I don't live in the US or Europe. In my country MtG cards are really expensive (at least double what they cost in the US), and my town doesn't have an LGS. I have a really small collection and know very few people who play MtG. If I meet a new player, saying to him "You have to spend around a quarter of your monthly income to start playing" is the same as saying "you just don't play this game". MtG has always been a luxury game in my country, but specially with the current WotC policies I don't see why they deserve my money when they do nothing to make the game more accessible for me. A 100 USD deck may be accessible in the US, but in my country that would be closer to a 200 USD deck and that's a fifth of what a family needs to live a month, that's not cheap. Saying "no proxies at all" will always be an elitist position, specially coming from a guy in a first world country. Luckily my group has no problem with proxies as long as the deck doesn't have a ridiculous power level.
If our cards do the same thing, why does it matter if wizards printed your and i printed mine? They are the same cards. My counter spell isnt cheaper mana wise, only dollar wise. Cards are game pieces and commander is a game.
I'm super pro-proxying, fundamentally the _only_ legitimate issue with proxying is using unnecessarily powerful cards. Your Commander deck _does not need_ OG duals or mana drain or whatever else. That's the issue. I have a Homer Simpson '97 border Earthcraft because I'm not paying £60 for a card that is only expensive because Wizards promised some weirdo collectors that they wouldn't reprint it before I was born. Commander is a format where you _don't_ optimise your deck. There is no reason to be more salty about a proxied expensive and powerful card than someone who either spent the money, or just happened to be in the game longer and therefore got x card when it was £20 instead of £2000. If you are fine with someone running Tropical Island, but not a proxied Tropical Island, you're just being a prick, straight up.
Every argument against proxies is fundamentally either elitist or selfishly telling other people how to play. Some people like playing optimized decks. That's totally okay. Unlike a tournament setting, you're not forced to play with anyone else. You don't have to keep up if you don't want to. Instead of telling people how to play, just find a table that matches your vibe.
@@Azeria Could not possibly agree more, as someone who pulled playsets of the OG duals back in the day, who still has them. The Reserve List is garbage. Artificial scarcity to this extent is equally garbage. (EV below 50% of box price is straight up *theft* IMO) Like I say again and again. Cards my LGS actually has up to 10$ (So 11.50-12$ w/ store markup) I buy there. Cards 11-19$, I buy from 3 cool not-greedy guys who run digital stores on EBay. For cards 20$+, unless it’s something I’m absolutely in love with, like The Great Henge and my Step Compleat Foil Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider, I buy 3$ bootleg cards and skip the Proxy/Anti-Proxy arguments I’ve had a billion times at the LGS. And yes, if I could copy a rich Anti-Proxy gatekeeper’s house and car without damaging either in the slightest, I’d do that, too. I don’t believe a fraction of MtG players buying counterfeits will do anything more than slightly reduce singles prices of some cards in high demand, but if it did? I am not being compensated to care about the long-term health of this game.
@@sorcdk2880 I mean, one could argue that WotC’s Explicitly Worded Pro-Proxy policy is an, “Authorized Usage” exception. What is WotC actually approving of, if not images of the product they possess the rights to?
That’s a sadly and unusually mature position for an Anti-Proxy player to take. I applaud your respect for other players right to make the decision to proxy or not proxy for themselves. :)
@@DMorfin11 yeah with SL. But him talking about not liking proxy is fair but I just started in Blumborrow and dont have "thousands of cards". I understand he doesnt want to sound elitist but just because you have been in the game for so long just makes it even worse. like, sorry, I didnt start when you started but the only way for me to catch up is to see what the "optimal" way to play because Rule Zero doesn't really matter when people want to play-to-win at my LGS. My Hazel Precon turned into a $300 fringe Chatterfang deck that can keep up with a Zur deck. Newbie knowing Storm was a strong commander and then selling out because people exploited a glitch in the website sucks since I waited for 4-5 hours. Im just going to play for "free"
@Chrisvilla767 yea, I get it. I got back into it during the warhammer precons. I have a friend who is also new and who thinks that we should only make decks with cards that we have pulled. But he's more coming from a I don't want to have to buy cards to keep up with the power level. I get the idea of limiting cards for you to think outside of the norm. But that assumes you even have the cards to make the deck types you want.
I have a friend in my pod who used to get royally pissed when I used proxies. His argument was that I have a job, I can pay for them. This was when dockside and Jeweled lotus were legal. Everyone in the group yelled in unison, "It's cardboard, it wasn't made to be expensive!"
There’s the hidden reason for proxying of I just want my cards to look a certain way. I spent like 30 hours making a proxy Frodo and Sam deck(finding art, crediting artist, building the deck, editing and formatting). Everything is full art, everything is on theme and the art fits the individual cards, I poured my heart and soul into making it. it would suck for someone to say I can’t play my casual deck cause there not official cards. I’ll probably eventually buy all the singles but not for a while
@@aliciaamari5503 I agree with this for sure there are people who travel to cons and have artist make art. Those decks I wouldn’t even consider being proxies. Those are priceless works of art. With the new secret lair I plan on making a deck that has redrawings of all the staples. Nothing would make me happier than getting a green goblin drawing of “untimely malfunction” drawn by a marvel studio artist coming to a local con.
Yeah, Proxies have gotten good enough that you can't tell anyways. They pass bend test, light test, etc. Only way you can tell is popping out your jeweler's loop and I'm not letting people inspect my cards for casual magic and cEDH is proxy friendly. Also, proxying is a middle finger to wizards, so I'm not stopping.
@@ryanhefner2011 your greed is out of control. It's amazing your lack of self reflection. Counterfeits don't hurt wizards, they hurt players. This is exactly how counterfeits end up on the secondary market and get sold to some player. You're a fraud not a vigilante of anti-hasbro justice
@@dudemanbrodog1961 oh please. I don't sell them, I specifically mark all of them to make sure. I wouldn't commit fraud. That's actually immoral, not to mention illegal. It doesn't hurt anyone when they stay in my possession. Get Watzys meat out of your mouth.
What a terrible false equivalence that proxys mean homogeneous decks or format. That just a elitist gate keeping of the format, not everyone has a 20y old collection (and thats coming from someone that is playing for 30y), and not everyone is in your USA privilege bauble. You know whats worse then proxy? Not having anyone around to play, anything that makes the game more accessible is good
@TableSaltMTG The game kind of corrects the behavior of this. If someone always runs the "staples" of each color in their decks it gets boring in comparison to people who can make budget bombs shine and the gameplay operates the same. They'll get bored, when they play and when they deck build. Their pod will raise concerns about having certain power levels crossed, and they can take the proxy of an expensive card out without feeling like they didn't waste money on it
@grumbolaya And even then, players can have answers, players can choose whether that calls the game. If decks are as homgenized as he claims, people should always hold up the mana to handle rift. Sometimes it's predictable holding up rift mana
@@TableSaltMTGit's elitist with that philosophy lol they don't stifle creative freedom. What does is saying you can't use certain cards cause you have to buy them. What if you have a family n can't buy all the cards you want. If your having problems with staples always being used. It's your play groups problems maybe set better rule 0. You don't need to have the best tutors or removal in your deck. Your in a arms race at that point. Maybe try theme building then the proxies isn't gonna matter
15:10 "if you're poor, you have to know the rules better" If i use more expensive cards, even if proxies, i am inventivized to learn the rules to get the most value out of my cards.
I use to have a super bad land colluction outside of my deck, and when I wanted to create a new deck it is always a pain in the ass to go buy the fetch, the shock and the surveil lands. So now on I just decided to proxy my manabase ( don't proxy what I could not afford or see at the table, so no gaea's cradle, tabernacle...) I just build so many decks and buying the same cards again and again is boring. And I don't bother people proxying busted things, while it fit the power level of the table there is no reason to blame them for using proxies.
If I may, as someone who heavily disagreed using proxies, I had 3 of my fav decks get stolen ealrier this year, one I spent 7+ years fine tuning and upgrading, another I spent a lot of money on to be more competitive, and the 3rd I was still working on. Each of those decks I had at least one or 2 really expensive cards. I had quit magic for at least 3 months bc I did not hav the money to immediately rebuild my deck collection. thankfully I made a decklist for the first 2 decks and got them proxied. It made me understand that proxying isn’t bad as long as it’s done in moderation
Moderation? Brother you proxied two whole decks lol what are we moderating. Proxies are completely fine and it shouldn’t have taken you losing everything to come to that conclusion.
@ “moderation” is referring to not proxying the most broken legal competitive cards to build a casual commander deck…… I thought that was obvious by my statement “I only proxied what I had that was real and was on the decklist”….. but hey, I can see the confusion
I think I found out why the creativity argument is so divisive. What actually happens is that there are 2 different processes to create decks: 1) Look at your collection and try to build a deck out of that, maybe with a few extra pieces added in. 2) Look at what cards are available in general and figure out what cards you would want for the deck, and then go out and buy those as single cards, or alternatively replace some of them with equivalent cards you already have in your collection. Both processes can be quite creative, albeit in a bit different ways. What really tends to kill option 2 though is that there are a lot of readily available decklists that you can then just claim as your own and not really go through the process yourself. Personally I have historically done almost purely option 1, and that was okay. The problem is that my collection over time have become large enough that shifting through my physical copies and so on to figure out exactly what I have that would work best has just become such a huge hassle that I just did not really want to make new decks that way for a long time - like a decade. Even then my collection is also nowhere near large or high quality enough that I have all that many of the good cards, so those decks are quite weak compared to what one could otherwise make, as they often only have 1 or 2 of the more important cards (60 card format). Over time, those others in the group have started using proxies, and quite excessively so, and it is hard to convice them otherwise, as while I have a large enough collection to do 1, it would be a rather large investment for them to get to the same point and still only make those rather weak decks, so it is hard to convince them otherwise. Considering how much power creep there have been the last decade, and how easy proxies gives them access to the powerfull ones in that part, I have found that my decks have been slowly pushed to a worse and worse position, generally now being behind by quite a bit, even though they used to be the standard for the powerlevel of the group, as I was loaning out decks to those who did not have their own so we could all play. At this point their use of proxies are effectively pushing me to either use proxies myself or spent a lot of money on newer cards that are quite expensive to pick up at this point, and that does not really feel good. Hearing it from them, it sounds like "then just use proxies like us, we are okay with it".
He keeps talking about creativity and how proxies hinder that but what about people that want for example the velociramptor commander deck but are priced out of it due to scalpers? Why shouldn't they be allowed to proxy that deck 1:1? No optimized decks or anything just the out of the box deck? And legality doesn't matter if it's casual or competitive among your own pod or an LGS that allows proxies, nothing sanctioned. What arguments does he have then?
The arguments in this video are not anti-proxy even though this host keep saying it is. Their arguments are solely pointed at deck homogenization. Which is not unique to proxying cards, but rather lazy deck building using websites, guides, etc. There is nothing about having every card at your fingertips that forces someone to use all the same cards that someone else does. Your argument also falls to someone going out and just buying all those cards and playing the real staples in their deck that is the same as most of the other decks found on edhrec or other deck builder sites. It's just bad argumentation to conflate deck homogenization and whether or not proxying is good or bad.
