CartaMundi print orders leaked (ty Rudy), hope for Pokemon?

General
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You do realize that applying your logic to expanding the RL means that people won’t be able to play Modern one day and that’s ok"?

The Legacy competitive scene where I live is dead because of said RL, that’s not something I want to see happen to new formats as well.

I want to play Legacy seriously. I have most of the stuff required to build quite a few decks (Grixis Delver, BR Reanimate, Nic Fit, and its variant with Rectors Living Plane Curses). Yet I can’t play sanctioned events unless I travel very far. Am I feeling entitled? I bought a product to play with. I can’t. Some very nasty people are going to say “people where you live are poor, that’s their fault” (yes, I’ve already heard quite a few RL proponents actually say that, new Legacy players mind you. Such good people these price spikes have drawn to Legacy.). I’m just going to say I’d like people to be able to play sanctioned events at a decent price without having to choose playing either Tier 3 decks or Eldrazi (and I’m not even asking for cheap decks, just for the prices not going into the $2k territory). The RL caused that, I have to accept that. But now you go and say that this should ultimately happen to every new format from now on, by suggesting expanding the RL to Modern sets is a good idea, to “protect people’s investments”. So first, it’s a card game. It’s supposed to cost money. The money you spend is for the time you get to play with said cards, be it entertainment, tournament play, collecting, whatever. If you buy expecting a Return On Investment, you should NOT buy Modern cards. And you’re basically saying with that RL extension that people in 20 years shouldn’t feel entitled to be able to play Modern, and that I should not feel too entitled to be able to play with my Modern decks at sanctioned events, since there will ultimately be less and less of these as cards prices rise because of this new RL.

Seriously. Just no. Go take your “expand the RL” fallacy elsewhere and go play the investment game on stocks.

Or continue to play your investment game on old formats (destroying these in the process, not that investors care about the game anyway if they’re happy about the RL… really toxic people), but don’t expand the RL to Modern sets, else “investors” are REALLY going to be toxic to the game (they already are to an extent).

And no, well-handled reprints don’t “destroy” the value of your cards. Sure if non-pro players (or at least aspiring) were dumb enough to crack $200 on a Tarmo which was bound to be reprinted sooner or later, they lost money. That was their choice. Do you think Magic as a competitive game is welcoming with $200 cards? Do you think Magic needs this kind of nonsense to survive as a game? Do you honestly think it would be healthy for the game to have modern cards and decks rise to ridiculous levels just so entitled investors can buy cards knowing “their investments are safe” ?

I do think that if these toxic people leave Modern because they fear reprints, the competitive game as a whole has a chance to become more welcoming to new players (as card prices become cheaper since “investors” don’t try to buy out said cards), healthier, and reduce thefts / scams / counterfeiting of modern stuff to an extent.

If investors cry because they can’t reliably make money by hoarding Modern sets anymore, great. Good riddance.

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The modern print runs compared to reserved list era print runs are completely different things, modern wouldn’t be unplayable 20 years from now if a few cards from specific sets were put on an adjusted reserved list. Lion’s eye diamond is a $140 card at retail, Craig Berry attempted to buy it out and spent over $15k doing it, the price went up temporarily and dropped straight back down and he lot his ass because what he didn’t understand is the supply of mirage is far higher compared to legends where he was attempting buyouts before.

The reserved list causes high prices on old cards because there weren’t many of those cards to begin with, they weren’t saved and collected like cards are today so that logic of a format being unplayable because of an extended reserved list is short sighted. These days people know cards can be valuable and everything is sleeved and looked after, back in the day you had alpha cards being thrown in the bin at gencon and power being played unsleeved on playgrounds and benches. These days there’s a massive amount of cards, so many that buyouts aren’t a thing, you can’t attempt a snapcaster mage buyout because there are too many to affect the market and that will probably be the case 20 years from now, just like LED with an even lower supply than snapcaster has trouble being manipulated due to it’s supply … which is trivial compared to modern day cards.

