Okay, okay, I made a post about this in another forum, but since the topic has plagued my mind for the past couple of years, it have become significant enough to me to try and make it significant to you. I also did a google search and could not find and MTG Salvation threads on the topic.
So, the Mandelbrot set...now I'm not a mathematician, but one is not required to be one to make observations. It's very difficult to discuss what I believe to be true about our realities so I'll make it as simple as I can.
1. Our conscious view of the world is a window from a dimension of greater complexity than the atomic dimension. There is no limit on our complexity of thought. We can imagine things breaking the laws of physics all the time, that's what makes consciousness unique and powerful. The universe within our heads is of another dimension, not limited by atomic physics. (edit- but dependent on physical arrangements of atoms in order to exist)
2. The various brains in different lifeforms, which mostly evolved from the original brains, are nature's attempts at recreating the Mandelbrot set in 3D physics. From a pure layman's perspective, the points of emphasis and orientation of the Mandelbrot set look suspiciously like an uninhibited mind.
A) The image 'looks' forward. Eyes in nature tend to do the same thing. Eyes are essentially a part of the brain.
B) The image also has emphasis where life-forms tend have ears. The set 'hears' from the side.
C) The image bears equal complexity on all sides and spaces imaginable, both representing the ability to 'feel', both externally and internally. The amount and quality of feelings one can feel are truly infinite.
D) The rear of the image curls in ward like brains do at the back where the hemispheres separate.
Now that's all I can think of for now, but if anyone would wish to debate, criticize, or help me grow my opinions on the subject, I would be greatly appreciative. My ideas are in evolution, as I observe new and intriguing things every day that make me question exactly what life is. I'm not looking for attention, I tend to run away all shy with or without attention, but this is something I feel strongly. It's not exactly a useful observation to me, but on that provides infinite perspective.
Anyone here ever see a Mandelbrot fractal? I believe our will is as free as the image is infinite.
Brains themselves are 3-D physics attempt at transcending to the Mandelbrot set, but limitations of our physics makes the perfect, all-knowing mind impossible in this dimension.
The God of Abraham is not what people think he is, but it is possible that the Mandelbrot set is mind of God encoded into nature itself. (sadly, all this God is is the possibility of consciousness itself, and death is eternal)
HOWEVER! I also believe it possible that matter that gets sucked into Black Holes reaches a point of singularity that ejects it all the way back in time to the original singularity, the Big Bang. This is how the Big Bang knows how much matter to eject. Space time is a repeating system because all light and matter may exist only in black holes, but the universe goes on in other ways.
They should just cancel the show. I know they won't because it's getting them ratings..but I'M SO TIRED OF ALL THESE STEREOTYPE-EXPLOITATION SHOWS YET EVERYONE SEEMS TO LOVE THEM. This show is just as offensive to southerners as it is to LGBT.
I hate that the media is constantly feeding people this crap that 'people who work a certain profession are a certain way', 'people who live in a certain region act a certain way'. It's a huge step back for our society and only serves to heighten the differences and tensions between different groups of people.
BTW shooting ducks is the least impressive profession in the world. This old beard fart wearing black paint on his face with a big puffy white beard...lol, what a senseless idiot. I'm sick of the merchandize too...what's marketable about these old beans besides bigotry and stereotypes?
You know I'm glad you said that, and I do understand and can relate to some degree. I get it.
For myself, I suppose there may be some reasons why I still hold onto my decks from the early days of Urza's saga and Onslaught. Probably memory's, or maybe I find them collectible or valuable. Although maybe for me, its not necessarily the money that makes the card valuable.
I grew up playing these stupid cards but I found that they need to evolve as well. I enjoy playing just as much as collecting, and what's playing if your friends or group don't have the drive or range of cards you do.
You also have to consider the possibility of the old Onslaught fetches holding their value even after a reprint. People like myself, and maybe even you go nuts for cards in the old border. For every commander deck I build I went out of my way to get something in the old border even if I already own the Modern version just because. I also like having cards from their original sets. Its small things like that that might even make them hold their price keep everyone happy.
I'm glad we have some common ground.
Personally, I spent over $1,000 on cards to complete my Legacy decks...90% of it was on LANDS, because I was just a child playing the game when the cool cards were out.
I used to draft when I was twelve and during that time I collected x4 Goblin Piledriver (forever the heart and soul of my collection). I liked that he was hard enough to get that my friends didn't have him too. Expensive Magic cards forces players to accept the role that they identify with most, the trick is getting them to identify with them enough to open their wallets.
Unfortunately, I only came out of Onslaught block with x3 Bloodstained Mire (I once picked a Grinning Demon over one of these in the redraft). Nonetheless, I had enough awesome Magic cards which resonated with me in such a way that made me value the game. I didn't quit when Wasteland went from $12 > $30 > $50. I loved the game enough that I valued it enough to make a serious commitment. My friends did it too, which was the best part. I seriously hated paying that much for those stupid lands, but for the amount of play-value we got out of it, we determined that it was worth it.
