Proxies in Commander

Do you like proxies in commander?

Yes
26
31%
No
22
26%
Depends if they are used reasonably or not
37
44%
 
Total votes: 85

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Airi
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Post by Airi » 4 years ago

Reminder to keep things polite here, some of the phrasing and arguments are getting in to borderline territory.

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Post by Cow31337Killer » 4 years ago

I'll throw in a vote for proxies.

Just please print out images I can read😅

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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

I use proxies a lot, as it's about deck building and fun, not your wallet.

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Post by Mimicvat » 4 years ago

Big thumbs up to proxies. If everyone in your play group agrees to them, you can all save a bunch of money. Whats not to like.

I also run 2-3 no proxy decks for the few times I go to other groups or FLGS
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

The more I've noodled on it the more I think that using proxies has quite a bit in common with board game and video game piracy (both of which are rampant of course). Not playing with the pieces the game designers intended is - in a roundabout and distant value chain - stealing from them. The value of magic cards is connected to the value of the game design in some ways.

The collectible value of cards is actually something Wizards owns at least in part - because they have the ability to reprint them (yes, even the RL--because they can and do print strictly better cards from time to time).

I don't think it's exactly the same of course but I do think we owe Wizards something for their continued investment in the game. The people who just stop buying cards and print them all out are placing more burden on the people who do buy cards to sustain wizards' bottom line.

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Post by Rorseph » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
I don't think it's exactly the same of course but I do think we owe Wizards something for their continued investment in the game. The people who just stop buying cards and print them all out are placing more burden on the people who do buy cards to sustain wizards' bottom line.
That argument doesn't feel quite right to me.

Is it okay to use proxies if you're still buying lots of new product from Wizards? Is it not okay to not buy new product any more and rest on an existing collection and only buy singles? This is an honest line of questioning because I'm not sure myself. I agree that the piracy angle is more or less analogous, but I struggle with where the secondary market fits into everything as well as the idea of players having control over the game experiences they want to have.

Like, I enjoy MtG a lot and I want to see it grow and thrive and gain new players, but I don't have much of an interest in the formats that are revenue generators. (I'm a recovering Limited junkie and I can't bring myself to care about Standard too much.) Am I helping or hurting the game overall? I don't know.

Proxies can be a problem, but it's a small piece of a much larger issue. I'm inclined to say, play with proxies to your heart's content, but be aware that there are consequences to just printing whatever you want.
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

Rorseph wrote:
4 years ago
That argument doesn't feel quite right to me.

Is it okay to use proxies if you're still buying lots of new product from Wizards? Is it not okay to not buy new product any more and rest on an existing collection and only buy singles? This is an honest line of questioning because I'm not sure myself. I agree that the piracy angle is more or less analogous, but I struggle with where the secondary market fits into everything as well as the idea of players having control over the game experiences they want to have.

Like, I enjoy MtG a lot and I want to see it grow and thrive and gain new players, but I don't have much of an interest in the formats that are revenue generators. (I'm a recovering Limited junkie and I can't bring myself to care about Standard too much.) Am I helping or hurting the game overall? I don't know.

Proxies can be a problem, but it's a small piece of a much larger issue. I'm inclined to say, play with proxies to your heart's content, but be aware that there are consequences to just printing whatever you want.
Something to remember is that the singles market is what drives the demand for new product. if you buy a 15 dollar brazen borrower that drives demand for the people cracking boxes of Throne of Eldraine. If the demand is soft for a set because the cards are not good (see Dragon's maze, Fate Reforged) the set undersells and Wizards and their distributors lose money.

Similarly, the people who are opening all this product depend on the revenue from previous sets and their singles business to fund cracking new product -- every time someone prints a Gaea's Cradle instead of buying it from somewhere, it essentially trickles back to Wizards' pocketbook one way or another. It's a long and winding road for reserved list cards driving current revenue to wizards, but it absolutely does, even if it's just by propping up the faith in the collectible quality of the hobby.

I don't think that obligates you to buy stuff from Wizards that you don't want. But if you *do* want it and you print it at the copyshop instead, that's money right out of wizards' pocket. And similarly, printing singles instead of buying them is taking money away from the people who support Wizards' business model of selling sealed product and growing their playerbase.

You buy a cradle from SCG, they use that money to fund their business which ultimately funds Wizards. Even when you buy from a random person who's getting out of the hobby, they bought those cards from someone who spent money with Wizards -- and you're contributing to the overall demand for magic cards, which is a net good for Wizards.

