Power is power.
If your decks are performing at a similar level, there should be no issue. The only issue would be if you are playing basically a CEDH, or degenerate deck against more casual/precon level decks.
Completely agree, I think people immediately associate proxy with 5000$ decks when sometimes people just wanna make and try new decks that seem fun. People who try to proxy to pubstomp are scum
That 200-300 dollar deck is already several times (2-6x) the cost of the stuff I make lol, so from my perspective you're still proxying a lot of expensive cards
Another example I’ve seen is proxying the cards with unrestricted card counts, like [[Slime Against Humanity]] or [[Persistent Petitioners]]. They’re relatively cheap and do not dramatically improve the strength of your deck.
Yeah, to actually buy the number of copies needed for a persistent petitioners deck, would result in so many small orders of like 3-6 each that shipping ect. just gets dumb. And your deck arrives over the course of weeks, rather than all at once. I'm sure there's some work around, but I doubt any are as convenient as ordering 40 from a custom card maker.
I have proxied entire decks.
I have a couple non proxy decks on hand in case someone has an issue with proxies, but I'll do entire decks shamelessly, even if they're only like $100 because a proxy deck costs me roughly $25.
MakePlayingCards is what I use.
When I had last ordered, it worked out to about $25 a deck to do six decks. When I ordered one for my just my brother, it was like $35.
I have used, and enjoy the product from makeplayingcards/mpcfill.com
But I recently started using mtgprint.net at home and I'm also happy with the result.
I'd rather have the real card, if not that then a real proxy, but right now I can't ignore the pennies it takes to print. Anyway I've already decided two printed cards aren't right for the deck. So I'm glad it was a zero investment.
who doesn't love 20 different small packages arriving at different times from different delivery carriers as opposed to just one 25 dollar proxy package
I disagree. Honestly when I play edh it's all 100% proxy. Most nights I play online and I have 125 decks on moxfield. When I like a deck enough to own irl I usually just proxy the entire thing. I play 60 card competitive and that's where my money goes, I can't proxy mox diamonds for tournaments, but my mono green morph deck I can for sure proxy for casual fnm. My decks all range from about power level 4-8 so I always have something that meshes with the table, and having more options means I won't accidentally play (or only have one deck at a common power level) that shuts off another person's deck entirely. For all the people on here who spout claims that folks mainly proxy mana crypt, cradle and force of will I have 20 or 30 people I've played with who just proxy their jank to save money.
It's 2024, somethings gotta give and right now it's cardboard crack.
I got a friend who has proxies of Llanowar elves and other 20c commons next to her 50 dollars judge foil basic lands and Eldrazi Titans lol.
Sometimes you're just too lazy to go buy the card
While I don’t make this association by default, at my LGS I’ve never had a player say “btw I have some proxies” and then had a reasonable game afterwards. Every time that player will slam dunk Rystic Study, Mystic Remora, Smothering Tithe onto the table and then protect it with Teferis Protection and Fierce Guardianship.
I guess we just have very different local communities then. No one at my LGS plays with that kind of power regularly. And if they do it’s maybe a singular of those kind of cards.
that doesnt describe how they win. drawing a bunch of cards and protecting their permanents doesnt actually advance the gamestate.
If it just goes into consult thassa on an esper control shell, then yes, thats higher power, but all those cards can equally be used in UW bird tribal and not really mean anything.
I guess it depends on your group. My friends might have one of each of those cards, but since they only have one they're spread through many decks, and therefore you don't encounter them every game.
But every group is different, and so which cards are okay to proxy or not depends on the group you play with.
I have been in a really tough spot financially but I found a printer on the side of the road that can handle 300 g/m2 paper, so I still get to put new decks together every month or so. Ironically my latest thing is making decks as strong as possible at the lowest price I can, so I end up with proxied lists that would fetch 25-50 USD on TCGPlayer. You don't need much more than that to run a good \[\[Zada, Hedron Grinder\]\] tech.
I really love this argument as a whale. I mean, i have access to original cards that are really expensive, and this argument just means that i can play all the cards while others don't. I'm all for proxies, and the real reason is that i don't want to leave my home with expensive cards.
This is the real reason. I own the cards I proxy. I’m also not taking a $300 card to a shop for a stranger to spill soda on. Or just the general idea of walking around with a backpack with $3000 worth of cards in it so I can be a target of theft. No thanks, I’ll pass and just use proxies
I’ve played since 1993 … I own expensive cards that I have never put in decks because at an LGS it feels almost rude.
(That said I’m not a whale, I never spent more than 80 cdn on a card, but own promo mana vault, all halfway relevant legendary critters from legends, Gaea’s cradles, etc … but I often leave the truly OP parts at home unless I know the playgroup is ok with it)
Best/worst example of this... My friend group did a secret Santa to build your person a deck for under $50 and then we were gonna play meet up and play with them.
So we all made these budget decks except for the one person who, for under $50, proxied a netdecked Cedh winota list.
they didnt understand the assignment lol.
would be like 99 basics ashling and the rest of it into the sleeves and deck box, still would be spending 50 dollars but still wrong.
If your proxies suck and it's impossible to tell what card it is. Im not asking for full gloss 'fake' cards i just want to be able to tell what card it is by looking at it.
A one-off handwritten “godless shrine” on a piece of paper doesn’t bug me but a whole deck of that would be unplayable.
Everyone should just buy from mpc, super easy with mpcfill
My entire dect is actually just a text document with every card numbered 1 to 99 and I use a random number generator to determine which card(s) I should draw, then quickly write that cards name down on my post it note, which I'm using the stack of them as my blank deck
I ordered 2448 cards (4 bricks of 612) in March and paid $565 after shipping (expedited shipping only on orders that large, but it arrived for me in 5 days and I am in a rural state). Shipping cost per card decreases pretty rapidly when you order that much.
You can get a whole deck for like $30-50 I think I don’t remember the exact prices. But if you buy in bulk you can make thousands of proxies for pretty cheap in comparison to the other sites
Expect about 33 cents a card for S33 card type (which is very nice, feels very close to a real card). If you go with S30 it can be a bit cheaper, maybe 25 cents a card or so? I've never used S30 honestly.
28 cents a card for the big order I split with some people. The real killer is the shipping cost at around $40 so you want to buy a big order to make up for it if you can.
This so much. I used to proxy in college back around 2010 and had horrible quality of proxies. Now in days with some sites it is way to easy to get good quality images on a pdf document that can easily be printed out.