Now that commitment is PRACTICALLY OVER! Barring the arrival of True-Ca$h Goblin, I'm FREE and out of the system just hoping Goblins don't go extinct so that the few chances I have to play Legacy these days, I can infiltrate random tournaments and have moderate success, but that is beside the point.
The moral of this story are that it sucks that Magic cards are expensive, but the graduating levels of formats are progressively more expensive for good reason. It's not a cruel extension of the Reserved List, but the way the game always has and must be.
*I am a strictly working-class individual to, so that might suggest that since I have had so little value in my life, the value from Magic cards is more important to me than it should be. Oh well, it makes me happy. I'm not in the game strictly to compete in tournaments. There is a certain aesthetic that appeals to me which I hope to see maintained and grown exponentially.
Unless I took your words for the wrong meaning I personally think its very selfish to care only about the $$$ value of what a card is going to be after a reprint. Its shouldn't be a worry or concern what the dollar value drops to but more so building the life and enjoyment of playing the game.
I own all Zendikar fetches, Goyfs, and Bobs. To be honest, I think they all still need reprints to make them more affordable and available for all players. The only people who should be concern about the price is the card sellers. If my cards loose value in expense to make them available and cheaper for my friendly players I'm cool with it.
I have only been following parts of this thread just to see and hear what people have to say. For me, I would not be surprised if they bring the Landfall effect back into one of the core sets and introducing the reprint of fetches. I see it happening in M15 the earliest, but I'm just your average Joe going off a assumption.
You're heart is certainly in the right place, but I do not think there is any injustice in someone not having certain Magic cards.
It's selfish to want Magic cards, it's selfish for me to have enjoyed watching fetchlands double/triple in value. I've seen many ages of the game of Magic come and go and things like this just happen. Certain cards eventually generate great enough cache and demand that they become collector's items as well as play things. The game moves on and prints new cards for the next generation, eventually turning them into collectables too. The way people want things to go now though is to recycle every old idea to death because they weren't around for that era of Magic. The Innistrad crowd wishes to gut Magic for everything that it's worth.
I like that the games of Legacy/old-card-casual played between me and friends were using obscenely rare and valuable Magic cards that were attached to our own selfish identities, something unique to our generation, something that can have even greater value and mystique at a later time. Compounded with memories formed over the game in the past and you have the perfect storm for nostalgia. There is great, existential value in playing with rare and valuable cards which contributes to Magics awesomeness.
There are plenty of ways to play Magic, I happen to love limited. Denying someone easy access to fetches doesn't tell them that they can't play Magic.
Modern will NEVER be a cheap format. I think Wizards is OK with Modern being under-supplied. They only need to supply Modern with enough cards to be more played than Legacy. The hierarchy of Limited played more than Standard played more than Modern played more than Legacy played more than Vintage must be maintained.
I was all for banning fetchlands in Modern so more people could play, Goyf and DRS would suck, and other lands would have a chance to be format pillars, but no. Modern just need enough cards to see just a teentsy-bit more play than it does now.
At this point, I'd say just put them all ten of them in Modern Masters 2. There is no guarantee that they're printing Goyf and Bob again, so the set might need some value at the top. As a matter of fact, I can imagine the Modern Masters series getting very boring after the second time and superfluous for the kinds of cards people expect to see in the set.
Heck, it could be done in standard, but I'd rather it be somewhere far away from Zendikar, hopefully good old naturally-proportioned Dominaria where they belong.
I have all the fetches I want except for Scalding Tarns, so it would be a disappointment if they just crash the ONS fetchlands without the 'Modern investors' putting any skin in the game.
I also wonder how many times one must destroy the value of Bloodstained Mire to bring Polluted Delta to an acceptable level.
Okay, I'm not going to be starting threads and polls every day, but this is a topic that is relevant to me that I've always considered relevant to the rest of the MTG playerbase at large...smoking tobacco during Magic tournaments!
In my adult phase of playing Magic, roughly 10% of players that I've known were smokers. I smoke too, almost a pack a day, but it is something that I seriously hate about my life and would like to change if I could. When you're addicted to something like that, it feels like your cerebral cortex is hollow when you do not have it. It's difficult to enjoy what you normally enjoy, especially when you include smoke breaks into the routine.
One of my main motivations to go to LGS and participate in the Magic community is that for 3-4 hours, I can do something that distracts me from cigarettes and makes me feel like the innocent child that I was when I started playing. It's not going to stop me from smoking when it's over, but anytime a smoker goes more than a hour or two without a cigarette is progress in a battle against an incurable life-long mental illness of addiction.
...but Magic, especially working-class Magic, tends to have a subculture of smokers who 'step out' in between rounds and smoke 'social cigarettes'. I personally prefer to smoke alone and out of sight because I am ashamed of it, but the friendly encouragement of other people feeds the addiction and hinders my efforts to hold back. I'm also very shy, so while I enjoy the time for small talk usually about real life stuff, I feel so terrible about myself doing what I'm doing where I'm doing it.
Smoking during Magic tournaments is wrong on so many levels:
1. It makes the LGS look bad. Not only does it feed to the 'degenerate gambler's den' appearance that LGS must avoid at all costs, it makes the surrounding community and businesses weary of the kind of people who play the game. Excessive cigarette-butt accumulation is not uncommon outside LGS.