Proxying makes homogenization of decks easier. If you don't attach some form of value to a card outside of "It's the best at it's job", it's a lot easier to just throw it in a deck. It is an anti-proxy point because most people won't have the disposable income to go out and buy all of the staples, so once proxying is encouraged it becomes a lot more common. Once you have a dedicated group agreeing on certain restrictions during deckbuilding, the homogenization of decks becomes a weaker and weaker argument against proxying. However, having that dedicated group agreeing on restrictions tackles the communication issue from Commander players. If people could and would effectively communicate power levels and expectations from games, proxying wouldn't be an issue. Proxying will continue to be an issue as long as communication is an issue, and it's the same with pubstomping and arms races.
@ I understand the take in the video. It is still not an answer to why proxying is bad. Proxying making the thing you don’t like easier is not a problem with proxying but rather people wanting to do the thing you don’t like. You’re really anti-those people and deck homogenization. It’s still a bad argument for being against proxying.
I feel like the entire power imbalance argument applies not to proxies but to deck expectations. I proxy all my decks. I have decks of various power levels. I proxy because i have to prioritize spending on needs and not wants. The game is made of paper, why not proxy? Im not playing in tournaments, so its only casual play with friends.
In general I'd agree, the issue is expectations. However whether we like or not, price and availability are de facto what keeps power level in check at your average LGS. Not many have the luxury of having multiple choices of LGS or pods even, so I can totally see how getting curbstomped by an expensive deck might rub people the wrong way. Granted that could happen regardless if you play against a rich player, but how many people are you realistically going to find with a deck worth thousands? And while I think it's wrong to be against proxies, it's also wrong to force players into it, just to keep up with the powecreep. So while this is a player issue at its core, proxies tend to exagerate the problem in my experience.
@matteopoerio5632 Maryland/DC area. A lot of our players are traveling military for all the bases in my local town. A LOT of money comes walking through the card shops. I have 2 LGS within a 10 minute drive of me and both are packed multiple nights a week. Our regulars are buying the collectors boosters by the 4 pack boxes. The power level for the casual tables are filled with $25+ cards and land bases are top notch. We have 2 players with gaeas cradles and almost half the players have real dual lands everyone likes to compliment each game they see them. So, I proxy to keep up lol.
My entire playgroup (15people) all proxy and have good discussion about power level. We've never run into any problems with proxies betweenus. People who play outside of their agreed power level are the problem, not proxies. People who don't agree on a power level at all are asking for a miserable time. You don't need proxies to have your 'upgraded precon' run into the CEDH player's $3000 deck at a random pod in an LGS. Proxies never ruined a game, a person did. Our group so far has had so much fun being able to change our decks or make entirely new decks at each power level we usually play at, and it's all possible due to proxies. I usually buy cards if they are less than $5, just because i like the feel of the card and it makes it easier to swap out/add in, but when an artificially rare card that is vital to a deck costs more than my food for a week, I'm just going to click Print and slot it front of a bulk common. It's still a game at the end of the day and I don't owe the secondary market a thing. The only time I would agree to no proxies would be WOTC sanctioned events or events where the TO has ruled them out.
I proxy in deck testing but if it’s commander at an organized table of players I think cards should be legit UNLESS you want to retain value of expensive cards and you have the card but don’t want to be shuffling it or if you have it in 5 different decks just get 1 copy and be able to show that you own it ya know what I mean?
I'm a cedh player. We are proxy friendly because we want to play against your deck not your wallet. Alot of the cards are RL so they just can't be found. And almost all tournaments are proxy friendly. As a side note there other reasons to proxy that wasn't said here, a art style that you want, limited releases that are scalped like the recent secret lairs that become impossible to obtain, or you live in an area that doesn't have a good local selection (like myself) And if I may, it sounds more like the anti proxy sediment is more against magic players then thr proxys themselves. I have a dumb burn deck that's all proxy I just wanted Chandra on every card. I don't think it's won a game yet.
16:49 maybe I'd proxie a pauper deck in b/w with my friends so we don't have to make a trip to the lgs and pray they have what we need, or wait several days for the cards to arrive. He knows proxies aren't legal at official events right?
I think this video highlights the pros and cons of proxying depending on the individual. You can totally see why Proxying might harm the creativity IF the individual is just going to "Best Decks" -> "Print". They don't gain any knowledge on what makes it good, how they could build this from scratch with all cards at their disposal. But on the contrary, what if you're actually thinking about building around a certain playstyle, you build with what you have and then think about searching up cards that may have certain effects and print those to test out your new deck theory. EOD, depends on the indiviudual and not handicapping themselves by going for "the best cards".
The old proxy debate. An important distinction to recognize is the difference between proxies and counterfeit cards. I think both Jake and Kenny make some good points.
If you're always playing the best version of cards your decks will be boring. The whole point of commander is to use the old, forgotten cards that never had a chance. By always optimizing creativity goes right out the window.
@3weiter I only started playing a bit over a year ago and every deck I've built has had the philosophy of choosing a commander that can make some bad cards worth playing. Beluna Grandsquall (adventures), Tetzin, Gnome Champion (double sided artifacts), Bello, Bard of Brambles (high CMC enchantments), Eluge (high CMC counterspells), Saruman (amass spells), Niv Reborn (all dual colour spells). The power level of these decks ranges from casual to pre-cedh and the budget ranges from $100 (Eluge and Niv) to $1000 (Tetzin). There is very little crossover among the cards in the decks (even though some of the decks would love to pinch some game pieces from some of the others). Maybe it's just you?
@RegisJim "Let me proxy what I want or I'm going to make you all miserable" is not a good argument. Total AH move really. Have a proxy deck if you want. Also, have a salty deck for sure, goes great at some tables. However, ALSO, have a non-salty, non-proxy deck on account of you wanting to engage in good sportsmanship. You do want to be a good sport, don't you, sport? If in doubt, buy and sleeve up a precon 😅.
In our pod we have a proxying rule that requires trust and accountability among ourselves. If you own the card OR realistically WOULD buy the card, then you are free to proxy it. Like for myself, I would never spend more than $20 on a single unless it was an evergreen card so I do not proxy anything above $20. Also, it is unofficially understood that if you proxy a card you don't own, you are intending on getting that card later.
@hahahafunniness because if u give people an inch they will take a mile. U have to always set rules or boundaries on thing otherwise people will abuse your goodwill.
@hahahafunniness i dont its just a general thing still though. U dont need fake expensive cards to play nor do u need real ones. U can easily build strong or fun decks for dirt cheap.
All these arguments are very bad. Especially trying to say that proxying is side by side with the homogenization of commander. If poeple want to be boring, they will be boring, rich or poor. If people want to be creative, they will be creative, rich or poor
No pod will say “unless your deck is +$700 you can’t play with us” it’s just you may be playing with some slightly weaker cards- typically lands and finishers. Most people have decks with different power levels and will just use those with you Optimization is somewhat against EDH’s philosophy of just hanging out. But it’s not really needed unless you just can’t stand losing to that one guy who’s got a powerful card/deck. At that point just play with others. There’s so many people who just play pre cons because brewing is harder to do Testing and just to protect your actual expensive cards is fine. I’ll play with people who use SOME proxies but I’ve played against guys who come in full proxy and just want to pubstomp my basic pirate deck
Yeah, sounds like the guy on the left is essentially saying I want you to play the way I want you to and if you don’t, then you don’t get to play. You don’t have money to buy expensive cards you don’t get to play. Oh, you haven’t been collecting for 30 years you don’t get to play. Sounds like a real fun way to approach a social game format. Insert heavy sarcasm here.
@TableSaltMTG you can be what you want to be, but your argument is people shouldn't play proxies because you think people should play cards in their budget range because you want to. It's a very personal argument and not really a good general stance. If people play legible proxies in a casual game who does it hurt? No one.
The default way to play the game is without counterfeit or proxy cards. "I should be able to play proxies because I should be able to do what I want and everyone should just do what they want lolz" isn't as strong an argument as you think it is. It's a collectable hobby with a real cost to entry. If someone can't afford a card, they can look to cheaper budget options. I'm not playing against their wallet; I'm playing against their creativity. If you think you need to play the card you are trying to proxy, you likely just suck at deckbuilding and should work on that. Also, most people aren't proxying cheap cards unless they're custom art, so we all know that they're just trying to shove the most powerful cards in their deck. Again, if you think you cannot play without those cards, you need to check yourself and the entire card pool that exists on the secondary market for under a dollar.
@@Cybertech134 You’re entitled to your opinion, of course. I’m fine with people disagreeing with my stance. I’ve always been fine and respected the position of players that say, “Proxying isn’t for me, but other players can make that decision for themselves.” My objection arises when Anti-Proxy players try to make that choice for others by doing what they can to limit the proxying player’s opportunities to play. I encountered enough of that to switch to bootlegs. Thereby ending the arguments where they actually matter, at the table. The argument doesn’t need to be any stronger than, “I believe the game shouldn’t be this expensive. The *maker* of this game frequently stated no MtG cards should ever, ever cost more than 20$, so I’ve taken steps no one else can prevent me from taking to make the game more affordable.” If you honestly believe you’re playing against the creativity of others while advocating to keep their cardpool narrower than your own, I really have no idea how to resolve that cognitive dissonance.
@@Shawn-f3x The problem with your position is the same problem with the Universes Beyond position. "If you don't like it, don't play it" only logically makes sense in a single-player game. Just because it's not in your deck, doesn't mean it won't be a part of the gaming experience if someone else decides to bring it to the table. Not sure where it originated from, but "let everyone do what they want" has never been a viable argument. And if you think it's "cognitive dissonance" to tell people to be more creative with the budget they have to work with, you're actually just an aggressive retard and there is no cure.
Hey dude what if I haven't been playing mtg for 15 years and I don't have a closet full of bulk that I can cobble a deck out of I don't have a shit ton of money to spend on this game and I don't really have a collection so I proxy whole decks except for the cards that are a dollar or less, those I buy at the lgs. That's still running about 50 bucks for a deck, that's not nothing.
I would argue that part of the problem, is the reserved list, this makes certain cards not just unattainable from a price perspective but also the fact that there are limited quantities of said cards there just physically isnt enough of them to go around. This is one of the reasons that the cedh community even in a lot of tournaments is proxy friendly.
Proxying does not stifle creativity, not being able to afford cards stifles creativity. If you have access to more cards you have access to more tools to be creative. Just because you can proxy the best cards doesn’t mean you HAVE to. Being able to look at the entirety of all magic sets and build a deck from that massive pool without restriction allows for the most creativity. Players who choose to only play the most optimal cards will do so regardless of weather they proxy the cards or buy them. I’ve never understood the idea that because you proxy you must proxy the very best most expensive cards. I have thousands of proxy cards and most of them are under 5 dollars, why? Because it allows me to build more decks of of varying power levels and varying themes for a reasonable price. It has never stifled my creative process, my decks vary in objective, speed, and gameplay. I hardly ever use the same cards twice in a deck because that’s boring. Some staples do go in a lot of decks, command tower for example, but outside of two or three cards the remaining 97 are unique and fun.
Unfortunately you are a rare breed, which we can appreciate. The grandeur scheme of it is most people will proxy because they want power not a unique experience.
@@TableSaltMTGAnd why do you think that is? They want to compete with the player who bought a more expensive deck. The problem is the arms race, not the way the cards are purchased
Card quality is one thing but the game is so complex. Synergies usually can trump good cards. Power doesn’t always win and if you are playing to have fun no need for an arms race. Be the change you want to see.
Just not true on a % basis, you only win 25% of commander games so if you play 3 games with a bad deck, win 1, you fee like it was a good deck, you don't know it loses 95% of the time.