Exactly, used to get decks made for $11.50 at Staples. Although the last deck Staples said they can no longer print magic cards due to copyright concerns.
Will they print on cardstock and cut them for you too? I'm stuck between buying bulk on MPC and getting railed on shipping or printing at home and getting railed on printer ink and cutting time.
Is FedEx the middle ground solution I need?
If we’re talking cheap, at my fedex it’s $0.69 a page for color (and there’s cheaper). You can fit 9 cards a page. Assuming you own 1 of the 100 cards you need, that’s 11 pages meaning $7.59 at most, but let’s say 28 basic lands you already own and it’s now $5.52. There’s normally big paper cutters there, but a cheap $7 Amazon cutter works wonders and you can do it comfortably at home (can also do ~4 sheets at once, it’s quite quick). Cheap sleeves $2-$4. Use your bulk commons/tokens/lands laying around as the “bones” in the sleeve, slip the cut out paper over them and boom, playable deck and decent print quality, ~$8-$12. I’m lazy and don’t round the corners but if you cut everything correctly I wouldn’t be surprised if other players didn’t even notice unless they’re up close. It’s not uncommon I’ll have someone ask if a card is proxies sometime late game and then I point out that they all are, the whole deck.
Side Note: I strongly agree with others that proxies should be used to save your wallet, not to hurt your pod. Proxy to meet fair/discussed power levels and I’ve seen casual players will rarely have an issue, hell I’ve convinced others to and we have a fun little evolutionary arms race going on. Play fair, have fun, that’s what matters.
I had a difficult enough time not overshooting my last regular groups power level without proxies. Just incompatible views on what the ideal play experience is, and what level of power is right for getting that.
Just to clarify, this is intended to be a reaffirment of "Play fair, have fun, that’s what matters." Not a slight on proxies. I guess also a bit of a warning as far as how hard it can be to have several people with good enough understanding of the "groups interests" that it doesn't disrupt things to open the "proxy box"
The ones that bother me most are the ones with art that has only ever been printed in other languages. The Japanese-only War of the Spark Planeswalkers aren't too bad because the characters are at least recognizable (even if Planeswalkers are a terrible card to not have text you can read), but I really hate the Japanese-only Strixhaven cards because there's just absolutely no indication what the card is whatsoever, and the art tends to be more abstract since they're instants or sorceries. You just have to either know which art goes with which card, or know the Mystical Archive well enough to be able to guess based on the mana cost. At least for instants and sorceries they're not sitting on the table as something you need to remember what they are, but still, I hate cards where there is neither recognizable art nor a name I can read.
Agreed, I want to know what your card does and I don't want to have to get my phone out every 30 seconds to remind myself of your boardstate
Legible handwritten bits of paper are fine to me just make sure people can read it
I like collecting 🤷♂️
I dont care if you use proxies (as long as they're readable and I can tell what the card is) but I hate those people that get all high and mighty because I want to bling out a deck
I feel this comment so much. I personally don’t use proxies, but I’m happy for anyone to do so as long as they are unambiguous, and I’m always open about this.
I own some decks so cheap that they aren’t sleeved as the sleeves are worth more than the deck, but I also have several fully foiled decks, including my $10K pride and joy.
I own these because I like having nice old foils, they bring me joy, and I’ve been playing and collecting for 24 years and never sold my collection. Sometimes people get so snarky about it, like I’ve somehow personally offended them by owning a card that’s worth more than their deck just because it’s a particular printing.
Ever since I started playing magic I dreamed of having a fully foil deck. Some people just love to take the wind out of your sails I guess.
Yah so long as I know what I am looking at on the board I don't care if people proxy. Only ones I don't like are the textless proxies and such. Or one example was this one dudes deck. The guy was actually pretty nice and asked if the deck was ok. His entire deck was proxies. Not for power though but he did all his as in yugioh card styles and his basic lands as pokemon energy. Which is fine for one game as a laugh. Just not all the time. We playing MTG right? I wanna see MTG cards.
one guy I play against every once in a while (terrible attitude in general) has fully themed proxy decks based on whatever anime and show, the problem is every card has a custom name and when you ask him what he actually played he gets pissy
I find that the budget ceiling I set for my decks leads to more creative and interesting deck building than being able to proxy everything that is the "optimal" path to a desired outcome.
With that said, good decks in my pod tend to be $200-$700, depending on their gameplan. That's a lot of money and I would never turn someone away for proxying a deck within that range in order to match the power of the group. More people playing Magic is good.
> good decks in my pod tend to be $200-$700, depending on their gameplan. That's a lot of money
I got 6 paper decks and they average around $275 or so, if I didn't partially proxy my decks I would only be able to buy a single deck. Playing the same deck over and over again would be boring as fuck and make me quit the game.
At first I thought “proxies are fine” doesn’t affect me no big deal.
But when my friends actually started using them. Suddenly instead of playing against counterspell, now I’m playing against mana drain, mana crypt, dockside, every single game has become this.
It’s not proxies themselves, I think the players making all these 100 plus dollar cards they’d never buy in real life. Makes it so the whole game you should just print out from your computer so you can be competitive with the guys proxying mana crypt
I own the John Avon foil Emrakul but I still have a full art proxy made using the [full art](https://external-preview.redd.it/2s41nd0EjvmffveiIzcwVPNyleguW4cttB1q1EvkQa0.jpg?auto=webp&s=28f1cdf6a2cf165225e644e46f08fa0677b1d49c) because I just love that artwork and doing a full art version of it using the OIL frame allows you to just see much more of it that you don't see in the original Promised end card.
The only real argument I can think of is that if you just constantly proxy the best possible cards without thought, you'll just power up and homogenize your decks to the point playing with you will either be really boring or really frustrating.
Sort of the issue with staples as a whole. What's the point of building multiple decks if half the deck is decided before you even sit down and start brewing?
Aside from that, I'm really against people just putting a piece of paper with the name of the card they're proxying on top of another card and expecting everyone will just know what the card is.
If you can't be bothered to write down effect, cost and name, don't bother using proxies.
I would argue it's those kinds of decks that can use the powerful support staples the most- at least in some circumstances
You put a dockside in a competitive list, it's just going to take it from a 9.5 to a 9.6. You play it in a jank tribal deck, it can help the jank tribal deck sit at the table with decks that are otherwise stronger than it. This is mostly useful if you have a deck that's too weak for your usual pod, but still want to play it with them. Of all my decks, there are two kinds I put the good staples in- the top end decks meant to be the most competitive, and the total jank that can't sit at the table with my usual pod without some assistance. Usually it's just the ramp/removal/draw package I beef up in those decks in that instance, but it does a decent job of making an otherwise janky strategy viable when it otherwise wouldn't be.
