Open letter to Mark Rosewater - Reprint Policy

[Atlatl]

Dear Mark Rosewater,

I am an avid Magic: The Gathering player. I participate in FNM events, go to Prereleases, and I try my hand at States, Regionals, and PTQ's from time to time. This is all good, and I appreciate the time, energy, and creativity that everyone at Wizards of the Coast puts into their product development and events. I am quite impressed with many of the changes that have taken place in the game over the past decade, while being wary of a few of your policies.

As you can probably imagine, having played Magic since Unlimited, I possess quite a card collection. I have had various "power cards" from days of yore: a partial set of Moxen, Drains, Workshops, and playsets of most of the other halfway decent cards that are useful in Vintage. Vintage, my first and greatest love. Vintage, the format that has so much potential, yet is passed over and ignored time after time. Vintage, the format that I would love to see more of, but has such a limited playerbase that it is nearly impossible to find another player, and completely devoid of events unless I want to fly 3000 miles to an event hosted by Star City Games or The Mana Drain.

How did this come about? Why has WOTC utterly abandoned its most venerable format? Why, with all of the support and the huge playerbase that Magic has, does WOTC choose to leave support of Vintage to a fansite or two, and a handful of remote card shops that most players have no access to?

One step in the right direction would be reprinting certain key cards for the Vintage environment. It could range anywhere from a few cards to a whole set:

Dual Lands
Moxen/Lotus
Ancestral Recall
Mana Drain
Time Walk/Twister
Balance
Necropotence
Swords to Plowshares
Strip Mine
Force of Will
Demonic Tutor
Mind Twist

All examples of the backbone of Vintage. Cards that, without having a playset, you are completely unable to compete in Vintage. Cards that are stated "never to be reprinted" according to a company that, even with all its creativity and good intentions, is first and foremost concerned with the bottom line. Not reprinting these cards does nothing except encourage increasing prices on integral pieces of a format, with such wide options that only the cream rises to the top. Why, when you have broken your own Reserve List policy more than once, do you encourage the secondary market so? As cards get damaged, wear out, or are forgotten about, the Vintage playerbase shrinks. As Vintage fades away, card collections grow and gather dust, and our favorite format becomes a twinkle in someone's eye.

Why let it happen? Obviously you have reprinted reserved cards with our newest sets, and are more than willing to revisit the nostalgia we feel from the early days, so why not make another release of these cards somehow? Your company will make money, counterfeits will all but disappear, and a format that has such potential for growth as Vintage will have new life breathed into it. Currently, I feel like I am wasting my time playing Vintage - every card shop or event location that hosted Type 1 games here in the past has either closed, or moved on to Extended or Standard, and I am left with remnants of a format that I feel like Wizards has thrown in the towel on. Many quote power level concerns - the format is far from broken, as I'm sure any of your employees that frequent a certain Vintage fansite know; it is healthy and thriving in many places. For every broken deck there is a metagame shift, and every new set changes the format. It has enough options to entertain anyone. Don't abandon us in our hour of need.

Vintage players are the most nostalgic of all - and we won't let our secondary market collapse. Most of us will trade any amount of new cards or flat-out purchase old Alpha/Beta/Legends copies, and with a brand new set floating around to drum up some more players, I have no doubt that the market will continue to grow. More players mean a higher demand, and a higher demand means a healthier secondary market. Don't base your reprint policy off faulty economics - rather, look at the demand increase in cards like Psionic Blast, now that it has been reprinted.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I appreciate all the work that you put into the game - keep it up!

Brennon Adams
Phoenix, AZ

-  The "reprint policy", as is named, is the only thing standing between Wizards fully supporting every format that your game    provides, and letting the most open environment stagnate and fade away with time.




With Wizards' recent willingness to break their own rules, I have to wonder why the Reserved List is still being regarded at all. Reprints would solve many problems with format accessibility. I know that this has been suggested many times in the past, but it seems that, more and more, Wizards is loosening up on the refusals to reprint older cards. Perhaps one day, if we voice enough of a concern, they will listen. I urge you all to send a new round of emails/letters to Mark.

[Moxlotus]

Well, they would completely break all other formats.  And it would be a financial disaster to print cards that wouldn't be legal in those formats.  World Championship decks are a completely different animal.

Wizards would not want to tick off collectors who have spent lots of time and money investing into the COLLECTIBLE card game.

Vintage is available w/o reprints.  Its called proxies and its been very successful.

[yespuhyren]

I would HATE this.  If I spent my hard earned money on my cards, why should people get them dirt cheap AND drop the prices of my cards?  I'm not rich, and I don't have thousands of dollars to spend.  The money in my T1 deck came from saving up over years and selling all my cards before re-investing in T1.  I had originally started saving when I was 14 because I had wanted to buy Power and the like.  Thats saving for 3-4 YEARS before I got everything.  I'd hate to see that down the drain.

