7 ms·

WoC did not beat speculation, it sustained growth with a powerful dose of American patriotism. Allow me to explain. Their business model is the same as telcos,

WoC did not beat speculation, it sustained growth with a powerful dose of American patriotism. Allow me to explain. Their business model is the same as telcos, software, movies, mosanto, etc. It is called artificial scarcity, in other words, find a legal (in the case of MtG a moral) way to control distribution of a product or service that is otherwise naturally abundant. Bare with me. I was there in the 90's and Kinkos would print a very decent set of 6 The Black Lotuses (or Lotusi?) for a buck and change. Go home, cut them nice, dress them with a sleve and go play with your proxy. Artificial scarcity has this big problem (or natural cure): piracy. So proxy playing went well for a few months b/c it did not matter, what mattered was playing such a badass game! But suddenly patriotism kicked in: "dude, I wont duel if you play proxies, that's not right, blah, blah, blah". Proxies died eventually, they where going to be the PopCornTime of MtG, the Napster. Me and a couple of playmates decided otherwise, we thought MtG needed to be open-source. We created a small set and played it along MtG cards. Nothing fancy since we sucked at drawing but fun still. At the time we knew of other players doing something similar (do remember that MtG is rooted on D&D where players make 'everything'). We gave in eventually. (Btw, I am from SA so the theme on my custom cards was Inca mythology). Another proxy attack came online: the first online apps to play MtG where NOT official MtG apps. Those too died eventually b/c, you know, official online digital cards where also collectible and artificially scarce. I sold my first two collections, the third one is sitting there on a closet waiting for my kid to grow up and waiting for a home-use cardboard color printer (or maybe an online service that prints and ships proxies or custom cards). In the open sharing economy, every day there is less space for artificial scarcity business models, MtG will not escape this reality, twice.

bigger_cheese 12y ago
As someone who occasionally plays Vintage and pretty regularly plays Legacy (two of the formats which allow use of 'any' cards printed including many of the more expensive cards in mtg's history). I dislike playing against proxies because it warps the metagame. Some cards are so prohibitively expensive that building decks around them (in a non-proxied tournament) is simply not feesible. Even if the expensive cards are objectively better (which is arguable in legacy's case) they are 'priced out of the market' so you rarely see them in tournamnets this is stuff like (Tabernacle, imperial recruiter, candelabra, grim tutor etc. in legacy's case). Sure some people will throw down a small cars worth of cash to play with "the best cards" but they are outliers in any tournament once you allow proxies suddenly everyone has access to "the best cards" and suddenly an entire room of people are all playing the same deck. When I go to a tournament half of my enjoyment comes about because of the diversity of opponents you will face playing the same match round after round is not fun and thats what proxing leads to. A good compromise is to allow for a limited number of proxies typically 5-10 cards maximum this allows you to play with a fewcopies of cards you otherwise wouldn't have access to but stops people going online to find the best deck and proxying 100% of it (decks are typically 60 cards).
- apocolyps6 12y ago
  you are completely missing the beauty of the Legacy format. Cards like Tabernacle, Imperial Recruiter, candelabra, Grim Tutor are not objectively more powerful than commonly used alternatives. These are role players in a couple of decks and while some of these decks are quite good, none of these decks are particularly dominant. The metagame would not collapse in on itself if the guys that spend $10K+ on foiled out decks and beta duals just decided to buy rare expensive staples instead. If there was a way to pay money to have an unfair advantage in tournaments there is no way in hell the people who basically do it for a living wouldn't be doing it. I play almost exclusively Legacy and almost exclusively with people who have either no qualms with proxying or large disposable incomes. My local meta is extremely varied. We have unsanctioned tournaments with large prize payouts so people are very much incentivized to play the best deck possible. Proxying allows the people with less disposable income to have options outside of the typical 3-5 tier 2 budget decks.
  - bigger_cheese 12y ago
    I said they were arguably better not definitively better. Legacy is not so bad and you get a pretty diverse set of decks (that's why I like playing legacy - Hell I've played Goblins for something like 9 years and its still competitive) but in vintage it's a huge issue. Our store has vintage events with proxies sometimes and it's always proxied mana drains, proxy ancestral recall, proxy timewalk, proxy moxes and lotus, there will be 20 of the same Grixis control deck. The deck won once and then next week every single person copied the wining deck from previous week there is zero innovation and proxies just discourage that further. I really want to play with Gush but I don't want to sit through multiple rounds against the same deck over and over again which I know will happen.
    - apocolyps6 12y ago
      To some extent, this is how the vintage format is intended to be played. The format is all about being able to play with your power and other "broken cards". The fact that each deck starts of with 3-5 pieces of power is kind of a given. That being said, I think that is more of a problem with your local meta. For example mana drain has been on the decline because it is a slowish and hard to cast card (relative to the format) so it is relegated to ~3of in hard control decks, if that. Actually, UR delver and monastery mentor strategies as well as Fish decks are very popular in vintage ATM. These decks deviate significantly from "play all the best cards Grixis control" lists. I myself play White Trash because my meta happens to be very weak to turn 1 uncounterable Thalias, and I can play between 0 and 2 pieces of power