2. Children can surprisingly still afford to play Magic. I certainly wouldn't want a young child of mine going to Magic tournaments with twenty-somethings smoking cigarettes and who knows what else. It's a bad influence for kids to look up to good Magic players who smoke.
3. It is a cheating opportunity in Limited. Honestly, people should not be allowed to leave the building during drafts. The last thing the game needs is people going outside and augmenting their decks while out of sight behind a veil of smoke.
4. It's a waste of money that could otherwise be used to improve the quality of the local meta. For all the money it costs to smoke in a year, once could buy a Black Lotus or every Revised dual land. People who smoke have no right to complain about the price of cards (hence, I rarely complain).
5. It takes away from the social experience. Social cigarettes aren't socialization - it's assisted suicide, reinforcing bad habits that ultimately lead to sickness and death. The more people trying to reinforce this kind of behavior, the worse off we all are.
6. Joyfully smoking represents and attitude that one is living for their own short-term pleasure above all else at all costs. The logic that leads someone to think smoking is a good idea leads to many more bad ideas and attitudes in life.
6. I'm sure there are more.
I personally believe that it's up to the LGS owner/operator to take initiative to curb the sidewalk smokers. No smoking within 300 ft, or even disqualification for leaving the premise for such reasons. That warning or threat would be enough for me to bite the bullet and tough it out, because I can choose Magic of short term pleasure...in the short term. At the very least, smokers should be encouraged to use nicotine gum while playing, as it will give them good practice for when they actually need to quit (Obamacare policies hurts smokers more than any other group of people...the damn insurance premiums are probably the only thing that could get me to quit. Thanks Obama.).
I definitely don't want people going around disparaging smokers and insisting that they are inherently weak-willed and unwelcome and are disgusting people for what they do. MTG players should show concern for their fellow players. The best way to help someone work their way through a nicotine-fit is with encouragement and good humor, not a volley of insults should they slip up...but in no way should their behavior be ignored and taken for granted.
So does anyone else have an opinion on this? Does your LGS have a policies to deter smoking by tournament participants? If they don't, they should. I think it would be good for Magic culture...good for ME if smoking was less tolerated at Magic events. If I feel like it's OK and accepted, I'm probably going to do it.
Lastly, I'd like to say that there is absolutely no comparison between addiction to substances and 'addiction to Magic'. There was a time when I would have made jest of someone for drafting five times a week, but at this point the price if a draft is nearly equal to the price of a pack of cigarettes. Magic cards are a collectable rather than a consumable, so you actually get something out of it besides cancer. One can never play too much Magic that it is worse than a single pack of cigarettes. We all should be cracking packs and not smoking them. Smoking is the worst hobby ever.
Through the prerelease and release events, I never realized that Whip of Erebos is sorcery speed. Whoops.
That's deep stuff man. I once won a draft in which I thought that you could tap Cluestones for mana and sacrifice them at the same time. I know I did it twice, I'm not sure if that won me the game, I felt so horrible about a tournament in which I drafted removal heavy monster. When I got home, I even FB messaged the person it happened against saying how sorry and stupid I was, because I'm strange like that.
As a matter of fact, all of my minor victories in this game are marred with unusual circumstances and awkward situations, which actually keeps me away from my LGS at the moment. I'm afraid of damaging that precious meta with my outlandish opinions and beliefs.
The last draft I played was the first time I played against minors since turning adult. I felt so mean killing all their stuff with removal, and I neglected to let him have a 'friendly seven'...NOT because I'm a win at all costs kind of person, but because I'm very serious about the mulligan rules thanks to my participation in these forums. I don't know if I did the right thing or the wrong thing, but I felt really bad about it.
When I posted this thread, I did not even know the price of Wasteland until people starting bringing it up. I was only focusing on the gameplay aspects of this card. I play mostly Standard and Modern, and seeing as how this card is not currently legal in either format, I could care less how expensive it is. To sum up my point, I do not think it is fair to label one side as "Magic players who are motivated by personal desires."
I'm sorry, I just assumed. I've read many threads about similar subjects before and there are trends that are similar to each of them.
You have people who want Wasteland reprinted because they don't have Wasteland and want it primarily for eternal formats.
There are modern players who want is so they can put the second-to-last 'nail-in-the-coffin' to Legacy (the last being FoW), assuming that Modern with Wastelands would be every bit as good and 'skillful'.
Then, you have Legacy players without player-bases who just want more people to have Wasteland. I personally wouldn't mind having more people to play with myself, but I fear the effect that reintroducing eternal format pillars on a massive scale would have.
So, that is what I meant by personal desires.
I've spent time in a small, 'how do they stay in business' LGS, and that forever changed my views on what should and should not happen to the game of Magic. Doing things that explicitly encourage players to buy old staples and play at centralized Legacy events hurts the wider MTG scene. Only so many people can like Magic at once and only so many people can play formats at once.
