In one of my other articles printed on StarCity, I argued that Wizards should reprint the older cards that are hard to attain due to their sheer scarcity. I used the most expensive cards, such as the Power 9, to demonstrate my position. I now realize I may have been overreaching, as many Magic players are far too conservative to see the merits of a full-scale reprint. I'll only say one more thing about a Type 1 reprint: If it is truly the case that a revitalization of the format through reprints would only cause existing Type 1 players to quit, then obviously money is more important, and maybe it deserves to decline even further. I don't think even half of the Type 1 players I've talked to would actually quit, and many would be happy to see the format rise in popularity... But I think I've said all I can about that at this time.
This brings us to Dual Lands. Not"painlands," not"taplands," but good old original"Counts as a Forest and a Swamp" duals. Everyone who's ever played Extended knows about these cards, and they are still very popular despite being out of print for over five years. In the Extended format, they are seen as being so critical to the environment that they have stayed legal long after their base set rotated out. I think it's obvious that the majority of players like these cards and wish them to stay legal. There's only one thing keeping them from being reprinted: The reserved list. And that can be changed.
If you look at it historically, only those players who are"Good DCI Members" have ever been against dual lands. To this day, I'm really not sure why they got rid of them. It's kind of the same attitude that created such bum sets as Homelands; they just got overzealous concerning"game balance." Dual lands simply create more options, allowing you to play more colors without much penalty. One person has remarked that they are"broken" because they count as basic land types. I hardly think that that's the case. When the dual lands were originally created, they were made to conform to basic land types as much to hurt them as to help. The thinking is simple: If it produces a color of mana, it must be that type of land. So Bayou would help out your Sedge Troll and your Gaea's Liege, but the card was then doubly vulnerable to both Karma and Acid Rain. I don't know about anyone else, but I like the fact that when I Choke a blue mage, his Tropical Islands aren't immune. When I use Flashfires against a Junk Deck (and who does that?), I like the fact that I am in fact hurting most (if not all) of their white mana sources. Add to this all the non-basic hate cards that exist today, and I think it should be quite clear that dual lands are fair by virtue of their vulnerability. They aren't just vulnerable to color hosers, but also to non-basic land hosers.
As an old-school player, I once wondered why Extended decks like The Rock didn't splash a third color. After all, its"broken" dual land goodness that allegedly gives you the ability to splash, even when it's not key to your deck. Well, there's a school of thought that says a deck with nothing but duals becomes more vulnerable, on account of cards like Back to Basics, Price of Progress, Dust Bowl, Wasteland, etc. In the case of The Rock, it would also prefer to search for basics with Yavimaya Elder. Therefore, you better have a very good reason for adding that third color; it isn't a"no-brainer" like it might have been around the time of Revised. If you ask me, that sounds pretty balanced. Despite the duals being out of print for so long, enough cards have been created that it's no longer an automatic given that your deck will contain twenty duals.
There are a few cards like Tithe, the Mirage Search Lands, and Land Grant, all of which have great synergy with duals. If this is bad, all R&D has to do is make all future land search cards read"Basic Forest" or something similar. Without these searchers, many decks in Extended would not exist. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather see complex"answer" decks like Junk over simplistic decks like Sligh. When was Sligh's heyday? Right after they got rid of duals.
They thought people should somehow work to play multi-color - when in fact, all that happened was people switched to one-trick mono or two color decks. We're seeing a lot of multi-color in Type 2 right now, but that's because they rammed it down everyone's throats by making the best cards in the environment multi-color.
My point is this: People almost overwhelmingly support dual lands, particularly in Extended. The fact that there are very good decks in Extended with lots of duals, a few duals, and no duals, seems to show that they aren't unbalancing the format. Unlike the case of the $100 cards, dual lands are still pretty cheap. Thing is, many stores just don't carry them, and there just aren't enough for everyone who'd like to use them. One local store in my area used to have about fifty duals in stock... Until they sold them all to Japan! Now you're lucky if you see one dual in their case every few months. I think it's obvious that a reprint of duals would barely hurt the existing cards value, if at all. If the reprints have new artwork, I could almost guarantee the originals value will hold. After all, the Unlimited Plateau with original art still carries a premium most of the time. If you bought your duals for $15 each, they might go down to a consistent $10 or $12. Price shouldn't even be a consideration, because how many times have people paid $15 - $20 for Type 2 rares that plummet in value when they rotate? Dual Lands would still be popular after a reprint, if not more. Obviously, they can't just go around shattering card values - wait a minute, they do that all the time and they call it"Type 2 rotations."
In my opinion, Extended is the best format that has any kind of popularity. Why not make it better by making the duals more accessible? The alternative, nixing the duals, would cause me to lose any interest I may be developing in the format. Taking them out would probably anger all those who own them more than a reprint possibly could. Leaving things the way they are isn't really smart, either; it makes no sense for the dual lands to be so popular, and distinctly supported by the DCI, yet not reprinted. I would even dare say the Dual Lands could work in Type 2, although that's not key to the argument. Given time for the painlands to rotate out, there's no reason it couldn't work. Wizards went overboard when they declared the duals bad for the game; now they need to admit they're wrong by reprinting them. Were they to do such a thing, I'd probably even forget about Type 1 reprints. I can live without restricted cards... But I just can't live in a Magic world that doesn't include dual lands. Many older players feel the same, and I think if most old players had to choose one type of old card to come back, dual lands would easily top the list.
It's just common sense, really - and if there's one thing this game needs, it's more of that.
Ed Kunkle
(HengeWolf all around the Internet)
henge_wolf@yahoo.com
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