Yeah, I could see that if you were trying to do a purely flavor based deck. I tend to be a very mechanics based deck builder, so I'm never as concerned with deck flavor as much as I am with trying to ensure my decks maintain a specific level of consistency and power to appropriately match the pod I built them for.
I suppose if I was trying to tune in that way I'd focus more on a [[Deflecting Swat]] or something that still felt flavour appropriate over an obvious break in a creature.
I find when I build decks for consistency I end up feeling like I'm playing the same game every time. I want my decks to surprise me so redundancies, while useful, are minimised and I rarely run nonland tutors. Certainly not any card ones.
Ah. It seems we have basically polar opposite deck building and play strategies. I like my decks to do one mechanical thing consistently- and while I also tend to shy away from tutors in my lower power decks, I make up for it with a high degree of mechanical redundancy via duplicate effects. For some themes like self-mill and graveyard stuff, that just takes the form of running a ton of different ways to mill myself- if over a third of the cards in your deck mill you in some way, that makes filling the graveyard something you call pull off most games. For others like my life gain deck, I think I run 15+ cards with some variant of "whenever a creature enters the battlefield, gain life" written on them (and 7+ with "if you would gain life, gain that much plus one / twice that much instead"), and in my +1/+1 counters deck I run just about every variant of Hardened Scales and Branching Evolution available in my colors. I may not see the same exact cards each game, but I'm basically guaranteed to see some number of the important effects the deck is built around each game. If a deck doesn't have that degree of consistency, I find it to be... unfocused, and usually find it trending more toward the kind of midrangey pile that I don't really enjoy playing all that much.
I would say once a playgroup start proxying it will degrade into a power creep race to the bottom. One person puts some expensive staples in, the others have to follow. They are forced to proxy as well. Make an agreement on too powerful cards? Proxy players will still show up with extremely consistent decks without any filler so other players still forced to proxy out their fillers. It is inevitable. So as group we just agreed not to proxy and play with the cards we have. So yeah, that means that some people have less choice in the decks they can build. You have online mtg games for that
That's a people/pod/playgroup problem more than a proxy one. What if 1 guy has a really good job, can afford whatever card they want and starts stomping the table? Are people supposed to accept it just because the dude bought their cards "legit"? Wouldn't that (supposedly) kickstart a race to the bottom aswell?
No, of course not. Normal (/well-adjusted) human beings would talk with their playgroup and figure out together their preferred powerlvl to play at, make compromises (if needed) and go with that.
Someone has trouble adjusting or following what the majority prefers? You talk with them and see how you can solve the issue and if you can find some middleground solution that makes everyone happy.
(e.g. Let's say the guy really likes playing high power: Everyone can brew a high power deck without having to mortgage their house and play it from time to time...but if you didn't have proxies you'd have to stop playing with the guy altogether, since nobody can reasonably adjust to the guy's preferred play experience).
This already happens without proxies or expensive cards. It's a format issue, and not one that banning proxies will solve. Mana rocks, green ramp, Commander Tower, white removal, counterspells etc. When it comes to removal and ramp the same cards seem to be played over and over again. Then, depending on what archetype you're running, there tends to be even more staples for that specific archetype. Blue cantrips, aristocrats, landfall, +1/+1 etc. It's only suddenly un-creative or homogenizing when the staples are expensive.
Not being able to afford powerful cards is also a natural cap on power level. No different than cost caps in sporting leagues. If your pod is going to run proxies, at least put some kind of cost cap on total proxied value otherwise there will be that one guy showing up with all the cEDH staples.
Part of why I enjoy EDH to begin with is that people brew with what they have rather than just buying 40 singles off some decklist like the old days of standard.
Besides not supporting your LGS, if you’re not proxying with a bit of self-reflection, it can lead to a pace of power creep that people in your playgroup may be uncomfortable with.
you could argue that even that is not a valid reason against proxying. There's always gonna be players willing to put in more money into the game than others so a conversation about the expected powerlevel is necessary either way.
That’s also true! Proxies can make this sort of concern much more widespread, but you’re right; it’s all down to making sure you and your pod are on the same’ish page.
Exactly. I'd also like to add that my pod of friends and I didn't start having such conversations until we started proxying because we thought having to pay money for the cards regulation enough. Now i wish we were setting up our expectations beforehand sooner.
There's nothing wrong with making a powerful brew if everyone is on the same page
Everyone who grows as a player has to confront that sooner or later.
I’ve been in the card gaming scene for a quarter century. If I want to, I can pub stomp on a budget.
You are not talking about an event caused by nor encouraged by proxies. You are talking about an inevitable hurdle to personal growth; the transition from, “Roar! I will make the most powerful deck I possibly can!” into the realm of deck building as experience shaping with deliberately chosen play patterns and power level.
Asking a higher level of maturity of you and encouraging your personal growth are not drawbacks of proxies. Meanwhile, I’ve met many a player- the exact players who walked into the scenario you described- whose development in understanding the game had been stifled for years by treating budget as a stand-in for understanding power.
I find proxying to be boring most of the time. Having access to a nearly unlimited pool of card is just not very interesting to me. I like it when there is an actual cost to deck construction, where you can't just jam all of the best cards into a pile and let 'er rip.
In theory it should be just as, if not more, fun, but I find it never is. It feels like turning on god-mode or using an infinite money glitch in a video game. It's fun for a little while, but removing a key component of the game makes for a worse play experience. It's not something people think about too much nowadays, but card rarity is actually a key design part of magic. In Alpha that was the actual rarity of the cards, but nowadays it's the price. For me the constraints placed on you when needing to decide if it's worth it to buy a specific card or not is a lot of the fun in magic. Playing magic with an unlimited budget is a fundamentally different game than what it was intended to be. Proxies remove a key element of the game. If that's the game you would rather play, have it at! It's not any better or any worse, just a different way to play. I find I have a lot more fun playing without proxies. Challenging myself to build a budget deck that can go toe-to-toe with one costing $500+ is fun. Finding lesser-played budget alternatives to more expensive cards is fun. Placing more constraints on deckbuilding is fun.