Counterpoint about proxies: I personally like brewing with older, more unique cards, things like tabernackle, lifeline and friends, sure, lifeline is 5-10 bucks, but on a student budget, and wanting to make a strong deck that can keep up, these cards, that if the price tag was not an issue, would be nice options, are now excluded since paying a lot of a potentially worse card just feels bad. The main reason I am pro proxies is because I am of the opinion that ones wallet should not affect how good your deck is allowed to be. And even if you want to use money as a power constraint, it is a horrible metric anyway, since print runs, popularity and other formats also affect price. For example, Swords to plowshares is by far the best removal spell in all of magic, and sol ring is on par with a mox. yet both are basically free.
I really enjoy building and tweaking new decks, I probably build more decks online than I play games in a year. When I make a proxy deck I am free to experiment with styles of play that I wouldn't normally try out, because the financial risk of the deck not being a good fit for me is removed. If anything, proxying has lead to me making even more creative decks because $0.25 a card is much more doable than spending $20 - $30 on a super niche card with a single printing before I was born. I have an Orzhov landfall deck that is pretty unique and would have cost me over $400, this deck would get folded by a green deck at half the cost, but It plays decently and gives opponents a cool deck to play against. The only way that proxying leads to a more homogenous format is if the person making that statement can't wrap their head around doing anything with that freedom besides copy pasting the best cards, that's a you problem.
I feel like the argument of there being some "less optimal" alternatives is falsely assuming you can just choose another one, as often redundancy is part of the deckbuilding. I'm not playing 100$ Lich in my Queza deck cause it's better or i havent thought of Nefarious Lich or Lich's mastery, but because it allows me to actually play more copies of the effect (without playing tutors, which would arguably homogenize it more)
Our playgroup is proxy friendly for the most part. I try to only have 1-2 decks that use proxies. 1 cEDH and 1 Casual. The rest are all real cards. Heavy proxy use stifles creativity in my opinion. Each player at our LGS has a known archetype. I am Storm player by heart, but everyone knows me as the Vehicles deck guy.
The problem with the creativity argument means is that its also saying "well I can't say anything if you buy the same cards over and over again". And it also causes people more money minded to use the same good cheap staples over and over again. If it's gonna cost me money to test new cards that are worse than the ones I own already , why would I get them? Sure it's reasonable to not proxy 2$ cards, but alot of weird stuff is out of stock or has one or two printings. I can pay 3/4/5$ shipping on a 2$ card that's kinda weird or I can proxy OR I can say forget it and run w.e staple version of it I have already. Proxies don't cause people to be uncreative ,it just removes the barrier of money for being able to experiment. And finally b4 you say the online goldfishing tools, if I'm gonna do all that work online ,why don't I just set up into a Sim and play for free instead?
I like this discussion a lot, and its one that should be discussed. I wish you guys had laid some ground rules and set up some basic statements you both agreed about in regards to how to deaign and play magic. Which I believe would have made the even discussion better. You both having completely different philosophies about how to play and design decks will mean you 100% will never agree. And you both make good points and I agree with things you both said. But if I had to pick one I would say I will always allow proxies. At the end of the day I want to play with as many people as possible and with proxies that makes it more of a reality.
Thanks for watching! Our salty takes videos are usually not scripted and much shorter but we both had a lot to say about this topic so it ended up being longer and less structured than usual. We agree though that there was a definite disconnect as far as what we felt the purpose of proxies were which could have helped to give our point of views a little bit more context.
The other reason that I have seen folks proxy is simply lgs power level. The other players are using incredibly powerful cards and decks so to have a chance the person proxies some cards so they are not being just curb stomped every game.
The guy in the red shirt seems to think everyone proxying is just doing it to meta game witch isn't always the case, so many people especially in commander just wanna make there silly think just a bit more optimized but optimizing cost money that some people can't afford
The main reason I'm thinking about proxying because I just feel dumb paying even 3 euro for a card. It is just artificial scarcity. But I also recognize the risk of just going for the lazy expensive staples, so I think I'll limit it to card I own for now that I just can't be bothered to move between decks. And I'll probably go for alternative arts.
When you remove the option to proxy you narrow a player's ability to adapt and evolve compared to a non-proxy world. I proxy even pauper decks as waiting for orders takes time printing and cutting out a proxy take much less. You complain about proxies creating repetition, a player reusing the same cards from there personal collection over and over again as they take apart and rebuild decks creates even more repetition then proxying would. Player who are worried they might dislike a deck will use the staples they know that they have on hand over buying a risky narrow cards when testing out decks, again more repetition. Players feeling limited to only being able to afford 2 or 3 decks creates way more repetition then a players who can proxies a dozen decks. Magic does need better tools to encourage diversity within format attacking people who proxy will only narrow what is acceptable which is the opposite.
From a economic standpoint, buy the cards if you have the means to. Magic has lasted because people buy cards. If there's no longer a reason to buy them because you can print them yourself, then the game will die when the company who's no longer being supported financially goes bankrupt. Proxies have very strong arguments for rather than against them, but at the end of the day I buy my cards because I want to see more cards printed in the future.
@RegisJim people won't see it in game stores anymore and there will be no advertising for it so eventually it will die out even if it takes 50 years. I love this game enough to think it should bring joy for eternity.
but we don't buy them from the company, we are buying the cards from a secondary market that is out of control right now, some people think the game is stocks and it is unfair that people use that as advantage.
@@RegisJim "you still didn't explain who gave you authority to tell me what we can play at our table" I'm going to address this specifically because you've misunderstood me. I never said anything like this other than you should buy your cards if you can. If you can't buy them then don't? I'm not your financial advisor or have even the slightest bit of credibility. everything I've said has been an opinion and if you disagree with that then why are you even wasting time arguing with me about things that I have no responsibility for like I'm the one causing these problems. Games are fun. I've been playing magic for 8 years since I was a kid. To me it's my favorite game to play so forgive me if I want to see the game survive longer and we get more cards.
@@elladan23 at some point someone had to buy the cards from wizards. By purchasing any real cards you are supporting the game, game stores, and the people and places that you can play at and or with.
@@vegetalordvegetaW opinion. Some People need to step back and have a little perspective. For some 30 is a lot. For others 30 is a decent lunch on a random Tuesday.
I had a dumb deck i played online where half the value of the deck was just Guardian beast, a dumb old ass Arabian nights card on the reserve list. There's no way I'd spend $700 on a guardian beast (it's way worse than something like darksteel forge since it's restricted to black mana) to mess around with one deck and never play the thing again.
I'm pro-proxies but you need to let people at the table know and the proxies have to have different art and can't look like the real thing. I also stand on if you do some kind of WOTC event I kind think proxies can be allowed and only if you own that card and only when you own it, the reason I say that is with non-events I use a proxy of my mono green commander which is Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider, he's the foil promo prerelease card. I never wish to use it only one time and it felt bad but it's sleeved to hell and back.
Personally, if i want a card over ~$15, i will buy 1 and then proxy it across any other decks i need it in. That way im not inflating my power level with proxies but im not buying 5 copies of a card for the 5 decks i play it in
The only thing I saw from the conversation of proxy card is the artwork for the cards. I’ve seen some completely proxy decks but it’s purely to have run artworks for them. Personally I like to proxy cars if I have at least 1 of them. Beyond that I try not to proxy unless it’s something I won’t ever get to see or is gonna cost way too much to order online.
I'm okay with proxies, If wizards limits the print. Cards like doubling season may be expensive, but I can get lucky and pull it. But Gaia's cradle will never be reprinted, so it limits me playing against people who have play long enough that they pulled Gaia's crade.
Or when they artificially inflate the price of UB:Marvel so that scalpers get all the boxes in the first hour. I'm proxying all those cards with custom, cooler, art soon.
played commander with a new magic player this weekend who proxied 100% of the cards he played, knew every card he played, it was weird when he played earthcraft but only had nonbasics. then he comboed off and won instantly without it…
That's not a new player, they literally have spent zero dollars on the game. Then they are 'playing' power too? Nope examples like this are why the most I'll tolerate is a card or two and you better be testing with intent to buy not just avoiding spending or using a different card. This is a TCG collection is part of the hobby not just the game, if you don't want to collect play a cheaper hobby. There is plenty of cost effective formats in magic an entire pauper deck is like 50-60 dollars to play meta.
@@kennethjames4915 What an incredibly ignorant and elitist take, Spoken like a true rich kid even. You might as well have written "Just have money lmao" or "stop being poor loser" that's what your comment sounds like. Very discriminating.
My dockside got band and is cheap as fuck now, I'm only proxyong cards over a dollar, but I'm also giving them away to my friends and at my lgs. Don't pay hasbro.
Salty take: Playing high power non-CEDH is the best form of Commander. Full-blown CEDH is boring, and full on jank, though funny, tends to get old after a couple games. Nothing is more satisfying than optimizing a deck through trial and error, play testing with the group, and showing off the new cardboard that's pushing the limits of what your deck can do. On the topic of the video: I fall into a middle camp. Proxying your lands is fine. You might have the coolest, most fun deck ever, but commander is about doing the thing. If you're running a dozen lands that enter tapped and two dozen basics in a three color deck, you find yourself unable to function a lot of the time. Proxy some shocks, some fetches, hell, Fabled Passage is huge and don't pretend that Ash Barrens or Evolving Wilds are on the same level and I don't want to spend 5 bucks per copy. Past that, please at least own one copy of the card. I'm moving a copy of Roaming thrones between 4 decks right now and it is brutal. I plan to print a proxy for them and play the real one in my favorite of the 4.
My group proxies, but we dont go for optimization. I like Portal 3k but age and exclusivity makes them not frequently played and not neccesarily optomized. Same thing with this whole Marvel secret lair. Total bs but we still want to try and play with them without having to reward scalpers and break the bank to try something new. Another reason we started to do proxies, is because we wanted to easily have more variety by easily making more decks.
proxies are great for when ur playing at you local lgs where you can play your valuable cards around Doritos and Mountain Dew while the real versions sit at home nice and safe
Proxy is fine. Its understandable to not be willing or able to spend a aubsurd amount of money on a card and do a proxy instead. If your bothered by a opponent running proxies then you really are the issue not the one using them. THat being said I agree in a tourmanent you need to use legal/real cards and i feel you should not be able to proxy op cards like gaias cradle and so on.
The argument against proxies just comes down to “I’m not good enough to beat you unless I have access to stronger tools” It’s also pretty telling that the same guy who took the anti-proxy side also was talking in a previous video about “I like having things other people don’t” But all anti-proxy could muster is straw man’s about “B-but homogenization” “B-but magic 30th” ….. it’s because they were SELLING proxies. Jesus dude. How are you this disingenuous
Statements 1 & 3 are the same so I agree. 2 boils down to I like pretty arts not overpowered good cards because of statement 1. 4 not sure what you are eluding to but a fake is a fake. Thanks for the comment
@ with magic 30th no one was complaining about fake cards existing. They were 1. Complaining that fake cards were being sold to them and 2. Complaining about the price point of the cards Also, proxying does not equal homogenization. Proxying allows for further deviation because you don’t have to just buy staples and use those in every deck. You can justify getting cards you wouldn’t ever use in other situations
I am against proxies. There is no need. Even when I test decks I have a list of “similarly functional” cards so when I get the one I want I just swap it out.
I only buy genuine and authentic cards for my favorite pet deck that I've been refining since 2011 otherwise it's nothing but proxies. No need spending money on real cards when you never get to play anyway.
