Of Prices and "Playtest Cards"

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Post by TheGildedGoose » 3 years ago

umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
That's not a fair analogy though. Tacos don't cost a lot. And even if they did and you couldn't eat them anymore, are you saying that you have no choice other soylent green?

Ironically, most actual "nutrient pastes" for people who value convenience above all else or doomsday preppers are actually expensive alternatives to cooking at home and not cheap.
The original analogy didn't make much sense, either. For a significant portion of people a car is a necessity, not a luxury, like expensive cars or expensive cards are, so it's apples to oranges to begin with. Besides that, Ferraris are expensive because of the design, materials, and branding. Magic cards are expensive entirely because of artificial scarcity. That's the nature of a trading card game, and it's something I happen to think is completely idiotic from a design perspective. I want access to every card for every player, because what I care the most about is the gameplay, not the collectible aspect, so everyone having equal opportunity to have every moving part available to them in the interest of fairness only makes sense.

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Post by DirkGently » 3 years ago

JovialJovian wrote:
3 years ago
I am in the camp that either these insanely expensive reserved-list cards either need to be banned, or there needs to be a default reserved-list proxy allowance to compensate.
Both those options are bad. For one thing, price is relative - some people don't mind dropping thousands for a card, while some people balk at $5. So where do you draw the line? For a second thing, there are lots of reserved-list cards that are a great part of the format (coughs in Phelddagrif). Banning a ton of expensive cards would piss off a huge section of the playerbase, and primarily the long-time players. Not a great look.

As far as a "default reserved-list proxy allowance" I think that would be pretty awful too. A lot of the highest priced cards are, uh...pretty awful to play against. Tabernacle, chains, the abyss, moat, nether void...I'm pretty ok with those cards not being played very often. Price isn't my favorite barrier for preventing people from running unpleasant cards, but at least it's a barrier. I think for a lot of people, they get into commander with the intention to build the most powerful deck they can no matter what (because that's what pretty much every other card game/format encourages), but they lack the skill and investment to build anything truly nasty. As they play they get more skilled and acquire more powerful cards, but they also learn how to play the format in a social way. So by the time most people have been playing long enough to be able to build a nasty deck, they've lost the desire to do so - or at least they have the good sense to only play it occasionally or in specific metas.

If you suddenly remove the budget barrier entirely - and even remove the difficulty of acquisition barrier, so that suddenly Nether Void is easier to acquire than Giant Growth - you're basically handing a bunch of new players with few cards a list of many of the nastiest ones and saying "here, these are effectively the first cards you own". That's not going to end well. That's going to end with stax being, like, the DEFAULT deck. I don't think we should be intentionally trying to create the darkest timeline. Things are bad enough as it is.
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Post by pokken » 3 years ago

I could get on board with banning the reserved list. A huge portion of the cards are the most busted in the format (lookin' at you Gaea's Cradle) and another huge portion are hot garbage.

Volcanic Island is now more expensive than Mox Sapphire was when the original 'perceived barrier to entry' bans were handed out. By a lot.

It's sad because I love a lot of the cards but most of what I love about them is that they're farkin broken.

Who's gonna miss Mox Diamond all that badly? I'll live.

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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

wow, so many interesting posts - I don't have time to read them all now.

I personally never liked playing with proxies. It's just not for me. I understand your friend.

I am looking to sell my more expensive reserved list cards. Looks like I could pocket a few thousand dollars - which can go a long way to making my wife more comfortable taking a full year of maternity (which pays out at 55% of salary in Quebec for months 7-12).

Good news is I am applying for a job that just opened that would double my salary. Then I would not sell.

I don't think RL cards will be banned. At some point, play will just become so easy virtually that there will be no reason to have to buy these staples.
They will keep going up in price, so I think it is worth holding onto them. I have a lot of cards that went up 10x in price in the last 4 years. Better than any investment I ever made in the stock market!

Regarding your situation - I would definitely consider playing more budgeted decks. Or maybe build with a restricted card pool (modern only, etc).
I am fine holding onto the cards. No need to play a 500$ land in a jank deck.
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Post by toctheyounger » 3 years ago

This is a weird one for me. I don't mind other people proxying, but if I put the mental effort into building a deck I want to know it exists in front of me and I don't need sticky notes to make it happen. Despite not having played a game in a few months, that continues to be the case. It's what makes my brain ok with the game, it is what it is.