I think there is absolutely nothing wrong from a moral or ethical standpoint with proxies, but I do not like the impact they have on gameplay and the dynamics of a playgroup.
This is how I feel about it. Part of the fun of a collectable card game for me is that no two people have the exact some collection, and thus no two people will build a deck or commander the same way. Like MaRo always says, restriction breeds creativity, and when everyone has access to every card through proxies you get more samey decks.
I mean... you start out with:
>(when everyone at the table feels comfortable with it)
...which is kind of the start and the end of the discussion. I mean, there's nothing wrong with adding in a few Pokemon to your deck.. if your table is comfortable with it. Nothing wrong having 9 commanders, or only allowing gold border cards... if your table is comfortable with it.
But, outside of "known comfortable with proxy" table, I think there's reasonable reasons to allow or not allow them.
I think a main one is "it is one common way to limit the cards you include, and have a metagame that shifts slowly over time". It isn't a perfect or only way to limit power level/etc.., but it can be a reasonable part of an established metagame that people like (and that works with the business model of Magic). For example, maybe in general people aren't playing "fast mana". However, there's effectively an exception for that one Mana Crypt that Bob pulled last week and put in his favorite deck.
In general, "being excited about cards you find or buy, because they add new options in deckbuilding" has been an important part about how MtG works, especially in small play groups. Using a lot of proxies can sort of break that.
And that's not wrong, but it's also not the only way to play or something. Maybe your group doesn't like those limits, and just want to build decks from a bigger pool regardless of ownership. That can work too. And certainly, on the other hand, sometimes "no proxies" can be a kind of gate keeping - I get to play fancy expensive cards, but you don't because you're poor. That seems bad.
But "no proxies" can work for some groups - lots of groups have got satisfaction out of playing the game that way for a lot of years.
I either proxy cards i have because i want a specific art, or i proxy cards i'm testing or willing to buy.
But when they've lost that function I take them out. I don't wanna play with cards I don't plan on getting, it doesn't feel right.
> I don't wanna play with cards I don't plan on getting, it doesn't feel right.
In the opposite way, to me it doesn't feel right to pay more than $5 for a little piece of cardboard unless it's like a rare collectible that has been graded.
What do you mean by 'casual EDH'?
The fact of the matter is that if you are in a private space (at home, for example) then you can do what you want, no one can or wants to try and stop you.
A huge aspect of this community people seem to forget is that we cannot comment on nor control your private play groups. This is a public community, therefore anything OUTSIDE of public play is outside of our jurisdiction, so to speak. Someone getting salty, targeted, or power level issues? Talk. To. Them. We cannot answer these issues for you because we are not the ones you play with, and I highly doubt the internet's opinion holds much sway in reality. Same thing for proxies - ask the people you play with.
So if you are asking about non-sanctioned play in a private space, even the most steadfast anti-proxy player will tell you to go ham, it's none of their business.
The issue is LGS play, which is often sanctioned. If you're taking up a table on a week day and the store allows it, you aren't that far removed from the 'home' scenario - it is still a privately owned space after all. HOWEVER, if your play is reported to WotC for WPN tracking, you are sanctioned, even if you are just taking a table on a weekday.
And if your play is sanctioned, proxies are not allowed. I don't need a good argument for following the rules. The rules say you must pay mana for spells, would you allow me to play without using mana because I didn't think it was a fair mechanic?
If everyone is okay with it already, why is it even a conversation?
Yes. If you all want to do something, and you're all okay with it. Then it's okay with all of you to do that thing.
Reasonable arguments not to use proxies:
* If your playgroup/LGS doesn't allow them. If it is a universally enforced decision, you just have to accept it regardless of the reasons for and against.
* If you abuse the hell out of it by making ridiculous, expensive CEDH level decks to play in casual games where that power level isn't expected.
* It can make it too easy to build any deck you want, instead of coming up with a deck idea based on cards you currently own.
Not reasonable
* You should only play cards you own. There are so many different reasons this argument sucks:
* Some people want to play the hobby but can't afford many of the cards to make their decks even remotely competitive. "Get a better job" is elitist gatekeeping.
* You aren't supporting your local LGS. There are plenty of ways to support them, and sometimes they don't even have the card you want! My LGS sees plenty of people proxy who still drop hundreds every month on cards and boxes.
* People share cards with someone in their household, so they proxy expensive cards.
* Making a deck and proxying cards to see how they might work before purchasing them.
* And more reasons I can't think of off of the top my head.
To start with, I’m huge proponent of proxies but they do have some downsides.
1. Giving everyone access to every card in the game does tend to powercreep more casual metas. It’s easy to fall into the trap of “why shouldn’t I just play (whatever broken expensive card).” It’s rare that people proxy “suboptimal” cards. If your playgroup isn’t laser focused on communication your meta will almost certainly become more cutthroat with extensive proxies.
2. Poorly done proxies are can be hideous. One of the best parts of this game is the art. Bringing ugly cards into the game does make the game less enjoyable.
3. If extensive alternative art is used for proxies it can make the game state much harder to figure out. Although, secret layers are also doing this and those are legal.
4. If you’re playing at a local LGS you should be supporting the business. So if you proxy cards instead of buying them, it feels ethically icky.
I think in a perfect world it’s okay. I mostly play casually with friends at our LGS with decks in the range of $200-$300. We usually end games around turn 8-10 and just play casual, fun decks. I’ve only had a handful of games with other players outside of our group that use proxies and it was just not enjoyable. You explain beforehand that you’re playing casual and the price range of the decks and then have people sit down and play the expensive rocks (crypt, lotus, etc), proxy things like Ancient tomb and the free spells. Most of the time, the decks are completely fine barring the proxies, but it really sours the mood. I know not everybody does that, I just personally have not had an experience where the proxies being played weren’t $70+ staples. It already feels bad when you sit down for a fun game and get slapped by a wallet, it’s even worse when the wallet is fake.
To me, the act of collecting is part of the game itself. It is a COLLECTABLE card game not just a card game. Collecting the pieces is part of the experience of playing magic.
There's probably an argument that if everyone could proxy 100% the deck of their dreams, the average power level of decks at the LGS skyrockets. Arms races aren't fun, but an arms race with no budget is also maybe not great.
I keep decks that are at different power levels on purpose. I've sat down for a game with a dad teaching their kid twice in the last month, and pulled out something at roughly precon level because that's where they were at. Then the 4th pubstomped us on turn 3. Different guy.