I moved to another country, and had to leave the VAST majority of my cards in in America. I have no LGS that sells cards in English, no way of ordering more cards down here, just stuck.The dude on the left came off as very snide, what happens if you're like me, what happens if you live in a third world country? "Just buy the card" Easier said than done if you're not in America.
"if you need a card just tell me, ill give it to you" Okay dude shoot me a dm ill send you my address and you can send me a legitimate black lotus. Do that and I pinky promise ill never proxy another card again.
I proxy cards that already own a copy of, so i dont have to purchase multiple copies or swap cards out between decks. I also like to try out a card sometimes in a deck in real life before I buy it instead of just goldfishing. I also jave a wife and 4 kids, so there's a practical limit of what I can afford compared to my single/DINK friends.
So lets put it this way: you've seen the clusterfuck that's happened with Marvel Secret Lair? Yeah, I'm just gonna proxy those cards rather than spend upwards of $100 moneys. Generally, I agree with both of you. I only proxy cards that are hard to find (secret lairs, unique UB cards), or staple cards I need for most my decks (ramp and mana rocks).
To that same point. There are plenty of artist that can produce a painting that can invoke similar if not better emotions. Just need to discover them. Check the bulk artist bin. 😂
EDH Pauper Anyone ??? some of the cards in pauper are expensive only because some staples wizards has only printed once put there not like stupid high $20-40 ...still you need to have a conversation with your play group about proxies .. we normally have a 10 proxy limit.
Personally i dont like proxies because of the snowball effect they almost always create were the person keeps up the power level constantly because they have no restrictions. And when u try to add restrictions on what can be proxied it leads to pointless arguments. you can build cedh level decks for pennies so theres no reason you need to proxy cards unless your testing something before u buy it or just wanna run a card without having to move it from deck to deck.
And what about people who only have the LGS available as a play-space? “As strong/consistent as we can make this deck, without it being cEDH viable (most of the time, some people do try to sleaze cEDH lists into casual games at the majority of LGSs at least some of the time)” is what I’ve universally encountered at the 3 stores in my home city where much EDH is played. One of the stores has a 100$ to upgrade a Precon night, and you can sometimes find a pod to play upgraded precons with, but the above is the norm. Why should the less financially well-off players be the only ones not running a bunch of expensive staples? I was an interstate courier until September, so I’ve probably played at upwards of 50-55 game stores in the 23 months since I came back to MtG for EDH. I’d say the average cost of decks I encountered was around 850-1100$, and it was always the same thing. 500-600$ decks w/ 5-5+ 30$+ staples. Take something tame, like a Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn life-gain/+1/+1 counters hybrid. Esper Sentinel, Archangel of Thune, The Great Henge, Enlightened Tutor, Sylvan Library, Kodama of the West Tree, Bristly Bill, Spine Sower. Ocelot Pride. Serra Ascendant, Teferi’s Protection. Ranger Captain of Eos. Plus a ton of 10-15$ stuff there’s no great alternatives for. Why does no one ever champion, “Hey, those of us with the most immense collections are best equipped to find more affordable alternatives to staples. Maybe we should be encouraging others to play things besides staples with our example?” Every time I hear a deck diversity argument, it’s always a reason why the people with the smallest collections and most modest budgets shouldn’t be using generically good cards (That all the enfranchised players in the same colors are playing.)
@Shawn-f3x i only play at the local shops (unless im at a convention) and its rare to ever run into people playing cedh at the casual pod. Yes it happens but that's usually either a new commander player who came from modern or another competitive format. And on the extremely rare occasion u have that one ass who sneaks in the cedh deck in the casual game and from my experience we just don't play with that person after that game and sometimes the shop owner will get involved if the person does it often enough. One guy even managed to get banned from all the shops in the area because he did it so much at the commander events at the shops.
@@Shawn-f3xive played commander since it became format and played magic before then. U dont need expensive staple cards to play the game and win. Haveing a decent understanding of how magic works and building a cohesive deck is all u need. I have a +1/+1 counter marathon deck thats dirt cheap about 200 maybe 300 at the top end. It's a fun theme deck that can win often and plays well. Yes it has some expensive cards in it like great henge or doubling season but I didnt rush out and buy them because the deck needed them to functionor were must have staples. I added them because they fit the theme of the deck and I even removed double season after a few games because I liked the cheaper mana version of similar effects more then it since I didn't ever use its token doubling effect.
@@cread13 Outright cEDH into casual pods is proportionately rare, but 850$+ 8-9s are literally Default EDH in every single store in Florida I’ve sat down in. Up until the recent Bans, I never played in a WPN FNM without at least 3 players out of the 4-5 pods running who were using minimum 3 pieces of Expensive Fast Mana. I have never, ever, run into an established player playing Blue who wasn’t using 2 Freebie Counters. Trouble In Pairs is literally the second-most common White Enchantment I’ve seen played in the last 6 months. I’m not disputing that budget decks can’t be competitive. I’m saying that putting the burden of playing budget on less well-off players when literally *everyone* who can afford to do so is loading up on Good Stuff, as an alternative to proxying is (IMHO) ridiculous. If there’s a duty to make the deck-pool more diverse in composition, that duty belongs to those best, not least, equipped to undertake it.
@Shawn-f3x u dont need any of those cards to play at the same level as them if u dont like playing against those cards or those level of decks then say so to the group or see if the shops willing to establish a lower power level night. Also just because someone runs cards like those in there decks doesn't mean the deck is an 8 or 9 u also have to account for the skill level of the player to an extent. I build all my decks to be about a 6 to 7 at the hi end but because of the years ive played I know the ins and outs of the game so well that I tend to make the decks seam more like an 8 or even 9 with certain decks. Even though fundamentaly the deck isn't that strong. Yes expensive cards tend to be stronger then the cheaper options but there are other variables then just money = wins. If all u care about is the win then sure money will make it easier for ya but if your just wanting to build a fun deck and play games then u dint need to spend money on staples (or proxy them) just use cards that the same or similar thing that are cheaper to aquire or synergies better with the deck build. Then upgrade to more expensive stuff later if u want.
I wholeheartedly agree with Kenny on this one, as someone who has been on both sides of the fence on the topic, I find building and creating my own decks from scratch rather than proxying leads to more fun and honest gameplay which leads into my HOT TAKE: Players of this format just need to be more honest and self aware, I find that too many people are focused on “winning the game” rather than playing and having fun, so much so that they will lie about having proxies or even banned cards just to get an upper hand to win a promo pack. It’s hard to introduce my friends to a game I cherish only to have us all get kicked to the curb by someone pubstomping in a casual pod. Overall, this game is about community and I feel like as players are willing to be more honest with themselves and a play group, the commander format would improve DRAMATICALLY.
I can not afford to play the cards i want ro play and i have been playikg the game since 2017. My playgroup is ultra proxy friendly and now that indont have to spend all my money on one deck thatbwill last a long time incan experiment with many deckntypes. The argument it homogonizes magic is just not true.
Uhh this is 'Murica. You trying to limit my freedom saying I can't proxy t1 Thoracle combo? !? Or proxy t1 One With Nothing and concede?!? REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
The only time I hate proxy’s is when the art is not the same as the original art. But definitely proxy things like sol ring or rhystic study. Staples that don’t drastically affect the games. But what I will say is that proxy’s do take away what’s fun about cards. Trading, LGSs, seeing different cards. If everyone proxies were all gonna end up playing the same decks. And trading to make that perfect deck is such a rewarding feeling.
Well stated. If you need a sol ring I have 30 😂. I have tons of “curated jank” in my binder and it feels great to share those cards with folks who have never seen them and are willing to trade for pieces I need. Childhood nostalgia.
I'd have a proxy trade binder and trade proxies no problem!!! It's part of the life story, having memorable proxies could be a fun story. And I'm also someone who has made a living at times selling cards... It's entirely different, the playing and financial side of things.
@@sn0n I just wanna say I don’t agree with the concept of proxies for financial reasons. We buy packs so we can play the cards we get. And if that’s not where the roads leads why even say you really enjoy playing. IMO, Players need to have a better perspective about their cards. If you proxy you don’t appreciate the creative side of yourself, the development team and the people sitting at the table not playing proxies. There are tons of players that have no issues playing against proxy cards, but understand that if there is a table who doesn’t like them you may have to run it at another table. And those players who play the actual cards, are well within their right to turn you away because they are the ones shelling out their money and supporting the game.
@@alonzoramon704 noone said anything about forcing others to accept use of proxies. There is a time and place. I think you are confusing some things, like absolutes....
I want to fight peoples deck buidling and ability to play the game, not a wallet, or lacking card pool.
I don't live in the US or Europe. In my country MtG cards are really expensive (at least double what they cost in the US), and my town doesn't have an LGS. I have a really small collection and know very few people who play MtG. If I meet a new player, saying to him "You have to spend around a quarter of your monthly income to start playing" is the same as saying "you just don't play this game". MtG has always been a luxury game in my country, but specially with the current WotC policies I don't see why they deserve my money when they do nothing to make the game more accessible for me.
A 100 USD deck may be accessible in the US, but in my country that would be closer to a 200 USD deck and that's a fifth of what a family needs to live a month, that's not cheap. Saying "no proxies at all" will always be an elitist position, specially coming from a guy in a first world country.
Luckily my group has no problem with proxies as long as the deck doesn't have a ridiculous power level.
If our cards do the same thing, why does it matter if wizards printed your and i printed mine? They are the same cards. My counter spell isnt cheaper mana wise, only dollar wise. Cards are game pieces and commander is a game.
I'm super pro-proxying, fundamentally the _only_ legitimate issue with proxying is using unnecessarily powerful cards. Your Commander deck _does not need_ OG duals or mana drain or whatever else. That's the issue.
I have a Homer Simpson '97 border Earthcraft because I'm not paying £60 for a card that is only expensive because Wizards promised some weirdo collectors that they wouldn't reprint it before I was born.
Commander is a format where you _don't_ optimise your deck. There is no reason to be more salty about a proxied expensive and powerful card than someone who either spent the money, or just happened to be in the game longer and therefore got x card when it was £20 instead of £2000. If you are fine with someone running Tropical Island, but not a proxied Tropical Island, you're just being a prick, straight up.
Every argument against proxies is fundamentally either elitist or selfishly telling other people how to play. Some people like playing optimized decks. That's totally okay. Unlike a tournament setting, you're not forced to play with anyone else. You don't have to keep up if you don't want to. Instead of telling people how to play, just find a table that matches your vibe.
@@Azeria Could not possibly agree more, as someone who pulled playsets of the OG duals back in the day, who still has them.
The Reserve List is garbage. Artificial scarcity to this extent is equally garbage. (EV below 50% of box price is straight up *theft* IMO)
Like I say again and again. Cards my LGS actually has up to 10$ (So 11.50-12$ w/ store markup) I buy there. Cards 11-19$, I buy from 3 cool not-greedy guys who run digital stores on EBay.
For cards 20$+, unless it’s something I’m absolutely in love with, like The Great Henge and my Step Compleat Foil Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider, I buy 3$ bootleg cards and skip the Proxy/Anti-Proxy arguments I’ve had a billion times at the LGS.
And yes, if I could copy a rich Anti-Proxy gatekeeper’s house and car without damaging either in the slightest, I’d do that, too.
I don’t believe a fraction of MtG players buying counterfeits will do anything more than slightly reduce singles prices of some cards in high demand, but if it did?
I am not being compensated to care about the long-term health of this game.
What about the argument that typical proxies are technically illegal due to copyright?
