Just a couple things in response to questions you thought out loud during the videos, Runeflare Trap doesn't work against spellstutter sprite because spellstutter sprite's counterspell is a triggered ability and not a spell on the stack, same goes for Mystic Snake.
Also Hypergenesis is banned in Heirloom atm. It was winning a little too consistently without the hate cards being effective enough against it. The popular consensus was that it aught to be banned despite being a cheap card money wise.
This is the Heirloom banned list in addition to the normal bannings based on price points.
Argentum Armor
Channel
Hypergenesis
Quest for the Holy Relic
Sword of the Meek
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
Zuran Orb
Argentum Armor + Quest for the HOly Relic + ornithopter and friends made for very fast blowout games that were also doing well without people being able to interact very well.
Teferi was a little too good in control lists.
Sword of the Meek I assume is just a little too difficult to disrupt.
Zuran Orb is probably due to Restore Balance decks being a bit on the very annoying side with it around.
And Channel is probably just due to powerlevel, transmute into it is pretty easy and all that, I think it was the only restricted card legal as well which probably felt odd.
I really liked the opinion piece there... you really could not have echoed my thoughts any better on the subject...
"So why is every other format being "punished" for Standard and Block being "easy"?"
anything but standard has been my motto through my Magic career because of the fact that it draws from a small card pool, its often overpriced, and its usually made up of three decks... now it seems they've decided that (once again) in an effort to favor money making over anything else they've decided this is a good idea
Great event coverage Mr. K. I have to say I may have just gotten really lucky, I never had to play an aggro match and just had to play against the obviously fairly favorable combo matchups 4 times. Its still a challenging match that I cant really make many mistakes and still win. In the end again I may not have made it through an aggro matchup if I had had to face them and then you'd never see me in the top 4.
The original list probably is stronger than the list I used. As I mentioned I have a personal budget to spend on the decks I make for these articles and 9 tickets on the 3 Wrath of Gods in the original list exceeded that budget. Equally I didn't have any Day of Judgments and that card is much more likely to see a reprint in future. Lotleth Troll is a good reason to play Wrath of God and one I overlooked, but I hope I made it clear that Wrath of God was to be preferred, however, it just put the deck as a whole out of my budget.
I have to foolish admit that I didn't understand the purpose of Mistveil Plains in the deck and just cut it for that reason. I hadn't considered it's combo capabilities with Squadron Hawk. Although in my defence, you could argue it's another ETB-tapped land.
Good job in organizing the material, it's very exhaustive.
I don't entirely get why you just didn't go with the original deck, though, since your only changes don't seem helpful: you talk about Wrath of God becoming Day of Judgment for budget reasons (you sure Lotleth Troll isn't in itself reason enough to spend those 3 tix more?), but why did you take out the Mistveil Plains/Squadrow Hawk combo? Mistveil is essentially the same cost of a basic Plains.
I appreciate your disapproval at this decision by R&D. I'm interested in writing a short article myself on the matter and am glad to see that the matter hasn't just dissolved into the woodwork yet.
Back in 2010, when Wizards was discussing this with dealers, the dealers I knew were fine with the reprints, provided that Wizards did not do another Chronicles. The dealers knew that reprinting Argothian Enchantress, for example, would only increase the value of their stock. They also knew that Wizards was not dumb enough to reprint a bazillion Black Lotuses.
There were exceptions, of course, but the majority of major dealers seemed in favor ending the Reserve List. The most vocal opponents were collectors.
It's not the notice, it's the lawsuits. Seriously, no matter how much notice people have of the change, a bunch of ambulance chasing lawyers will sue for damages. And, win or lose, Wizards will have to defend itself in dozens of lawsuits - and if they lose any, then there will be hundreds of "me, too" suits. This is the USA after all; our civil suit legal system is a mess.
I think Wizards has made the decision, and invested in Modern because Legacy (in paper) and Vintage cannot be mass formats. They will still exist, and Wizards will do the occasional Legacy GP, but they will work harder to support Modern, and make Modern the PTQ format.
Besides, SCG will support Legacy for Wizards, as will many local stores. Vintage, too, can survive in some stores that have a critical mass of Vintage players.
At this point, I cannot see Wizards changing this. It's the best they can do.
