i'm an optimist. a pollyanna. i try to see the best in people and always give folks the benefit of the doubt. but man, this secret lair is real testing. And i don't blame anyone for being mad, it's just real unfortunate that the target ended up being an unrelated third party.

i think there were a bunch of things that went wrong here- *mechanically unique cards in a special edition
*time limited access
*geography limited access
*cost
*legality
*timing

lets talk about these. First off, i think that any one of these alone might have been annoying but not the end of the world. We have seen mechanically unique promos before - The hascon cards, the mlp cards, so on.

we've seen geographical and time limited cards before-
comic con promos, secret lairs, from the vaults, the chinese treasure token, apac and euro lands

we've seen high cost promos, with the mythic editions

and promos only being legal in one format or another (like all of them, frankly).

But rarely have all of these coincided into one

And look, it's fine to have super expensive cards, as long as there is a reasonably priced and accessible version that isn't. My convention foil sol ring and your precon sol ring are the exact same card at the end of the day.

but when it's only available one way one time, and there's no accessible equivalent, it's an incredibly distasteful and bad feeling

and when the cards end up being not only playable but actually really good, that feeling gets even worse. Look, we all know that FOMO is irrational and dumb, but it is also core to human nature. And business teaches us that inducing fomo in people makes them act irrationally

And that means making poor decisions about spending money and chasing that high and trying to keep up with the joneses to your own personal detriment, but to the benefit of the business

This is why folks keep calling this predatory. the combination of factors that lead to people making bad monetary decisions turns this from a whatever game piece into an addiction.

"you don't need the cards" is absolutely true. You don't. there are 20,000 plus cards in magic that are right there, in whatever subset you own, and almost all of them can be played in commander just fine.

but that's not the point. that's not how the human mind thinks. that's something that is objectively and logically easy to say, and in practical life utterly meaningless when it comes to decisions making

And wizards absolutely knows this. that's their entire model. Secret Lair Snow Lands was just 5 basics. I bought ten boxes of it so i could have sets to play with. I *have* basics. Lots and Lots of them. It didn't matter at all because of the need to get the new shiny.

There were any number of ways that wizards could have reined this in so that it didn't end up with a colossal shit storm that somehow managed to damage the trust between the community and an entirely unrelated group of people who regulate the best way to play magic.

Forsythe's chat on thursday was really indicative that they knew this would happen, and that this was coming. If these cards had been silver, no one would have cared. But wotc knows folks don't buy silver, they buy black. and so they found a way to walk around commander rules

"Hey, these are legal in legacy and commander! black border! no one thinks silver cards are real magic cards, and we need to sell these, so black border it is!"
And suddenly, all those factors above come crashing together

Now, it's a time limited, geography limited, price gated mechanically unique and really strong set of cards that HAS A PLACE TO BE PLAYED. and moreover, if you are human and a magic player, you're primed to want the next big thing, even if you don't need it

and whoops, now people can't get it and are intensely mad, and the people who can are kinda offputting with either condescending takes, edgelord attitudes or obliviousness (not to mention the actors motivated by greed and resellability)

So like agitated gas in a sealed enclosure, the community is furious and needs an outlet to vent at and get this anger out at. (plus all of the external pressures of the global economic collapse, populist governments, corona, etc, adding to it)
And they look and see commander.

Commander, an independent fan format, with a committee that decides rules. They can do it! they'll be the Susan Collins here rushing out to save us! They'll be the unfaithful electors, the Mueller Report!

Which is all completely misunderstanding what commander's rules committee actually does, and what they actually can do. And when the RC says 'yo, we called wotc and had many talks with them about why this is bad, but we aren't going to ban the cards because of a myriad reasons"

the bombs go off.

and it feels really bad. i know it feels bad. There was a burning emotional desire to have the RC stick it to the man who had been fucking us over for so long. But when you look at the long term impact of what this would do it doesn't make any sense.

I'm not gonna bother justifying the decisions. They exist and you can read them or not, and it doesn't matter anyway. In like 2-3 years, these cards, this new reserve list, are just gonna be like every other card in commander you don't own, and there's gonna be more and more.

Because the problem isn't the rules of the casual format meant to play whatever cards you own. The problem isn't integrity or openness or whatever. It's certainly not financial benefit, because the only one winning here is the people who made the cards in the first place.

The RC making a ceremonial stand would have felt good for a moment, but it wouldn't have stopped the cards going on sale and existing, it wouldn't have stopped them from showing up in games anyway (black border) and it would have felt weirdly punitive to people who did want em.

and yeah, it would have annoyed wizards, but that's a them problem. But it's far more constructive to leverage the contacts and strength of the RC to have face to face discussions with actual decision makers and get shit to change downstream than to make a symbolic gesture now.

And i think that the fan riot this weekend was absolutely impactful and noticed, and will have an effect on how the company looks at this stuff, because i guaran-damn-tee you that 'cause a civil war in the most popular format of magic' was not in the marketing plan.

And 'let's erode the decades of trust and bonds the RC has built with the community from the ground up in this, the year of commander' is not good business.

It's been an incredibly long week for all of us. Don't be so quick to be dismissive of all of this tempest just because it doesn't look like a big deal to you. It really really is, not the least of which it damaged consumer confidence and trust in wotc among its most core fans.

There are lots of folks who have been invested in this game emotionally and monetarily for a very long time who are taking this as a sign to pack their tents and move on. There are content creators who are divesting their collections. And there is incredible anger all over.

Magic is a strong game. For decades it has relied on being really fun to play to get around a lot of social problems. These past few years, though, have drained the fun out of the game, leaving bare all of the warps and strained joints that had nowhere to hide.

Now Magic's problems with race, with economic class, with cultural misappropriation, with misogyny, with harrassment and hate, all are coming to the forefront, and the game can't just skate over it, because the game is way way off kilter.

Uro Oko Omnath Energy Emrakul Astrolabe on and on and on. Jumpstart availability. Masters sets breaking every format they touch. The bizarrely busted organized play system. The hella hasty and simultaneously too late banning of invoke.

is it any wonder the fans finally had enough? And that their anger was direct at the one format that actually listens and responds? Agitated gas needs an egress, and Commander is it.

WotC has failed us, their customer base, their fandom, on multiple axes, and given their lead times, we have at least another year of more of the same coming. Because you know the walking dead was just the canary in the coal mine.

There needs to be systemic rebuilding of the entire game development philosophy from the ground up. the game needs to find balance and fun again, and the secret lairs need to calm the fuck down and not come out every three days.

And in the meantime, the community needs to find equilibrium again. We need each other more than ever. I hope we can get through this together. After all, it isn't magic without the gathering. peace out.