That being I was pretty stunned when I checked the price to buy now on a FTV Memory Jar I bought for like $13 on SCG credit maybe a year ago. Absolutely nuts. It's gotta be pandemic driven, surely. It's the only major thing that's changed in the time since buying it and now.

I'd like to see the RL go, but realise it'll never happen, or not in any meaningful way for a while to come. It'd be very nice if all of this stuff was affordable for any player. All that said I'm happy to build within my means, and I like to think generally I hold my own well enough against decks that are more fully funded. Mostly I can let it go, because I don't really need hard tutors, moxen or Academy Rectors, but the part that really galls me is lands. It's pretty commonly known how good a full set of fetches and duals are for just smoothing and giving a great play experience (whether you win or not) and just making sure you get less whiffs. Not having access to that blows. But it's not going to change anytime soon, so I try not to spend too much time screaming 'reprint fetchlands you cowards' at the top of my lungs.

I won't do proxies myself, so @ZenN, I'm probably on the same sort of principle as your pal....I just don't want to for my own mental ease, even if it might be detrimental to me not to. For me it's not even that I won't, I just...can't. It's not the card. It puts me ill at ease, and I want to be able to be relaxed while I play. Is that neurotic? Probably, but I don't care.

I also don't hold it against anyone else who does want to. I'm not in favour of buying counterfeits of course, that's scummy and shouldn't be done, but if someone wants to jam a sticky note on a forest and call it a Cradle I don't care. Most of the world is doing it on Spelltable for tokens and theft at the moment anyway.

I guess the wider moral issue from the viewpoint of those having ownership of these high-priced beauties is whether you ought to feel guilty if you run what you have and your opponents choose not to proxy, and the answer is unequivocally no. Firstly they probably don't want your pity, secondly they've chosen where they want their deck to sit, and if it has to be authentic cards that's their prerogative in building the deck they want to play. After all, they probably know you've got these cards and still agreed to shuffle up.
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Post by Myllior » 3 years ago

I've always been for proxies, even though I've never used them myself, and given the explosion in card prices during covid it's highly likely that any future decks I build will essentially be 100% proxied. I like playing the game and proxies let anyone do that in anyway they want, so go for it.

The discussion on banning the reserved list is interesting and does bring a couple of other thoughts to mind. Hypothetically, what if it wasn't about modifying Commander as it currently stands, but creating a neo-Commander format, such as Modern or Pioneer is to 60-card gameplay? Where would you draw the line for defining such a format and how does that line affect it? A couple of ideas,

1. Don't draw a line based on a given set, but ban reserved list cards only.
2. Have the format allow only cards from Mercadian Masques onwards.
3. Have the format allow only cards from a later set onwards; e.g. 8th Edition so that it is effectively Modern Commander. (I think 3drinks had a deck based on this, right?)

Just some thoughts.
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Post by DirkGently » 3 years ago

@toctheyounger I don't think it's really fair to put the blame on the RL for having subpar fixing. Fetches are BY FAR the more important part of the equation in optimizing fixing.

Personally part of me wishes that all fixing sucked so that being multicolor wasn't a total freeroll. Part of why I like limited so much, you actually have to weigh pros and cons of adding colors and how much to add, instead of just "more colors = better" that's led us to this 5-color hell we find ourselves in. Guildgates and basics only would be ideal imo, but wygd.
pokken wrote:
3 years ago
I could get on board with banning the reserved list. A huge portion of the cards are the most busted in the format (lookin' at you Gaea's Cradle) and another huge portion are hot garbage.

Volcanic Island is now more expensive than Mox Sapphire was when the original 'perceived barrier to entry' bans were handed out. By a lot.

It's sad because I love a lot of the cards but most of what I love about them is that they're farkin broken.

Who's gonna miss Mox Diamond all that badly? I'll live.
A big difference between Mox Sapphire and an ABU dual, though, is that an ABU dual is a very minor upgrade to a relatively easy-to-acquire shockland (or bicycle or tango or snow dual). Moxen are closer in power to a sol ring. There's a very different feeling between being a budget player and getting beaten because someone had slightly better fixing than you, and getting beaten because they started the game 1-2 turns ahead of you thanks to moxen. If someone thinks they need an ABU dual to compete, I'm sorry to tell them but they should just get better at the game. Having ABU duals won't make much change to win%. Whereas the difference between a 5c all-moxen deck and a 5c no-moxen deck is quite substantial even with everything else being equal.

