The Vintage format lives on broken cards, and I see no reason why there shouldn't be broken cards that benefit my particular deck of choice to an inordinate degree. I mean, that's only fair.
From a practical standpoint, needing to change your deck every year would be very annoying, unless you ran it as full proxy or something.
As always, whenever someone proposes a new format, I say the same thing: if you want to start something, then do it yourself. Get a playtest group and make some decks and jam some games. Then if it ends up being good, start running tournaments.
You're not going to convert people with just a forum post, you have to build a (small) community first.
All of the above, really. Arcanist is excellent in the blue mirrors, and great against survival to flash back your bolts and plows.
Goblin Engineer plays nice with the grixis tinker strategy. Might be worth a shot.
@jimtosetti said in Tiny Forgebots:
I think it would be better if they just decided not to print this card. There is no point of going into the technical discussion of balance or qualitative values for the format because they are obviously moving away from these things.
too bad, it's getting printed whether you like it or not!
@megantic said in Should all Vintage be 100% proxy?:
If the goal was to increase access to vintage and attendance, why not allow the latest batch of counterfeit cards, appropriately marked, to be used as in local non-sanctioned tournament play? I guess we can either keep our memberships to the exclusive vintage country club or open the course to the masses. Any vintage deck would be available for less than $200 USD, which last time I checked was about the same amount of money as my putter. Proxies can make the board annoyingly confusing- is that a mox jet or mox ruby? is that an underground sea or a volcanic- oh wait, it was a fetchland? I see a easy way to open the format, the cards are distinguishable, and actually makes play easier. Solves the proxy issues Brassman pointed out- legibility and damage, as well as the video coverage, and COST all in one fell swoop.
we shouldn't support counterfeiters. just make nice proxies instead.
legibility isn't just a proxy thing either for what it's worth, I can't tell the difference between most of the expedition lands.
I think Arcanist is more like the red Bob, but whatever.
@protoaddict said in Should all Vintage be 100% proxy?:
The format for Magic is a concession to the fact that they did not know what they were doing with card designs at the onset of the game. Banned and restricted lists were pieced together to give the format some structure to make it possible, but it is still a format of overpowered cards from the dawn of the game that will not be reprinted, in part created to placate card speculators so that there reserve list cards held value. I think I can reasonably say that if the lotus and moxen were not legal in any format they would drop in price as they would be relegated to collectors items.
Look at the eternal formats for any CCG that has lasted the test of time. Either the stuff from the early sets were vastly underpowered and therefor a non issue for players wishing to join the format, typically games that learned from Magics mis-steps, or they are in the same situation where the barrier to entry is much higher.
Elite players tend not to like to think of themselves as breathing rarefied air, same as how millionaires like to think they are "of the people", but the very fact that you are posting on this forum does in fact carry with it some level of elitism because you play a format of magic with a super high barrier to entry and a staunched, somewhat clique based community.
I'll equate this tread to a current political discussion.
usually this is a bad move
yes, removing the reserve list would remove a large barrier to entry into vintage (not all of them), but it wouldn't be a silver bullet for growing the format*. however, we don't have power to remove the reserve list. we do have the power to run proxy events.
*decks would still be expensive unless wotc decided to print virtually unlimited amounts of power and duals and all the other expensive cards.
@moorebrother1 said in Should all Vintage be 100% proxy?:
@craw_advantage The prospect of only having 2 or 3 paper events is the reality of Vintage right now. The interesting thing is that Old School has several well attended paper events without proxies.
I can barely keep up with the number of Old School events and the attendance is typically more that 32. I picked that because it is the So Many Insane Plays cutoff.
Is this more of a card pool issue? Is it nostalgia? Why is that player base able to sustain more events, at least for now, for paper events?
Old School events have great turnout because they are fun, and very different from sanctioned magic tournaments. They're usually in a venue that serves drinks, and they're run by community members who do a lot of work to make sure everyone has a good time. That sort of event doesn't exist for Vintage at the moment.
I totally agree that vintage events should be allow proxies. All of the events that I have run allowed proxies. But if you want to get new blood in, you have to convince them that it's worth their time to build a deck (or borrow one) and show up.