The best thing about standard is that a lot of people play it, which could be hurt by giving people Legacy Power (especially the wealthier kids who tend to anchor the playerbase and feed the store owner). The best thing about legacy is arguably-controversially that the cards do not rotate, which is not profitable for MTG in any way, shape or form long term...unless you want to power-creep the heck out of the game and create rapid deck turn-over in Legacy, which a lot of people wouldn't like.
That's all. I don't mean to be the grinch who stole wasteland, I just have a broad vision of what is possible within Magic and what is unfeasible.
I figured I'd take the time to set establish a thread for people to come and confess their Magic sins. Many times, people vent complaints and frustrations about the Game and Wizards of the Coast, but neglect to give them credit for the things that keep them paying attention to the game. I think it would be great if we could hear from a bunch of people admitting they were wrong about something Magic related, and how sometimes the things that cause their frustrations were all part of a grand and mysterious plan. Sorry if this is too cheeky/irreverent/unnecessary, we can proceed to bury this thread with Proxy, Mulligan, and Reprint threads if we must.
I'll go first!
Forgive me Maro, for I have sinned.
I have not drafted since RtR block because I do not like Theros (because there are no Goblins in Theros) and core sets give me vertigo. I did not draft Goblins in Modern Masters either because I did not draft Modern Masters; it felt like my LGS would be running a high-stakes gambling event rather than the pleasant games of skill and chance they had been.
I've strayed from the path of righteousness and returned to the dark depths of an eternal format free-loader, coveting the handful of cards I want from each block and ignoring/ridiculing the rest. It is hard to have much faith in WotC when I have to wait a FULL YEAR for the game to return to what it has always been to me: Goblins versus the world. Even if they do, standard is so very rarely as balanced as I would like it to be that my favorite archetype has not been tier-1 since 2003.
It seems like just as I was ready to do-the-good-thing and attend a FNM with a non-tier-1, non-Machiavellian Goblin deck, I came upon hard times and I felt as though the game no longer had a purpose for me. How can I serve you if you want me to go away every two years?
BUT I STILL HAVE FAITH!
In hard times past I received your blessings with Cavern of Souls. 'Legion Loyalist' and 'Goblin Diplomats' felt like well orchestrated plants to keep me interested in the game in times when I would otherwise have zero interest. I sought out the Jund Commander precon because I knew that YOU created that for ME, as it would be wrong for me not to buy it...but since Shattergang Brothers is obviously the best card in C13, it was sold out at Wallmart and Target and all I could find were those terrible Grixis decks (lol, I mean Esper and Bant).
Magic is important to me whether I am playing or not because many of the things I would otherwise be thinking about are sinful and unclean. Without the light of Goblins, my mind would be a more unpleasant place to reside, so I am forever thankful.
I have faith that MTG will not banish my people to hell. I make a vow to recognize when Wizards does things to appeal to my particular psychographic and seize the opportunity...as well as being a better influence and more positive caregiver of the game than I have been.
For thine is the card kingdom, the power nine, and the glory forever. Amen.
I think this thread separates Magic players who are motivated by personal desires and those who are motivated by reason.
The idea of reprinting Wasteland in Standard has nothing to do with making Standard better...it's about making non-rotating formats cheaper. You even hear it in some of the arguments...the whole idea is that you design standard around not being wrecked by Wasteland so it can be safe to reprint.
Standard gains absolutely nothing by rehashing old ideas so new players can more easily play the expensive collectors formats. Wizards is giving everyone $10 Thoughtseizes and still people are thirsty for more and more from their expansive volumes of old classics. I just want to see new experiences and new cards so I can look forward to buying new product rather than watch the cards recycled over and over again. (it's not easy for them to get me to try new things, so they have to be really really good at it, better than they are now)
At any rate, Wasteland is way to efficient for manabases that aren't Legacy bases and mana-curves that aren't Legacy curves...but I guess a lot of people want to see them all those cards come back to standard until they've finally cycled back around to reprinting Shocklands and Deathrite Shaman, square one.
I'm more bothered by people defacing good Magic cards with breasts and ponies and ponies with breasts than I am proxies. I don't enjoy using proxies myself though, I always felt dirty playing proxies, unless I was calling my Strip Mine a Wasteland, because come on.
Either way, official, authentic Magic: the Gathering cards are like membership vouchers to the official, authentic tournament establishment club. That means real Magic cards actually are much more fun than fake ones.
The best way to 'troll' in magic would be to play something that wins 90% percent of the time against a specific portion of the meta but has critical flaws against another wide portion of the meta. That being said, depending on what your opponents are playing, it is likely that you can troll the crap out of them with $10 worth of sideboard cards (or $50-100 since we're talking Legacy here).
I'm most looking forward to the possibility of mono-colored fetchlands (either limited to fetching basics or not). I think they could be designed around very well and would be extremely aesthetically appealing. I can taste the ink on each land already. I suppose they aren't 'dual lands', but if well executed, they're as good as any other major land cycle ever.
Enemy sac-lands (ala Sulfur Vent) would be swell as well. I'd like to have one that taps for W and sacs for BR for budget Tendrils.
I'd also like to see lands that gain abilities when you control basic land types around them...like...if you control a swamp, a mountain and a forest, (this) has: (do something powerful).