I think it's a fairly reasonable argument to level at something like cradle (and maaaaybe mox diamond though it's a far cry from the power of the original moxen - honestly I rarely use my copy), but against the ABU duals I think it's a reach. They're technically overpowered insofar as they're better than what WotC would print these days, but in terms of impact on the game it's a pretty minimal difference. "Broken" doesn't mean "BROKEN".
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Post by Ruiner » 3 years ago

I'd say even Mox Diamond isn't wildly that much more powerful than Chrome Mox. If I recall correctly, they both were roughly equal in monetary value years ago before crazy RL prices started shooting up (back when you could get Mox Diamond for around $20-$30), maybe I'm slightly misremembering. Yeah, if you have land recursion Mox Diamond's land discard isn't bad, and Chrome Mox is in practice usually tapping for 1 or 2 colors most of the time instead of all 5 colors (but in 1-3 color decks they are pretty close). Usually with either, you drop a 0 cost artifact and lose another card from your hand in exchange for getting ahead by 1 mana. Don't get me wrong, Mox Diamond is better in many decks, but it isn't 20x better like the monetary value would imply.

A similar argument could be made for Watery Grave vs. Underground Sea.

Is Concordant Crossroads really that much better than Mass Hysteria? Practically identical but in different colors but with a crazy monetary disparity.

Just banning every RL card entirely seems kind of like a silly knee-jerk reaction to me. Even a lot of the pricier RL cards are not superbly more powerful than similar cards (with some clear exceptions). Scarcity plays a big role in their monetary values, without the RL you'd see a number of these cards at far lower values but that wouldn't make them necessarily more or less powerful in game. A lot of perfectly legal cards not on the reserved list are pretty pricey as well depending on how 60 card formats are going or even if it is just a single printing and only really used for EDH (like Fierce Guardianship or Teferi's Protection). I don't know that monetary value alone should be grounds for a blanket banning.

I may have been rambling a bit.

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Post by Mookie » 3 years ago

Ruiner wrote:
3 years ago
Is Concordant Crossroads really that much better than Mass Hysteria? Practically identical but in different colors but with a crazy monetary disparity.
Green cards that grant mass haste: Concordant Crossroads, Finale of Devastation (for X=10+).
Red cards that grant mass haste: Anger, Mass Hysteria, Cyclops of Eternal Fury, Emblem of the Warmind, Fervor, Hammer of Purphoros, Hellraiser Goblin, Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded, Tuktuk Rubblefort, Urabrask the Hidden... and probably a few others I'm missing.

Concordant Crossroads isn't better than Mass Hysteria, but it is significantly more difficult to replace. Dual lands are pretty replaceable, and I could see downgrading Wheel of Fortune to Magus of the Wheel... but replacing a card like Aluren or Humility is extremely difficult.

Of course, it's not like irreplaceability is unique to RL cards - swapping out a card like Teferi's Protection, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, or Smothering Tithe would also be pretty difficult, and contributes to those cards' price tags.

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Post by WizardMN » 3 years ago

Ruiner wrote:
3 years ago
Is Concordant Crossroads really that much better than Mass Hysteria? Practically identical but in different colors but with a crazy monetary disparity.
Not entirely your point, but Crossroads isn't even on the RL. Wizards could just reprint it and solve that issue today.

Regarding banning RL cards: I know I am against it. As it stands now, there is a very real chance I stop playing paper Magic altogether, outside of things like pre-releases, within the next year or two. At that point, and even until then, I will just play online to get my "fix". I still enjoy the game but I have become somewhat jaded regarding prices in general.

However, if cards on the RL get banned from commander I likely just stop playing entirely: paper and online. I will find something else to occupy my time. Maybe I will venture out of my basement into the bright shining light of the "outdoors" :P

I am sure plenty of people would still be playing the format and I doubt it kills commander. But that will probably be the sign that indicates the format is no longer for me.

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Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

The amount of moxen available vs the amount of duals available is significant. The power level of moxen is also significantly higher than that of duals. A moxen vs duals comparison isn't compelling. Unless you think steam vents is worth a ban?

But any point about duals is worth bringing up since those are the cards that get brought up the most when discussing RL.

