@maximumcdawg said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

Print silver boarded versions with alternate card backs and you're closer to something that works. As it stands...

When I made a ton of proxies for my local group, all I did was blank a ton of unglued and unhinged chaff. They should just print collectors sets with gold borders that can be used as playtest cards. Better yet, print gold bordered versions of Vintage champs decks.

Nice post, CDawg. I liked that it focused on a specific aspect of this big issue, the ability to eschew the reserved list with various flavors of printings. The chart you made was enjoyable to read.

@cajunofficer said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

@maximumcdawg Regarding the Moxen, I suggest artifact lands (one for each color) which include a text restriction that you may only have one copy in your deck, and you may play them in addition to any other lands you have played this turn. This isn't exactly equal to moxen, but allows for a similar mana ramp, and the cards are still considered artifacts (so they can be destroyed or manipulated, or searched for, etc just as artifacts are).

Does this fix a problem, or just make Vintage more broken because now people with money can have twice as many moxes? Paradoxical/storm decks probably don't play them, but they are not everything. It's still broken ass cards doing broken things. It is great to discuss hypothetical solutions, but you don't see a problem with deliberately printing overpowered cards?

@blindtherapy said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

@cajunofficer you don't need that wording, just restrict/ban them.
These cards you describe might actually be better than normal moxen, as they get through spheres, trigger landfall, can be played through standstill. they're worse because you can't outcome them, they don't trigger mentor/storm and are wastelandable.

Do you think that deliberately printing cards that are so broken you have to b/r them is a wise idea or reasonable game design? They could be printed in a Conspiracy-like so they are not Standard/Modern legal, but why print cards you have ban in Legacy? The point is to not ban any more cards unless necessary and printing purposefully OP cards is exactly in opposition to that.

@dstinct said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

When I made a ton of proxies for my local group, all I did was blank a ton of unglued and unhinged chaff. They should just print collectors sets with gold borders that can be used as playtest cards. Better yet, print gold bordered versions of Vintage champs decks.

This isn't helping anything though, it doesn't address any problems vintage or the reserve list have.

@sovarius

1. It's not just collectors and investors, it's also players. My point was simply that legal action is not necessary to enforce the Reserve List policy, because normal market fluctuations resulting from a loss of faith would have the same effect. This leads me to believe that any approach involving legally sidestepping the RL policy is irrelevant, because it won't solve this natural market issue.
2. The stock example is just real-world example of something similar. You can't just arbitrarily change the value of a share, because it change the value of the stock as a whole. But if you simply split individual shares, the overall value remains the same. If this kind of thing can be done for a system vastly more complicated and worth vastly more money, why can't it be done here.
3. The reason the value can be pinned to exactly 1/10th is because the only way to get the new lotuses would be to trade in an old lotus for 10 new ones. This means that everyone would be able to get any lotus and make it 10 new ones. If this is the only way to get new lotuses, then the market would naturally hold the price at 1/10th.
   Example: I have an old lotus, I know I can at any time trade it in for 10 new ones. So, it's always worth 10 times the price of a new one. Similarly, if I 10 new lotuses, I know they can be traded for an old lotus, because that old lotus can be traded for 10 new ones. Any fluctuations in these to relative prices would be arbitrage, and it would immediately be corrected by the market, just like in the stock market.
4. While I agree that some people would hoard the old lotuses and the market would take a while to flood with new lotuses, it would still be much better than it is today. If this approach is taken, that every person that doesn't hoard their lotus, can trade it in, keep a lotus and get $4,500 back for trading out the other nine. For every one person that doesn't this, there are 9 new black lotuses available for other players.

This whole idea is the only way, to my knowledge, to "reprint" (not really reprint, mind you, which is the entire point of this weird approach) the RL cards without getting in the way of or abolishing the RL policy, which I don't think will happen due to the first bullet above.

Any new printings of comparable cards, like the Ancestral Visions, Treasure Cruise, Shocklands, etc. can, should, and do still happen, but as some people have already pointed out, doing anything like that for the P9 is nearly impossible without still being utterly broken.

@sovarius self-restricted moxen in legacy would still have to be banned.
I objected to the wording as a means of implementing the idea, but the idea itself is bad for the reasons I already said.

Gleemox is the savior we need. Rich would be overjoyed.

All this talk about functional reprints opens a big nasty can of worms. In the end, collectors and card shops will never be happy because they lose value.

What if WOTC implemented some kind of "stock split" whereby owners of RL cards are invited to trade them in for X copies which are worth 1/X of the original (in order to increase circulation/liquidity)?

I'm not sure how to do this and preserve exactly the value of the originals, since you are creating new value (since each copy has the same utility as the original, assuming they are tournament legal), but it doesn't seem impossible to execute if the original owners are compensated for this effectively.

Any economics experts here?