@@sorcdk2880 I mean, one could argue that WotC’s Explicitly Worded Pro-Proxy policy is an, “Authorized Usage” exception.
What is WotC actually approving of, if not images of the product they possess the rights to?
in addition to these points I still proxy 60 cent cards. I could buy it, but I ain't gonna when I can just print it on copy paper
I have a personal rule that I only proxy cards I own. I have no problem with others proxying, however.
That’s a sadly and unusually mature position for an Anti-Proxy player to take.
I applaud your respect for other players right to make the decision to proxy or not proxy for themselves. :)
I proxy $25 decks and im proud.
After this I’m 10000% proxy cards! If WotC doesn’t want my money then I’ll just burn it somewhere else
I assume you are talking about Secret Lairs and i 100% agree.
@@DMorfin11 yeah with SL. But him talking about not liking proxy is fair but I just started in Blumborrow and dont have "thousands of cards". I understand he doesnt want to sound elitist but just because you have been in the game for so long just makes it even worse. like, sorry, I didnt start when you started but the only way for me to catch up is to see what the "optimal" way to play because Rule Zero doesn't really matter when people want to play-to-win at my LGS. My Hazel Precon turned into a $300 fringe Chatterfang deck that can keep up with a Zur deck. Newbie knowing Storm was a strong commander and then selling out because people exploited a glitch in the website sucks since I waited for 4-5 hours. Im just going to play for "free"
@Chrisvilla767 yea, I get it. I got back into it during the warhammer precons. I have a friend who is also new and who thinks that we should only make decks with cards that we have pulled. But he's more coming from a I don't want to have to buy cards to keep up with the power level. I get the idea of limiting cards for you to think outside of the norm. But that assumes you even have the cards to make the deck types you want.
Why don't you support other people using proxies? "Well, I have a lot of money and cards already."
I have a friend in my pod who used to get royally pissed when I used proxies. His argument was that I have a job, I can pay for them.
This was when dockside and Jeweled lotus were legal.
Everyone in the group yelled in unison, "It's cardboard, it wasn't made to be expensive!"
There’s the hidden reason for proxying of I just want my cards to look a certain way. I spent like 30 hours making a proxy Frodo and Sam deck(finding art, crediting artist, building the deck, editing and formatting). Everything is full art, everything is on theme and the art fits the individual cards, I poured my heart and soul into making it. it would suck for someone to say I can’t play my casual deck cause there not official cards. I’ll probably eventually buy all the singles but not for a while
@@aliciaamari5503 I agree with this for sure there are people who travel to cons and have artist make art. Those decks I wouldn’t even consider being proxies. Those are priceless works of art.
With the new secret lair I plan on making a deck that has redrawings of all the staples. Nothing would make me happier than getting a green goblin drawing of “untimely malfunction” drawn by a marvel studio artist coming to a local con.
I want to play against my opponent’s brain, not their wallet.
I just love the "pay to win argument" from the ban proxy guy 😂
Yeah, Proxies have gotten good enough that you can't tell anyways.
They pass bend test, light test, etc.
Only way you can tell is popping out your jeweler's loop and I'm not letting people inspect my cards for casual magic and cEDH is proxy friendly.
Also, proxying is a middle finger to wizards, so I'm not stopping.
Those are definitely counterfeit cards.
@dudemanbrodog1961 wah about it. Wizards greed is out of control.
@@ryanhefner2011 your greed is out of control. It's amazing your lack of self reflection. Counterfeits don't hurt wizards, they hurt players. This is exactly how counterfeits end up on the secondary market and get sold to some player. You're a fraud not a vigilante of anti-hasbro justice
@@dudemanbrodog1961 oh please. I don't sell them, I specifically mark all of them to make sure. I wouldn't commit fraud. That's actually immoral, not to mention illegal.
It doesn't hurt anyone when they stay in my possession. Get Watzys meat out of your mouth.
What a terrible false equivalence that proxys mean homogeneous decks or format. That just a elitist gate keeping of the format, not everyone has a 20y old collection (and thats coming from someone that is playing for 30y), and not everyone is in your USA privilege bauble.
You know whats worse then proxy? Not having anyone around to play, anything that makes the game more accessible is good
The game is plenty accessible. Lots of cheap cards available to play with. Nothing elitist about that.
@TableSaltMTG The game kind of corrects the behavior of this. If someone always runs the "staples" of each color in their decks it gets boring in comparison to people who can make budget bombs shine and the gameplay operates the same. They'll get bored, when they play and when they deck build. Their pod will raise concerns about having certain power levels crossed, and they can take the proxy of an expensive card out without feeling like they didn't waste money on it
He's talking about commander like it's modern. Who cares if all the blue players run cyclonic Rift? It's like, the only good blue board wipe.
@grumbolaya And even then, players can have answers, players can choose whether that calls the game. If decks are as homgenized as he claims, people should always hold up the mana to handle rift. Sometimes it's predictable holding up rift mana
@@TableSaltMTGit's elitist with that philosophy lol they don't stifle creative freedom. What does is saying you can't use certain cards cause you have to buy them. What if you have a family n can't buy all the cards you want. If your having problems with staples always being used. It's your play groups problems maybe set better rule 0. You don't need to have the best tutors or removal in your deck. Your in a arms race at that point. Maybe try theme building then the proxies isn't gonna matter
15:10 "if you're poor, you have to know the rules better"
If i use more expensive cards, even if proxies, i am inventivized to learn the rules to get the most value out of my cards.
I use to have a super bad land colluction outside of my deck, and when I wanted to create a new deck it is always a pain in the ass to go buy the fetch, the shock and the surveil lands.
So now on I just decided to proxy my manabase ( don't proxy what I could not afford or see at the table, so no gaea's cradle, tabernacle...)
I just build so many decks and buying the same cards again and again is boring.
And I don't bother people proxying busted things, while it fit the power level of the table there is no reason to blame them for using proxies.
Proxies allow everyone to enjoy mtg
If I may, as someone who heavily disagreed using proxies, I had 3 of my fav decks get stolen ealrier this year, one I spent 7+ years fine tuning and upgrading, another I spent a lot of money on to be more competitive, and the 3rd I was still working on. Each of those decks I had at least one or 2 really expensive cards. I had quit magic for at least 3 months bc I did not hav the money to immediately rebuild my deck collection. thankfully I made a decklist for the first 2 decks and got them proxied. It made me understand that proxying isn’t bad as long as it’s done in moderation
Moderation? Brother you proxied two whole decks lol what are we moderating. Proxies are completely fine and it shouldn’t have taken you losing everything to come to that conclusion.
@ “moderation” is referring to not proxying the most broken legal competitive cards to build a casual commander deck…… I thought that was obvious by my statement “I only proxied what I had that was real and was on the decklist”….. but hey, I can see the confusion
I think I found out why the creativity argument is so divisive. What actually happens is that there are 2 different processes to create decks:
1) Look at your collection and try to build a deck out of that, maybe with a few extra pieces added in.
2) Look at what cards are available in general and figure out what cards you would want for the deck, and then go out and buy those as single cards, or alternatively replace some of them with equivalent cards you already have in your collection.
Both processes can be quite creative, albeit in a bit different ways. What really tends to kill option 2 though is that there are a lot of readily available decklists that you can then just claim as your own and not really go through the process yourself.
Personally I have historically done almost purely option 1, and that was okay. The problem is that my collection over time have become large enough that shifting through my physical copies and so on to figure out exactly what I have that would work best has just become such a huge hassle that I just did not really want to make new decks that way for a long time - like a decade. Even then my collection is also nowhere near large or high quality enough that I have all that many of the good cards, so those decks are quite weak compared to what one could otherwise make, as they often only have 1 or 2 of the more important cards (60 card format).
Over time, those others in the group have started using proxies, and quite excessively so, and it is hard to convice them otherwise, as while I have a large enough collection to do 1, it would be a rather large investment for them to get to the same point and still only make those rather weak decks, so it is hard to convince them otherwise. Considering how much power creep there have been the last decade, and how easy proxies gives them access to the powerfull ones in that part, I have found that my decks have been slowly pushed to a worse and worse position, generally now being behind by quite a bit, even though they used to be the standard for the powerlevel of the group, as I was loaning out decks to those who did not have their own so we could all play. At this point their use of proxies are effectively pushing me to either use proxies myself or spent a lot of money on newer cards that are quite expensive to pick up at this point, and that does not really feel good. Hearing it from them, it sounds like "then just use proxies like us, we are okay with it".
He keeps talking about creativity and how proxies hinder that but what about people that want for example the velociramptor commander deck but are priced out of it due to scalpers? Why shouldn't they be allowed to proxy that deck 1:1? No optimized decks or anything just the out of the box deck? And legality doesn't matter if it's casual or competitive among your own pod or an LGS that allows proxies, nothing sanctioned. What arguments does he have then?
The arguments in this video are not anti-proxy even though this host keep saying it is. Their arguments are solely pointed at deck homogenization. Which is not unique to proxying cards, but rather lazy deck building using websites, guides, etc. There is nothing about having every card at your fingertips that forces someone to use all the same cards that someone else does.
Your argument also falls to someone going out and just buying all those cards and playing the real staples in their deck that is the same as most of the other decks found on edhrec or other deck builder sites.
It's just bad argumentation to conflate deck homogenization and whether or not proxying is good or bad.
Proxying makes homogenization of decks easier. If you don't attach some form of value to a card outside of "It's the best at it's job", it's a lot easier to just throw it in a deck. It is an anti-proxy point because most people won't have the disposable income to go out and buy all of the staples, so once proxying is encouraged it becomes a lot more common. Once you have a dedicated group agreeing on certain restrictions during deckbuilding, the homogenization of decks becomes a weaker and weaker argument against proxying.
However, having that dedicated group agreeing on restrictions tackles the communication issue from Commander players. If people could and would effectively communicate power levels and expectations from games, proxying wouldn't be an issue. Proxying will continue to be an issue as long as communication is an issue, and it's the same with pubstomping and arms races.
@ I understand the take in the video. It is still not an answer to why proxying is bad.
Proxying making the thing you don’t like easier is not a problem with proxying but rather people wanting to do the thing you don’t like. You’re really anti-those people and deck homogenization.
It’s still a bad argument for being against proxying.
I feel like the entire power imbalance argument applies not to proxies but to deck expectations. I proxy all my decks. I have decks of various power levels. I proxy because i have to prioritize spending on needs and not wants. The game is made of paper, why not proxy? Im not playing in tournaments, so its only casual play with friends.
In general I'd agree, the issue is expectations. However whether we like or not, price and availability are de facto what keeps power level in check at your average LGS. Not many have the luxury of having multiple choices of LGS or pods even, so I can totally see how getting curbstomped by an expensive deck might rub people the wrong way. Granted that could happen regardless if you play against a rich player, but how many people are you realistically going to find with a deck worth thousands? And while I think it's wrong to be against proxies, it's also wrong to force players into it, just to keep up with the powecreep. So while this is a player issue at its core, proxies tend to exagerate the problem in my experience.
@matteopoerio5632 Maryland/DC area. A lot of our players are traveling military for all the bases in my local town. A LOT of money comes walking through the card shops. I have 2 LGS within a 10 minute drive of me and both are packed multiple nights a week. Our regulars are buying the collectors boosters by the 4 pack boxes. The power level for the casual tables are filled with $25+ cards and land bases are top notch. We have 2 players with gaeas cradles and almost half the players have real dual lands everyone likes to compliment each game they see them. So, I proxy to keep up lol.