I'm not excited about a ONS/ZEN fetchland reprint. I just think it's boring for Wizards to be expected to reprint the most powerful lands in the game's long history. Seriously, years from now, when you all have arthritis from all the searching and shuffling, you'll wish you didn't ask for this reprint.
It's OK though, because if they reprint ONS fetches, I suddenly have eight more fetches that I could theoretically play in Modern. ZEN fetches, I can get them darn Scalding Tarns I passed up on. I'd be happier to see both at once as not to crush the magnificence of ONS fetches, making those poopy-looking ZEN-fetches even more expensive.
If you don't have the cards to play, you aren't a part of the metagame. Players of the format are not affected by card prices because you have to have the cards to be an actual player. Sooo...the meta itself isn't affected by not having cards, only it's size is affected.
...which doesn't really matter because Legacy is as large and as popular as it ever can and will be, played by adults who somehow organize and attend events around the world. Some places have it better than others, but few places that actually have it have lost it, or at least they have transitioned to the 'once every few months of major tournaments' phase, which is a perfectly healthy way to attend what are effectively Magic card conventions.
Legacy is strong with a centralized base. Large, successful card stores in certain regions have very strong Legacy environments. A vast majority of card stores cannot afford to run Legacy, neither price-wise nor player-wise nor profit-wise, but that's fine because the flagship products of MtG (Standard, Limited) must take priority over the awesome-magic-forever-club.
Now bear with me...I'm one of the quacks who thinks banning Fetchlands in Modern is a good idea...but banning Duals in Legacy is a horrendously terrible idea. All you accomplish is adding a Shock to every dual. It's pointless. At least fetchlands add a component of synergy (+1 land in grave/free shuffle) to decks which elevate certain strategies above others...but I've come down on my ban philosophy since they aren't oppressive to the META, but to the structure of the FORMAT.
A ban to address the structure of the format is not necessary in Legacy. While Modern could use a little bit of reinvention here and there, banning a format that's SO GOOD that it's staples go for THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS is like Ferrari making Soviet-era cookie-cutter cars because they don't control enough market share. There is no need. Legacy seamlessly fulfills it's role to Magic: the Gathering, and demanding for it to be something different from what it is becomes a life lesson in and of itself.
Okay, okay, I made a post about this in another forum, but since the topic has plagued my mind for the past couple of years, it have become significant enough to me to try and make it significant to you. I also did a google search and could not find and MTG Salvation threads on the topic.
So, the Mandelbrot set...now I'm not a mathematician, but one is not required to be one to make observations. It's very difficult to discuss what I believe to be true about our realities so I'll make it as simple as I can.
1. Our conscious view of the world is a window from a dimension of greater complexity than the atomic dimension. There is no limit on our complexity of thought. We can imagine things breaking the laws of physics all the time, that's what makes consciousness unique and powerful. The universe within our heads is of another dimension, not limited by atomic physics. (edit- but dependent on physical arrangements of atoms in order to exist)
2. The various brains in different lifeforms, which mostly evolved from the original brains, are nature's attempts at recreating the Mandelbrot set in 3D physics. From a pure layman's perspective, the points of emphasis and orientation of the Mandelbrot set look suspiciously like an uninhibited mind.
A) The image 'looks' forward. Eyes in nature tend to do the same thing. Eyes are essentially a part of the brain.
B) The image also has emphasis where life-forms tend have ears. The set 'hears' from the side.
C) The image bears equal complexity on all sides and spaces imaginable, both representing the ability to 'feel', both externally and internally. The amount and quality of feelings one can feel are truly infinite.
D) The rear of the image curls in ward like brains do at the back where the hemispheres separate.
Now that's all I can think of for now, but if anyone would wish to debate, criticize, or help me grow my opinions on the subject, I would be greatly appreciative. My ideas are in evolution, as I observe new and intriguing things every day that make me question exactly what life is. I'm not looking for attention, I tend to run away all shy with or without attention, but this is something I feel strongly. It's not exactly a useful observation to me, but on that provides infinite perspective.
Brains themselves are 3-D physics attempt at transcending to the Mandelbrot set, but limitations of our physics makes the perfect, all-knowing mind impossible in this dimension.
The God of Abraham is not what people think he is, but it is possible that the Mandelbrot set is mind of God encoded into nature itself. (sadly, all this God is is the possibility of consciousness itself, and death is eternal)
HOWEVER! I also believe it possible that matter that gets sucked into Black Holes reaches a point of singularity that ejects it all the way back in time to the original singularity, the Big Bang. This is how the Big Bang knows how much matter to eject. Space time is a repeating system because all light and matter may exist only in black holes, but the universe goes on in other ways.
I hate that the media is constantly feeding people this crap that 'people who work a certain profession are a certain way', 'people who live in a certain region act a certain way'. It's a huge step back for our society and only serves to heighten the differences and tensions between different groups of people.
BTW shooting ducks is the least impressive profession in the world. This old beard fart wearing black paint on his face with a big puffy white beard...lol, what a senseless idiot. I'm sick of the merchandize too...what's marketable about these old beans besides bigotry and stereotypes?
I'm glad we have some common ground.
