to the game for a few months. The game is getting a little too far out of whack for my tastes. (and I just bought a Nintendo 3DS XL)
I hope everyone has fun with Wild Nacatl, BB, and $75 precons!
The presence of Wild Nacatl makes any given format 10% more popular.
I actually agree with this.
Sure, there are a lot of competetive players playing Legacy, but I feel like recent moves by Wizards have drastically decreased the appeal of Legacy to fringe players.
Legacy was more appealing when Zoo was a deck and when Maverick was a deck. When those decks died, people who only collected the Naya manabases were turned off to the (competitive) format. Not everyone buckled down and bought Bayous for Jund, and many of them probably kept their staples, so Legacy is -1 player for each of them.
If Goblins is dying right now because of True-Name Nemesis, my desire to pay >$30 to attend a major tournament will decline sharply. If so, I would be thrilled to see TNN banned.
'Metagaming' in Legacy takes a backseat to 'Variety' in value of importance. Without significant variety, Legacy metagaming becomes rock/paper/scissors like Vintage.
TL;DR - Legacy is a great format if you own all the staples, but interest is declining in the people who only collected one ridiculously expensive deck and don't want to play everything else. It used to be better.
A lot of people don't like it when you put a dollar value on cards, but it makes trading fair and easy. Whatever price increases the card experiences after that is your gain, but it is wrong to intentionally trade less immediate value for more immediate value, unless the parties involved are aware of the values of the card(s) and accept the difference between sides.
It's important to be careful with casual players...as their attachment to the game is largely emotional, and the feeling of being ripped off could cause a disconnect between them and the game.
The real problems are in Africa and parts of Asia. Between these regions exist serious ecological limitations which prevents their enormous populations from becoming comfortably modern. You really can't throw enough money at these regions to make things better, as they are poorly conceived or populations have grown beyond their capacity.
Regardless of whether or not we reign in the US elite class, there is still the global elite which is essentially also a part of the US elite. In the geo-political structure of the world, we are better off with the super-rich doing business here, as our lower classes are super-rich in return.
It sucks that there is not much room at the top, but even a modest salary in the United States is more splendid than all of Solomon's riches (unless you happened to find them today).
What needs to happen is that inflation and minimum wage increase proportionately to each other. This way, Old Money is obsoleted over time, while people have more incentive to work hard for New Money. The lower classes can continue enjoying their relative luxuries in comparison to millions people who live in daily fear and suffering.
edit - better public education is also a must
I used to live in a room full of Magic cards, but now they are all neatly condensed into boxes under my desk.
First I separated what I deem good cards and bulk. I'll took anything that wasn't obviously limited chaff from the large box of randomness. These include Legacy/Modern/Standard/Pauper playable cards as well as all my Goblins.
The resulting box of jank and future hidden treasures remains unsorted, because it's just not worth the time.
I keep playsets of playables in penny sleeves...two sets per sleeve, storing them in boxes within a larger box. I've found that it makes the deck tinkering process a lot easier for me. I don't like moving cards to and from a binder to make decks. I become overly concerned with the aesthetics of the binder and waste time managing it.
I usually don't have much more for trade than a penny sleeve stuffed to the breaking point with my best standard rares that I happened to get. I might consider getting one in the future so I can express better etiquette at drafts and that is all.
I've also taken the time to separate all of my basic lands into one box. I can stand the thought of pockets of basic lands in my jank box. I'd much rather know that I have access to all my older art lands at demand.
This exchange has been enlightening to me.
I support the reserved list, not because I'm sitting on an enormous mass of expensive staples, but because I think the game is better off with the eternal-formats being pricey and collectable, providing long-term playability for short-term expenses.
I like that eternal-formats are rare and 'special'. The fact that you're playing with classic Magic masterpieces is cool. The exclusivity of the formats adds to their appeal...but players are more exceptionally welcome to play eternal-formats as long as they have cards. Being starved for players, more people understand that being kind and understanding towards others is important to the health of the format. The eternal-format player base is generally less toxic than the more played, pro-tour circuit formats where individual players are more or less replaceable and competition more fierce.
On the other hand, I think inexperienced eternal-format players are toxic to the Standard environment. Especially new ones. If eternal -formats were reprinted in large numbers, I can imagine a lot of LGS's torn up by new kids with power and the format demographics would be disrupted in a harmful way. I suppose I shouldn't be so sociological about things, but I have noticed certain trends.
