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The One Ring card, Magic: The Gathering’s coveted collectible, has been found

polygon.com

51–60 of 72 posts

Re: The One Ring card, Magic: The Gathering’s coveted collectible, has been found

#51

Ah MTG, the original pay to win game.

While that's a criticism that can be made of the game, it has nothing to do what's going on here. The card is perfectly available normally; it's simply the card with this particular frame treatment and artwork that there's only one of.

Re: The One Ring card, Magic: The Gathering’s coveted collectible, has been found

#52
I would like to point out that this card contains a critical error - the number reads 001/001, but in fact, there were twenty made.

As we all know, three were given to the elves, seven to the dwarves, nine to the race of Men, and the one the Dark Lord kept for himself.

Re: The One Ring card, Magic: The Gathering’s coveted collectible, has been found

#53

OK, true believers, correct me if this anecdote is wrong in some way. So Wizards has put out a few releases of a joke set called "Unglued" where the cards are completely unserious in-jokes, sometimes with unplayable or really meta game mechanics. One Unglued set featured a card whose effect was derived by throwing it in the air and then seeing which other card(s) it landed on. So far so good. But apparently there was…

You might be conflating two things. One is Chaos Orb, a card in the original Magic sets. https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive... One is Chaos Confetti, a card in one of the Un- sets that you were referring to. https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive... I don't know if the Chaos Orb play is real or apocryphal. It may be that Chaos Confetti is a reaction to the story behind…

Chaos Confetti is a reaction to the Chaos Orb story -- that's why the flavor text is "And you thought that was just an urban legend."

Note that Chaos Confetti, being from Unglued, was never tournament legal. However, Chaos Orb was for a time, being from the original Magic set.

Re: The One Ring card, Magic: The Gathering’s coveted collectible, has been found

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be conflating two things. One is Chaos Orb, a card in the original Magic sets. https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive... One is Chaos Confetti, a card in one of the Un- sets that you were referring to. https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive... I don't know if the Chaos Orb play is real or apocryphal. It may be that Chaos Confetti is a reaction to the story behind…

Chaos Confetti is a reaction to the Chaos Orb story -- that's why the flavor text is "And you thought that was just an urban legend." Note that Chaos Confetti, being from Unglued, was never tournament legal. However, Chaos Orb was for a time, being from the original Magic set.

Since Orb specifies a full rotation of the card during descent, how would the destructive play be ruled? I would imagine that there's some kind of group theory argument that if each individual piece of the card turns over, then the entire card has turned over, but it's not satisfying from a physics perspective. Do you have any rulings from the time?

Re: The One Ring card, Magic: The Gathering’s coveted collectible, has been found

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's just a really expensive game with a subscription model. What's the price to pay to get four copies of each card in every standard set? That's your quarterly subscription fee. It would be pay-to-win if you could do stuff like, pay a fee to take a second card at once during a draft, or tutor a card from your collection during a game, etc...

I think it's pay to win in the sense that there are multiple subscription tiers, and if you only pay for basic, you're not winning against the players paying for gold++.

I would say, in that sense, there aren't really tiers; it's a continuum, and you can attempt to compete at whatever price point you're willing.

Re: The One Ring card, Magic: The Gathering’s coveted collectible, has been found

#57
"The Wall Street Journal reports that the bearer wishes to remain anonymous, but multiple resellers are already offering millions to buy it."

Uh huh. Why am I reminded of the WATA Games and Heritage Auctions pump and dump scams for video games when a sealed copy of Mario 64 allegedly sold for a million dollars?

Re: The One Ring card, Magic: The Gathering’s coveted collectible, has been found

#58
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still P2W, because more money = more power. The goal in those situations is to have fun, not win, so inherently P2W is lessened. However that does not mean it doesn’t exist. It’s still a very real problem that’s only getting worse, regardless of whether you care or not.

Somewhat reductively, that means all games are pay to win, because at the extreme, having enough money to retire, devote yourself to the game, hire tutors, etc. = more power.

Not really. You could have Scrooge McDuck vault levels of gold and all the training time in the world and you'll probably still get absolutely destroyed by Gary Kasparov in a casual game of chess.

There's always a genetic component that influences your min and max levels at any given skill.

Re: The One Ring card, Magic: The Gathering’s coveted collectible, has been found

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pay to win in the sense that there are multiple subscription tiers, and if you only pay for basic, you're not winning against the players paying for gold++.

I would say, in that sense, there aren't really tiers; it's a continuum, and you can attempt to compete at whatever price point you're willing.

That is exactly what "pay to win" means in the parlance of our times: the more you pay, the better chance you have to win. Tiers vs continuum doesn't matter here. The important part is that players with the same skill must decide how much money to pay the manufacturer to gain advantages over other players. If everyone had to buy the full set every quarter, then it would not be pay to win, it would just be a very expensive subscription game. There are things like sealed deck drafts where everyone agrees to buy in at the same price so that everyone can compete on skill. But there is a reason WotC doesn't allow proxy cards (just printing an unofficial copy of a card or a piece of paper with the name of the card), because they make a ton of money from the pay to win dynamic.

Re: The One Ring card, Magic: The Gathering’s coveted collectible, has been found

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chaos Confetti is a reaction to the Chaos Orb story -- that's why the flavor text is "And you thought that was just an urban legend." Note that Chaos Confetti, being from Unglued, was never tournament legal. However, Chaos Orb was for a time, being from the original Magic set.

Since Orb specifies a full rotation of the card during descent, how would the destructive play be ruled? I would imagine that there's some kind of group theory argument that if each individual piece of the card turns over, then the entire card has turned over, but it's not satisfying from a physics perspective. Do you have any rulings from the time?

Again, it's not clear that the confetti story actually happened at all, let alone in a tournament. (I mean, likely after it started spreading someone tried it in a non-tournament setting, but such a case wouldn't be the origin of the story.)

If someone did try it in a tournament, it probably wouldn't be legal -- why would it be? The text of the card certainly doesn't suggest it ought to be; that's part of why it's a notable story in the first place, that it turns on such an unusual interpretation. There are a number of rulings on how to play Chaos Orb from when it was tournament legal, but I can't find any relating to ripping it up; there's not a need to rule on what's clearly illegal. I don't think most people would be misled by a humorous story, an urban legend -- generally not told about a tournament setting -- into thinking that such a play would be legal in tournament.

A recent video on Rhystic Studies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dDLQkg5O1o) contains one person claiming that they witnessed someone trying this in a tournament -- presumably influenced by the story rather than the origin of it -- and the person who tried it was disqualified. Whether that actually happened, I don't know, but if so it even further suggests that no, there was no need to make detailed tournament rulings of this.

(Of course, the punchline of the Rhystic Studies account is that the person was disqualified not for the illegal play, but rather for the fact that, by doing so, they had reduced the number of cards in their deck to below the minimum legal size. If the Rhystic Studies story really did happen, though, I think we can infer that this reason was probably given because it was a way to avoid getting into an argument over whether ripping up the card was legal.)

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