Personally, I spent over $1,000 on cards to complete my Legacy decks...90% of it was on LANDS, because I was just a child playing the game when the cool cards were out.
I used to draft when I was twelve and during that time I collected x4 Goblin Piledriver (forever the heart and soul of my collection). I liked that he was hard enough to get that my friends didn't have him too. Expensive Magic cards forces players to accept the role that they identify with most, the trick is getting them to identify with them enough to open their wallets.
Unfortunately, I only came out of Onslaught block with x3 Bloodstained Mire (I once picked a Grinning Demon over one of these in the redraft). Nonetheless, I had enough awesome Magic cards which resonated with me in such a way that made me value the game. I didn't quit when Wasteland went from $12 > $30 > $50. I loved the game enough that I valued it enough to make a serious commitment. My friends did it too, which was the best part. I seriously hated paying that much for those stupid lands, but for the amount of play-value we got out of it, we determined that it was worth it.
Now that commitment is PRACTICALLY OVER! Barring the arrival of True-Ca$h Goblin, I'm FREE and out of the system just hoping Goblins don't go extinct so that the few chances I have to play Legacy these days, I can infiltrate random tournaments and have moderate success, but that is beside the point.
The moral of this story are that it sucks that Magic cards are expensive, but the graduating levels of formats are progressively more expensive for good reason. It's not a cruel extension of the Reserved List, but the way the game always has and must be.
*I am a strictly working-class individual to, so that might suggest that since I have had so little value in my life, the value from Magic cards is more important to me than it should be. Oh well, it makes me happy. I'm not in the game strictly to compete in tournaments. There is a certain aesthetic that appeals to me which I hope to see maintained and grown exponentially.
You're heart is certainly in the right place, but I do not think there is any injustice in someone not having certain Magic cards.
It's selfish to want Magic cards, it's selfish for me to have enjoyed watching fetchlands double/triple in value. I've seen many ages of the game of Magic come and go and things like this just happen. Certain cards eventually generate great enough cache and demand that they become collector's items as well as play things. The game moves on and prints new cards for the next generation, eventually turning them into collectables too. The way people want things to go now though is to recycle every old idea to death because they weren't around for that era of Magic. The Innistrad crowd wishes to gut Magic for everything that it's worth.
I like that the games of Legacy/old-card-casual played between me and friends were using obscenely rare and valuable Magic cards that were attached to our own selfish identities, something unique to our generation, something that can have even greater value and mystique at a later time. Compounded with memories formed over the game in the past and you have the perfect storm for nostalgia. There is great, existential value in playing with rare and valuable cards which contributes to Magics awesomeness.
There are plenty of ways to play Magic, I happen to love limited. Denying someone easy access to fetches doesn't tell them that they can't play Magic.
Modern will NEVER be a cheap format. I think Wizards is OK with Modern being under-supplied. They only need to supply Modern with enough cards to be more played than Legacy. The hierarchy of Limited played more than Standard played more than Modern played more than Legacy played more than Vintage must be maintained.
I was all for banning fetchlands in Modern so more people could play, Goyf and DRS would suck, and other lands would have a chance to be format pillars, but no. Modern just need enough cards to see just a teentsy-bit more play than it does now.
Heck, it could be done in standard, but I'd rather it be somewhere far away from Zendikar, hopefully good old naturally-proportioned Dominaria where they belong.
I have all the fetches I want except for Scalding Tarns, so it would be a disappointment if they just crash the ONS fetchlands without the 'Modern investors' putting any skin in the game.
I also wonder how many times one must destroy the value of Bloodstained Mire to bring Polluted Delta to an acceptable level.
In my adult phase of playing Magic, roughly 10% of players that I've known were smokers. I smoke too, almost a pack a day, but it is something that I seriously hate about my life and would like to change if I could. When you're addicted to something like that, it feels like your cerebral cortex is hollow when you do not have it. It's difficult to enjoy what you normally enjoy, especially when you include smoke breaks into the routine.
One of my main motivations to go to LGS and participate in the Magic community is that for 3-4 hours, I can do something that distracts me from cigarettes and makes me feel like the innocent child that I was when I started playing. It's not going to stop me from smoking when it's over, but anytime a smoker goes more than a hour or two without a cigarette is progress in a battle against an incurable life-long mental illness of addiction.
...but Magic, especially working-class Magic, tends to have a subculture of smokers who 'step out' in between rounds and smoke 'social cigarettes'. I personally prefer to smoke alone and out of sight because I am ashamed of it, but the friendly encouragement of other people feeds the addiction and hinders my efforts to hold back. I'm also very shy, so while I enjoy the time for small talk usually about real life stuff, I feel so terrible about myself doing what I'm doing where I'm doing it.
Smoking during Magic tournaments is wrong on so many levels:
2. Children can surprisingly still afford to play Magic. I certainly wouldn't want a young child of mine going to Magic tournaments with twenty-somethings smoking cigarettes and who knows what else. It's a bad influence for kids to look up to good Magic players who smoke.
3. It is a cheating opportunity in Limited. Honestly, people should not be allowed to leave the building during drafts. The last thing the game needs is people going outside and augmenting their decks while out of sight behind a veil of smoke.