Also modern most likely won’t be the core non standard format in 20 years as there will probably be a new sanctioned format created just like modern was. This is because the card pool will eventually be too big and the meta too unchanging, as wotc would need to power creep to add more playable cards to the modern pool after so many years. It’s a problem that’s been discussed when hareruya created frontier and Mark Rosewater said if he were doing it he would create a new format post khans so that fetch lands weren’t in the meta. That will probably happen at some point and modern will no longer be the main non rotating format.

I don’t think this is going to be much of a problem in future anyway as wotc has a perfect solution to the reserved list that they’re already working on - magic arenas. A digital game gets around the reserved list, magic online is a horrible experience but if they can create a beautiful client and don’t make the pricing ridiculous like mtgo then everyone can play any format they want at any time through a hearthstone like experience. If people are salty because they can’t afford a deck in paper than like I said that’s just a bit too entitled.

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+1. My emphasis.

@froggy25 I don’t play magic, nor invest in reserve list cards or any magic cards for that matter. I think I have a couple hundred cards laying around from random collections that I acquired and I know very little about them.

That is a crappy argument IMO. I am on the side of “tough luck”. I live out in the boondocks. If I want to experience the city night life or any other aspect of city life I need to drive 1+ hour to the nearest thing resembling a city. If I don’t like that, I can move. I can make the choice. For the exaggerated case, I don’t think some kid born in Siberia is entitled to having the MTG championships in his backyard just because he loves the game. The closest Pokemon league to me is only a couple players. I would need to travel 1+ hour just to play in league events. The closest tourneys are hours away. Worlds was across the country last year.

The way I see it they can either RL cards so that they steadily increase in value over time or they can reprint them so they always stay cheap. The first makes cards more expensive to buy initially but then you can feel a little more free to spend the money knowing it should hold some value in case you change decks or sell out one day. The second route you have to always worry what gets reprinted. You don’t lose as much up front but it sounds like you lose either way. One could argue the RL would potentially be best for the people playing modern straight through picking up all the cards as they are new and in print and relatively cheap. When the price increases slowly over time you already had locked in at the earlier pricing. I never could see new sets getting $1k+ cards anyways as a lot of the most expensive cards it sounds like were from the low print run sets. Print runs are way too high now for cards to spike too ridiculously I would think.

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Try living in the UK, limited everything…tournies, products etc. Most are abroad in the US and importing cards or goign to tournies, worlds etc costs alooot of monies. Retailers dont stock up much on magic, Pokemon there ar elimited places for pre releases.Alot of the promos arent released here…PSA lives abroad, and so do alot of the big collectors and collections.

Sad face :slightly_frowning_face: Its not fair! I think PSA should open up a grading place over here and import, vat, tax etc when bringing into the country cards, and things should be scrapped.For me, so i can enjoy them at the prices the US peeps get …plus free flights foood accom and spends to take me around the world for worlds, poke centers and so on.

#PL0X

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I wholeheartedly disagree. Rudy is the man. Very, very wise when it comes to these types of business dealings. Respect Rudy, screw the haters. No offense but… Just saying.

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After reading pierce and gottaketchum’s posts I’m starting to feel much better about this generation:)

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I watch Rudy a lot so I have been hearing a lot about Magic lately. It intrigues me quite a bit, especially all the hoopla about the RL.

One thing I have wondered about the RL is that it seems most old cards hold value due to their play ability in the game whereas in Pokemon the primary cause for value is collectible value. My question is this: How would the value of a RL card be affected if a new set were to come out with a functionally similar card, but one that is superior in nearly every way? I know very little about the mechanics of the game, but it seems like it would be plausible for a similar type card coming out that does the same thing better e.g. comparison of “hala” vs. “tierno”. Tierno is a guaranteed draw 3 whereas hala is a draw 4/draw 7 so you are always outdrawing with hala over tierno.