I feel like realistically the best alternative entries into Vintage are going to be other, newly-printed broken strategies, such as the newest crop of Eldrazi, that allow a real budget option entry into the format. This in no way tarnishes the promises implied in the reserve list while still creating in-roads to Vintage.

@topical_island said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

@maximumcdawg I'm honestly not sure how to take that... at first it felt so sarcastic... that I feel like it might be next level sarcastic?

You seemed to enjoy the comment about "Come on, man," so I tried to incorporate that statement into every sentence I used in response. I thought it was a pretty good attempt at laughing off what seemed like a pretty stuffed-shirt response to the use in that phrase in the first place, but I guess it didn't come off that way, man.

Like you actually think this is a good idea?...

What, printing a Null Rod on legs? Sure! It'd be playable, and I'm all for that. I know we're skirting dangerously close to just "R&D Rejects" in this thread, but really the whole point was to start a conversation about RL Replacements, and cards that compete with or undermine old RL staples are absolutely part of the conversation.

In any case, a Mox Emerald that was also a 2/2 creature seems like a pretty good idea. At least for the purposes of this conversation, the reserve list would be significantly diminished as a problem, at least as far as the ranking of problems goes...

I know the thread has grown so I don't blame you for not looking up, but I think all of us have acknowledged that the challenge in creating cards that diminish the need for RL cards is exactly this - how do you manage the power level.

I think the suggestions so far fall into a few camps:

1. Ignore the problem because it's not real. For true ABUR Dual replacements, this probably fine because I really doubt that any Legacy or Vintage deck's optimal form involves playing 8 Tundras, for example.

2. Print cards that are incompatible with the RL versions somehow. Can be dumb "You can't play New Emerald in your deck with Mox Emerald" but is there a clever way to do this?

3. Print new strategies that are orthogonal to old power. Like @themonadnomad just said. Thing is, we really have not had something like this since Shops became a thing and Dredge arose. Is there design space for another competitor?

4. Print cards directly to eternal. This is something that can easily be done, and probably would have to be done, just to avoid blowing up standard and modern.

For actual tournament-playable replacements for RL cards, I think those are the only real suggestions so far. And a whole lot of very productive R&Ding

@hyperborea said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

What if WOTC implemented some kind of "stock split" whereby owners of RL cards are invited to trade them in for X copies which are worth 1/X of the original (in order to increase circulation/liquidity)?

@Takaryx suggested the same thing awhile ago, and I don't see that this works. The problem, as I said above, is that: (1) such a plan directly violates the black-and-white language of the RL; (2) basically is an attempt to avoid trouble by ensuring no one has any damages as a result of the violation, but (3) since players and collectors are a diverse group of people, it would be impossible to make everyone happy. So, it basically paints a target on WotC for enterprising class action attorneys. If they can print money in other ways, why would they bother?

http://www.themanadrain.com/topic/1473/the-reserve-list-the-reddest-red-herring/53#

If you want to save Legacy and Vintage, I say don't worry about convincing WotC to violate the black and white language of the RL. Encourage them to print more cards for Legacy and Vintage

We got some breaking news!

http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/165693606868/if-you-were-making-a-cube-product-i-think-a#notes

We are unwilling to reprint Reserved List cards at normal card size regardless of border or back.

Maro here tightens the noose by going public with a statement that silver-boarded, CE-style cards are also something WotC is not willing to do. So, check that one off the list of possibilities.

Not that it really matters, since if your play group is fine with CE cards, they're probably fine with other playtest cards too, so whats the difference.

A long time ago I had the idea of Wizards releasing a kind of "sanctioned proxy". They'd release gold-pink-masterpiece-whatever bordered cards, and allow players to use them in sanctioned tournaments to a limit of X per-deck (5? 10?). So you could play sanctioned tournaments with this special-border cards as long as you had only 5 (or 7 or 10 or whatever) in your 75, for example.
You'd generate sales of packs, old cards wouldn't lose that much value (because you'd still need power to play fully powered for example), and would probably solve a good part of the dual and power problem.

I know this is impossible to become true due to their policy (and Maro's recent statement). But what do you guys think?

@fsecco Would be fine except that Maro literally just said no.

EDIT: Actually. It wouldn't be fine anyway. RL says no tournament playable cards. If your proposal was tournament legal, even with restrictions, it seems like it would be a no go.

The funny thing about Maro's comment, is that anything he says can probably have an ending of "...at this time.", added to it. There are things that my company does every day, that I recall someone at some point saying we'd never do or have interest in doing. I've been at my current employer for almost 15 years now growing from about 700 employees to over 3,500 at this time, and any time a new regime takes over at the exec level, there are new sets of thinking that take place to change the direction we're going in.

At some point in my lifetime, they will reprint those cards. Whether they are Yu-gi-oh size or landscape format or something odd, it will happen.