Compare Volc to Steam Vents and most reasonable people would say their power levels are pretty much even. Volc actually might be worse since people will actively go after you just for having a dual. So is it a really big problem when someone does not have a Volc in their collection? I don't think so.

1.) non-RL cards vastly outpace the power levels of RL cards. And they are expensive as well. Price is not a good point of discussion since people will complain at any price level and uhh proxying is here.
2.) many RL cards have substitutes. And besides, this is not a constructed format like Standard where the lack of one specific card makes an entire deck fold. No one is crying because you can't Abyss them. Just play Sheoldred or Grave Pact.

Since this thread is about proxying,
A.) proxy if you want to. I think the general consensus is that the default to acceptability is a tacit yes
B.) but if you ask whether or not proxy is okay. don't get huffy when someone says no. If you were going to be mad at a "no" then there was no point in asking.
C.) no counterfeiting or supporting counterfeiting
D.) proxying is less satisfying than not, and if someone doesn't want to there is no reason to push/encourage them to because this is a open format and no one has to have a certain card to play.

Honestly, I would miss stuff from the RL. It's just cool to see those cards even if it's opponents. Part of what's cool about edh isn't just your deck but seeing what your opponents play. That just isn't a part of other formats.

For disclosure, personally, I would miss, my Metalworker. My brother opened it a long time ago when we were little kids cracking packs.

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Post by kraus911 » 3 years ago

I've talked a lot with my playgroup about this, and I think it comes down to what you want out of the hobby and out of your games. Short answer, consider that for yourself and suggest that for others - what do you want, and once you know, communicate that to your playgroup.

If you love the game's history and have originals and want to see them on the table, I think that's valid.

If you have lots of spare cash and want to buy originals and display them in crystal cases with a laser grid defense system, sounds cool.

If you want a competitive deck and need to pay rent so you proxy cards to play cEDH online, cool.

Power level and playstyle are more important things to work out with a group I think than who has real cards and who doesn't and why. I have some money cards I bought for $5, and I have some money cards I paid money for because I wanted them and had the cash at the time. I also have proxies of common cards I have a few "real" copies of but want to put in more decks and think it's ridiculous that Cyclonic Rift and Teferi's Protection aren't sub $5 cards (different topic, I know, but WOTC not printing staples that they could easily print is part of the gatekeeping problem being discussed here and part of me thinks everyone should proxy those cards until they print them for cheaper).

My two cents.

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Post by capitacommunist » 3 years ago

Proxies are a good way for people to play with key RL cards and I have also seen this become more common as the RL has increased in price. Banning the reserved list due to price bans a lot of cards unnecessarily and sets a bad precedent (as there are also quite some expensive non-RL cards). One of the main draws of the format is being able to play with all the cards of the game's history.
Rather than banning the RL I would rather ban specific cards that have an extremely high power level versus alternatives, which makes substitution very difficult, and are ubiquitous as well. The main ones I think would then be Gaea's Cradle, Survival of the Fittest and Gilded Drake. Most of the others have quite a number of substitutes (Wheel of Fortune), are geared to very specific deck types (Lion's Eye Diamond, Humility), or don't show a great power differential (duals).

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Post by 3drinks » 3 years ago

Yeah, I did.

Look, I love this game, I love the gameplay, I love talking about it daily, and I love doing the RCotD right here. But right as this covidconomy started I sold out about 85% of my collection (leaving only my precious Kari Zev with it's BB gauntlet of might). Part of that was it not making sense to have thousands in pretty painted cardboard while owing five figures on a dumb butt car and as such the goal is to overly aggressively pay that off. but even as I near that benchmark (I'm about $5k away from it now), I still wouldn't buy back in. it just doesn't make financial sense to own pretty painted cardboard worth as much as a mortgage payment, when I could go on a select service or to a select seller, and get the same for $2.50/ea (or less, if I printed stuff myself onto cardstock over at FedEx, but I prefer it feeling like a "real" card). This is an unsanctioned format anyway with nothing on the line, right? So why are we allowing ourselves to be bullied into spending four figures on it?

Disclaimer: I will buy in to constructed formats like Modern and would never advocate cheating/counterfeiting in sanctioned DCI events.
Last edited by 3drinks 3 years ago, edited 3 times in total.