I've always disliked the reserve list, right from when they created it. I understood the need for it at the time though, to save MtG by supporting the dealers' investment in singles. I just don't think it is necessary anymore. Even if they reprinted Black Lotus in paper, given enough lead time notice, dealers would not necessarily lose their investment. After all, a Beta Lotus IS still a BETA Lotus. Like the players that like to pimp their decks with foilies, there are those that pimp them with the first printing of each card.
As a dealer in both paper and online, I'd like to hear Heath's opinion on this; that is, How do you think your profitability would be affected if a) WotC announced they will abolish the reserve list? b) WotC announced that they would reprint a card from the reserve list, say 3-6 months ahead of release.
Keep in mind any card not on the reserve list doesn't have that kind of protection, any high-priced standard card card be printed without notice and can crash unexpectedly.
In theory yes, if I didn't attack with the skywatch I could've survived one more turn at 1 life, as long as he didn't cast anything to change that. I was on tilt that game though because I was frustrated at being down with the best deck I've ever drafted, so I gave up. Ah well.
Why did you conceed in round 3 game 2? Couldn't you have flashed out the chump blocker to stay at 1 life and buy another turn? Or hoped he might make an error?
From my experience buying at local shops, it seems people are willing to buy packs of cards based on how much value they expect to get out of it. But this is a silly way of thinking. Standard cards might rise and fall, but every year, they drop off with rotation. As a result, all new cards are short-term investments. And, let's be honest here, most players prefer newer cards to older ones. I don't think anyone is looking for a reprint of Homelands.
Lowering the price of singles with increased print runs benefits the players and the dealers. I believe that, in the aggregate, paper card dealers stand to make more money by selling cheap chase rares- cards that are used in every deck, but which are inexpensive to acquire. More players will be willing to pay a lower price, which will result in more sales and more players paying the entry fee to play weekly events. Everyone benefits from low prices. The only people who really benefit from high prices are the people who own the cards in question already (ie, Vindicate). That probably constitutes a very small percentage of the people who play magic.
As I read Pete it is not collectors, in the sense of players with 1 expensive deck, that is the main concern for wotc. Rather, it is card dealers selling singles. If you want to be a paper singles dealer like scg then you got to have a large inventory. Without the reserved list the value of the dealer inventory can disappear over night. With this kind of risk no one wants to be a paper dealer. It is in the interest of wotc to have these paper dealers because without paper dealers constructed tournaments will be harder to execute in real life. Hence, I dont think wotc care much about ordinary collectors but about the dealers (major collectors).
Mtgo do not have the same problem because major dealers are not as important in collecting a deck. The market place is very centralized online compared to paper cards.
I liked your article so much that I read the Demonopedia and both volumes of the Encyclopedia of Fatties. For your next article can you link both those articles at the top so they are easy to find? The only way I knew about the Encyclopedia of Fatties was from a link under a Demon's entry.
Yeah, I thought you meant I should talk about what Angelic Arbiter does within Commander. Commander Evaluation only cares about using the creature as commander of your Commander deck. I should write that down in the initial disclaimer next time.
The question is, is being selfish a bad thing? And how much of it is bad? To be utterly selfless could also be known as being a rug. Being a miser is of course unfortunate because then people think your name is Ebeneezer but typical card collectors are no more selfish than anyone else. They just focus all their selfishness on their collections.
Some might call it obsessiveness since they focus so intently on collecting and the values of their collectables. So the question remains...is this a bad thing?
If it is, then do you as someone who is clearly less selfish (IE: not a collector or you wouldn't be disparaging them) have the right to tell them how/what they should be able to complain about? I don't think anyone has that right. The most you might be able to legitimately do without sounding selfish yourself is remark on how single-minded their view is.
I personally have no qualms with people wanting to protect the value of the cards they paid for. I don't think it should be at the expense of the entire game but I can see reason to limit such damage. This gives us incentive to trade for/buy expensive cards we might not otherwise. Commerce benefits, some prices drop as a result of other cards being so high and the mtgo economy continues onwards in a healthy and vibrant way.
