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Comment by kelukelugames | Hacker News Reader

Chinese counterfeit Magic cards are a disruptor.

Wizards of the Coast, Magic's parent company, maintains a reversed list of historic cards. Listed cards can never be reprinted to protect their prices on the secondary market for collectors. Many players complain this is a bad for the game. As the counterfeits are getting better, more players buy them, pressuring Wizard to act. Maybe Wizards will abolish the reserved list.

Reserved list: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/official-reprin...

More links: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27693_Counterfeit-Cards...

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/how-to-dismantle-the...

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> to protect their prices on the secondary market for collectors

A lot of Wizards' approach to tournaments and playable cards is designed so that the secondary market's influence on the game is minimized.[0]

They saw beanie babies and comics implode in value after waves of speculation, so they set up a schedule where they churn out new cards and retire old ones on a predictable schedule. All this means the company has to think as little about the secondary market as possible.

You're right that counterfeits are a disruptor, but I think that's more a threat for current cards, not because people will print a bunch of black lotuses and moxes.

[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/04/16/400140583/how-s...

The argument could be made that players are simply trying to play with cards they can't normally obtain. Obvious counterfeits have often been allowed in unofficial games "by proxy" - allowing players to construct more powerful decks than they could afford.

It would then come down to how much the counterfeit is worth to the player. So long as these aren't being passed off as legitimate cards, I don't see an issue.

Do most places allow this proxy card without owning the actual card these days? Back when I played in 93-97 you could use proxy cards, but it was usually a land card marked with an indicator of the real card, and the person had to pull out their real card (usually in a plastic case) to show they actually had it (and show the stats).

I had a friend with a color printer that tried to make counterfeit cards to use as proxies (not to try and sell, the printer he had back then was not very good), he got caught at a game night at a shop (unofficial tournament) and was actually banned from there.

Sometimes a store will hold proxy tournaments for certain formats, but not for the standard format, and they can't be officially sanctioned events.

There was a big deal about it recently with relation to counterfeiting. http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/proxies-po...

I don't play any card games, but what's honestly the big deal? Is the game about card-collecting skills, or deck-building and play strategy? It's hard to argue the latter and ban people for not having an original version of a card. I guess I don't really "get it", or I had way too much fun playing ridiculous mods (where it was fair because everyone had equally ridiculous stuff) for games (Mr. Pants Excessive Overkill for Quake 3 comes to mind). IMO it'd be fun to play some Magic tournament with all fake cards, so everyone could build their dream decks, then see who was better at building the best deck and better with play strategy.

This. In addition to card games that intentionally reward skilled counterfeiters, there should be MMO games designed to reward the best hackers and botmakers. Also, there should be an "unlimited" category in real-life events like the Olympics and Tour de France, where the team with the best drug lab wins.

I think we'll start to see more and more games like this emerge over the next few years/decades, as the possibilities of traditional sports and games (and the humans who play them) are exhausted.

Pay to Win is the evil.

Magic the Gathering is good.

Because.

How long before people won't be able to tell the difference (at least without tests that are prohibitively expensive or would destroy the card)?

Wizards needs old sets to become rare & obsolete, for many reasons. It helps them sell more cards, and it also gives them far more creative leverage with new cards. They don't have to play test & ensure balanced play across the entire catalog (some stupid good cross-decade combos have showed up on accident over the years) and they have more ability to avoid rampant power creep, which according to some has been a big part of why the game has lasted.

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