This article has been created to help people out with those burning questions that you may have wondered in the deepest, darkest part of your mind, and never could discover the answer too. Let’s see what type of questions were sent in to be answered…

Why is Wizards so strict about their copyright information lately?

Answer:

Well Zangy, this is an interesting question. Before I answer your question, let me tell you a story about a lesson I learned back in Economics class during my high school days. It’s the law of supply and demand. It basically goes something like this..

As supply increases, demand goes down. Inversely, as demand increases, supply decreases. This is what drives the price, in theory, of items.

So having said that, when people go out, and copy cards, and neatly adhere them to basic lands, they in effect decrease the demand of the cards, which should increase the supply. Since you didn’t buy the card, those cards are still sitting in the packs, which should make the price of the cards come down.

This also leads me to what bothers me about this world we call home. How the heck do you increase the price on things that are not selling? If you’re trying to sell me a Ford truck for $20,000, and I am not buying it, how the heck do you expect me to buy it when you then increase that same truck to $22,000? You can tell me all day about how you’re trying to cover lost money in the purchase of a later truck, but it still didn’t get me to go into debt to buy your stinking truck in the first place.

Wizards, riding that same bus as Ford, increases their price from around $3.50 to almost $4.00 a pack, while not increasing the quality of their cards, to cover money lost due to shipping and card creation costs. How about giving me a reason to buy your cards? Do something new and original, and perhaps you can interest me enough to buy your product. I’ll admit that Time Spiral intrigues me. It’s just too bad that oil companies are better at getting money from me than you are. Going back to the Law of Supply and Demand. I am in demand of gasoline to make it to work, and they are supplying me gasoline and a reason to barely have extra money for anything else.

So to come around the bend and back to your question Zangy; it is because they feel threatened. They feel that by making websites that are too intoned with their product, or making programs that could print proxies, or playing their game for free is essentially stealing from them. Legally, I think they have a valid point to this, but morally, I think they don’t have a leg to stand on. You don’t own my time, and you don’t own the money in my pocket. Just as much as I don’t believe that a singer owns the music that just left their mouth, I don’t believe that Wizards owns the imaginary cards that I created that utilize their game mechanics. They own the cards they print, and the website that they created, but as long as the people love their game, and continue making their own cards and playing fictionally created sets, I don’t believe Wizards has a leg to stand on morally.

Here's my question. How do people on the Pro Tour afford to live while being on the Pro Tour. I notice winnings aren't that much and the cost of travel must be horrendous in order to compete. I also imagine most Pros are coming from high population areas with a better card pool (although I guess eBay and a pocketbook can substitute for that), so that would even further add to the cost of living.

Answer:

Cashew, thank you for the question, let’s see if I can give you a satisfactory answer. I equate a Magic Pro Tour Player to a Pro Track and Field Athlete or a new Pro Texas Hold’em Poker Player. These people don’t really have a way to make money, outside of win the tournament or atleast place respectively. With hundreds and thousands of people trying to win each tournament, how can all of those people possibly make a living off of the Pro Tour?

Endorsements.

Jumping to the NBA for a quick second, do you think LeBron James cares about his NBA salary at all? He didn’t even sign a long term, max-out deal this past season. No, before LeBron ever laced up his sneakers for his first game, and before he ever signed his original NBA contract with the Cavaliers, and immediately after he graduated from high school, he signed on with Nike for more money than he could possible ever spend in his lifetime, and most likely in his children’s lifetimes.

Have you watched boxing or UFC lately? Perhaps even watching the lower level poker tournaments on TV? Those people all are wearing shirts or hats, or are in commercials where they are selling a name. The same thing is true with Pro Tour Players. The shirts they wear, the cards they play, all are things that and promoting someone.

As far as the part of your question about paying for the cost of their cards goes, their card sets have long since gone infinite. What does that mean? That means they don’t pay for cards anymore. Their card collection and their skill generate more cards. As a matter of fact, they most likely haven’t paid for cards in the last four or more years. I know this, because my set went infinite before I quit playing. I didn’t buy new cards from Odyssey through Mirrodin. That is not including drafts of course, but I still won a good percent of the drafts, so I earned more packs than I bought, so in reality, I didn’t spend the money, you bought my cards. Card sets go infinite when you have all the cards needed for competitive tournament play for say.. the Kami block. Now that the block is rotating out of Standard, you trade away all your Kami stuff and acquire the needed Time Spiral stuff. More than likely, you do this during the Pre-Release season, when Kami stuff still has some value.