My entire playgroup (15people) all proxy and have good discussion about power level. We've never run into any problems with proxies betweenus. People who play outside of their agreed power level are the problem, not proxies. People who don't agree on a power level at all are asking for a miserable time. You don't need proxies to have your 'upgraded precon' run into the CEDH player's $3000 deck at a random pod in an LGS. Proxies never ruined a game, a person did. Our group so far has had so much fun being able to change our decks or make entirely new decks at each power level we usually play at, and it's all possible due to proxies. I usually buy cards if they are less than $5, just because i like the feel of the card and it makes it easier to swap out/add in, but when an artificially rare card that is vital to a deck costs more than my food for a week, I'm just going to click Print and slot it front of a bulk common. It's still a game at the end of the day and I don't owe the secondary market a thing.
The only time I would agree to no proxies would be WOTC sanctioned events or events where the TO has ruled them out.
Ew. Wotc needs to step in on this.
I don't play sanctioned tournaments... so I proxy!
I proxy in deck testing but if it’s commander at an organized table of players I think cards should be legit UNLESS you want to retain value of expensive cards and you have the card but don’t want to be shuffling it or if you have it in 5 different decks just get 1 copy and be able to show that you own it ya know what I mean?
If you are against proxies, then you should be against reprints too because reprints are just proxies of the originals.
These guys videos are fantastic! Very good production value. Keep it up guys
I'm a cedh player. We are proxy friendly because we want to play against your deck not your wallet. Alot of the cards are RL so they just can't be found. And almost all tournaments are proxy friendly.
As a side note there other reasons to proxy that wasn't said here, a art style that you want, limited releases that are scalped like the recent secret lairs that become impossible to obtain, or you live in an area that doesn't have a good local selection (like myself)
And if I may, it sounds more like the anti proxy sediment is more against magic players then thr proxys themselves. I have a dumb burn deck that's all proxy I just wanted Chandra on every card. I don't think it's won a game yet.
It's cardboard it's just not worth it 10 bucks it's not worth it
16:49 maybe I'd proxie a pauper deck in b/w with my friends so we don't have to make a trip to the lgs and pray they have what we need, or wait several days for the cards to arrive. He knows proxies aren't legal at official events right?
First time watching the channel and I just wanted to compliment the set and how cool it looks. Especially the chairs which look super comfy.
Thanks so much! We put a lot of effort into it so we’re happy you like it!
I think this video highlights the pros and cons of proxying depending on the individual.
You can totally see why Proxying might harm the creativity IF the individual is just going to "Best Decks" -> "Print". They don't gain any knowledge on what makes it good, how they could build this from scratch with all cards at their disposal.
But on the contrary, what if you're actually thinking about building around a certain playstyle, you build with what you have and then think about searching up cards that may have certain effects and print those to test out your new deck theory.
EOD, depends on the indiviudual and not handicapping themselves by going for "the best cards".
Pompous argument from no-proxy guy
Hopefully he plays aristocrats, because that’s what he sounds like
The old proxy debate. An important distinction to recognize is the difference between proxies and counterfeit cards. I think both Jake and Kenny make some good points.
If you're always playing the best version of cards your decks will be boring. The whole point of commander is to use the old, forgotten cards that never had a chance. By always optimizing creativity goes right out the window.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Sadly, that is not where commander is any more. Commander 2024 is not commander 2012.
@3weiter I only started playing a bit over a year ago and every deck I've built has had the philosophy of choosing a commander that can make some bad cards worth playing. Beluna Grandsquall (adventures), Tetzin, Gnome Champion (double sided artifacts), Bello, Bard of Brambles (high CMC enchantments), Eluge (high CMC counterspells), Saruman (amass spells), Niv Reborn (all dual colour spells).
The power level of these decks ranges from casual to pre-cedh and the budget ranges from $100 (Eluge and Niv) to $1000 (Tetzin). There is very little crossover among the cards in the decks (even though some of the decks would love to pinch some game pieces from some of the others).
Maybe it's just you?
@RegisJim "Let me proxy what I want or I'm going to make you all miserable" is not a good argument. Total AH move really. Have a proxy deck if you want. Also, have a salty deck for sure, goes great at some tables. However, ALSO, have a non-salty, non-proxy deck on account of you wanting to engage in good sportsmanship. You do want to be a good sport, don't you, sport? If in doubt, buy and sleeve up a precon 😅.
yeah like 10 years ago. Commander is way more competivie even in the casual level
In our pod we have a proxying rule that requires trust and accountability among ourselves. If you own the card OR realistically WOULD buy the card, then you are free to proxy it. Like for myself, I would never spend more than $20 on a single unless it was an evergreen card so I do not proxy anything above $20. Also, it is unofficially understood that if you proxy a card you don't own, you are intending on getting that card later.
That's been my policy for the most part on proxies. It's ok if its something u own or plan on buying.
why does it matter? it's a casual game. your efforts are better spent defining your meta instead of policing arbitrary crap like this.
@hahahafunniness because if u give people an inch they will take a mile. U have to always set rules or boundaries on thing otherwise people will abuse your goodwill.
@@cread13 them dont play with those people. Not everyone is the same dude
@hahahafunniness i dont its just a general thing still though. U dont need fake expensive cards to play nor do u need real ones. U can easily build strong or fun decks for dirt cheap.
HEY THAT'S ME! I brought up Negan because that was the card and Universes Beyond that got me back into magic.
@@CookieKing-xf4lx we’re happy you enjoy Negan! We’ll still judge you just a little bit🤏🏼😉
That's my son!
@@TableSaltMTG His Negan deck is horrible. I built Sen Triplets Esper Stax to combat it.
All these arguments are very bad.
Especially trying to say that proxying is side by side with the homogenization of commander.
If poeple want to be boring, they will be boring, rich or poor.
If people want to be creative, they will be creative, rich or poor
No pod will say “unless your deck is +$700 you can’t play with us” it’s just you may be playing with some slightly weaker cards- typically lands and finishers.
Most people have decks with different power levels and will just use those with you
Optimization is somewhat against EDH’s philosophy of just hanging out. But it’s not really needed unless you just can’t stand losing to that one guy who’s got a powerful card/deck. At that point just play with others. There’s so many people who just play pre cons because brewing is harder to do
Testing and just to protect your actual expensive cards is fine. I’ll play with people who use SOME proxies but I’ve played against guys who come in full proxy and just want to pubstomp my basic pirate deck
Yeah, sounds like the guy on the left is essentially saying I want you to play the way I want you to and if you don’t, then you don’t get to play. You don’t have money to buy expensive cards you don’t get to play. Oh, you haven’t been collecting for 30 years you don’t get to play. Sounds like a real fun way to approach a social game format. Insert heavy sarcasm here.
Would love to talk with you about proxies and cEDH in general if you guys would like!
8:03 bro's basically saying that the poors should be happy with the cards they can buy. Not sure that take is good.
I am happy with my “curated jank” I don’t need expensive or fake cards. Guess I am poor too. 😅
@TableSaltMTG you can be what you want to be, but your argument is people shouldn't play proxies because you think people should play cards in their budget range because you want to. It's a very personal argument and not really a good general stance. If people play legible proxies in a casual game who does it hurt? No one.
This was a good episode. I enjoyed and learned from both perspectives
We tried to keep it as level headed and constructive as possible so that’s awesome to hear! Thanks!
The default way to play the game is without counterfeit or proxy cards.
"I should be able to play proxies because I should be able to do what I want and everyone should just do what they want lolz" isn't as strong an argument as you think it is. It's a collectable hobby with a real cost to entry. If someone can't afford a card, they can look to cheaper budget options. I'm not playing against their wallet; I'm playing against their creativity. If you think you need to play the card you are trying to proxy, you likely just suck at deckbuilding and should work on that. Also, most people aren't proxying cheap cards unless they're custom art, so we all know that they're just trying to shove the most powerful cards in their deck. Again, if you think you cannot play without those cards, you need to check yourself and the entire card pool that exists on the secondary market for under a dollar.
"play the game you want" is retarded phrasing. You can play MTG with or without the optimized cards.
Eloquently stated.
@@Cybertech134 You’re entitled to your opinion, of course.
I’m fine with people disagreeing with my stance. I’ve always been fine and respected the position of players that say, “Proxying isn’t for me, but other players can make that decision for themselves.”
My objection arises when Anti-Proxy players try to make that choice for others by doing what they can to limit the proxying player’s opportunities to play.
I encountered enough of that to switch to bootlegs. Thereby ending the arguments where they actually matter, at the table.
The argument doesn’t need to be any stronger than, “I believe the game shouldn’t be this expensive. The *maker* of this game frequently stated no MtG cards should ever, ever cost more than 20$, so I’ve taken steps no one else can prevent me from taking to make the game more affordable.”
If you honestly believe you’re playing against the creativity of others while advocating to keep their cardpool narrower than your own, I really have no idea how to resolve that cognitive dissonance.
@@Shawn-f3x The problem with your position is the same problem with the Universes Beyond position.
"If you don't like it, don't play it" only logically makes sense in a single-player game. Just because it's not in your deck, doesn't mean it won't be a part of the gaming experience if someone else decides to bring it to the table.
Not sure where it originated from, but "let everyone do what they want" has never been a viable argument.
And if you think it's "cognitive dissonance" to tell people to be more creative with the budget they have to work with, you're actually just an aggressive retard and there is no cure.
Hey dude what if I haven't been playing mtg for 15 years and I don't have a closet full of bulk that I can cobble a deck out of
I don't have a shit ton of money to spend on this game and I don't really have a collection so I proxy whole decks except for the cards that are a dollar or less, those I buy at the lgs. That's still running about 50 bucks for a deck, that's not nothing.
But did you consider how smuggly he laughed?
I would argue that part of the problem, is the reserved list, this makes certain cards not just unattainable from a price perspective but also the fact that there are limited quantities of said cards there just physically isnt enough of them to go around. This is one of the reasons that the cedh community even in a lot of tournaments is proxy friendly.
This actually isn't a matter of opinion there is only one correct statement which is proxies are completely fine and if anything should be encouraged.
It’s all opinion based😂Community driven, rule 0 all are opinions.
How much have you spent on cards? My budget is $20.
Proxying does not stifle creativity, not being able to afford cards stifles creativity. If you have access to more cards you have access to more tools to be creative. Just because you can proxy the best cards doesn’t mean you HAVE to. Being able to look at the entirety of all magic sets and build a deck from that massive pool without restriction allows for the most creativity. Players who choose to only play the most optimal cards will do so regardless of weather they proxy the cards or buy them. I’ve never understood the idea that because you proxy you must proxy the very best most expensive cards. I have thousands of proxy cards and most of them are under 5 dollars, why? Because it allows me to build more decks of of varying power levels and varying themes for a reasonable price. It has never stifled my creative process, my decks vary in objective, speed, and gameplay. I hardly ever use the same cards twice in a deck because that’s boring. Some staples do go in a lot of decks, command tower for example, but outside of two or three cards the remaining 97 are unique and fun.
Unfortunately you are a rare breed, which we can appreciate. The grandeur scheme of it is most people will proxy because they want power not a unique experience.
@@TableSaltMTGAnd why do you think that is? They want to compete with the player who bought a more expensive deck.
The problem is the arms race, not the way the cards are purchased
@@Byteside546 if the problem is the arms race, proxying means you forfeit your ability to blame the arms race...
Card quality is one thing but the game is so complex. Synergies usually can trump good cards. Power doesn’t always win and if you are playing to have fun no need for an arms race. Be the change you want to see.