It seems from this statement “Reserved cards will never be printed again in a functionally identical form. A card is considered functionally identical to another card if it has the same card type, subtypes, abilities, mana cost, power, and toughness.” on the Magic RL website that we could never see a direct reprint but different name situation e.g. Prof. Juniper/Prof. Sycamore. Could we however see a direct reprint at the cost of 1 less mana or 1 extra power/toughness? It seems it would honor the integrity of the RL wording, but again it would turn the new card into a direct superior replacement in all decks running the prior card (I think).

Any thoughts from some magic vets? @pierce? It sounds like you are quite knowledgeable on the subject.

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@gottaketchumall You’re right in that a lot of value in magic is derived from a cards playability rather than collectibility, though a lot of the cards from A/B/U/ARN/ANT/LEG have transitioned to being true collectibles. Ie. There are a heap of completely unplayable crap cards across those sets that used to be almost worthless but now fetch $500+ graded because there just aren’t many left and collectors want them. Anything after these sets the print run starts to get too high for the unplayable cards to have real value even if they’re on reserved list and only the playables have value.

To answer your question it would depend on the set the cards printed in … if it’s something like the power 9, those are iconic collectible cards and I don’t think their value would be affected. You could print a functionally better card than say the black lotus that gives 4 mana but that card won’t be an icon like the actual lotus. It’s similar to the evolutions Charizard, the reprint was a functionally better reprint with the same art yet it didn’t affect the 1st edition base version because when it comes down to it, it’s just some new card that there’s heaps of, not a historic card that’s extremely limited. In my opinion pretty much anything from legends and earlier that’s on the reserved list and wasn’t printed in revised is at the point where it’s value is protected by its limited numbers and collectibility, and even if the reserved list was abolished the value would still be there for high graded examples - I feel like mtg in this instance is similar to Pokemon collecting.

If instead it were something like Metalworker from Urza block, not pre legends, that they made a better version of … like making it cheaper and give more mana through its ability, it might affect its value because there are a lot more printed than stuff from say legends and it’s value comes from its playability. That said, it might not affect the value, because people might just run the ‘better’ copy alongside the old. It’s hard to print something better in most cases because a lot of the playable reserved list cards are broken in regards to their power level, making functionally better cards would be bringing in some serious power creep which wotc doesn’t want to do.

A good example of this is ancestral recall … draw three cards for 1 blue mana. A few years ago they printed a card called treasure cruise which was 1 blue + 7 colourless for the same effect. Treasure cruise had a new mechanic called delve in which you could exile cards in your graveyard to pay the colourless cost … meaning if you exile 7 you only need to pay 1 blue to draw 3 meaning you effectively have one of the power 9 cards in your hand. Even though this was a functionally worse card, it’s extremely easy to put 7 cards in your graveyard and treasure cruise warped every sanctioned format … even mono red burn decks splashed blue to run 4 treasure cruises. This caused cruise to be banned in all formats and restricted to 1 copy in vintage (vintage is the only format power 9 cards are playable … cruise being restricted to the same level as power shows how strong it is).

This is why I don’t think there will be functionally better reprints of the majority of these reserved list cards, they’re too strong already which is why they’re banned and restricted in a lot of formats, printing better copies would just mean those cards get banned as well. Plus as I mentioned even if it happened, the playability value of the older cards wouldn’t go down, people would just run both and have even stronger decks.

Btw one of the most expensive barriers for old formats is dual lands as they’re the best lands ever printed and on the reserved list, a superior reprint would be tap for one of three diff kinds of mana with no drawback and be fetchable, that’s just too strong. If functionally better dual lands were reprinted I think revised prices would suffer but alpha/beta wouldn’t, the revised print run was massive…

Hopefully that makes sense … 2am and brain is tired :blush:
tl;dr I think superior versions of cards won’t affect value for playable reserved list cards from legends and earlier as they’re limited and collectable as well as playable.

edit: I forgot to say as well, yes functionally better cards would get around the RL wording but like I said, I don’t think that’s something wotc would do as many are format warping already.

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