With the same token though I expect prices to plummet every once in a while and think anyone who doesn't isn't being very realistic. Collectibles with a large "print run" are bound to deflate occasionally. What the people are worried about is their entire collection deflating which seems like a dumb thing to worry about since it wont happen over night and likely wont really happen at all as the cards that are good will still be good and in demand in a growing popular format.
I feel like even if we both had ten duals each, there's a chance I'll have Scrubland, Swamp, tundra and lightning bolt, cultivate, and forgotten ancient.. still being manascrewed. If both our manabases are the same basically, then we have an equal chance of being screwed or not screwed. Sure duals probbly fix our mana base slightly better thanjust basics, but if you have 20 basics you can utilize sakura-tribe elder, armillay sphere, landcycling to mana fix. it's all perspective. CIPT lands are all well and good, but I feel like I'd rather mana fix through spells than haemore than half my lands start tapped. just my opinions! Like I said however you wanna make your landbase go for it! just try the format! :)
When you update this I'd add a Commander entry for Angelic Arbiter. Attack or cast spells can be very tough choice for opponents to make. Great defense and can even have a toned down Time Walk effect if played right.
edit: I just noticed your Commander comments were only give to Legendary Angels. Makes much more sense now.
Card collectors must be really selfish people if they complain about the value of their cards dropping in exchange for an influx of cards into any given format. I have a paper deck worth close to 400 dollars, but who cares? I'm not going to sell it, and it's not going to make me happier if it's more expensive. I have it because it wins for me.
Fixed: Rakdos, Lord of Riots's casting restriction now correctly checks to see if opponents of the caster have taken damage this turn.
Fixed: Rakdos, Lord of Riots's ability to reduce the cost of creature spells you cast now correctly checks for life loss of opponents of his current controller.
Yeah I figured hyperngenesis was banned, lol. Also I knew the sprite interaction.
Just a couple things in response to questions you thought out loud during the videos, Runeflare Trap doesn't work against spellstutter sprite because spellstutter sprite's counterspell is a triggered ability and not a spell on the stack, same goes for Mystic Snake.
Also Hypergenesis is banned in Heirloom atm. It was winning a little too consistently without the hate cards being effective enough against it. The popular consensus was that it aught to be banned despite being a cheap card money wise.
This is the Heirloom banned list in addition to the normal bannings based on price points.
Argentum Armor
Channel
Hypergenesis
Quest for the Holy Relic
Sword of the Meek
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
Zuran Orb
Argentum Armor + Quest for the HOly Relic + ornithopter and friends made for very fast blowout games that were also doing well without people being able to interact very well.
Teferi was a little too good in control lists.
Sword of the Meek I assume is just a little too difficult to disrupt.
Zuran Orb is probably due to Restore Balance decks being a bit on the very annoying side with it around.
And Channel is probably just due to powerlevel, transmute into it is pretty easy and all that, I think it was the only restricted card legal as well which probably felt odd.
I really liked the opinion piece there... you really could not have echoed my thoughts any better on the subject...
"So why is every other format being "punished" for Standard and Block being "easy"?"
anything but standard has been my motto through my Magic career because of the fact that it draws from a small card pool, its often overpriced, and its usually made up of three decks... now it seems they've decided that (once again) in an effort to favor money making over anything else they've decided this is a good idea
Great event coverage Mr. K. I have to say I may have just gotten really lucky, I never had to play an aggro match and just had to play against the obviously fairly favorable combo matchups 4 times. Its still a challenging match that I cant really make many mistakes and still win. In the end again I may not have made it through an aggro matchup if I had had to face them and then you'd never see me in the top 4.
Thanks for the Video of the Q&A portion of the cup.
Very happy you got to go this year. Having been myself, I know you had a awesome time.
Thanks for the comment and the positive review.
The original list probably is stronger than the list I used. As I mentioned I have a personal budget to spend on the decks I make for these articles and 9 tickets on the 3 Wrath of Gods in the original list exceeded that budget. Equally I didn't have any Day of Judgments and that card is much more likely to see a reprint in future. Lotleth Troll is a good reason to play Wrath of God and one I overlooked, but I hope I made it clear that Wrath of God was to be preferred, however, it just put the deck as a whole out of my budget.
I have to foolish admit that I didn't understand the purpose of Mistveil Plains in the deck and just cut it for that reason. I hadn't considered it's combo capabilities with Squadron Hawk. Although in my defence, you could argue it's another ETB-tapped land.