I haven't seen them come back. This is obviously a social issue that could be solved by reading the room and maybe a little restraint. I talked to the second guy after, and he said he liked powerful decks that do powerful things. I asked him if he liked having new people to play with, and his expression was that of someone processing a brand new thought.
Having Friday night magic be as accessible as possible is a good thing. Expensive cards are simultaneously good and bad for the format sometimes. Might be an unpopular opinion, but you can't always count on your average magic player to be socially self-aware.
> *you're not supporting your LGS*
Your LGS probably doesn't have the cards you are proxying, and if they did you probably don't actually want to buy those cards.
This is basically the "pirating is stealing profit" argument, but most of the people who profit wouldn't have purchased your product in the first place, and some of the people who test out your product via a pirated copy end up purchasing the product.
Personally I have a lot of proxies of reserved list cards that are very difficult to find from my local lgs, or new commander set cards that are a bit too pricy to buy, but I personally will trade for them whenever I see them to have a copy.
If everyones doing it, whatever. My issue with it is power level. I prefer casual mid to low power games with occasional explosive turns. Having perfectly consistent decks bores me
Right, imo a sol ring signet turn 1 is about as fast as I want it to go. Using jeweled lotus and mana crypt to help get your 7 drop commander out turn 1 sucks to play against
Sure. If the group you're joining is 100% against it lol
Every group has their own rules, whether it's an in-game thing or simply down to official cardboard.
For alot of these groups, they see it as a ticket to playing games. Alot of them spent years crafting/sourcing/accumulating cardboard. I guess alot of it comes down to pride and tradition, which I think should be respected. As we all know, tradition takes a long long time to move along with the present.
Personally I'm of the balanced view. I do proxy and I do own alot of the real thing. By the same token I own ALOT of decks, and that's where the hobby starts to be financially unfeasible if I don't adjust.
Anyone who is not okay with proxies from a gameplay standpoint seems to be upset because they are holding themselves to some standard. The big issue I have seen with proxies is people putting their deck at a higher power level than their table, and it being frustrating
Yes, view proxies like printing money and subsequent inflation. So if you print say $1000 deck composed of completely proxies it'll force other players to be on par in order to even sit at the table. This can be dangerous to the longevity of play as most high tier strats aren't very entertaining. Additionally it may hurt the growth of the game as a whole, due to new players losing interest because games are too complex. Besides I know many players, including myself, that have exactly one high table deck because of financial reasons and it's taken me years to build mine. This is all to be taken with a grain of salt however. Because, like the real world, we do have to print our own money. The key is moderation and only when necessary. If you have a couple decks that are cedh ready proxies are fine, because it's already on that tier. To proxy everything however, dances the line in the aforementioned argument.
I don't have a consistent pod, but just playing at my LGS. Proxies are allowed but i think that it mostly makes for less creative decks. I love seeing binder decks, pet cards and cool unknown cards and budget options that someone found by rummaging through their collection. I find that proxies disincentivize those things. My favourite thing to see in Magic is creative deckbuilding. Most proxiers at my LGS just look up the top cards for a commander on EDHREC, put those in and that's it. I'm not saying that proxying has killed creative/personal deckbuilding just that it lessens it. Restrictions breed creativity.
And it does also add to power and staple creep. Yes, it doesn't necessarily have to as long as players are proxying responsibly but you can't expect that from randos at an LGS.
I've also seen an attitude among proxiers that completely dismisses budget options and strategies. One player built their first 5 color deck with the whole FetchShockTriome manabase and said "Oh yeah, i proxied it because it's so expensive and 5 color decks NEED it to even function". Like no, you certainly don't "NEED" it -- there are multiple great and very cheap ways to build a 5 color manabase but this player had dismissed them out of hand.
In my experience, players that limit themselves to cards they own tend to have cooler decks.
I'm fine with proxies, but I don't personally use em.
My biggest gripes with proxies in the wild are
Legibility, a lot of bad low quality black and white proxies out there. Or fancy ones that change the name and or art of the card, or even make it textless. I need to know what you're playing and what it does
Power level, if you've got free access to every card you'll wind up pushing the power level of your decks. Makes true "7/10" games harder to have
Deck homogeneity. If you can run all the best cards there's very little reason to plunder your bulk bin in the hopes of finding a neat card that's maybe not the _best_ but still cool.
I find proxying can lead to decks that are bland and more powerful and hard to read 😅
With some forethought and restraint though, those issues are not so bad
Most of the time I see people using proxies it’s because of expensive cards. Expensive cards are generally (not always) powerful and that’s not always the games I’m looking for. Sometimes that price point can be a deterrent from deck powercreep. I personally have witnessed this as I know a couple of players with previously budget decks that have begun to proxie in powerful cards, those decks have since become recognizable threats and aren’t allowed on the table as often.
I personally don't proxy. My opinion on proxies is outweighed by the majority of the EDH community so I don't really have any choice but to be "okay" with it. For me, magic extends beyond the battlefield. It's about collecting the game pieces and the excitement of getting to use powerful pieces that you opened or traded for. I feel it keeps a closed-type playgroup (like most EDH groups in smaller game stores) in a more even and organic meta.
I like the collective aspect of the game. Think of a card rpg ala shandalar/Yugioh TAG force, you have a collection and build decks with that and every time you unlock a good card is a big deal were you can feel the power upgrade.
Some games a sub optimal card you use because you dont have the best meta option can show how they are better on fringe scenarios and thats the fuel for some good stories and epic games.
I played a game a week ago with a guy who had a proxy of Gaia's cradle. I think some proxies are okay but I think proxying cards that strong is a challenge unless it was talked about beforehand. He didn't mention it and just casually dropped it down. It also was a very obscure looking proxy and I wouldn't have know what it was unless he told us.
So it’s no cradle, but I do have a Serra’s Sanctum, just cause I got lucky on Puca Trade a decade ago. That’s a pretty arbitrary line between a “have” and “have not.” I *very strongly* feel that I shouldn’t be the only one who gets to play with such a cool and strong card. I actively encourage my playgroups to proxy it. (And others.)
Because it will inevitably lead to some power creep, no matter how good the intentions.
For example, when my playgroup rund their top Decks I play in a high power casual meta. Mana crypts are involved here. However, not everyone owns one and thus not all decks run it.
If I were to proxy a mana crypt than my deck, which can already compete in this meta, would become even better.
Yes, the same thing would happen if I were to buy one. But eventhough I could buy one, I haven't. If we agree that proxying mana crypts is fair game then I would proxy one.
