Ave!
I have been wondering why nobody commented on the changes about the legality of CE, IE and gold-bordered cards on tournaments. First, I thought I am the only person who is concerned about the changes but talking to some friends, I learned that I am not.
I understand that (currently) the decision to allow IE,CE, gold-bordered cards on tournaments is entirely up to the TO. Giving the TOs a little more freedom... no complaints about that. What I am actually concerned about is the direction this change is possibly leading to: all HL tournaments will be sanctioned. So this discussion is quite on the theoretical side at the moment.
Let me start with the hypothetical worst case scenario: At some point in the future IE, CE, gold-bordered cards will be banned from the format entirely or they will not be allowed on the big HL tournaments.
For me personally that would indicate that I will no longer be able to play on the big tournaments... which were one main driving force to play this wonderful format. I just cannot afford to buy duals for the current prices. Why should anybody care? - Because I think that more players would face this problem. We already have a high price tag to enter the format - with allowing IE, CE, gold-bordered cards, we lower it at least to some amount.
Why is the price tag relevant? I assume here that lower 'entrance fee' => easier to attract new players who do not already possess the a fetch / dual manabase because they are playing e.g. Legacy. This leads directly to why we should be interested in recruiting new players from non-eternal formats (modern =/= eternal
)? One could argue with sanctioning HL tournaments we may attact more Legacy and Vintage players... they are fully equipped for HL already! - I think that the gain from this group of players is not very high. They could enter the format already if they wanted. Will they be attracted to prefer HL over Legacy / Vintage just because HL tournaments are sanctioned? I don't believe they will. They could just continue playing the formats they know well and which offer (in case of Legacy) larger tournaments.
The bottom line of the last paragraph is: We have to recruit players who do not have a Legacy / Vintage background and who would have to invest heavily to enter the HL format. Two reasons: 1. This group of players is larger (Hello captain obvious!). 2. These players are younger on average.
Especially the latter point is important for the development of the HL format in my opinion. From my personal experience the HL community consists mainly of ppl who are 25+. These will sooner or later drop out of the active community for various reasons (job, family, move to another place,...). If we do not succeed to 'replace' them with young players, the format will dwindle away. -> This is exactly opposite of what the council had in mind whith introducing these changes!
I suppose that the council was well aware of all this and I guess they had a long discussion about it. Currently, the complete line of thoughts above is rather hypothetical but as I said... I'm more concerned about the future implications if we push further into the direction of sanctioning HL. Perhaps I'm just too pessimistic.
I can hardly argue against trying out if the community grows if we give the TOs the opportunity to decide whether a tournament will be sanctioned. Real life experiments and not just gedankenexperiments!
I'm interested in your thoughts on this issue - let's hear (read) them!
I have been wondering why nobody commented on the changes about the legality of CE, IE and gold-bordered cards on tournaments. First, I thought I am the only person who is concerned about the changes but talking to some friends, I learned that I am not.
I understand that (currently) the decision to allow IE,CE, gold-bordered cards on tournaments is entirely up to the TO. Giving the TOs a little more freedom... no complaints about that. What I am actually concerned about is the direction this change is possibly leading to: all HL tournaments will be sanctioned. So this discussion is quite on the theoretical side at the moment.
Let me start with the hypothetical worst case scenario: At some point in the future IE, CE, gold-bordered cards will be banned from the format entirely or they will not be allowed on the big HL tournaments.
For me personally that would indicate that I will no longer be able to play on the big tournaments... which were one main driving force to play this wonderful format. I just cannot afford to buy duals for the current prices. Why should anybody care? - Because I think that more players would face this problem. We already have a high price tag to enter the format - with allowing IE, CE, gold-bordered cards, we lower it at least to some amount.
Why is the price tag relevant? I assume here that lower 'entrance fee' => easier to attract new players who do not already possess the a fetch / dual manabase because they are playing e.g. Legacy. This leads directly to why we should be interested in recruiting new players from non-eternal formats (modern =/= eternal
)? One could argue with sanctioning HL tournaments we may attact more Legacy and Vintage players... they are fully equipped for HL already! - I think that the gain from this group of players is not very high. They could enter the format already if they wanted. Will they be attracted to prefer HL over Legacy / Vintage just because HL tournaments are sanctioned? I don't believe they will. They could just continue playing the formats they know well and which offer (in case of Legacy) larger tournaments.The bottom line of the last paragraph is: We have to recruit players who do not have a Legacy / Vintage background and who would have to invest heavily to enter the HL format. Two reasons: 1. This group of players is larger (Hello captain obvious!). 2. These players are younger on average.
Especially the latter point is important for the development of the HL format in my opinion. From my personal experience the HL community consists mainly of ppl who are 25+. These will sooner or later drop out of the active community for various reasons (job, family, move to another place,...). If we do not succeed to 'replace' them with young players, the format will dwindle away. -> This is exactly opposite of what the council had in mind whith introducing these changes!
I suppose that the council was well aware of all this and I guess they had a long discussion about it. Currently, the complete line of thoughts above is rather hypothetical but as I said... I'm more concerned about the future implications if we push further into the direction of sanctioning HL. Perhaps I'm just too pessimistic.
I can hardly argue against trying out if the community grows if we give the TOs the opportunity to decide whether a tournament will be sanctioned. Real life experiments and not just gedankenexperiments!I'm interested in your thoughts on this issue - let's hear (read) them!