Good job in organizing the material, it's very exhaustive.
I don't entirely get why you just didn't go with the original deck, though, since your only changes don't seem helpful: you talk about Wrath of God becoming Day of Judgment for budget reasons (you sure Lotleth Troll isn't in itself reason enough to spend those 3 tix more?), but why did you take out the Mistveil Plains/Squadrow Hawk combo? Mistveil is essentially the same cost of a basic Plains.
I appreciate your disapproval at this decision by R&D. I'm interested in writing a short article myself on the matter and am glad to see that the matter hasn't just dissolved into the woodwork yet.
Back in 2010, when Wizards was discussing this with dealers, the dealers I knew were fine with the reprints, provided that Wizards did not do another Chronicles. The dealers knew that reprinting Argothian Enchantress, for example, would only increase the value of their stock. They also knew that Wizards was not dumb enough to reprint a bazillion Black Lotuses.
There were exceptions, of course, but the majority of major dealers seemed in favor ending the Reserve List. The most vocal opponents were collectors.
It's not the notice, it's the lawsuits. Seriously, no matter how much notice people have of the change, a bunch of ambulance chasing lawyers will sue for damages. And, win or lose, Wizards will have to defend itself in dozens of lawsuits - and if they lose any, then there will be hundreds of "me, too" suits. This is the USA after all; our civil suit legal system is a mess.
I think Wizards has made the decision, and invested in Modern because Legacy (in paper) and Vintage cannot be mass formats. They will still exist, and Wizards will do the occasional Legacy GP, but they will work harder to support Modern, and make Modern the PTQ format.
Besides, SCG will support Legacy for Wizards, as will many local stores. Vintage, too, can survive in some stores that have a critical mass of Vintage players.
At this point, I cannot see Wizards changing this. It's the best they can do.
I've always disliked the reserve list, right from when they created it. I understood the need for it at the time though, to save MtG by supporting the dealers' investment in singles. I just don't think it is necessary anymore. Even if they reprinted Black Lotus in paper, given enough lead time notice, dealers would not necessarily lose their investment. After all, a Beta Lotus IS still a BETA Lotus. Like the players that like to pimp their decks with foilies, there are those that pimp them with the first printing of each card.
As a dealer in both paper and online, I'd like to hear Heath's opinion on this; that is, How do you think your profitability would be affected if a) WotC announced they will abolish the reserve list? b) WotC announced that they would reprint a card from the reserve list, say 3-6 months ahead of release.
Keep in mind any card not on the reserve list doesn't have that kind of protection, any high-priced standard card card be printed without notice and can crash unexpectedly.
I was thinking of doing something like that.
Thanks for your appreciation!
Here you go:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75846/19193034/Classic_sets_...
Just fyi, Worth has said that this was a mistake, but that he has to stick to it.
In theory yes, if I didn't attack with the skywatch I could've survived one more turn at 1 life, as long as he didn't cast anything to change that. I was on tilt that game though because I was frustrated at being down with the best deck I've ever drafted, so I gave up. Ah well.
Why did you conceed in round 3 game 2? Couldn't you have flashed out the chump blocker to stay at 1 life and buy another turn? Or hoped he might make an error?
" And, let's be honest here, most players prefer newer cards to older ones. I don't think anyone is looking for a reprint of Homelands."
But that is not an argument against the reserved list? If people want newer cards they can just buy the newer sets.
"Lowering the price of singles with increased print runs benefits the players and the dealers."
So all cards should just be common cards?
Seems like you are talking about the standard format, which runs just fine without any reprints from the reserved list.
From my experience buying at local shops, it seems people are willing to buy packs of cards based on how much value they expect to get out of it. But this is a silly way of thinking. Standard cards might rise and fall, but every year, they drop off with rotation. As a result, all new cards are short-term investments. And, let's be honest here, most players prefer newer cards to older ones. I don't think anyone is looking for a reprint of Homelands.