Your winnings from the Rav-TS Standard tournaments will increase your collection, and once the next set comes out, you trade your extras and acquire all the needed cards for that next set before it is tournament legal. My teammate Patrick and I shared our set, and we always had all the top rares and uncommons before the set was tournament legal, and we never traded for them once those cards were at the top of their prices. As a matter of fact, we normally needed to get two playsets of all the best cards, to ensure we both could use them.

So they don’t pay for cards, so new cards are not a cost of living.

You next need to remember what I just said, “My teammate..” You need to be on a team. You are most likely not going to get better in your skill or in popularity until you’re on a winning team. As good a player as I was, I never got anywhere in my hobby until Patrick and I formed our team, the Outsiders, and started to recruit talent from our area and increased our winnings. So when I send four people into a tournament and where the total player count is 20 people, what are my chances to win? They are now 1 in 5. My chances of getting prizes increase and my chances of getting more bomb rares increase due to that. So once I start getting packs all the time, my chances of getting the rares that I can sell increase. That is how someone can make a living off of Magic. A meager living perhaps, but it is attainable. My friend ended up not only making a living, but also put himself through college and paid his rent off Magic.

Pros also get money from the stores that they represent to pay for plane flights and things like that. I know this because a.) it makes sense and b.) because our store made shirts for us to wear to a big tournament in Columbus, Ohio. We didn’t ask for them, and we had no idea he was doing it. He asked us if we were going to the big tournament, and after we told him that we were, he asked us to come to the shop before leaving. Upon arrival, we had two shirts with, “7th Inning Stretch” embroidered across the back, nicely done I might add. It was such a nice gesture, especially since he didn’t even have a shirt for himself either. Of course we lost our behinds in the tournament, and that ended that, but imagine what might have been next. Our teammate Tysene qualified for Nationals one year, and everyone around him was rallying to get the plane fare gathered together for him to go. Of course he decided not to go, which saved us the trouble, but it would have been nice to see him off.

So in the beginning it would be tough, but with a tight nit support group around you, its attainable.

Then of course, once you start making money, money makes money.

Why does magic set fairly stringent rules concerning card design; only to break them willingly at a later date?

Answer:

Thanks for the questions Luther, I will get at them one at a time.

Wizards makes tough rules for card design so that they have a place to start with. It’s all a point to begin with in the design process. They don’t really have anyone looking over their shoulder to make sure they do it correctly. So they set in place a set of rules, which I have never read, to govern their card design. Why do they break it? Why not? Why were rules made? So that they can be broken as some might tell you. Or for the simple fact, that there is no right or wrong. It is their game; they can make the cards how they want.

Here is what bugs me about the card design. How can you set a game into motion, and then decide, after you have a strong fan base, that certain things need to change about the game. You can’t let me play the game for five plus years with Blue having the awesome fliers then all the sudden… “That’s more a White thing.” Why? When? Who said that? Why all the sudden Blue can’t have Psionic Blast, and Red should have Char blows my mind. Oh, then nevermind; we will just re-preint Psi Blast a hundred years later as is. Disregard the previous notes we set forth.

I don’t know Luther. They are crazy I suppose.

Why are such creatures and Mummy and Cyclops so underused?

Answer:

Being that most of this game is based loosely upon the foundation set forth in the D&D realm of gaming, I would have to say that I never want to see a Mummy. As a matter of fact, I’d rather run into a Cyclops than a Mummy.

Getting to the point of the question; I don’t know Luther. I would guess that it is a storyline thing where these creature types are not very commonplace in stories. Off the top of my head, I can’t even think of how to fit a mummy into a story. How they possibly made two parts to The Mummy movie series, I have no idea. I wish they would have tied Scorpion King into the real storyline and not just made another half-hearted action movie for the Rock, but as I said.. how many Mummy concepts can you have?

As far as the Cyclops goes… what do you want? According to Greek Mythology, they were super powerful beings. What in Magic is going to stand up to a super powerful being?

I see where you are going with the question though. A lot of creature types have one or two cards and that is it. Laziness; not following through with old plans; stupid original ideas; or who even wants to play with a Mummy. There are countless reasons for these creature types to be very bland, and that is because… they are very bland creature types. Mummies don’t traditionally do anything to you if you don’t disturb them first. How many stories involve people heading off to the pyramids to screw with a Mummy or two? How many people take off in search of giant one-eyed beasts?

