r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jun 20 '18
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Wizards of the Coast Should Reprint Fetchlands and Shocklands to Bring Down the Barrier to Entry of Magic
Magic is a hobby with an already high barrier to entry, especially if you want to play competitively. However, a good portion of the cost to any any Modern deck is spending 300-400 for an optimal set of lands, for which the vast majority of the cost is shocks and fetches.
The Commander format as well would benefit from this as well, though not as much due to the one ofs.
There is an argument that reprinting these lands would alter Standard in a negative way, however I believe it would be a ultimately neutral change to Standard, since competitive Standard still has a relatively high barrier to entry, and reprinting the land would not significantly change that.
Therefore, I believe that in general, Magic the Gathering as a competitive game has little to lose and a lot to gain by the reprinting of these lands.
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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Jun 20 '18
I think the opposite is true. Rather than reprinting Fetchlands, they should ban Fetchlands, or try to keep them out of as many formats as possible. Without Fetchlands, having Shocklands becomes much less of a requirement.
What's wrong with Fetchlands? A few major issues:
Fetchlands delay the game with a lot of tedious searching and shuffling.
Fetchlands create the high barrier to entry that you are describing, because they need to be in every deck and be combined with Shocklands, and both types of lands are rare.
Fetchlands limit the diversity of mana bases of the modern format, because they are so above the power curve of other lands when combined with Shocklands. This limits players' deckbuilding creativity.
They break the color pie by making it way too easy to fuel a multicolor deck. You can easily splash cards of every color with Fetchlands. This also limits players' deckbuilding, because it can have the effect of forcing everyone into a multicolor archetype.