Lowering the price of singles with increased print runs benefits the players and the dealers. I believe that, in the aggregate, paper card dealers stand to make more money by selling cheap chase rares- cards that are used in every deck, but which are inexpensive to acquire. More players will be willing to pay a lower price, which will result in more sales and more players paying the entry fee to play weekly events. Everyone benefits from low prices. The only people who really benefit from high prices are the people who own the cards in question already (ie, Vindicate). That probably constitutes a very small percentage of the people who play magic.
As I read Pete it is not collectors, in the sense of players with 1 expensive deck, that is the main concern for wotc. Rather, it is card dealers selling singles. If you want to be a paper singles dealer like scg then you got to have a large inventory. Without the reserved list the value of the dealer inventory can disappear over night. With this kind of risk no one wants to be a paper dealer. It is in the interest of wotc to have these paper dealers because without paper dealers constructed tournaments will be harder to execute in real life. Hence, I dont think wotc care much about ordinary collectors but about the dealers (major collectors).
Mtgo do not have the same problem because major dealers are not as important in collecting a deck. The market place is very centralized online compared to paper cards.
Or maybe I have gotten it all wrong?
I liked your article so much that I read the Demonopedia and both volumes of the Encyclopedia of Fatties. For your next article can you link both those articles at the top so they are easy to find? The only way I knew about the Encyclopedia of Fatties was from a link under a Demon's entry.
Yeah, I thought you meant I should talk about what Angelic Arbiter does within Commander. Commander Evaluation only cares about using the creature as commander of your Commander deck. I should write that down in the initial disclaimer next time.
The question is, is being selfish a bad thing? And how much of it is bad? To be utterly selfless could also be known as being a rug. Being a miser is of course unfortunate because then people think your name is Ebeneezer but typical card collectors are no more selfish than anyone else. They just focus all their selfishness on their collections.
Some might call it obsessiveness since they focus so intently on collecting and the values of their collectables. So the question remains...is this a bad thing?
If it is, then do you as someone who is clearly less selfish (IE: not a collector or you wouldn't be disparaging them) have the right to tell them how/what they should be able to complain about? I don't think anyone has that right. The most you might be able to legitimately do without sounding selfish yourself is remark on how single-minded their view is.
I personally have no qualms with people wanting to protect the value of the cards they paid for. I don't think it should be at the expense of the entire game but I can see reason to limit such damage. This gives us incentive to trade for/buy expensive cards we might not otherwise. Commerce benefits, some prices drop as a result of other cards being so high and the mtgo economy continues onwards in a healthy and vibrant way.
With the same token though I expect prices to plummet every once in a while and think anyone who doesn't isn't being very realistic. Collectibles with a large "print run" are bound to deflate occasionally. What the people are worried about is their entire collection deflating which seems like a dumb thing to worry about since it wont happen over night and likely wont really happen at all as the cards that are good will still be good and in demand in a growing popular format.
I feel like even if we both had ten duals each, there's a chance I'll have Scrubland, Swamp, tundra and lightning bolt, cultivate, and forgotten ancient.. still being manascrewed. If both our manabases are the same basically, then we have an equal chance of being screwed or not screwed. Sure duals probbly fix our mana base slightly better thanjust basics, but if you have 20 basics you can utilize sakura-tribe elder, armillay sphere, landcycling to mana fix. it's all perspective. CIPT lands are all well and good, but I feel like I'd rather mana fix through spells than haemore than half my lands start tapped. just my opinions! Like I said however you wanna make your landbase go for it! just try the format! :)
Great article, I really enjoyed reading it.
When you update this I'd add a Commander entry for Angelic Arbiter. Attack or cast spells can be very tough choice for opponents to make. Great defense and can even have a toned down Time Walk effect if played right.
edit: I just noticed your Commander comments were only give to Legendary Angels. Makes much more sense now.
Card collectors must be really selfish people if they complain about the value of their cards dropping in exchange for an influx of cards into any given format. I have a paper deck worth close to 400 dollars, but who cares? I'm not going to sell it, and it's not going to make me happier if it's more expensive. I have it because it wins for me.
And now (Oct 30 announcement) it has been fixed:
Fixed: Rakdos, Lord of Riots's casting restriction now correctly checks to see if opponents of the caster have taken damage this turn.
Fixed: Rakdos, Lord of Riots's ability to reduce the cost of creature spells you cast now correctly checks for life loss of opponents of his current controller.