[Atlatl]

They would not need to reprint them in any sort of Standard setting, a new Collector's Edition would be fine. Or, premium cards released in a very limited setting - something like the FNM prize cards - they aren't legal for standard, but they are fully functional, nice looking reprints.

You think that the secondary market would be so negatively impacted by a new CE set that your values would drop exponentially? The real thing is 99.9% preferred to anything "fake". Essentially, all this would be is a printing of official proxy cards, perhaps with some alternate art or in premium versions.

[Moxlotus]

I would HATE this.  If I spent my hard earned money on my cards, why should people get them dirt cheap AND drop the prices of my cards?  I'm not rich, and I don't have thousands of dollars to spend.  The money in my T1 deck came from saving up over years and selling all my cards before re-investing in T1.  I had originally started saving when I was 14 because I had wanted to buy Power and the like.  Thats saving for 3-4 YEARS before I got everything.  I'd hate to see that down the drain.

To pre-empt any "but proxies do it too":

Proxies are not real cards.  People want to play with real cards.

"But people would like old cards--look at beta"

Look at Chronicles.

[Atlatl]

Chronicles was far from a Power Set Reprint - Fear the Serra Angel.

[Moxlotus]

Chronicles was far from a Power Set Reprint - Fear the Serra Angel.

The prices on older cards completely tanked.  I don't think too many people would be happy about their full power dropping 90% of its value

[Atlatl]

Which older cards were these that tanked, which weren't very quickly reprinted in 5th edition, and kept the low value for any extended period of time? It was made up of bad Legends cards. I'm not saying that there will be no impact on the secondary market, quite the contrary. I think the secondary market needs some of the air let out of its sail - the prices are going nowhere but up, and in an already extremely cost-prohibitive format this isn't a healthy change.

[Moxlotus]

Which older cards were these that tanked, which weren't in print in 4th edition, and kept the low value for any extended period of time? I'm not saying that there will be no impact on the secondary market, quite the contrary. I think the secondary market needs some of the air let out of its sail - the prices are going nowhere but up, and in an already extremely cost-prohibitive format this isn't a healthy change.

Elder Dragon Legends.  They were 50 bucks.  Dropped to 5 overnight.  Erhnam Djinn dropped a bunch too.

Why do you think the format is too expensive that it will hurt Vintage?  The cost is extremely high and Vintage is still very popular.  The prices have stagnated more or less over the past year.

[Atlatl]

I've seen quite the opposite in my area - every store that hosted Vintage events in the past have completely discarded the format. I have a hard time finding 2 opponents at a 40 person draft who play Vintage with any regularity. Given, I don't live in the Northeastern US, but an expansive, growing T1 environment is not something I see.

Those who play will continue to play until they get bored. Those who quit probably won't get rid of their power, they will hang onto it in case they rejoin in the future. This shrinks the cardpool of an already limited stock in addition to normal wear and tear damage, and a perpetually shrinking pool leads to less and less players.

In a very limited cardpool, Elder Dragon Legends go for $50, but I think they would have quite a hard time breaking that barrier nowadays. I see your point with the depreciation of prices, but we are not talking about "neat" big creatures anymore - we are talking about the prerequisites to playing Vintage, at all.

[Moxlotus]

I've seen quite the opposite in my area - every store that hosted Vintage events in the past have completely discarded the format. I have a hard time finding 2 opponents at a 40 person draft who play Vintage with any regularity. Given, I don't live in the Northeastern US, but an expansive, growing T1 environment is not something I see.

Those who play will continue to play until they get bored. Those who quit probably won't get rid of their power, they will hang onto it in case they rejoin in the future. This shrinks the cardpool of an already limited stock in addition to normal wear and tear damage, and a perpetually shrinking pool leads to less and less players.

So what is the advantage of reprints over proxies?  I've elaborated on why reprints are bad and how proxies are a great alternative.  You have not given an argument on why reprints>proxies.

[Atlatl]

Because proxies are only tools for those who are interested in the format enough to purchase a large amount of high dollar cards to begin with. I've never seen a "full proxy" tourney; I've seen 5 or 10 proxy matches. An official release from WOTC that reprints the building blocks of every T1 deck would breathe new life into the format, as many, many people would buy them just to play with a Black Lotus that looks like a Black Lotus.

