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Views and Brews #3: Reserved List Matters

It’s Friday night and you’ve been waiting all week to get to your local game store. Last weekend your favorite Magic the Gathering player, Brad Nelson, won the Star City Games Invitational tournament with a Naya CONTROL deck. Really, a control deck, in your favorite colors, kicked those blue decks in the junk and took their lunch money. Awesome! You’ve poured over the list, and even though you have most of the stuff, there’s still a couple of the pricier cards that you haven’t been lucky enough to trade for or open in a draft.

But all is not lost, little gamer. Deep in the back of your trade binder you have hope; last year, you managed to trade for an honest-to-goodness dual land! Sure it was only a Revised [card]Badlands[/card], but you gave up a lot to get it, and it sat there, at the back of your binder, in the “Only Trade in Dire Circumstances” slot. You had a friend offer you two [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card] for it last season, but you stood strong and resisted the temptation. Now, acquiring [card]Elspeth, Champion of the Sun[/card] and [/card]Stormbreath Dragon[/card] and [card]Xenagos, the Reveler[/card] is all that stands between you and the righteous glory of a FNM champion.

“Can I help you?” Mark, the store owner and tournament organizer asks as you walk to the glass case. You have your binder in front of you and you turn it to the back carefully. There is your Badlands, in the center of the page, the only card on the page, still stuffed in a Perfect Fit sleeve (the only card in the binder that warrants such protection).

“I wanted to trade this,” you say, pulling the card out with the same delicacy a doctor would use delivering a newborn babe, “For Elspeth and a Stormbreath Dragon.”

Mark looks at the card and frowns. He picks it up, a little to callously in your opinion, and looks at both sides. He sets it back down. “Sorry, I can’t do that.”

Okay, you thought this might have happened. I mean, it is a Badlands, one of the worse duals, and Mark, while he is an awesome store owner, still has to make a little off the trade. “How about a Dragon and Xenagos?”

Mark shakes his head. “Did you see the announcement on Daily MTG today?” he asks.

You shake your head; You didn’t have time to check anything today.

“Wizards made a huge announcement today. Modern Masters was such a hit that they’ve decided to release a new set this summer—Legacy Masters. All of the dual lands will be reprinted. I’ve had people in and out of here all day trying to sell their Legacy cards before they tank.”

“I thought… I thought they were on a Reserved List?”

What is the Reserved List?

For the uninitiated, the Reserved List is part of Wizard’s of the Coast’s Official Reprint Policy. It states that “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,” (http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=magic/products/reprintpolicy).

For a while, Wizards used a “foil loophole”; They reprinted cards from the reserved list in premium foil form, believing that this evaded the reprint policy. However, even this loophole was eventually closed (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/other/031810a).

Why did Wizards issue the Reserved List to start with? In “Reexamining Reprints, ” Randy Buehler stated, “The Reprint Policy was devised and announced in the wake of a fairly big mistake: Chronicles. In Chronicles and Fourth Edition, Wizards of the Coast reprinted quite a few cards from the first few Magic expansions that had fairly high prices in the secondary card market. The original versions of cards… plummeted in value when these cards were reprinted.” (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/rb9).

Just two months ago Mark Rosewater reiterated, “Over the years, the Reserved List has remained a contentious issue, with players constantly calling for its abolishment but Wizards of the Coast saying it’s going to honor its promise and has vowed to retain it,” (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/259).

The Chronicles fiasco may actually be the closest Wizards/MaRo/Zac Hill/Gleemax/Hasbro ever came to really and truly killing the game.

Imagine that you’re a store owner or internet seller and you wake up to find that the value of your Magic collection has dropped by 70% overnight with the announcement of a major reprinting. Sure, as a player you may be overjoyed—you can actually run Legacy tournaments!—but, as someone whose livelihood is directly related to the secondary market and the movement of card prices, you’re going to feel like grabbing a pitchfork and driving to Renton with the intent of pulling a building down with fire and blood.

Chronicles collectively raised the blood pressure of the Magic community at least 10 points. In light of this, Wizards took the nuclear option and blasted the concept of reprinting expensive cards from orbit, just to be sure collectors wouldn’t abandon the game in its infancy. You can say that this was a bad idea, but Magic just turned 20 this year, and this promise may be one of the things that got us to this milestone.

Why Should Wizards Abolish the Reserved List?