bigger_cheese 12y ago

As someone who occasionally plays Vintage and pretty regularly plays Legacy (two of the formats which allow use of 'any' cards printed including many of the more expensive cards in mtg's history). I dislike playing against proxies because it warps the metagame. Some cards are so prohibitively expensive that building decks around them (in a non-proxied tournament) is simply not feesible. Even if the expensive cards are objectively better (which is arguable in legacy's case) they are 'priced out of the market' so you rarely see them in tournamnets this is stuff like (Tabernacle, imperial recruiter, candelabra, grim tutor etc. in legacy's case). Sure some people will throw down a small cars worth of cash to play with "the best cards" but they are outliers in any tournament once you allow proxies suddenly everyone has access to "the best cards" and suddenly an entire room of people are all playing the same deck. When I go to a tournament half of my enjoyment comes about because of the diversity of opponents you will face playing the same match round after round is not fun and thats what proxing leads to. A good compromise is to allow for a limited number of proxies typically 5-10 cards maximum this allows you to play with a fewcopies of cards you otherwise wouldn't have access to but stops people going online to find the best deck and proxying 100% of it (decks are typically 60 cards).

apocolyps6 12y ago
you are completely missing the beauty of the Legacy format. Cards like Tabernacle, Imperial Recruiter, candelabra, Grim Tutor are not objectively more powerful than commonly used alternatives. These are role players in a couple of decks and while some of these decks are quite good, none of these decks are particularly dominant. The metagame would not collapse in on itself if the guys that spend $10K+ on foiled out decks and beta duals just decided to buy rare expensive staples instead. If there was a way to pay money to have an unfair advantage in tournaments there is no way in hell the people who basically do it for a living wouldn't be doing it. I play almost exclusively Legacy and almost exclusively with people who have either no qualms with proxying or large disposable incomes. My local meta is extremely varied. We have unsanctioned tournaments with large prize payouts so people are very much incentivized to play the best deck possible. Proxying allows the people with less disposable income to have options outside of the typical 3-5 tier 2 budget decks.
- bigger_cheese 12y ago
  I said they were arguably better not definitively better. Legacy is not so bad and you get a pretty diverse set of decks (that's why I like playing legacy - Hell I've played Goblins for something like 9 years and its still competitive) but in vintage it's a huge issue. Our store has vintage events with proxies sometimes and it's always proxied mana drains, proxy ancestral recall, proxy timewalk, proxy moxes and lotus, there will be 20 of the same Grixis control deck. The deck won once and then next week every single person copied the wining deck from previous week there is zero innovation and proxies just discourage that further. I really want to play with Gush but I don't want to sit through multiple rounds against the same deck over and over again which I know will happen.
  - apocolyps6 12y ago
    To some extent, this is how the vintage format is intended to be played. The format is all about being able to play with your power and other "broken cards". The fact that each deck starts of with 3-5 pieces of power is kind of a given. That being said, I think that is more of a problem with your local meta. For example mana drain has been on the decline because it is a slowish and hard to cast card (relative to the format) so it is relegated to ~3of in hard control decks, if that. Actually, UR delver and monastery mentor strategies as well as Fish decks are very popular in vintage ATM. These decks deviate significantly from "play all the best cards Grixis control" lists. I myself play White Trash because my meta happens to be very weak to turn 1 uncounterable Thalias, and I can play between 0 and 2 pieces of power