BUT, given that I wouldn't pay the current prices for eternal format staples, I think they deserve to come down a little. Unfortunately, they will never break their promise, and Legacy is 'doomed' to be the second Vintage. That's why the format must continue to appeal to current players rather than cycle new players interests in and out of it. Legacy's playerbase can be sustained as it is sustained right now: by strong tournament scenes in-between two large centers of population to enable regular Legacy tournaments of meaningful scale.
No matter what they do, it'll be a PR nightmare from one faction of their customers or another, which is why I'm glad that they have a more progressive approach in marketing the game. As long as the game as a whole remains healthy, there will be no business incentive for them to break their promise and Magic will not adopt the Yu-Gi-Oh model of regular format-implosion.
TL;DR - My personal preferences has been for a while that they print duals in Chinese to grow the game internationally, but now I understand why their business model depends on eternal-format scarcity. I just get sick of hear people wanting to reverse the current order of thing, which would negatively affect the high-quality of the product in a number of unimaginable ways.
Remember everyone, the Higgs boson has mass hundreds of times greater than the protons they are part of. That's freaking amazing an practically proves the existence of extra-dimensions. Am I wrong about that, no one else seems as amazed?
Sub-atomic particles oscillate between dimensions, bringing all matter through time at a certain pace. A an atom moves through space-time, the qualities of the sub-atomic particles change in each direction. They behave a lot like imaginary numbers, being two things at once. This is how things moving in one direction act like they have greater mass than the side opposite the force vector.
These contractions and expansions of the sub-atomic particles also account for how time 'slows down' and 'speeds up' depending on how fast an object is moving. If an object moves at the rate that sub-atomic particles move, light speed, time stops because the subatomic particle is no longer oscillating - it has become a sphere.
In turn, consciousness is tied to sub-atomic processes. The ability of brained-life to retain it's identity from one moment to the next exhibits a mastery of time that out idea of atoms and energy do not express. Our ability to analyze and imagine change in reality also takes something greater than chemical reactions. Consciousness is firmly integrated into the highest levels of reality, the expression of dimensions greater than Euclidean physics.
All these extra dimensions are probably kind of boring rules-governing dimensions that just make our reality what it is. I don't believe in 4-D, 5-D people, other than the possibility that we are those people because 3-D people are impossible.
My non-professional opinion. Take care!
@ Crimeo - If you don't want to play the same deck for ten years, stay the heck away from Legacy.
Legacy is partly about 'going infinite' in constructed Magic. If that were easier to achieve, there would be significantly less incentive to play any other constructed format. Whether you're stuck with one or two decks or can never play blue decks, Legacy is still such a great and classic format that recent standards can't compare in terms of quality of play and competitive diversity. If Legacy and Modern staples cost what Standard staples do, the game would lose profits year after year.
The only reason Yu-Gi-Oh still makes money is because it's basically Legacy with massive power creep. You need to get new expensive cards every year regardless of what format you're playing to be at the top of the competitive game. Some sick people might like to see that continue to happen to Legacy ala-TNN, but I'm sure plenty of older player would quit if more key staples were obsoleted by cash-grab replacements.
Counterfeits concern me, but not too much. The idea that they will be sold 10% bellow mid sounds very accurate. They will go down in value, sure, but at least some of the people posting here will get screwed over buying fake cards.
I'll be ok with my cards losing value, but I expect Magic to become a worse game as a result.. It's not like I was going to sell them anyways. I just understand why they are expensive. I worked hard and bought a collectable I like and want it to stay the way it is.
Back to MTG sucks right now hibernation.
If you really want to know whether your idea would float with Wizards, got to Maro's Blogatog thing that I'm sure everyone knows about, dress up your profile with magic themes, and ask him if they are possible in the current direction that Magic is going.
He might answer your question or he might not. If he doesn't, the answer is probably no, but don't blame him, he's below like hundreds of people where he works. I'm pretty sure Maro gets harassed all the time with these types of player comments on his Tumblr. You can see it in the comments section whenever the reserved list is a topic.
Eternal formats are a luxury to retain old players. Type 2 was created because they couldn't sell cards is Black Lotus was the standard forever. The life cycle of standard is the primary reason they are in business. Eternal formats are secondary. It's important to have meet demand at a certain level that they do not overlap into mainstream magic too much.