Something I am less sure of is the impact of someone who simply would not play magic otherwise; say I'm a poor college kid and I only like playing CEDH. I'm never going to buy a Gaea's Cradle so there's no unmet demand there -- I have zero demand for an actual cradle. It could be that removing those people from the playerbase is a net bad thing because fewer people to play with is bad for people woh *do* buy cards. And maybe that guy who prints a cradle does in fact buy a couple packs here or there that they would not otherwise.

It's possible that proxies in some way contribute to enabling more people to play by allowing them to access the game in a way they wouldn't otherwise. I think there was some research suggesting something kinda similar with pirated music and movies? That they are in some way demand drivers?

------------------------------------------

Some more thoughts on this--but I think in the end proxies might be a form of socializing the cost of Magic, something that I might be OK with in some ways -- whales who spend lots of money on stuff support the industry so that people with lesser budgets can still play. But I don't think it's a particularly *fair* method of distribution, because proxies are not really used in a structured fashion that benefits the neediest.

I see lots of people who could really benefit from a little Magic socialism who keep scrounging to buy packs and then I see people who have plenty of money "saving" their money by proxying $5000 worth of cards in every deck because they have a different ethical perspective.

I don't see how you could really means test proxying in a fair way, lol. But it does rankle at me that in some ways Magic's financial model preys on people with gambling issues.
Last edited by pokken 4 years ago, edited 2 times in total.

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Post by Rorseph » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
I don't think that obligates you to buy stuff from Wizards that you don't want. But if you *do* want it and you print it at the copyshop instead, that's money right out of wizards' pocket. And similarly, printing singles instead of buying them is taking money away from the people who support Wizards' business model of selling sealed product and growing their playerbase.
Well said!

Thank you for the clarification.
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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

I am fine with proxying so long as you own copies of the card and could field a playable number of them. Essentially, from the standpoint that you could swap a card between games but for convenience sake you proxy the extras. I also don't mind situations where you have ordered cards and the cards are on the way or are temporarily testing to see if you would like a card (assuming said testing doesn't need to go on for months or something).

I really don't mind proxies as long as people aren't abusing it heavily. When you start seeing people proxying $100 cards they don't own or plan to own I get a little more miffed with the concept.

This is mostly my thoughts towards commander. I don't mind testing modern decks with or against proxies as its good play experience with and or against those decks to have optimal builds and learn the ins and outs of the deck.
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Post by darrenhabib » 4 years ago

I still think Wizards ends up with more money in their pockets with proxing going on. The thing is that most (if not all) people still buy most of the shell of the deck with normal cards and then proxy cards that are too expensive. It's likely that the person would not have built that deck at all if they felt like they needed to spend all that money at once. Then most people strive to get the pieces of the deck over time if it works out.

So my inclination is that without proxing, maybe you'd see people buy less cards to make and try decks. Nothing worse than somebody spending all the money for a deck and find out that it doesn't work or they don't actually like the style of it. You'll lose players that way.
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Post by Cow31337Killer » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
I don't think it's exactly the same of course but I do think we owe Wizards something for their continued investment in the game. The people who just stop buying cards and print them all out are placing more burden on the people who do buy cards to sustain wizards' bottom line.
I would sympathize more with this argument if Wizards wasn't a multi-million dollar company run by a multi-billion dollar parent company. Trust me when I say that, proxies or no proxies, Wizard's "bottom line" will be just fine (especially with how they manage to consistently sell-out big premium products like Mythic Edition or Throne of Eldraine Deluxe edition). I think your argument is better suited for counterfeits that attempt to make money off of pretending to be real cards. Printing out proxies doesn't really lower the demand for expensive cards because nobody in the market for real (or at least real looking) cards is going to purchase them.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

Cow31337Killer wrote:
4 years ago
I would sympathize more with this argument if Wizards wasn't a multi-million dollar company run by a multi-billion dollar parent company. Trust me when I say that, proxies or no proxies, Wizard's "bottom line" will be just fine (especially with how they manage to consistently sell-out big premium products like Mythic Edition or Throne of Eldraine Deluxe edition). I think your argument is better suited for counterfeits that attempt to make money off of pretending to be real cards. Printing out proxies doesn't really lower the demand for expensive cards because nobody in the market for real (or at least real looking) cards is going to purchase them.
Let's say I have 3 Tropical Island in 3 different decks. I decide to follow the "own one, proxy it" principle, therefore I sell my two spare trops; and I will never get another tropical island for a deck either. So I have reduced the demand for tropical island (by whatever my future deckbuilding desires are, let's say 1) and increased the supply by 2,functionally reducing the price of tropical island however infinitesimally.

Using proxies both increases demand and decreases supply. It's a matter of how much. I "make money" by only paying for one copy of Trop.