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Post by 3drinks » 3 years ago

Mookie wrote:
3 years ago
Ruiner wrote:
3 years ago
Is Concordant Crossroads really that much better than Mass Hysteria? Practically identical but in different colors but with a crazy monetary disparity.
Green cards that grant mass haste: Concordant Crossroads, Finale of Devastation (for X=10+).
Red cards that grant mass haste: Anger, Mass Hysteria, Cyclops of Eternal Fury, Emblem of the Warmind, Fervor, Hammer of Purphoros, Hellraiser Goblin, Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded, Tuktuk Rubblefort, Urabrask the Hidden... and probably a few others I'm missing.

Concordant Crossroads isn't better than Mass Hysteria, but it is significantly more difficult to replace. Dual lands are pretty replaceable, and I could see downgrading Wheel of Fortune to Magus of the Wheel... but replacing a card like Aluren or Humility is extremely difficult.
You forgot the best new haste enabler of all.

Crashing Drawbridge!!

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Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

3drinks wrote:
3 years ago
Yeah, I did.

Look, I love this game, I love the gameplay, I love talking about it daily, and I love doing the RCotD right here. But right as this covidconomy started I sold out about 85% of my collection (leaving only my precious Kari Zev with it's BB gauntlet of might). Part of that was it not making sense to have thousands in pretty painted cardboard while owing five figures on a dumb butt car and as such the goal is to overly aggressively pay that off. but even as I near that benchmark (I'm about $5k away from it now), I still wouldn't buy back in. it just doesn't make financial sense to own pretty painted cardboard worth as much as a mortgage payment, when I could go on a select service or to a select seller, and get the same for $2.50/ea (or less, if I printed stuff myself onto cardstock over at FedEx, but I prefer it feeling like a "real" card). This is an unsanctioned format anyway with nothing on the line, right? So why are we allowing ourselves to be bullied into spending four figures on it?

Disclaimer: I will buy in to constructed formats like Modern and would never advocate cheating/counterfeiting in sanctioned DCI events.
I don't like the idea of counterfeit cards under any circumstance but how is someone not being okay with proxies "bullying" exactly?

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Post by 3drinks » 3 years ago

umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
3drinks wrote:
3 years ago
Yeah, I did.

Look, I love this game, I love the gameplay, I love talking about it daily, and I love doing the RCotD right here. But right as this covidconomy started I sold out about 85% of my collection (leaving only my precious Kari Zev with it's BB gauntlet of might). Part of that was it not making sense to have thousands in pretty painted cardboard while owing five figures on a dumb butt car and as such the goal is to overly aggressively pay that off. but even as I near that benchmark (I'm about $5k away from it now), I still wouldn't buy back in. it just doesn't make financial sense to own pretty painted cardboard worth as much as a mortgage payment, when I could go on a select service or to a select seller, and get the same for $2.50/ea (or less, if I printed stuff myself onto cardstock over at FedEx, but I prefer it feeling like a "real" card). This is an unsanctioned format anyway with nothing on the line, right? So why are we allowing ourselves to be bullied into spending four figures on it?

Disclaimer: I will buy in to constructed formats like Modern and would never advocate cheating/counterfeiting in sanctioned DCI events.
I don't like the idea of counterfeit cards under any circumstance but how is someone not being okay with proxies "bullying" exactly?
Whoosh, reading isn't your strong spot, is it? No one said not being okay with proxies is bullying. I said we shouldn't allow ourselves to be strongarmed into spending four figures on cardboard. I've followed a number of your "contributions" to this site, you need to stop reading into things more than what they seem and spinning them into a way to generate an argument. It's not cute. It's not clever. Tbqh, it's disrespectful and childish. Sometimes words mean exactly as they say, there is no hidden meaning.

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Post by RxPhantom » 3 years ago

@3drinks: I'd like you to expound on the bullying part. By whom are we being bullied? Is it more a feeling of pressure from the greater MtG community? Other players in your orbit? WotC? It was a strong piece of rhetoric with zero follow-up. I came to the same conclusion as @umtiger, and while you touched on their other posts, your reaction to that post was over the top.
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Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

3drinks wrote:
3 years ago
umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
3drinks wrote:
3 years ago
Yeah, I did.