From a player’s perspective: to give life to Legacy and Vintage. I know you Eternal-loving maniacs don’t want to hear this, but, as is, Legacy and Vintage are dead formats. Wizards doesn’t have the decency to give them a double tap to the brainpan, so we get to watch them bleed out from a gut shot instead. There just isn’t enough product to justify the formats as anything more than niche. As the game gets older, as more people enter the player base, and as the current product devolves into paper with the consistency of single-ply Charmin, it’s only going to get harder and harder to meet the needs of the players. Sure, you’ll always be able to build a Legacy deck, but if you don’t have access to the cards that make Legacy and Vintage Eternal formats (especially the dual lands), then why are you playing the format?

From a corporate perspective: $$$$$$$$$. Reprinting would be guaranteed money for Wizards as players would be interested in buying new versions of previously unobtainable cards.

Why Should Wizards Keep the Reserved List?

The easiest conclusion is the simplest: Wizards gave their word, and players made purchases and built collections contingent on their keeping that word. While there are a ton of players who would be over the moon with reprints, there are a lot that would also be extremely upset, and some would probably go so far as to disassociate themselves form the game. Some small stores or sellers may be financially ruined, and regardless of the expected outcome, some players (in a variety of countries and in any number of courts) would probably seek legal action.

Will Wizards Ever Break the Reserved List?

I can see only two scenarios where Wizards breaks the Reserved List promise: first, if the game is dying and they feel that they can inject life back into Magic by hooking it up to a Power 9 IV. This would be their weapon of last resort, and if this ever gets announced, I would feel very concerned for the future of the game.

The other scenario? Deep within the bowels of the Wizards of the Corporate Office there exists a lawyer (he of Heavy Meta repute) with a calculator for a heart and cold green cash for a blood stream. Every day he comes to work and runs seemingly endless computations. He calculates the expected revenue from a massive reprint and weighs it against the possibility of court costs and reparation payouts from a lawsuit (whether one would actually succeed or not, it is a consideration that must be taken into account). Thus far, every day his final result has been displayed in bright red. But… should the day ever arise when that final number shows up black…

That’s the day things get interesting.

Ok, But What Is Your Personal Opinion?

For the longest time I was firmly in the “burn the Reserved List to the ground and piss on the ashes” camp. I believed that Magic is a game, and as such the integrity of the game came first and that the Reserved List was a hindrance to the growth of the game.

But, looking back, I’ve come to disagree with that. The Reserved List may be a hindrance to Legacy and Vintage, but Magic is so much bigger than those formats now.

One of MaRo’s oft repeated mantras is that, “Restriction breeds creativity.” If we didn’t have the reserved list, would we have Commander? We most assuredly wouldn’t have Modern (my favorite format). By trying to satiate the longing for the chance to play with our favorite cards once they’ve rotated, it’s possible that Wizards and players have had to adapt to find a way to continue playing with the cards they love.

In addition, it is also possible that the allure of a format where cost is a significantly prohibitive barrier to entry has helped grow the game. There are some people that see a format that is represented by expensive cards and restricted player bases as “legitimizing” the game. They see these high dollar formats with the gold bricks in cardboard form and think, “Now there’s a format I can play away from the rabble. Pip, pip, good sirs! Let’s sleeve up some [card]Wasteland[/card]s and show these ruffians what for!”

Likewise, there are some that look at Legacy or Vintage like Indiana Jones looks at dilapidated ruins. To them, it’s all about the pursuit. They want to take the time to trade for the cards that they can’t afford to outright purchase (or choose not to). Just because there are some ridiculously priced or hard-to-find cards makes the game worthwhile to them. I mean, how many “Pack to Power” articles do you need to read to realize that there’s a large portion of the Magic community that wants a nigh-unobtainable prize that requires some work?

Abolishing the Reserved List, even a little, could change the health of the game in very dramatic ways.

But in the end it may just be that I’m old enough and “get the hell off my damn lawn!” enough to appreciate a company that makes a promise and sticks by it. In this regard, I feel safe giving stores my money (since Wizards doesn’t really profit from the sale/transfer of eternal cards) to continue playing the game. Breaking the Reserved List wouldn’t make me leave the game. But, it would make me look at the game differently. That may not be a bad thing, but it may not be all that good either.

If you like my suggestions, you can follow me on Twitter: @travishall456. I throw around random observations and deck ideas every day. You can also hear me on the Horde of Notions podcast each week, discussing deck ideas for FNM level events and the PTQ grinders.

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