I don't think that the "you can't really affect wizards' bottom line" argument holds water; you can, it's just very very little when it's just you. If every EDH player used the proxy binder method it would absolutely crater the market for most staples, which I don't know if that's good or bad, but it would surely affect the livelihoods of large companies who purchase from Wizards -- which thus affects Wizards.

If everyone did the proxy binder method it'd probably shatter the secondary market. It's easy to justify it when you think of just you -- it's kinda how shoplifters justify it. But if everyone did it, it'd be a disaster.

I don't mean to aggressively compare proxiers to shoplifters; I'm just trying to get the point across that it really only works if it's not systematic. If everyone systematically used proxies the way people often propose the impact would be huge.

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Post by umtiger » 4 years ago

Cow31337Killer wrote:
4 years ago
I would sympathize more with this argument if Wizards wasn't a multi-million dollar company run by a multi-billion dollar parent company. Trust me when I say that, proxies or no proxies, Wizard's "bottom line" will be just fine (especially with how they manage to consistently sell-out big premium products like Mythic Edition or Throne of Eldraine Deluxe edition). I think your argument is better suited for counterfeits that attempt to make money off of pretending to be real cards. Printing out proxies doesn't really lower the demand for expensive cards because nobody in the market for real (or at least real looking) cards is going to purchase them.
I agree with you in that there's no justification for counterfeits at all. And counterfeits as proxies are just as bad.

But how does Hasbro's financial success have any bearing on whether or not playgroups should use proxies?

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Post by Cow31337Killer » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Let's say I have 3 Tropical Island in 3 different decks. I decide to follow the "own one, proxy it" principle, therefore I sell my two spare trops; and I will never get another tropical island for a deck either. So I have reduced the demand for tropical island (by whatever my future deckbuilding desires are, let's say 1) and increased the supply by 2,functionally reducing the price of tropical island however infinitesimally.
Two things:
1. Once a certain set had stopped being printed by Wizards, they no longer make money off of secondary market purchases of cards from those sets. For example, if I buy out every box of Zendikar from my local store, that store doesn't go to wizards to buy more boxes of Zendikar, because the set is no longer being printed. This is especially true for your example of Tropical Island which is a reserved list card that will never be sold in any product by Wizards ever again. Wizards doesn't see a penny of any money spent to buy actual copies of Tropical Island nowadays. Same with cards like Oracle of Mul Daya, because they sell no current products with those cards in them. So your argument has some merit for cards in products currently being printed and sold by Wizards, but not much outside of that.

2. Proxies do not add more supply to the market because they do not hold the value that real versions of those cards hold. I could print a million pictures of Mana Crypt and hand them out to everyone I see on the street and the scarcity of the real card wouldn't drop because it is not adding any actual printings of that card to the market. It's similar to the way that older printings of cards like Birds of Paradise|LEA retain their thousand dollar price tags even though newer printings cost much less.

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Post by Cow31337Killer » 4 years ago

umtiger wrote:
4 years ago

I agree with you in that there's no justification for counterfeits at all. And counterfeits as proxies are just as bad.

But how does Hasbro's financial success have any bearing on whether or not playgroups should use proxies?
Pokken brought up the idea of using proxies as somehow hurting Wizards ability to make enough money for their "bottom line", and I'm arguing that this isn't really a valid concern.

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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

Cow31337Killer wrote:
4 years ago
Two things:
1. Once a certain set had stopped being printed by Wizards, they no longer make money off of secondary market purchases of cards from those sets. For example, if I buy out every box of Zendikar from my local store, that store doesn't go to wizards to buy more boxes of Zendikar, because the set is no longer being printed. This is especially true for your example of Tropical Island which is a reserved list card that will never be sold in any product by Wizards ever again. Wizards doesn't see a penny of any money spent to buy actual copies of Tropical Island nowadays. Same with cards like Oracle of Mul Daya, because they sell no current products with those cards in them. So your argument has some merit for cards in products currently being printed and sold by Wizards, but not much outside of that.

2. Proxies do not add more supply to the market because they do not hold the value that real versions of those cards hold. I could print a million pictures of Mana Crypt and hand them out to everyone I see on the street and the scarcity of the real card wouldn't drop because it is not adding any actual printings of that card to the market. It's similar to the way that older printings of cards like Birds of Paradise|LEA retain their thousand dollar price tags even though newer printings cost much less.
There are at least three major ways in which the health of the secondary market contributes to Wizards' success, largely indirectly.
1. A healthy secondary market means profitability for secondary market sellers, who coincidentally are the largest purchasers of new product from wizards (e.g. Starcity Games). Lots of demand for cards means SCG has more money to buy more product, they run more tournaments, etc.