Just not true on a % basis, you only win 25% of commander games so if you play 3 games with a bad deck, win 1, you fee like it was a good deck, you don't know it loses 95% of the time.
Counterpoint about proxies:
I personally like brewing with older, more unique cards, things like tabernackle, lifeline and friends, sure, lifeline is 5-10 bucks, but on a student budget, and wanting to make a strong deck that can keep up, these cards, that if the price tag was not an issue, would be nice options, are now excluded since paying a lot of a potentially worse card just feels bad.
The main reason I am pro proxies is because I am of the opinion that ones wallet should not affect how good your deck is allowed to be.
And even if you want to use money as a power constraint, it is a horrible metric anyway, since print runs, popularity and other formats also affect price. For example, Swords to plowshares is by far the best removal spell in all of magic, and sol ring is on par with a mox. yet both are basically free.
I really enjoy building and tweaking new decks, I probably build more decks online than I play games in a year. When I make a proxy deck I am free to experiment with styles of play that I wouldn't normally try out, because the financial risk of the deck not being a good fit for me is removed. If anything, proxying has lead to me making even more creative decks because $0.25 a card is much more doable than spending $20 - $30 on a super niche card with a single printing before I was born. I have an Orzhov landfall deck that is pretty unique and would have cost me over $400, this deck would get folded by a green deck at half the cost, but It plays decently and gives opponents a cool deck to play against. The only way that proxying leads to a more homogenous format is if the person making that statement can't wrap their head around doing anything with that freedom besides copy pasting the best cards, that's a you problem.
I feel like the argument of there being some "less optimal" alternatives is falsely assuming you can just choose another one, as often redundancy is part of the deckbuilding. I'm not playing 100$ Lich in my Queza deck cause it's better or i havent thought of Nefarious Lich or Lich's mastery, but because it allows me to actually play more copies of the effect (without playing tutors, which would arguably homogenize it more)
Our playgroup is proxy friendly for the most part. I try to only have 1-2 decks that use proxies. 1 cEDH and 1 Casual. The rest are all real cards. Heavy proxy use stifles creativity in my opinion. Each player at our LGS has a known archetype. I am Storm player by heart, but everyone knows me as the Vehicles deck guy.
The problem with the creativity argument means is that its also saying "well I can't say anything if you buy the same cards over and over again". And it also causes people more money minded to use the same good cheap staples over and over again.
If it's gonna cost me money to test new cards that are worse than the ones I own already , why would I get them? Sure it's reasonable to not proxy 2$ cards, but alot of weird stuff is out of stock or has one or two printings. I can pay 3/4/5$ shipping on a 2$ card that's kinda weird or I can proxy OR I can say forget it and run w.e staple version of it I have already.
Proxies don't cause people to be uncreative ,it just removes the barrier of money for being able to experiment. And finally b4 you say the online goldfishing tools, if I'm gonna do all that work online ,why don't I just set up into a Sim and play for free instead?
I like this discussion a lot, and its one that should be discussed.
I wish you guys had laid some ground rules and set up some basic statements you both agreed about in regards to how to deaign and play magic. Which I believe would have made the even discussion better. You both having completely different philosophies about how to play and design decks will mean you 100% will never agree.
And you both make good points and I agree with things you both said. But if I had to pick one I would say I will always allow proxies.
At the end of the day I want to play with as many people as possible and with proxies that makes it more of a reality.
Thanks for watching! Our salty takes videos are usually not scripted and much shorter but we both had a lot to say about this topic so it ended up being longer and less structured than usual.
We agree though that there was a definite disconnect as far as what we felt the purpose of proxies were which could have helped to give our point of views a little bit more context.
The other reason that I have seen folks proxy is simply lgs power level. The other players are using incredibly powerful cards and decks so to have a chance the person proxies some cards so they are not being just curb stomped every game.
The guy in the red shirt seems to think everyone proxying is just doing it to meta game witch isn't always the case, so many people especially in commander just wanna make there silly think just a bit more optimized but optimizing cost money that some people can't afford
My decks are super stupid and unoptimized. watch our gameplay video, no proxies and works just as well as it can sometimes 😂
The main reason I'm thinking about proxying because I just feel dumb paying even 3 euro for a card. It is just artificial scarcity.
But I also recognize the risk of just going for the lazy expensive staples, so I think I'll limit it to card I own for now that I just can't be bothered to move between decks. And I'll probably go for alternative arts.
When you remove the option to proxy you narrow a player's ability to adapt and evolve compared to a non-proxy world. I proxy even pauper decks as waiting for orders takes time printing and cutting out a proxy take much less. You complain about proxies creating repetition, a player reusing the same cards from there personal collection over and over again as they take apart and rebuild decks creates even more repetition then proxying would. Player who are worried they might dislike a deck will use the staples they know that they have on hand over buying a risky narrow cards when testing out decks, again more repetition. Players feeling limited to only being able to afford 2 or 3 decks creates way more repetition then a players who can proxies a dozen decks. Magic does need better tools to encourage diversity within format attacking people who proxy will only narrow what is acceptable which is the opposite.
Do you have a video on building decks ? First time watching your channel's and great topic and discussion.
From a economic standpoint, buy the cards if you have the means to. Magic has lasted because people buy cards. If there's no longer a reason to buy them because you can print them yourself, then the game will die when the company who's no longer being supported financially goes bankrupt. Proxies have very strong arguments for rather than against them, but at the end of the day I buy my cards because I want to see more cards printed in the future.
@RegisJim people won't see it in game stores anymore and there will be no advertising for it so eventually it will die out even if it takes 50 years. I love this game enough to think it should bring joy for eternity.
but we don't buy them from the company, we are buying the cards from a secondary market that is out of control right now, some people think the game is stocks and it is unfair that people use that as advantage.
@@RegisJim "you still didn't explain who gave you authority to tell me what we can play at our table" I'm going to address this specifically because you've misunderstood me. I never said anything like this other than you should buy your cards if you can. If you can't buy them then don't? I'm not your financial advisor or have even the slightest bit of credibility. everything I've said has been an opinion and if you disagree with that then why are you even wasting time arguing with me about things that I have no responsibility for like I'm the one causing these problems. Games are fun. I've been playing magic for 8 years since I was a kid. To me it's my favorite game to play so forgive me if I want to see the game survive longer and we get more cards.
@@elladan23 at some point someone had to buy the cards from wizards. By purchasing any real cards you are supporting the game, game stores, and the people and places that you can play at and or with.
The problem was the thousand-dollar price tag if it cost at 5 bucks I wouldn't have gave a s***
dude pauper is not a cheap format
it's no more than 200$ per deck. Just find a tournament list and link it to TCG player, then optimize for moderate played
"It's no more than a plane ticket to go visit friends for a deck you can proxy for $10"
It's the cheapest though lol
@@vegetalordvegetaW opinion. Some People need to step back and have a little perspective. For some 30 is a lot. For others 30 is a decent lunch on a random Tuesday.
I had a dumb deck i played online where half the value of the deck was just Guardian beast, a dumb old ass Arabian nights card on the reserve list. There's no way I'd spend $700 on a guardian beast (it's way worse than something like darksteel forge since it's restricted to black mana) to mess around with one deck and never play the thing again.
I'm pro-proxies but you need to let people at the table know and the proxies have to have different art and can't look like the real thing. I also stand on if you do some kind of WOTC event I kind think proxies can be allowed and only if you own that card and only when you own it, the reason I say that is with non-events I use a proxy of my mono green commander which is Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider, he's the foil promo prerelease card. I never wish to use it only one time and it felt bad but it's sleeved to hell and back.
I feel like when it comes to proxies if it's decently expensive go for it, or if you already have a card that you want to proxy go for it
I proxy the entirety of standard and especially commander, since it's just for fun
Personally, if i want a card over ~$15, i will buy 1 and then proxy it across any other decks i need it in. That way im not inflating my power level with proxies but im not buying 5 copies of a card for the 5 decks i play it in
Why buy one off a scalper who bought it at $2?
The only thing I saw from the conversation of proxy card is the artwork for the cards. I’ve seen some completely proxy decks but it’s purely to have run artworks for them. Personally I like to proxy cars if I have at least 1 of them. Beyond that I try not to proxy unless it’s something I won’t ever get to see or is gonna cost way too much to order online.
I don’t I use proxies but I also don’t think you should not be able to compete due to financial reasons. Proxy it up as far as I’m concerned.
It is a casual format after all. That’s why the debate will never end. I don’t like it but i still play it you have them.
I'm okay with proxies, If wizards limits the print. Cards like doubling season may be expensive, but I can get lucky and pull it. But Gaia's cradle will never be reprinted, so it limits me playing against people who have play long enough that they pulled Gaia's crade.
Or when they artificially inflate the price of UB:Marvel so that scalpers get all the boxes in the first hour. I'm proxying all those cards with custom, cooler, art soon.
played commander with a new magic player this weekend who proxied 100% of the cards he played, knew every card he played, it was weird when he played earthcraft but only had nonbasics. then he comboed off and won instantly without it…
That's not a new player, they literally have spent zero dollars on the game. Then they are 'playing' power too?
Nope examples like this are why the most I'll tolerate is a card or two and you better be testing with intent to buy not just avoiding spending or using a different card.
This is a TCG collection is part of the hobby not just the game, if you don't want to collect play a cheaper hobby.
There is plenty of cost effective formats in magic an entire pauper deck is like 50-60 dollars to play meta.
@@kennethjames4915 What an incredibly ignorant and elitist take, Spoken like a true rich kid even. You might as well have written "Just have money lmao" or "stop being poor loser" that's what your comment sounds like. Very discriminating.
This aged real well with wizards stance on proxies now lmao they dont care only dci sanctioned events.
My dockside got band and is cheap as fuck now, I'm only proxyong cards over a dollar, but I'm also giving them away to my friends and at my lgs. Don't pay hasbro.
Proxying is way better than ever. Means that there's less secondary market sales of those who robbed everyone of their favourite secret lair drops.
Salty take: Playing high power non-CEDH is the best form of Commander. Full-blown CEDH is boring, and full on jank, though funny, tends to get old after a couple games. Nothing is more satisfying than optimizing a deck through trial and error, play testing with the group, and showing off the new cardboard that's pushing the limits of what your deck can do.
On the topic of the video: I fall into a middle camp. Proxying your lands is fine. You might have the coolest, most fun deck ever, but commander is about doing the thing. If you're running a dozen lands that enter tapped and two dozen basics in a three color deck, you find yourself unable to function a lot of the time. Proxy some shocks, some fetches, hell, Fabled Passage is huge and don't pretend that Ash Barrens or Evolving Wilds are on the same level and I don't want to spend 5 bucks per copy. Past that, please at least own one copy of the card. I'm moving a copy of Roaming thrones between 4 decks right now and it is brutal. I plan to print a proxy for them and play the real one in my favorite of the 4.
My group proxies, but we dont go for optimization. I like Portal 3k but age and exclusivity makes them not frequently played and not neccesarily optomized. Same thing with this whole Marvel secret lair. Total bs but we still want to try and play with them without having to reward scalpers and break the bank to try something new. Another reason we started to do proxies, is because we wanted to easily have more variety by easily making more decks.
proxies are great for when ur playing at you local lgs where you can play your valuable cards around Doritos and Mountain Dew while the real versions sit at home nice and safe
Funny you mention counterspell is just cheap mana drain. I use mana drain as a pseudo ritual in my hinata x spell deck
CEDH accepts proxies because excluding it would inhibit the best someone would be able to do, which is the whole point of the format.
