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Regarding the changes concerning IE, CE, glod-bordered cards

Started by carte_blanche, 15-10-2015, 02:03:32 PM

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carte_blanche

Ave!

I have been wondering why nobody commented on the changes about the legality of CE, IE and gold-bordered cards on tournaments. First, I thought I am the only person who is concerned about the changes but talking to some friends, I learned that I am not.

I understand that (currently) the decision to allow IE,CE, gold-bordered cards on tournaments is entirely up to the TO. Giving the TOs a little more freedom... no complaints about that. What I am actually concerned about is the direction this change is possibly leading to: all HL tournaments will be sanctioned. So this discussion is quite on the theoretical side at the moment.

Let me start with the hypothetical worst case scenario: At some point in the future IE, CE, gold-bordered cards will be banned from the format entirely or they will not be allowed on the big HL tournaments.

For me personally that would indicate that I will no longer be able to play on the big tournaments... which were one main driving force to play this wonderful format. I just cannot afford to buy duals for the current prices. Why should anybody care? - Because I think that more players would face this problem. We already have a high price tag to enter the format - with allowing IE, CE, gold-bordered cards, we lower it at least to some amount.

Why is the price tag relevant? I assume here that lower 'entrance fee' => easier to attract new players who do not already possess the a fetch / dual manabase because they are playing e.g. Legacy. This leads directly to why we should be interested in recruiting new players from non-eternal formats (modern =/= eternal :P ;) )? One could argue with sanctioning HL tournaments we may attact more Legacy and Vintage players... they are fully equipped for HL already! - I think that the gain from this group of players is not very high. They could enter the format already if they wanted. Will they be attracted to prefer HL over Legacy / Vintage just because HL tournaments are sanctioned? I don't believe they will. They could just continue playing the formats they know well and which offer (in case of Legacy) larger tournaments.

The bottom line of the last paragraph is: We have to recruit players who do not have a Legacy / Vintage background and who would have to invest heavily to enter the HL format. Two reasons: 1. This group of players is larger (Hello captain obvious!). 2. These players are younger on average.

Especially the latter point is important for the development of the HL format in my opinion. From my personal experience the HL community consists mainly of ppl who are 25+. These will sooner or later drop out of the active community for various reasons (job, family, move to another place,...). If we do not succeed to 'replace' them with young players, the format will dwindle away. -> This is exactly opposite of what the council had in mind whith introducing these changes!

I suppose that the council was well aware of all this and I guess they had a long discussion about it. Currently, the complete line of thoughts above is rather hypothetical but as I said... I'm more concerned about the future implications if we push further into the direction of sanctioning HL. Perhaps I'm just too pessimistic. :) I can hardly argue against trying out if the community grows if we give the TOs the opportunity to decide whether a tournament will be sanctioned. Real life experiments and not just gedankenexperiments!

I'm interested in your thoughts on this issue - let's hear (read) them!

Tiggupiru

In Finland TOs have practically never allowed those in tournaments. Considering how robust the player base is, taking account how small the scene is in comparison, I don't think not allowing them will kill the format. The real question is how much do the positive aspects of this change matter. That remains to be seen. I would even argue that it is beneficial to the format in the long run if TOs will try sanctioning these every once in a while. After all that is the only real data we can get from this.

That being said, bring these considerations to the local TO. They have every reason to keep their tournaments as large as possible. If your local play group has lots of IE & CE cards, they will not do it. If they go ahead and try, but the tournament size takes a hit, they will revert back.

The change is there to bring us closer to DCI official rules and being able to sanction this would make a world of difference. All of a sudden we go from being small kind of wacky format for being able to play it for your FNM. This change is massive and should not be downplayed. In Finland this is nothing but a positive change, but like I said, we never allowed those cards in the first place so this is obviously not comparable.

MMD

I also think the way to get closer to official DCI rule is an upgrade to the format as Highlander will get more recognition and acceptance in general and feeds more player interest in the end.

Also the price barrier difference is not that big any more as some players might think. When we speak about gold bordered cards we speak about the dual land base, isnĀ“t it? Have you checked IE/CE prices for duals lately?

I would better invest another 60 bucks for a blue dual or 15 bucks for a non-blue in order to buy a "real card" instead of a nice proxy.

Selling Revised duals later in a short period of time without losing money is also another advantage. I can imagine that selling gold bordered duals (especially with corners cut) could be a nightmare.

I am not a professional trader but I would estimate that most of them better invest in real dual lands because the demand is much higher.
Feel free to browse through my MKM account:

http://www.magickartenmarkt.de/index.php?mainPage=showSellerChart&idInfoUser=13199

I also have a huge amount of chinese and japanese foil HL staples not listed yet,  which I would like to downgrade to english foil. Just let me know!

pyyhttu

Quote from: carte_blancheI'm more concerned about the future implications if we
push further into the direction of sanctioning HL

Sanctioning a tournament for a Tournament Organizer, who is most often also
the shopkeeper, is completely voluntary, and the ruling Council made just
emphasizes that. However, there are several perks for the affiliated Wizards
Play Network (WPN) retailer to sanction their tournaments, be it just "Casual
non-rated constructed" as it would be for HL.

And no-one should take my word for granted as haven't worked as a shopkeeper,
tournament organizer or even as an employee in a shop, but I can quote certain
people who have, and know how the system works.

E.g. here a nice summarization a few years back from a user so_not who knows the system inside out:
http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?topic=356.msg3328#msg3328

Dalibor

I have always been a supporter of the gold bordered cards in this format, since it allowed more players to play this format here in Slovakia. The cheater-factor or something like that never came to my mind in HL format. HL players play it because of the fun this format offers, not the prices...

That being said I myself use them even when I have also normal ones. I can keep eg. my legacy decks intact this way.

That's my 2 cents. You can disagree of course...

ChristophO


At the moment I am wrting this the cheapest Underground Sea on MKM is ~150 Euros while the cheapest gold-bordered one is ~90 Euros. While you can safe some money you still have to spend a LOT just for a proxy. Selling of a real U Sea will also be a lot easier in the future. The big upside of the gold cards is for the people who already own them and did not have to buy them for such ridicolous prices. I personally think that the  big cost of entering the formatr and especially the extremely expensive manabase for highlander decks is the biggest issue the format is facing now and the last couple of years. Including 7 to 10 fetchalnds and a bunch of duals gets really expensive really fast.

I think if manabases would be more budget people could enter the format easier and then spend money on "cool" cards like planeswalkers and midrange creatures.The current mana bases also makes building more than one deck quite daunting (but this problem is shared by almost every MTG format). If I were to start "a" Highlander deck format from scratch today with no competition around I would exclude Duals and fecthlands to make mana bases more interesting and cheaper. The big problem is that this would severly weaken mana bases and players of the current format would most likely hate such a ruleset. It also would leave two color decks with a lack of "worthy" duals that can be played. There arent that many different sorts of dual lands even after more then 20 years.

I also thought about having two Highlander formats - lets call them Eternal HL (like ours) and a "modern" variant starting with ~Invasion where Fetchlands would be banned. I think that format would have no card with a value above 100 Euros other than Goyf and only very few above the 50 Euro range (Liliana of the Veil, Jace tMs). That format would be a lot cheaper but I dont think there are enough players around to have both formats. The banned list would be really nice and short though:
Fetchlands * 10
Jitte
Skullclamp
Birthing Pod
Stoneforge Mystic
Gifts Ungiven   
Entomb