2. Trust in the value of cards is fairly intrinsic to the hobby at this point; Magic cards are fairly liquid and they tend to index against inflation fairly well (that is if you put a pile of decent cards in your closet you're unlikely to come back to useless cardboard). Part of this is Wizards' conservative reprint policy. Part of it is the volume of demand from people needing 5 or 7 or 10 of a staple; if everyone needs one Cultivate, it's a penny card, not constantly hovering near a buck.

3. Reprint equity is part of wizards' portfolio - so if I reduce the value of Oracle of Mul Daya because everyone is proxying their one copy, that indirectly affects Wizards' bottom line because now when they finally reprint oracle it creates less demand than it otherwise would have.

People using the Proxy Binder method often advocated for absolutely does increase the supply of a card -- because now I need one of each dual land, one mana crypt, etc. That means all the guys like me who have 3 mana crypts sell down to one which means an increase in supply and a reduction in demand.

It has nothing to do with older cards and scarcity; if I want 1 mana crypt instead of 3, that's 2 more in circulation.

It's not really a big deal if a small segment of the population does it, but if everyone did it it'd be catastrophic.

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Post by Cow31337Killer » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
There are at least three major ways in which the health of the secondary market contributes to Wizards' success, largely indirectly.
1. A healthy secondary market means profitability for secondary market sellers, who coincidentally are the largest purchasers of new product from wizards (e.g. Starcity Games). Lots of demand for cards means SCG has more money to buy more product, they run more tournaments, etc.

2. Trust in the value of cards is fairly intrinsic to the hobby at this point; Magic cards are fairly liquid and they tend to index against inflation fairly well (that is if you put a pile of decent cards in your closet you're unlikely to come back to useless cardboard). Part of this is Wizards' conservative reprint policy. Part of it is the volume of demand from people needing 5 or 7 or 10 of a staple; if everyone needs one Cultivate, it's a penny card, not constantly hovering near a buck.

3. Reprint equity is part of wizards' portfolio - so if I reduce the value of Oracle of Mul Daya because everyone is proxying their one copy, that indirectly affects Wizards' bottom line because now when they finally reprint oracle it creates less demand than it otherwise would have.

People using the Proxy Binder method often advocated for absolutely does increase the supply of a card -- because now I need one of each dual land, one mana crypt, etc. That means all the guys like me who have 3 mana crypts sell down to one which means an increase in supply and a reduction in demand.

It has nothing to do with older cards and scarcity; if I want 1 mana crypt instead of 3, that's 2 more in circulation.

It's not really a big deal if a small segment of the population does it, but if everyone did it it'd be catastrophic.
Honestly you bring up good points and we could go back and forth on this but for me personally it really comes down to how I view my privilege as a magic player. I acknowledge that I am privileged enough to be able to purchase the physical copies of the cards I want to play with in my decks. While I am grateful for that, I also understand that not everybody has the means to make this happen. So who am I to tell someone that they shouldn't proxy cards when that might be their only way to afford to play the game? I would rather people have a way to enjoy Magic just as much as I do, and if using proxies are the easiest way for someone to accomplish that goal, then I'm 100% for it. The main issue I have with most anti-proxy arguments is that it shifts the issue of Magic's price barrier as a responsibility for the player to deal with rather than the people who actually have the means to make the game more accessible. Proxying exists because it is a solution for people who would otherwise be unable to afford to play Magic to get around these price barriers. If Wizards really wants to discourage proxying in casual formats like Commander, then they should make the cards being proxied more affordable and accessible to the average consumer. Until they do that, they are as much to blame for the existence of proxies as much as anybody else, if not more.

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Post by UnfulfilledDesires » 4 years ago

People using the Proxy Binder method often advocated for absolutely does increase the supply of a card -- because now I need one of each dual land, one mana crypt, etc. That means all the guys like me who have 3 mana crypts sell down to one which means an increase in supply and a reduction in demand.

It has nothing to do with older cards and scarcity; if I want 1 mana crypt instead of 3, that's 2 more in circulation.

It's not really a big deal if a small segment of the population does it, but if everyone did it it'd be catastrophic.
If folks who already own multiple copies of expensive cards swith to the proxy-binder approach & sell extra copies of their expensive cards because of this, sure, that increases supply. However, that's only one possible effect of the proxy-binder approach. In my case, I was never going to buy a second Mana Crypt or Serra's Sanctum regardless. If I wanted those in more than one deck, I'd just swap the cards around. Using nice proxies (playtest cards by definition in original post) to stand in for those expensive cards saves me time & effort. It doesn't increase supply in the slightest. In fact, realizing I could more conveniently use expensive cards in multiple decks encouraged me to build more decks, increasing demand. I would have spent less on singles if I never learned about nice proxies.