Look, I love this game, I love the gameplay, I love talking about it daily, and I love doing the RCotD right here. But right as this covidconomy started I sold out about 85% of my collection (leaving only my precious Kari Zev with it's BB gauntlet of might). Part of that was it not making sense to have thousands in pretty painted cardboard while owing five figures on a dumb butt car and as such the goal is to overly aggressively pay that off. but even as I near that benchmark (I'm about $5k away from it now), I still wouldn't buy back in. it just doesn't make financial sense to own pretty painted cardboard worth as much as a mortgage payment, when I could go on a select service or to a select seller, and get the same for $2.50/ea (or less, if I printed stuff myself onto cardstock over at FedEx, but I prefer it feeling like a "real" card). This is an unsanctioned format anyway with nothing on the line, right? So why are we allowing ourselves to be bullied into spending four figures on it?

Disclaimer: I will buy in to constructed formats like Modern and would never advocate cheating/counterfeiting in sanctioned DCI events.
I don't like the idea of counterfeit cards under any circumstance but how is someone not being okay with proxies "bullying" exactly?
Whoosh, reading isn't your strong spot, is it? No one said not being okay with proxies is bullying. I said we shouldn't allow ourselves to be strongarmed into spending four figures on cardboard. I've followed a number of your "contributions" to this site, you need to stop reading into things more than what they seem and spinning them into a way to generate an argument. It's not cute. It's not clever. Tbqh, it's disrespectful and childish. Sometimes words mean exactly as they say, there is no hidden meaning.
I'm "not trying to read into anything". This is a proxy/test card thread.

So I assume your rant about bullying has something to do with that because that's the context of this thread.

I don't understand the source of this "bullying" that you mentioned. Since you left it unreferenced and since this is a thread about proxying, that is what I assumed.

I'm sorry for making you feel so upset but I still don't understand the source of the strong arming? You already mentioned that this is unsanctioned, so what exactly is causing your grief about spending money on cards since there's no incentive to need/have to/want to play certain cards beyond simple enjoyment.

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Post by 3drinks » 3 years ago

RxPhantom wrote:
3 years ago
@3drinks: I'd like you to expound on the bullying part. By whom are we being bullied? Is it more a feeling of pressure from the greater MtG community? Other players in your orbit? WotC? It was a strong piece of rhetoric with zero follow-up. I came to the same conclusion as @umtiger, and while you touched on their other posts, your reaction to that post was over the top.
The simple card buyouts by the 1% in the mtgfinance circlejerk buying to flip for a massive profit, of course. They buy, re-list, and everyone whom isn't fortunate as them gets stuck paying the much higher cost. It's exactly the same as the real estate market, albeit on a much smaller scale (so far).

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Post by ZenN » 3 years ago

Sounds to me like he's referring to the general feeling of needing to drop an entire week's pay on cardboard in order for a deck to remain competitive in a given environment. I can understand where he's coming from, and the MTG Finance people continually driving up prices of cards, to be far beyond their actual play value, can certainly cause one to feel "bullied" or "strong-armed", almost as though their favourite hobby is being held hostage.

Please don't suggest something about talking to your group, playing more casual power level decks, using alternative cards, blah blah blah. That doesn't fix the problem, it just avoids it. If you and your group want to be playing high power cards in high power decks, or even to do something like building random jank using only the best cards, then any of the above suggestions are unhelpful at best. Telling someone to want something else, or telling them that their desires are invalid, doesn't solve their problem and can sometimes even be seen as condescending. It's not up to any one person to define someone else's fun, right? I see the same sort of gatekeeping and "bad wrong fun" attitudes in much of the EDH community as I used to see all the time when I was deep into the Pathfinder community. Makes me sad.

In any case, I think this is all very important discussion as this hobby, and its requirements, continue to evolve, so let's all try to keep it civil and non-personal, please. :)
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Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

ZenN wrote:
3 years ago
Sounds to me like he's referring to the general feeling of needing to drop an entire week's pay on cardboard in order for a deck to remain competitive in a given environment. I can understand where he's coming from, and the MTG Finance people continually driving up prices of cards, to be far beyond their actual play value, can certainly cause one to feel "bullied" or "strong-armed", almost as though their favourite hobby is being held hostage.

Please don't suggest something about talking to your group, playing more casual power level decks, using alternative cards, blah blah blah. That doesn't fix the problem, it just avoids it. If you and your group want to be playing high power cards in high power decks, or even to do something like building random jank using only the best cards, then any of the above suggestions are unhelpful at best. Telling someone to want something else, or telling them that their desires are invalid, doesn't solve their problem and can sometimes even be seen as condescending. It's not up to any one person to define someone else's fun, right? I see the same sort of gatekeeping and "bad wrong fun" attitudes in much of the EDH community as I used to see all the time when I was deep into the Pathfinder community. Makes me sad.