Proxy is fine. Its understandable to not be willing or able to spend a aubsurd amount of money on a card and do a proxy instead. If your bothered by a opponent running proxies then you really are the issue not the one using them. THat being said I agree in a tourmanent you need to use legal/real cards and i feel you should not be able to proxy op cards like gaias cradle and so on.
The argument against proxies just comes down to “I’m not good enough to beat you unless I have access to stronger tools”
It’s also pretty telling that the same guy who took the anti-proxy side also was talking in a previous video about “I like having things other people don’t”
But all anti-proxy could muster is straw man’s about “B-but homogenization”
“B-but magic 30th” ….. it’s because they were SELLING proxies. Jesus dude. How are you this disingenuous
Statements 1 & 3 are the same so I agree. 2 boils down to I like pretty arts not overpowered good cards because of statement 1. 4 not sure what you are eluding to but a fake is a fake. Thanks for the comment
@ with magic 30th no one was complaining about fake cards existing. They were 1. Complaining that fake cards were being sold to them and 2. Complaining about the price point of the cards
Also, proxying does not equal homogenization. Proxying allows for further deviation because you don’t have to just buy staples and use those in every deck. You can justify getting cards you wouldn’t ever use in other situations
I spent like $600 on my edh deck, just proxy the Damm cards. I like to compete not stomp. I would rather lose a close game than blow everyone out
I have a CEDH cheaper than that that wins turn 4 consistently. Budget constraints be damned, you don’t need the most powerful cards to compete.
@TableSaltMTG yeah you're right. How do you feel about proxies then?
I am against proxies. There is no need. Even when I test decks I have a list of “similarly functional” cards so when I get the one I want I just swap it out.
What if I am in debt and own no cards but proxies because the cards are more than a dollar each?
i proxy cards i already own. my collection is pretty vast but i only have single copies of many cards so if i want a card in a few decks i proxy
I only proxy if I already own the card. I dislike taking cards from deck to deck.
I’m not gonna spend big money to build jank decks (I. E. atraxa level up tribal) play them once then take them apart.
I only buy genuine and authentic cards for my favorite pet deck that I've been refining since 2011 otherwise it's nothing but proxies. No need spending money on real cards when you never get to play anyway.
I moved to another country, and had to leave the VAST majority of my cards in in America. I have no LGS that sells cards in English, no way of ordering more cards down here, just stuck.The dude on the left came off as very snide, what happens if you're like me, what happens if you live in a third world country? "Just buy the card"
Easier said than done if you're not in America.
"if you need a card just tell me, ill give it to you"
Okay dude shoot me a dm ill send you my address and you can send me a legitimate black lotus. Do that and I pinky promise ill never proxy another card again.
I proxy cards that already own a copy of, so i dont have to purchase multiple copies or swap cards out between decks. I also like to try out a card sometimes in a deck in real life before I buy it instead of just goldfishing. I also jave a wife and 4 kids, so there's a practical limit of what I can afford compared to my single/DINK friends.
So lets put it this way: you've seen the clusterfuck that's happened with Marvel Secret Lair? Yeah, I'm just gonna proxy those cards rather than spend upwards of $100 moneys. Generally, I agree with both of you. I only proxy cards that are hard to find (secret lairs, unique UB cards), or staple cards I need for most my decks (ramp and mana rocks).
No you can't have a starry night print on your wall!! That's a proxy!!
To that same point. There are plenty of artist that can produce a painting that can invoke similar if not better emotions. Just need to discover them. Check the bulk artist bin. 😂
@@TableSaltMTG th-cam.com/video/li69nFTrSMY/w-d-xo.html comment?
Only reason to Proxy a card is to test play or use different the art of a card you own. Everything misses the point.
a proxy is a card that has been signed and approved by a judge to be used only during the event it was approved for.
EDH Pauper Anyone ??? some of the cards in pauper are expensive only because some staples wizards has only printed once put there not like stupid high $20-40 ...still you need to have a conversation with your play group about proxies .. we normally have a 10 proxy limit.
Nobody knows how many counterfeit cards are there already, buying "real" mtg is for dummies.
Guy in red is unbearable.
Personally i dont like proxies because of the snowball effect they almost always create were the person keeps up the power level constantly because they have no restrictions. And when u try to add restrictions on what can be proxied it leads to pointless arguments. you can build cedh level decks for pennies so theres no reason you need to proxy cards unless your testing something before u buy it or just wanna run a card without having to move it from deck to deck.
And what about people who only have the LGS available as a play-space?
“As strong/consistent as we can make this deck, without it being cEDH viable (most of the time, some people do try to sleaze cEDH lists into casual games at the majority of LGSs at least some of the time)” is what I’ve universally encountered at the 3 stores in my home city where much EDH is played.
One of the stores has a 100$ to upgrade a Precon night, and you can sometimes find a pod to play upgraded precons with, but the above is the norm.
Why should the less financially well-off players be the only ones not running a bunch of expensive staples?
I was an interstate courier until September, so I’ve probably played at upwards of 50-55 game stores in the 23 months since I came back to MtG for EDH.
I’d say the average cost of decks I encountered was around 850-1100$, and it was always the same thing. 500-600$ decks w/ 5-5+ 30$+ staples.
Take something tame, like a Lathiel, the Bounteous Dawn life-gain/+1/+1 counters hybrid.
Esper Sentinel, Archangel of Thune, The Great Henge, Enlightened Tutor, Sylvan Library, Kodama of the West Tree, Bristly Bill, Spine Sower. Ocelot Pride. Serra Ascendant, Teferi’s Protection. Ranger Captain of Eos.
Plus a ton of 10-15$ stuff there’s no great alternatives for.
Why does no one ever champion, “Hey, those of us with the most immense collections are best equipped to find more affordable alternatives to staples. Maybe we should be encouraging others to play things besides staples with our example?”
Every time I hear a deck diversity argument, it’s always a reason why the people with the smallest collections and most modest budgets shouldn’t be using generically good cards (That all the enfranchised players in the same colors are playing.)
@Shawn-f3x i only play at the local shops (unless im at a convention) and its rare to ever run into people playing cedh at the casual pod. Yes it happens but that's usually either a new commander player who came from modern or another competitive format. And on the extremely rare occasion u have that one ass who sneaks in the cedh deck in the casual game and from my experience we just don't play with that person after that game and sometimes the shop owner will get involved if the person does it often enough. One guy even managed to get banned from all the shops in the area because he did it so much at the commander events at the shops.
@@Shawn-f3xive played commander since it became format and played magic before then. U dont need expensive staple cards to play the game and win. Haveing a decent understanding of how magic works and building a cohesive deck is all u need. I have a +1/+1 counter marathon deck thats dirt cheap about 200 maybe 300 at the top end. It's a fun theme deck that can win often and plays well. Yes it has some expensive cards in it like great henge or doubling season but I didnt rush out and buy them because the deck needed them to functionor were must have staples. I added them because they fit the theme of the deck and I even removed double season after a few games because I liked the cheaper mana version of similar effects more then it since I didn't ever use its token doubling effect.
@@cread13 Outright cEDH into casual pods is proportionately rare, but 850$+ 8-9s are literally Default EDH in every single store in Florida I’ve sat down in.
Up until the recent Bans, I never played in a WPN FNM without at least 3 players out of the 4-5 pods running who were using minimum 3 pieces of Expensive Fast Mana.
I have never, ever, run into an established player playing Blue who wasn’t using 2 Freebie Counters.
Trouble In Pairs is literally the second-most common White Enchantment I’ve seen played in the last 6 months.
I’m not disputing that budget decks can’t be competitive.
I’m saying that putting the burden of playing budget on less well-off players when literally *everyone* who can afford to do so is loading up on Good Stuff, as an alternative to proxying is (IMHO) ridiculous.
If there’s a duty to make the deck-pool more diverse in composition, that duty belongs to those best, not least, equipped to undertake it.
@Shawn-f3x u dont need any of those cards to play at the same level as them if u dont like playing against those cards or those level of decks then say so to the group or see if the shops willing to establish a lower power level night. Also just because someone runs cards like those in there decks doesn't mean the deck is an 8 or 9 u also have to account for the skill level of the player to an extent. I build all my decks to be about a 6 to 7 at the hi end but because of the years ive played I know the ins and outs of the game so well that I tend to make the decks seam more like an 8 or even 9 with certain decks. Even though fundamentaly the deck isn't that strong. Yes expensive cards tend to be stronger then the cheaper options but there are other variables then just money = wins. If all u care about is the win then sure money will make it easier for ya but if your just wanting to build a fun deck and play games then u dint need to spend money on staples (or proxy them) just use cards that the same or similar thing that are cheaper to aquire or synergies better with the deck build. Then upgrade to more expensive stuff later if u want.
I don't have any MONEY!!
I wholeheartedly agree with Kenny on this one, as someone who has been on both sides of the fence on the topic, I find building and creating my own decks from scratch rather than proxying leads to more fun and honest gameplay which leads into my HOT TAKE: Players of this format just need to be more honest and self aware, I find that too many people are focused on “winning the game” rather than playing and having fun, so much so that they will lie about having proxies or even banned cards just to get an upper hand to win a promo pack. It’s hard to introduce my friends to a game I cherish only to have us all get kicked to the curb by someone pubstomping in a casual pod. Overall, this game is about community and I feel like as players are willing to be more honest with themselves and a play group, the commander format would improve DRAMATICALLY.
I can not afford to play the cards i want ro play and i have been playikg the game since 2017. My playgroup is ultra proxy friendly and now that indont have to spend all my money on one deck thatbwill last a long time incan experiment with many deckntypes. The argument it homogonizes magic is just not true.
Uhh this is 'Murica. You trying to limit my freedom saying I can't proxy t1 Thoracle combo? !? Or proxy t1 One With Nothing and concede?!? REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
The only time I hate proxy’s is when the art is not the same as the original art.
But definitely proxy things like sol ring or rhystic study. Staples that don’t drastically affect the games.
But what I will say is that proxy’s do take away what’s fun about cards. Trading, LGSs, seeing different cards. If everyone proxies were all gonna end up playing the same decks.
And trading to make that perfect deck is such a rewarding feeling.
Well stated. If you need a sol ring I have 30 😂. I have tons of “curated jank” in my binder and it feels great to share those cards with folks who have never seen them and are willing to trade for pieces I need. Childhood nostalgia.
I'd have a proxy trade binder and trade proxies no problem!!! It's part of the life story, having memorable proxies could be a fun story. And I'm also someone who has made a living at times selling cards... It's entirely different, the playing and financial side of things.
@@TableSaltMTG nothing better than looking through someone’s trade binder. It’s atleast 70% of the reason I play.
@@sn0n
I just wanna say I don’t agree with the concept of proxies for financial reasons. We buy packs so we can play the cards we get. And if that’s not where the roads leads why even say you really enjoy playing.
IMO, Players need to have a better perspective about their cards. If you proxy you don’t appreciate the creative side of yourself, the development team and the people sitting at the table not playing proxies.
There are tons of players that have no issues playing against proxy cards, but understand that if there is a table who doesn’t like them you may have to run it at another table. And those players who play the actual cards, are well within their right to turn you away because they are the ones shelling out their money and supporting the game.
@@alonzoramon704 noone said anything about forcing others to accept use of proxies. There is a time and place. I think you are confusing some things, like absolutes....