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Post by DirkGently » 4 years ago

This poll kinda sucks. "used responsibly" could mean:

-only cards already owned (the binder strategy)
-only to protect valuable cards (so same as above but only 1 per deck).
-only with a legible print job
-only for cool decks (which itself is vague)
-only for cheap cards
-only for cards in the mail
-only for short-term testing with intent to buy
-only to match power levels, not exceed them

etc. So we've learned almost nothing.
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Post by SquirrelToken » 4 years ago

Personally, I don't proxy. If that means shelling out a grand in tradestock to acquire a second copy of The Abyss, so be it. I don't feel that it's fair for me to proxy because I've been playing since the mid-'90s so my collection is very deep.

If you want to proxy a card because you're testing it out, or you don't want to move your copy between decks, be my guest. Obvious and legible, please.

If you want to proxy a Cradle because you'll never afford one, that's fine, just don't abuse it. Like others have said, please don't proxy your entire deck. It's about love and effort, and if you don't love your deck enough to put in the effort to find most of it, you're probably just looking to ROFLstomp me, and that's not going to be fun because I play 75% at best.

Edit: I realize that this mostly reflects my desire to not play cEDH. But even if you have a janky fun combo deck, I want you to love it enough to get the real cards for it and I will actively help in that process.

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Post by deimos035 » 4 years ago

I think it all depends on your playgroup. I remember having a group of guys where we allowed fully proxied modern decks - just because the younger players couldn't afford most of the cards. Withing your closest group I think all-proxy EDH decks are fine, not only for testing purposes, but just to be able to play whatever you want at the moment. For playing with people outside your normal playgroup, I'd say it depends (just like the 3rd option in the poll). I would not be happy seeing someone with all the expensive/unusual cards proxied just bc he feels like it. Playtesting with others is one thing, accomodating to other groups' rules is another.

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 4 years ago

DirkGently wrote:
4 years ago
This poll kinda sucks. "used responsibly" could mean:

-only cards already owned (the binder strategy)
-only to protect valuable cards (so same as above but only 1 per deck).
-only with a legible print job
-only for cool decks (which itself is vague)
-only for cheap cards
-only for cards in the mail
-only for short-term testing with intent to buy
-only to match power levels, not exceed them

etc. So we've learned almost nothing.
I think this is sort of where I am comfortable. I have seen some metas where people aren't comfortable with proxies where people push cards between decks every game and that looks like a lot of overhead where a proxy could probably just expedite that process. If someone owns the card and is using it in multiple locations I don't really mind it. I also don't mind the testing with intent to buy.

I think there are a lot of affordable ideal decks that can be built without investing thousands. It is unfortunate when a few hundred dollars is too much to ask from some for a commander deck but I also don't think that every commander deck has to be ideal. I probably would be more willing to let someone tight on funds go a bit further in proxies but I start drawing the line when its for $50+ cards they don't intend to buy. If you need to test cards and figure out what works though before buying them thats totally cool with me.
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Gashnaw
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Post by Gashnaw » 4 years ago

Generally i try to avoid proxies as I get a lot of flak for them. I am not made of money, i don't have the money for a second playset of dual lands.

In most cases of i'll proxy a card I already own one, or the store did not have a copy or I am not sure if I want to run it and don't wanna spend 50 bucks on it if I may end up not running it. For the ones I do not habe a copy I will make an effort to get a real one. But as I said I do not have the cash for 9 copies of a dual land. Sorry but I am gonna proxy. (And if someone has an issue FINE, I'll switch them out with my real ones. Just wait five minutes while I do so... You are the one wasting time with your petty whining)

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 4 years ago

Not every manabase has to have duals. I only play the duals I own and its definitely made me more creative with mana. Sometimes i just play shocks and sometimes i play weird stuff.

Feeling like you need to have dual lands in every deck is part of the arms race problem. People didnt used to feel like that when I started playing.

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cryogen
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Post by cryogen » 4 years ago

pokken wrote:
4 years ago
Not every manabase has to have duals. I only play the duals I own and its definitely made me more creative with mana. Sometimes i just play shocks and sometimes i play weird stuff.

Feeling like you need to have dual lands in every deck is part of the arms race problem. People didnt used to feel like that when I started playing.
Interesting. I started playing in 2011 and I've ALWAYS felt like I needed them. I don't think it's so much that players feel like they don't need them, it's that they're realistic and know that they aren't worth the expense most of the time. But strictly speaking, every deck "needs" them as they are hands down the best dual lands in the format.
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