In any case, I think this is all very important discussion as this hobby, and its requirements, continue to evolve, so let's all try to keep it civil and non-personal, please. :)
I agree with those sentiments, yours and drinks.

However, discussing how you feel about the problems of mtgfinance before the start of a edh game is also unproductive. The feel bads from that topic don't encompass all of the reasons why someone wouldn't want to proxy due to cost (eg someone might want to proxy a Doubling Season). And the baggage of cost isn't fair to bring on a group of people just looking for a game.

My mind went to how someone disagreeing with you on proxying might make a player feel bad. Which is a topic that should be discussed at the start of a game. Misunderstanding and disagreements can lead to resentment.

The OP started the thread, his friend feeling bad about proxying even with the blessing of his playgroup. And even though it's an explicit okay there, for some people it's not. And in response to that and what I misunderstood drinks's comments to be about, I wanted to see how/if saying "no on proxies" is bullying.

Fwiw, some people also have a valid opinion that cost of the reserve list or any specific card isn't problem since it's a casual format. Proxy if you want. I don't think I've ran into a single person who said no to proxies and wasn't immediately slammed down by the other players. If anything, you're pressured into accepting proxies and increasingly pressured into accepting playing vs. counterfeits as well.

personally I don't mind as long as it doesn't affect the enjoyment of the game (tasteless anime cards, illegible sharpie, obviously marked card, etc.)

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Post by Dunharrow » 3 years ago

I just want to add that if you build your deck and can't afford expensive cards, then it feels bad to lose to someone who is using proxies. That is where it is important to be on the same page. If you feel like you can't proxy and then lose to a bunch of proxies, it can be frustrating.

This is more of an issue for in-store play against strangers.

The other thing I will say is one guy showed up once for commander at my LGS with 100 cards all printed in black and white on standard printer paper. Even the basics (as I recall, it was monogreen Azuza).
I didn't like that. No sleeves either. How do you shuffle?
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Post by BaronCappuccino » 3 years ago

To me, owning the cards is part of the game, and I simply won't proxy. To be fair, I have been coerced into proxying in the past, and could possibly be again, but I only acquiesced if the card was actually in the mail. I really care that I only play what I've earned. Shortly before the insanity began, I unintentionally, but somewhat fortunately, made a mad dash to grab badlands, mox diamond, wheel of fortune and any other Rakdos staples like lands and rocks that I thought I'd ever want, and now I see that I could never do that again. I'm now married to Rakdos, till death do us part. It's only getting worse. I don't mind if others proxy, and in fact, my once regular playgroup were all big fans of proxying, moreso for deck variety than card cost. I, on the other hand, am essentially in a Commander retirement home, with my one pet deck and no collection, because I won't invest the same all over again. I buy an average of one card per new release, and all is well in the world. Mission accomplished? MtG zen.

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Post by UnfulfilledDesires » 3 years ago

Over my many years in EDH, I've never once seen someone refuse to play with a person using playtest cards. I've heard folks grumble about it on occasion, but that's it. The main LGS I played at before the pandemic hit ran EDH tournaments for small prizes. Nominally, this meant real cards only. Even then people used playtest cards for expensive stables they owned one copy of but had in multiple decks & sometimes someone had playtest cards of something they didn't own & got away with it.

I suspect we'll see continuing acceptance of playtest cards. The officials may never endorse it out of fear; that's understandable. The community will go on without them.

As an amusing aside, my MTG spending increased when I realized I could get nice playtest cards because it inspired me to put together additional EDH decks. At the moment I only use playtest cards for cards I own one copy of but want in multiple decks.

P.S. Banning all RL cards is one of the few things that would get me to seriously consider giving up EDH entirely. Nostalgia constitutes a significant portion of my interest in the format. Not being able to play Unfulfilled Desires, Asmira, Holy Avenger, Bösium Strip, Braingeyser, Cadaverous Bloom, Femeref Enchantress, Hazezon Tamar, Infernal Tribute, In the Eye of Chaos, Lord of Tresserhorn, Phelddagrif, Rasputin Dreamweaver, etc. would dramatically reduce my enjoyment.

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