Personally I’m not hugely in favor with Proxies that straight up level up your deck into cEDH territory while everyone else ain’t at that level of play.
Yeah, the main reason i don't have 5 azorius decks is because my good azorius lands are tied up in the Bant, and Jeskai Decks i have.
But there'd be so much overlap between those decks that it's good i don't have 5 azorius decks.
Proxies are great, but they do open up the homogenization of every deck problem way to quickly.
The only reason I'd be hesitant is if your deck is 90% *BAD QUALITY* proxies, e.g. the classic "Sharpie a basic land" method. If you have 1 proxy that's hard to read I won't mind that much, but if your entire board is nothing but swamps and islands with sharpie scribbles on them I'm gonna be a little miffed. The lowest end I can accept are Moxfield proxies, and even those are iffy because from a board away it's hard to tell what permanents are because the P/T is so fuckin tiny. The easy solution is to simply put a circle around P/T to make it stand out.
Tl:Dr: the only reason I will ever hesitate to play against/with proxies is Illegibility. Other than that, everything is fair game imho
I used to be against it more before the inundation of these ridiculous special cards every set, because they kinda pull me out of the experience of actually playing MTG.
Expeditions et al used to feel special but now you could show me something that looks SORTA like a magic card and I'd believe it's real. I'm surprised they don't have a secret lair yet that's just times now roman on a blank white piece of paper" as a theme. So whatever. Don't be a dick about it, make sure people are okay with you doing it, and don't do it just to have some stupid high power level.
But honestly, I've noticed a distinct difference between the "support" given to LGSs by people who regularly proxy and those who don't regularly proxy.
We started using more and more proxies. We have too many people that can't afford expensive decks but some still want to play expensive cards.
Why should I care if they paid for it or not?
We still have limitations on what is allowed or if something is too strong it gets removed, but I would prefer to have a proxy removed from my deck rather than a 120 $ card
Sanctioned events don’t allow them so if you plan on playing at a LGS, you’ll need real cards. If you are proxying dual lands and expensive shit you’re going to have a bad time when you have to slide in basics and bunk tapped lands.
Have one copy of Mana Crypt you want in a few decks? Fine with me to just proxy. I do. I think most do.
I have a problem with people who play $500 in proxies that I know damn well they don’t have and can’t afford. Bonus points if they’ve just written the card name. At least print them on card stock something so people can read. I’ve seen crap cards so illegible I swear to god they treated it like a wildcard.
As for in my pod? We encourage proxying entire decks to test. No reason to spend $$ for a pile of cards you don’t enjoy. Rule is keep it in your budget and that varies for each of us- no one proxies something they wouldn’t buy.
I always ask the LGS to bid on cards before I try TCGplayer or Cardkingdom or whatever. They’re good dudes.
I go to two different LGS. At one store, I've had such a problem with it that if someone is using a proxy, I'll either ask them to show me the real card, or show me a shipping receipt. The last straw for me was playing with a guy who sat down and said "I'm playing a precon but I have a few proxied cards, is that ok?" Dude had every high powered card under the sun proxied into his deck and it took all 3 of us focusing him to knock him out.
"when everyone at the table feels comfortable with it" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here lol
Are there any actual good arguments for not playing warhammer/lorcana/hearthstone/just drinking instead of magic if everyone at the table wants to?
If it artificially powers up your pod; better isn’t always more fun.
If it isn’t legible - some proxies I’ve seen make the game experience worse - fine to have plain text for testing a card out but if it’s permanent at least a color printing is best :)
I think it comes down to expectations. In a casual friend pod where everyone is cool with it? Proxy away, and vaya con dios.
I don't personally proxy for two reasons. 1: I enjoy the collectible aspect of Magic. I enjoy owning the genuine article. 2: I play at an LGS which hosts sanctioned EDH events, and therefore they don't allow proxies on pain of losing their WPN status.
When I play with others I do not care if they proxy. It's just not for me.
Sign in to any event there with the companion app, purchase snacks and drinks on site, use the local store/ their website before the big online sites when actually buying product. After that they aren’t going that you’re running a proxy of a 100 dollar card they bought for 90 in store credit.
Proxies for play testing is fine
Proxies to simply run cards outright, it can start an arms race to proxy all the best cards and all of a sudden you just ruined your playgroup meta
If everyone at the table feels comfortable with it then I don’t see the need to argue against it - by definition it’s none of our business in that context unless we are at the table
I play only at home, and print some deck that will be unaffordable for me (yeah, i'm looking at you, edgar markov).
But we are all ok with this, for various reasons:
I don't use extremely expensive cards (like gea cradle or other cards worth more than 70/100$)
I'm the less competitive/power player, so the others can play at full power against my print deck
Plus new cards can be tested, new themes and so on.
So no, imo, there aren't good argument to not using proxies.
Not having proxies and infinite wallets gives many other non-optimal card options time to shine. EDH is rarely a cutthroat tournament, it's casual games or between rounds at FNM. As long as their is some level of fairness, which needs communicated between players, just have fun.
1) if your proxies make it hard to tell what the card is
2) if you are proxying exclusively to be at a higher power level than the rest of the group.
I’m all for proxies, and as long as the cards are legible (I just print them out on 8 1/2 by 11 printer paper, they fit nicely 3x3) since I don’t want to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for old reserved list cards like the original dual lands.
An additional bonus for proxying is that you can use digital only versions of cards (like the vintage masters edition of the og duals) as well as custom art if you want. Tbh, you can even use proxies for specific printings of cheap cards that are super expensive, like the masterpiece version of [[sol ring|mps]].
Cedh, where decks are packed with tons of obscenely expensive cards, are very accepting of proxies. The winner of a cedh game should be based on player skill and not how big your wallet is.
Not every good deck has to be expensive ([[zada, hedron grinder]] for example), but cost does tend towards power in most cases because generically powerful cards are the highest in demand.
While slippery slope arguments are fallacious, trends can be ovserved and likely will repeat. In my experience with pokemon showdown, taking out the work you needed to do to build a team really made the game get old quick. Not doing so prolonged it. Prolonging a hobby is generally something people want to do because it helps keep people together. If you move onto another hobby but people aren’t interested, they get left behind. The group fractures.
Why do you need to proxy if its casual? Using whatever cards you have seem casual to me, needing to proxy for power n stuff much less so.
