I hope to come to this one!
Appreciate the thought on proxies and I support you Eric. I’ve argued other ways in the past, but anything to support more people playing vintage is good.
MB
This deck is fun to play. Just wanted to add that. Thanks for brewing it!
Megantic on MTGO; Central Mass. Just starting out, will be able to vintage in the next week or so.
@john-cox said in Should all Vintage be 100% proxy?:
If a store is found to have proxies on their premise the can loose their ability to sell WoTC products. So cards with "proxy" on them is bad. "Playtest Cards" would work, the issue is that there is no way of guaranteeing that it is a playtest card and not a real card with words written on it.
You could show up to a 15 proxy event and with 20 cards with "playtest card" written on them and say that 5 of them are real and just have "playtest card" written on them.
I don’t care if they have 20 proxies or 60 proxies as long as I can read and understand them from my side of the table. That is not always the case, and some are god awful. Hence why I advocate for counterfeits allowed as proxies to make it easier to distinguish and read them. Some people will hate that, and I understand why. I respect the store policy and follow it. If I’m lucky, I get to play once a quarter if ELD is hosting a tourney and I don’t have family responsibilities. It’s always fun and I get to reconnect with a few vintage players I’ve known for a long time. The more participants the merrier. There are decks I’m priced out of I’d like to play, but until the policy changes I will play what is legal under the stores policy. I recognize this opinion may be in the minority, and counterfeit cards are distasteful and wrong, but the pricing of cards has made this hobby unreachable for too many.
@john-cox said in Should all Vintage be 100% proxy?:
@megantic said in Should all Vintage be 100% proxy?:
I would write "Proxy" on the card. Issue solved.
Aren't proxies like really bad at LGS though? There is also a well know piece of power that has "fake" written on it, -It's real.
I have no idea why that is important to this. I am advocating for proxies, and more liberal use of good quality counterfeits since they already exist and are being used in tournaments.
@khahan said in Should all Vintage be 100% proxy?:
@megantic said in Should all Vintage be 100% proxy?:
What if instead of counterfeit, I said "high quality proxies"? It seems to solve a lot of the issues mentioned. I understand reluctance, but there are not enough vintage players out there to start with to really make it an issue where we are 'encouraging' the counterfeit operations. They already exist, and the focus is not about vintage.
Like I said in another post - if you want high quality, just make sure its EASILY distinguishable from a real card. Having to bust out a jewelers loup, do the light test, etc is not easily distinguishable. Basically, if a cursory look makes somebody think for even a second, "hey, thats a nice looking black lotus", its a counterfeit. Distinguish it somehow. Make it an alternate art, full art, put it thru a foiling process etc. There are any number of things you can do to make a high quality proxy that leaves no doubt to even the most casual player that its not real.
I would write "Proxy" on the card. Issue solved.
What if instead of counterfeit, I said "high quality proxies"? It seems to solve a lot of the issues mentioned. I understand reluctance, but there are not enough vintage players out there to start with to really make it an issue where we are 'encouraging' the counterfeit operations. They already exist, and the focus is not about vintage.
If the goal was to increase access to vintage and attendance, why not allow the latest batch of counterfeit cards, appropriately marked, to be used as in local non-sanctioned tournament play? I guess we can either keep our memberships to the exclusive vintage country club or open the course to the masses. Any vintage deck would be available for less than $200 USD, which last time I checked was about the same amount of money as my putter. Proxies can make the board annoyingly confusing- is that a mox jet or mox ruby? is that an underground sea or a volcanic- oh wait, it was a fetchland? I see a easy way to open the format, the cards are distinguishable, and actually makes play easier. Solves the proxy issues Brassman pointed out- legibility and damage, as well as the video coverage, and COST all in one fell swoop.