4. It's a waste of money that could otherwise be used to improve the quality of the local meta. For all the money it costs to smoke in a year, once could buy a Black Lotus or every Revised dual land. People who smoke have no right to complain about the price of cards (hence, I rarely complain).
5. It takes away from the social experience. Social cigarettes aren't socialization - it's assisted suicide, reinforcing bad habits that ultimately lead to sickness and death. The more people trying to reinforce this kind of behavior, the worse off we all are.
6. Joyfully smoking represents and attitude that one is living for their own short-term pleasure above all else at all costs. The logic that leads someone to think smoking is a good idea leads to many more bad ideas and attitudes in life.
6. I'm sure there are more.
I personally believe that it's up to the LGS owner/operator to take initiative to curb the sidewalk smokers. No smoking within 300 ft, or even disqualification for leaving the premise for such reasons. That warning or threat would be enough for me to bite the bullet and tough it out, because I can choose Magic of short term pleasure...in the short term. At the very least, smokers should be encouraged to use nicotine gum while playing, as it will give them good practice for when they actually need to quit (Obamacare policies hurts smokers more than any other group of people...the damn insurance premiums are probably the only thing that could get me to quit. Thanks Obama.).
I definitely don't want people going around disparaging smokers and insisting that they are inherently weak-willed and unwelcome and are disgusting people for what they do. MTG players should show concern for their fellow players. The best way to help someone work their way through a nicotine-fit is with encouragement and good humor, not a volley of insults should they slip up...but in no way should their behavior be ignored and taken for granted.
So does anyone else have an opinion on this? Does your LGS have a policies to deter smoking by tournament participants? If they don't, they should. I think it would be good for Magic culture...good for ME if smoking was less tolerated at Magic events. If I feel like it's OK and accepted, I'm probably going to do it.
Lastly, I'd like to say that there is absolutely no comparison between addiction to substances and 'addiction to Magic'. There was a time when I would have made jest of someone for drafting five times a week, but at this point the price if a draft is nearly equal to the price of a pack of cigarettes. Magic cards are a collectable rather than a consumable, so you actually get something out of it besides cancer. One can never play too much Magic that it is worse than a single pack of cigarettes. We all should be cracking packs and not smoking them. Smoking is the worst hobby ever.
That's deep stuff man. I once won a draft in which I thought that you could tap Cluestones for mana and sacrifice them at the same time. I know I did it twice, I'm not sure if that won me the game, I felt so horrible about a tournament in which I drafted removal heavy monster. When I got home, I even FB messaged the person it happened against saying how sorry and stupid I was, because I'm strange like that.
As a matter of fact, all of my minor victories in this game are marred with unusual circumstances and awkward situations, which actually keeps me away from my LGS at the moment. I'm afraid of damaging that precious meta with my outlandish opinions and beliefs.
The last draft I played was the first time I played against minors since turning adult. I felt so mean killing all their stuff with removal, and I neglected to let him have a 'friendly seven'...NOT because I'm a win at all costs kind of person, but because I'm very serious about the mulligan rules thanks to my participation in these forums. I don't know if I did the right thing or the wrong thing, but I felt really bad about it.
I'm sorry, I just assumed. I've read many threads about similar subjects before and there are trends that are similar to each of them.
You have people who want Wasteland reprinted because they don't have Wasteland and want it primarily for eternal formats.
There are modern players who want is so they can put the second-to-last 'nail-in-the-coffin' to Legacy (the last being FoW), assuming that Modern with Wastelands would be every bit as good and 'skillful'.
Then, you have Legacy players without player-bases who just want more people to have Wasteland. I personally wouldn't mind having more people to play with myself, but I fear the effect that reintroducing eternal format pillars on a massive scale would have.
So, that is what I meant by personal desires.
I've spent time in a small, 'how do they stay in business' LGS, and that forever changed my views on what should and should not happen to the game of Magic. Doing things that explicitly encourage players to buy old staples and play at centralized Legacy events hurts the wider MTG scene. Only so many people can like Magic at once and only so many people can play formats at once.
The best thing about standard is that a lot of people play it, which could be hurt by giving people Legacy Power (especially the wealthier kids who tend to anchor the playerbase and feed the store owner). The best thing about legacy is arguably-controversially that the cards do not rotate, which is not profitable for MTG in any way, shape or form long term...unless you want to power-creep the heck out of the game and create rapid deck turn-over in Legacy, which a lot of people wouldn't like.
That's all. I don't mean to be the grinch who stole wasteland, I just have a broad vision of what is possible within Magic and what is unfeasible.
I'll go first!
Forgive me Maro, for I have sinned.
I have not drafted since RtR block because I do not like Theros (because there are no Goblins in Theros) and core sets give me vertigo. I did not draft Goblins in Modern Masters either because I did not draft Modern Masters; it felt like my LGS would be running a high-stakes gambling event rather than the pleasant games of skill and chance they had been.