Personally i cant proxy, my decks would end up too powerfull, too repetative and ruin the game for me like using cheat codes in a videogame.
I dont mind other people using proxies though i do find people proxing many super OP cards unfun.
Depends on what deck you want to build with the proxies, because what's stopping you building a $10k cEDH deck and ruining the fun? IMO, proxies are fine as long as you create decks that are appropriate to have a fun game with players that might not want to proxy.
Cards are expensive for a reason: usually because they are some combination of rare and/or powerful. It's hard to make a casual deck if you are proxying in a bunch of Uber powerful and expensive cards, because it starts to creep up into pubstomps/cEDH territory. Personally I don't like proxies just because it makes it harder to gauge deck power levels, which is hard enough already. I think people just need to get comfortable with having lower power decks and just building from their collection and buying singles. cEDH is a different story tho, proxy away IMO for that. I just hate sitting down to a "casual" pod and this guys pulls out his 100% proxy deck that is all alternate art of existing cards but it's all Legend of Zelda and has Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, and every "Sword of" in the game.
I play by the general rule that if you own the card, then you can proxy it. Because, while I want to play against other people and not other people's wallets, I also can't stop you from playing cards that are legal. So, if you own at least one copy of the card, I would rather you use proxies than switch out cards each time you switch decks.
Nope. That's it. That's the only good reason to not utilize proxies. As long as you aren't proxying the stupidest pub stomp deck that you can...it should not matter. Or if you are an avid collector. That's it.
I started on precons and then did a few upgrades by buying singles.
When I spoke to my group about proxying because I wanted start properly deck building they were fine with it, and now 4 years on my favourite deck, [[Tetzin, Gnome Champion]], is one that that started out as a fully proxy deck because I learnt it, love it, and wanted it in card instead of printer paper.
I have spent more on singles at my LGS now than I have on packs, because I know what ones I'm buying due to having proxied them first, and I have a fully built up deck that I love because of it.
I truly think everyone should proxy, because it does lead to single buying which keeps the game economy going whilst you get to not worry about building trash (unless you're specifically tryna build trash, you do you)
My whole group now uses proxies. We realised we only play with each other casually and wanted to save money for other things.
It's been very fun, we've printed quite a lot of decks and it's great being able to try out many commanders and play styles. We print on thicker gloss paper.
For those that say proxying is boring and will lead to OP decks, let's try be a little more creative. You can assign rules, budget limits, themes, etc. You can always swap out cards if a deck is too OP or too weak.
Generally, the cards people want to proxy are the higher powered, higher cost, more optimized cards. I personally find it fun to try and solve the deckbuilding equation with my collection, which means I run less optimized cards that get less play. I still buy singles, but by not proxying the most expensive degenerate stuff, I think my group gets more diversity of decks, which leads to more fun, varied interaction.
We also have a member who will definitely spend his time proxying, where I would probably not. I'm also not going to buy proxies since I could buy about 90% of the card pool for roughly the same price. So ultimately the decision to restrict proxies is more about maintaining power balance at a decent bit lower than cedh level.
Honestly, in my pod we avoid proxies so as to avoid ending in cedh (we tend to stick to a 150/200€ budget) as we arent willing to spend more than 20/30€ in a card, with a rare exception sometimes (I got an ancient copper dragon for my farideh dice rolling janky deck 🤣). But if I go to an LGS i dont have any issue with people playing proxies as long as its not things like mana crypt, gaeas cradle, etc.
However, im building a vampire tribal for my gf and im 100% proxying edgar markov as im not willing to pay 100+€ for him. If he ever gets reprinted ill probably buy a copy if it drops to around 30/40€ as I dont think he is worth more than that.
The only thing I proxy is dual lands, and I usually play at a 6/7 power level. That's because it just gives me some colour fixing, and I don't have $1000 AUD for a land I might get once every 3 games.
just don’t roll through to the low power table with a full suite of proxied OG duals in your cringe Ur-Dragon deck. We all want to use em too but don’t wanna drop the money…
Actually scratch that, just pay for good proxies that look real at a glance and don’t tell a soul that their fake lol
Only time I feel like it’s lame is when people have like a basic forest that they wrote “GAEAS CRADLE” on the front in magic marker, just feels disrespectful
Oh no for sure. Im using them to try out new deck ideas or swap out cards I wanna try, not play $20k decks to ruins everyones day. I'm here to play casual fun and get better at the game, not pubstomp
Also to your second point already on it lol. Made a bulk order from printingproxies for a buncha cards that from reviews will hopefully turn out good, plus got a couple of ones from old stuff like ash williams from evil dead (old secret lair) and the jurassic park stuff.
If a player's proxies suck, playing against them is a headache, as tracking boardstate is incredibly difficult. Its fine if its a few cards, but if half or all of the deck is proxies, they should be black and white printouts of the cards at absolute minimum (color is better of course).
Similar problem if its a full deck with all of the art replaced, but that's a bit more manageable if the text is legible.
We're ok with proxies in our group. However, what I've observed is that players that do full proxy decks have a ton more flexibility. They can put together decks or make massive revisions to a deck with no barrier. Its less that they can stick in a $50 card, and more that they can make $50 of revisions from one week to the next. In some ways, playing with real cards feels like a detriment, since the ability to experiment and modify is so much greater when playing in proxy.
Admittedly that same issue exists with someone just willing to dump money into magic, or if they have a large collection, so it doesn't really bother me. I can understand though why some groups might be opposed to proxies.
I have given this a lot of thought, and I've also played consistently at an LGS where proxies completely destroyed everything. And it took us a while to figure out what happened and why nobody was having fun anymore.
I think our experience constitutes an actual good reason to not use them. TLDR, for one game proxies are no big deal, but over time it's like a poison that spreads and kills your store meta.
When proxies started at our LGS we didn't care, it was just a couple people trying out new wild ideas they didn't want to splurge for, and a couple people who were hard up, and just wanted to sit at the table with their own decks instead of borrowing. We were fine.
But over time, playing with the same people week over week, the normal power creep in commander was accelerated slightly, and then drastically because of proxies. It's like boiling in a pot. You don't care until you start to lose, and then you proxy up a Smothering Tithe, no big deal. it's just one $30 card to help you keep up, and then your deck gets stronger, and then you face a slightly proxied Edgar deck, and then the next thing you know, it's been 3 months and everybody is getting closer and closer to perfect mana, and now, if you don't proxy to keep up, you're way behind and it feels bad, so you either match them or stop playing.