A real good example is the Evil Eye. They only made a second Eye because people told them (Wizards) that they were dumb for making a card that says only Eyes can attack. Yea, but there is only one! Mishra’s Factory can tap to pump up Assembly-Workers. Yea, but there is only one! So they make compliment cards ten years later. Chill out Luthervamplord, they are working on it alright?! They will have a freaking Mummy for you in ten years. Get in line! (Kidding of course)

Why did Wizards blur the line between Black and White so much? Both feature life gain and graveyard control or reanimation.

Answer:

Perhaps they were making it more life like. Take a look at your surroundings. How close is the line between lawful and illegal? How close is the limit between creating stem cell research for generating new limbs and creating a clone army to spread fear throughout the land?

If a doctor revives a good kid, is that a White ability? He returns life to the dead. If an evil scientist stitches together corpse body parts and brings it to life, is that a Black ability? He returns life to the dead. Black and White has been close ever since the beginning of time. A good example, look at the Dark set. Are you telling me that exorcisms and witch-hunts and crusades and the like are good and pure and are inherently a White ability? At least Black doesn’t walk around Persecuting people because of their beliefs.. Oops! Persecute is a Black spell. Hrmm…

Why was Ante originally involved in Magic? Did they intend people to gamble on games?

Answer:

Not only was it intended, but it was alive and doing quite well.

Remember, Ante cards reached all the way into the Ice Age block. It was not something removed at the end of Alpha. Ante was a big thing when I started playing. I remember a guy we used to call Ante Boy, because he would ONLY play you if it was for ante. Well, that is until Patrick and I showed up with Goblin Grenade decks and pipe bombed him and took his Juggernauts.

Heck yes we gambled on Magic. While I never saw people put cash on the games, I would not put it past us morons to do it. It was normally a random card from your deck that was wagered. You shuffled your deck, and both flip cards from the top of your library until a non-basic land appeared, and that was what you played for. Imagine Ante Boys surprise when he flipped his Juggernaut, and I flipped a Goblin Balloon Brigade.

Why WUBRG? Why specifically those five colors? Sure they make sense but that's because we are so used to them; would we have accepted anything else in their place?

Answer:

You already answered your question. They make sense. Would you have accepted anything else? Sure you would. You are all cattle. You’ll accept anything that anyone puts in front of your face and says is true. If I set a yellow card in front of you and told you this represents something yellow… like the sun. Oh yea, Sun Magic is cool!

Let me tell you a quick story. I heard this story from an 80-year-old Architect I used to work with. He was on a mission to teach me not to be a follower, not that I ever was, and he was going to teach me the right way.

He said that he took his wife to the movies and they went with a friend and his wife. Once the movie was over, they left the cinema. You all know that when you leave the theater, there are practically 20 doors to exit out of, yet how many of those doors ever get used? One. You all will walk out the same door that the first person opens. The only reason that the first guy opened that door is because there was none open to let him out in the first place. So as he scuffled along, trying to get out – wondering what the delay was, he was astounded to discover that he was in the middle of a cattle pack trying to force their way out of the theater through one door. So he got mad and walked clear over to the far door of the theatre, opened it and walked out. Of course his wife was embarrassed and yelled at him. But to him, it was not acceptable for him to feel controlled and herded by his surroundings.

So, to answer your question: would have accepted those other colors. Of course you would. They put the corn meal in front of you, and you could care less what color it was that you saw, everyone else was eating, so you did to.

Why does Wizards stifle creativity among card creators so? Why not simply endorse a specific program; surely this would generate more money (Big point for Corporations), increase interest in the product and even give them a new avenue for recruitment!

Answer:

First of all, remember that Wizards doesn’t even run it’s own tournaments. So you know that they are not going to make a program for you to create fictional cards with. Wizards barely wants to keep up with MTGO, let alone do more than that. To think that they are trying to recruit more talent is only to fool oneself. They don’t have to recruit at all. How many people would lie down in front of a train today to get a job working for Wizards of the Coast? So how could you consider that recruiting?

I don’t think that they are trying to stifle your creativity. I just think that businessmen of today don’t know what the hell they are doing. In the old days, a man would see your potential, and would hire you and put you through school and make you sign on with him for five years or so, in order to profit from you. Today, they don’t care. It’s not that they are trying to stifle you. It’s more so that they don’t know you exist. They don’t care about anything except them producing cards and generating revenue.

Thanks to the guys who submitted the questions. I hope I answered your questions in a satisfactory manner.

If you have any questions that you’d like to have answered, you should email those questions here.

~cpn~

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

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