I've strayed from the path of righteousness and returned to the dark depths of an eternal format free-loader, coveting the handful of cards I want from each block and ignoring/ridiculing the rest. It is hard to have much faith in WotC when I have to wait a FULL YEAR for the game to return to what it has always been to me: Goblins versus the world. Even if they do, standard is so very rarely as balanced as I would like it to be that my favorite archetype has not been tier-1 since 2003.
It seems like just as I was ready to do-the-good-thing and attend a FNM with a non-tier-1, non-Machiavellian Goblin deck, I came upon hard times and I felt as though the game no longer had a purpose for me. How can I serve you if you want me to go away every two years?
BUT I STILL HAVE FAITH!
In hard times past I received your blessings with Cavern of Souls. 'Legion Loyalist' and 'Goblin Diplomats' felt like well orchestrated plants to keep me interested in the game in times when I would otherwise have zero interest. I sought out the Jund Commander precon because I knew that YOU created that for ME, as it would be wrong for me not to buy it...but since Shattergang Brothers is obviously the best card in C13, it was sold out at Wallmart and Target and all I could find were those terrible Grixis decks (lol, I mean Esper and Bant).
Magic is important to me whether I am playing or not because many of the things I would otherwise be thinking about are sinful and unclean. Without the light of Goblins, my mind would be a more unpleasant place to reside, so I am forever thankful.
I have faith that MTG will not banish my people to hell. I make a vow to recognize when Wizards does things to appeal to my particular psychographic and seize the opportunity...as well as being a better influence and more positive caregiver of the game than I have been.
For thine is the card kingdom, the power nine, and the glory forever. Amen.
The idea of reprinting Wasteland in Standard has nothing to do with making Standard better...it's about making non-rotating formats cheaper. You even hear it in some of the arguments...the whole idea is that you design standard around not being wrecked by Wasteland so it can be safe to reprint.
Standard gains absolutely nothing by rehashing old ideas so new players can more easily play the expensive collectors formats. Wizards is giving everyone $10 Thoughtseizes and still people are thirsty for more and more from their expansive volumes of old classics. I just want to see new experiences and new cards so I can look forward to buying new product rather than watch the cards recycled over and over again. (it's not easy for them to get me to try new things, so they have to be really really good at it, better than they are now)
At any rate, Wasteland is way to efficient for manabases that aren't Legacy bases and mana-curves that aren't Legacy curves...but I guess a lot of people want to see them all those cards come back to standard until they've finally cycled back around to reprinting Shocklands and Deathrite Shaman, square one.
Either way, official, authentic Magic: the Gathering cards are like membership vouchers to the official, authentic tournament establishment club. That means real Magic cards actually are much more fun than fake ones.
The best way to 'troll' in magic would be to play something that wins 90% percent of the time against a specific portion of the meta but has critical flaws against another wide portion of the meta. That being said, depending on what your opponents are playing, it is likely that you can troll the crap out of them with $10 worth of sideboard cards (or $50-100 since we're talking Legacy here).
Enemy sac-lands (ala Sulfur Vent) would be swell as well. I'd like to have one that taps for W and sacs for BR for budget Tendrils.
I'd also like to see lands that gain abilities when you control basic land types around them...like...if you control a swamp, a mountain and a forest, (this) has: (do something powerful).
I'm not excited about a ONS/ZEN fetchland reprint. I just think it's boring for Wizards to be expected to reprint the most powerful lands in the game's long history. Seriously, years from now, when you all have arthritis from all the searching and shuffling, you'll wish you didn't ask for this reprint.
It's OK though, because if they reprint ONS fetches, I suddenly have eight more fetches that I could theoretically play in Modern. ZEN fetches, I can get them darn Scalding Tarns I passed up on. I'd be happier to see both at once as not to crush the magnificence of ONS fetches, making those poopy-looking ZEN-fetches even more expensive.
...which doesn't really matter because Legacy is as large and as popular as it ever can and will be, played by adults who somehow organize and attend events around the world. Some places have it better than others, but few places that actually have it have lost it, or at least they have transitioned to the 'once every few months of major tournaments' phase, which is a perfectly healthy way to attend what are effectively Magic card conventions.
Legacy is strong with a centralized base. Large, successful card stores in certain regions have very strong Legacy environments. A vast majority of card stores cannot afford to run Legacy, neither price-wise nor player-wise nor profit-wise, but that's fine because the flagship products of MtG (Standard, Limited) must take priority over the awesome-magic-forever-club.
Now bear with me...I'm one of the quacks who thinks banning Fetchlands in Modern is a good idea...but banning Duals in Legacy is a horrendously terrible idea. All you accomplish is adding a Shock to every dual. It's pointless. At least fetchlands add a component of synergy (+1 land in grave/free shuffle) to decks which elevate certain strategies above others...but I've come down on my ban philosophy since they aren't oppressive to the META, but to the structure of the FORMAT.
A ban to address the structure of the format is not necessary in Legacy. While Modern could use a little bit of reinvention here and there, banning a format that's SO GOOD that it's staples go for THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS is like Ferrari making Soviet-era cookie-cutter cars because they don't control enough market share. There is no need. Legacy seamlessly fulfills it's role to Magic: the Gathering, and demanding for it to be something different from what it is becomes a life lesson in and of itself.