[Moxlotus]

Because proxies are only tools for those who are interested in the format enough to purchase a large amount of high dollar cards to begin with. I've never seen a "full proxy" tourney; I've seen 5 or 10 proxy matches. An official release from WOTC that reprints the building blocks of every T1 deck would breathe new life into the format, as many, many people would buy them just to play with a Black Lotus that looks like a Black Lotus.

Ohio runs full proxy tournaments.  Convince a TO to run full proxy tournaments.  Those "high dolalr cards" aren't more expensive than in Type 2 right now.  Their duals are almost on par.  Lots of cards are 10-20 like the vintage staples.  Plus, there's Ichorid that needs only 4 proxies.

[zulander]

Interesting letter, and many props for actually doing it instead of complaining on a message board. I and many others would love to hear how Maro responds and would appreciate it if you were to post it in the original thread at the bottom- that is if he responds at all.

To be honest I'd love for them to reprint the cards, but I believe that too many people who spent a lot of time and energy would not be too happy. I think reprinting them now would be 7 years too late.

I would love for them to at least print official proxies, no text on the card at all other than the name, I believe that the availability of these proxies would spark the intrest needed for vintage without actually hurting any of the real cards' values. Just my 0.02.

[Atlatl]

I would love to convince someone to run a full proxy T1 tourney. Unfortunately, I can't convince anyone to run a single T1 tourney in every card shop I've visited in the Phoenix Metro area - and we have a huge MTG playerbase. Unfortunately, nobody here likes T1 - too expensive, might as well play T2, blah blah blah. The closest I can find is a Legacy tourney once every month or two. Vintage needs some love.

[Moxlotus]

I would love to convince someone to run a full proxy T1 tourney. Unfortunately, I can't convince anyone to run a single T1 tourney in every card shop I've visited in the Phoenix Metro area - and we have a huge MTG playerbase. Unfortunately, nobody here likes T1 - too expensive, might as well play T2, blah blah blah. The closest I can find is a Legacy tourney once every month or two. Vintage needs some love.

If the players don't want to play a format and would rather play something else, not much can change that.  Some areas just like Standard or draft and refuse to play anything else.  Other areas like extended and don't play much standard at all.

EDIT:  I honestly think that reprints of power would completely destroy the Vintage secondary market and ultimately destroy many vintage areas.  I see reprints bringing little benefit to Vintage as a whole in addition to pissing off a lot of shops that carry vintage staples.

[dandan]

"Obviously you have reprinted reserved cards with our newest sets"

I don't think this is true. They have reprinted a few uncommons that weren't on the reserved list and remade several old cards in much weaker form.

Note that Wizards have just reprinted Yawgmoth Will as a Judges foil and that such reprints are allowed under the Reserved Policy. Wizards could print a Vintage set in foil and sell it for a small fortune if they wished.

The Reserved List is not the problem. The problem is that you don't understand Wizards. They don't want to reprint power cards but ahead of any financial concerns (and there are financial concerns, although Wizards could get around those fairly to a certain extent as any Power cards using the new card layout would soon have a lower value than 'proper' cards), Wizards don't want to reprint these cards because they are fuck-ups. Vintage uses many cards that should never have been printed. Reprinting a Sol Ring hardly helps the cause, as the next 3cc artifact that generates 2 mana gets looked down on as overcosted rather than properly costed.

I think it is far more likely that Wizards will print (more) blank cards, as an 'unofficial' sanctioning of proxies than reprint power cards in sufficient quantities to make a difference. (A foil tournament legal Black Lotus would be a pretty good prize if Wizards want to attract players to the Vintage World Championships though)

[herbig]

If there are no Vintage tournaments in your area, hold your own.  You don't have to "convince" a card store to hold them for you, just pay a share to the store and they will be glad to lend the space.  You can't really say it won't work unless you try.

If weekly tournaments are something you're looking for, thats a really tough thing for any format.  In Syracuse, there is usually about 10 people for any given event.  When I stopped by Neutral Ground in NYC the week of New Years, there were 4 teams for a two headed giant sealed deck tournament.  The big events are really what get people excited, set one up!

Printing official proxies would be the sanctioning of fake cards in Magic, something Wizards simply cannot do.

Printing them in legal form would cause their value to drop considerably, but depending on availability, would probably still be out of reach of the average player.  Buying a $50 mox is still impossible when you need five of them.

Printing too many would be the same thing as printing proxies.

The whole thing is a dumb idea.

[Vegeta2711]

I stopped right around "WOTC doesn't care about Vintage."

This thread has probably covered most of the arguments on both sides of the topic: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=24387.0

[Godder]

Reprint/Proxy discussions are banned unless the new topic has something new to add to the debate. While there have been cards printed recently that are close to functional reprints, the discussion here has now reached a point where nothing new is being added to the discussion, nor is it likely to be.

Locked.