@loukayza said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

The funny thing about Maro's comment, is that anything he says can probably have an ending of "...at this time.", added to it.

Not really, no. Anything he says can be seized on as a public promise by the company, particularly where he is commenting on the most public and important promise the company made. Why do you think he is so circumspect (usually) about even talking about the RL?

At some point in my lifetime, they will reprint those cards. Whether they are Yu-gi-oh size or landscape format or something odd, it will happen.

I mean, they did that already. They hand out oversized versions of power to the winners of Champs, right?

@maximumcdawg said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

We got some breaking news!

http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/165693606868/if-you-were-making-a-cube-product-i-think-a#notes

We are unwilling to reprint Reserved List cards at normal card size regardless of border or back.

Maro here tightens the noose by going public with a statement that silver-boarded, CE-style cards are also something WotC is not willing to do. So, check that one off the list of possibilities.

Not that it really matters, since if your play group is fine with CE cards, they're probably fine with other playtest cards too, so whats the difference.

The reddit thread about this post pointed out that he's said it at least eight times before. Stop trying to make a ABUR dual land refresh happen, it's not going to happen. #reginageorge

@maximumcdawg one gap people hope for to that rule is printing something and then later making it legal. Seems unlikely

I still don't see what would be the problem with printing a dual land that also provides C mana (like "painlands" without the pain)? That kind of card would function the same way that duals always have until a year or so ago, but nowadays with C mana, it's a different card. This wouldn't unbalance Magic, it would help a few pillars get better (including budget), doesn't break the RL (if they are committed to C as a "sixth color"), and is even great for casual formats like Cube. Print them in a Conspiracy or Eternal set to keep them out of the other formats.

The only reason not to do this, is because they don't want to crash the dual land market. If card value is the central issue, just announce them a few years in advance. People have time to unload their duals at a fair price, casuals and cubists will still be interested in traditional duals, and nobody can claim loss of investment, as they had adequate time to unload.

It's not breaking the RL if you make a strictly better card, right?

Disclaimer: I personally don't care if they reprint duals or not, but for the interest of this thread I am assuming they could.

@maximumcdawg said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

@fsecco Would be fine except that Maro literally just said no.

EDIT: Actually. It wouldn't be fine anyway. RL says no tournament playable cards. If your proposal was tournament legal, even with restrictions, it seems like it would be a no go.

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm sure it can't be done - I said so in my post. I just thought it would be a perfect sollution for everyone involved, even investors, if it could happen.

@joshuabrooks The whole point of the RL is to not crash the market. So I don't think anyone would like a printing like that since it crashes the market without the benefits of the RL being gone.

@joshuabrooks said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

It's not breaking the RL if you make a strictly better card, right?

I don't think so at all because the RL says it only prohibits printing of cards with the same abilities, and if you add new ones, then the cards no longer have the same abilities. But, a few people in this thread read exactly this into Maro's comments about the "spirit" of the Reserve List. I've never seen him be so clear and I'm not sure this is a fair reading of what he has said.

I suppose an enterprising attorney could argue that a new card having all of the abilities of a RL card, plus more, is a problem. Imagine your card:

Eldrazi Tundra
Plains Island
T: Add <> to your mana pool.

I guess the argument would go like this:

Attorney: Does this card have the same abilities as Tundra? Yes! It has all of the abilities Tundra does.
Wizards: No, it does not have the same abilities. It has additional abilities Tundra does not have.
Attorney: Yes, but the RL does not say that Wizards will not print a new card such that the new card and the old card have identical abilities. It just says a new card cannot have the same abilities as the old one. It's a one-way street.
Wizards: No, it says same. It doesn't say that we can't print a card that includes the abilities of a Reserve List card, just that we can't print cards that have exactly the same abilities. It's a two-way street.
Attorney: It depends what you mean by same then, isn't it? Whether it's inclusive or exclusive. Sounds like a great issue for the judge to decide.
Wizards: This is a fitting argument to be had over a game that came out during the term of a President who argued over what is means.
Attorney: Also, can you point to a good example of where you literally just add text to satisfy the list? Even when you reprint cards that substitute for cards on the Reserve List, you never just copy-paste the same card and add text. You always change the color (Thunder Spirit becomes Sky Spirit f.e.) or you change the text entirely (Demonic Hordes becomes Helldozer).
Wizards: That's silly. We did exactly this with the Shocklands, the Zendikar checklands, and the bicycle lands from Amonkhet. We literally put all of the abilities from Tundra on cards, added more abilities, and called it a day. No one cared.
Attorney: Yes, but they were still violations, I say. Perhaps no one cared because they were drawbacks, but I think those were problems, too!

Seems to me like Wizards has the better part of this argument, both based on plain text and on history.