Yes, that is what this thread is actually supposed to be about. People stealing Wizards intellectual property and buying/selling it for cheap.
If anything, counterfeiters do nothing to encourage Wizards to reprint Legacy staples...only to abandon Modern and Legacy in favor of their new hologram frame formats. The hassle of weeding out fakes from authentic magic cards would be too much of a hassle for Wizards to put up with.
I'm not aware...but is this guy even selling ABUR duals that people covet so dearly? It'd be kind of hard to fake a 20 year old card, imo. This hurts Modern a whole lot more than it hurts Legacy, although it hurts both. Legacy cards are quite organic, causing people to look at them more deeply. Regardless, the deck-checks will be fierce and unpleasant in the coming months.
I don't blame Wizards for these counterfeiters. I do think they've made countless mistakes with the Modern format. It does not please the people. Their insatiable hunger for more and more eternal format is not satisfied. Unfortunately, what they really have to do is make people happy with standard, so I'm hoping it gets better soon.
Also, someone in this thread compared Foil Hymn to Legacy staples when talking about trading down with standard. That's just a silly pimp move. The only deals that matter are ones for duals and 'Legacy Power' - FoW, LED, Wasteland, duals, Jace, Goyf, etc. The only people in their right mind who would trade these things for standard cards are those who cannot use them because they can't afford the $3000 worth of cards around them in order to be competitive. Those people are few and far in between.
Some people will never understand why non-rotating formats have to be limited in supply.
My first was my first Legacy tournament where I was asked to draw since we were both going on to the 'final round' so I said yeah to be a good sport but we played a game anyways and one handily. Ok, maybe nerves played into that one. Anyways, I got paired up against Belcher and somehow beat Belcher. Got paired up against the opponent I drew against and let him split the prize. I knew I was going to beat him anyways (very good MU). I wasn't there for the (small) prize, but for the experience, the glory.
In this situation, I wish I didn't have the option to draw, because all that drawing took away from my first semi-formal Legacy experience.
The second time was at a draft. I suppose everyone wanted to go home, so they organized a draw for first place between me and somebody else. I was rocking the greatest draft deck I will ever draft, and I was extremely disappointment not to play for first.
In this situation, I wish I had the choice. After my first experience and knowing how busted my deck was, I had confidence in playing for first.
The third time was at my first trip to my super-LGS. It was the second round and my opponent knew I drafted Pack Rat and he was upset and conceded. What a lame move. There were only three rounds and I ended up losing the third, so and otherwise pleasant draft turned out to be five games of Magic one Pyrewild Elder.
In this situation, I wish people would just man up and play the games. It threatens the integrity of the tournaments in ways I wouldn't be able to touch on in a single post.
TLDR: Intentional draw is bad.
If silver is so awesome, why do they want my dollars for this? Nonetheless, it would be sweet to pick up one of these, as silver dealers I have browsed require you to fork over $500+ dollars minimum. I just want $100-200 to see if it can outrace my Wastelands.
Unfortunately, I think the lame JTMS picture* and limited supply is going to inflate the price of these silver products to unreasonable proportions, so getting it at the fair price of silver is probably out of the picture.
(The only silver I have is a $7 dime someone spent at my job a couple years back)
*not that the Queen looks any better
Personally, I think the alpha-nerd mentality and the idea that magic is a game of skill and that there is no greater purpose to the game other than to display your incredible talent at memorizing the rules and talent buying new cards keeps people away from Magic more than the people playing it do.
Hypocritical, judgmental calling out of other players is more damaging to the game than anything else. I've never been to an LGS that hasn't required deodorant, but not everyone is perfect. Everybody poops. It's too bad that eugenics thing from the early 20th century didn't catch on with the non-fascists. Only perfect people would play MTG and all would be well.
In North America, Magic is most popular on the East Coast, particularly the colder areas. Where I am from in New England, there are very few towns too small to have a standard FNM. Also, I've heard that most of the Vintage old fogey's live in the area between Boston, upstate New York, and Philadelphia.
I believe California has a lot of players due to sheer volume of population, but the weather and attitude in California enables people to do plenty of other things besides Magic. This might also apply to Florida. They might have large, centralized tournaments given the centralized nature of the states, but they might have fewer small-scale operations.
Other places are the ones where you hear stories from people who have to drive two hours to play standard. That's laughable in my area, I just have to walk five minutes or go to an even bigger tournament a half-hour away.