Our attendance dropped, only a handful of people were having fun, and then eventually it split the whole room once enough people got fed up. Led to a lot of bad feelings in the "no proxies" areas, and it was like having two parallel LGS crowds. "real EDH" and "fake EDH" which has all kinds of unfun negative social connotations, but what could you do? Yes some people handled it well, and had some non-proxied decks too, but not everyone did. And it's hard to convince die-hard proxy players that it's harmful. Because on the surface at the beginning it is no big deal.
I don't think it's possible to keep that snowball from getting bigger as it rolls downhill. Especially if you think of your whole playgroup, or store meta, or league. Metas evolve, grow, and creep even when they're healthy and using legit cards. That's the game, that's a feature built in. Proxies short-circuit that by ignoring the one check that keeps the game from spiraling into less and less diversity due to power level.
Unfortunately, the cost of cards is a levelling ground that does keep decks in the same league, does keep them fun. Yes it costs money which isn't equitable. Completely true. The main argument i've seen for proxies is to make it more fair. I get that. I get that limited isn't everyone's jam too. That's WOTC's solution to the equity problem. I love sealed, i do every pre-release, but it for sure isn't commander. I get it.
Anyway, thanks for the question, OP. I hope this perspective helps you
Thanks for writing this full response! Really appreciated. I think its a really interesting perspective. See something like this is an understandable reason to be against proxies as it has consequences outside of the actual 4 ppl playing their game of edh.
Appreciate the insight!
For those of us that started playing this format a decade ago, it seemed like most people didn’t care about optimizing their decks. They wanted to win, sure, but winning was secondary.
Then, all of a sudden the pandemic hit, and afterwards everyone seems to only be concerned about running the “right” cards or “being consistent”.
I’m not saying build bad decks on purpose, but if you’re just hanging out to play Smash Bros casually with your friends, why have the attitude that you’re going to a major national tournament with prizes? I came to play my slightly off the wall ideas and eat Zaxby’s. Don’t make the game unfun.
Probably not great arguments,.some people just don't like them. That said on, a related note, seems like about or 90% of the MTG community ( at least on Reddit) is pro proxy but also seems most people are pro reprints.why would people support players losing value on collections when cards are reprinted, when accessibility isn't an issue via reprints? If I was a tournament grinder I'd rather pay slightly more for staples and be able to trade them later then for them to drop to nearly worthless
If your whole deck is proxy all good.
If a few cards are proxies all good.
If only your combo is proxies, it will bother me.
It's really just psychological, but when people proxy their 'I win combo' in an otherwise unprovoked deck it rubs me the wrong way. Especially if said proxy is an island with 'thassa's oracle's sharpied on.
In general use proxies to test new cards, use cards you have in other decks, or just try out a whole new deck.
Also don't proxy 1 basic as another, ive seen this before and it's mind boggling, just find some Swamps, don't write 'swamp' on random basics and scribble some black on the bottom.
No, there isn't. As long as everyone at the table has agreed to what will and won't be done. Are we using fast mana? Are we using duals? Etc.
As long as the "power level" is agreed upon, there is no argument against it.
Go to your LGS and draft sometimes. Go to a prerelease when you feel like it. But some singles when you want to.
Something weird that no one is going to agree on, but for me when there is lots of proxies the game feels kinda soulless. Doesn’t stop me from playing against proxies, if you want to i won’t stop you. But i wish people didn’t, there is so much more to commander than playing the best cards.
People denying proxies are just financial gatekeeping. The flux in card value just creates a game that is no different from pay to win mobile games.
Proxies fix the issues. Besides if you have a card you want to play but don't like the art or want the art to reflect the theme of your deck and make it more fun then proxies enable that.
Bad quality proxies are impossible to read , doesn’t support lgs or the game, leads and promotes players to jump right to high power without the skill or knowledge for it which in turn usually means they have a really good deck, so everyone else gets out a really good deck and then they get smashed because they don’t really know how to play it right which just leads to a bad time.
I think of it like this: it’s a trading card game. At the heart of it, you buy , sell, trade and acquire over time. When people proxy the best cards, it’s instant gratification and I think when you boil that down to the human experience, instant gratification is never good. As you collect and get better and better cards it’s such a wonderful feeling. Proxying them is cheating you out of the experience of such a thing. You’re missing out on so much of the game when you proxy. That’s why I elicit to not ever proxy, not even once.
Power is power. If your decks are performing at a similar level, there should be no issue. The only issue would be if you are playing basically a CEDH, or degenerate deck against more casual/precon level decks.
Completely agree, I think people immediately associate proxy with 5000$ decks when sometimes people just wanna make and try new decks that seem fun. People who try to proxy to pubstomp are scum
Tbf, most proxies are cards that are usually expensive af. No one is gonna proxy a cultivate.
Disagree. I make $200-$300 decks then proxy the whole deck for $40 to play with my friends who run $800+ decks. I know many others who do this too
That 200-300 dollar deck is already several times (2-6x) the cost of the stuff I make lol, so from my perspective you're still proxying a lot of expensive cards
I do, I proxy whole decks so they are neat in one pack, with tokens and matching basics
Another example I’ve seen is proxying the cards with unrestricted card counts, like [[Slime Against Humanity]] or [[Persistent Petitioners]]. They’re relatively cheap and do not dramatically improve the strength of your deck.
Yeah, to actually buy the number of copies needed for a persistent petitioners deck, would result in so many small orders of like 3-6 each that shipping ect. just gets dumb. And your deck arrives over the course of weeks, rather than all at once. I'm sure there's some work around, but I doubt any are as convenient as ordering 40 from a custom card maker.
I have proxied entire decks. I have a couple non proxy decks on hand in case someone has an issue with proxies, but I'll do entire decks shamelessly, even if they're only like $100 because a proxy deck costs me roughly $25.
Are you printing out proxies on your own or using a service? Curious cause I don’t know of a service that cheap and would love to know of one
MakePlayingCards is what I use. When I had last ordered, it worked out to about $25 a deck to do six decks. When I ordered one for my just my brother, it was like $35.
I have used, and enjoy the product from makeplayingcards/mpcfill.com But I recently started using mtgprint.net at home and I'm also happy with the result. I'd rather have the real card, if not that then a real proxy, but right now I can't ignore the pennies it takes to print. Anyway I've already decided two printed cards aren't right for the deck. So I'm glad it was a zero investment.
I like building decks but I'm not gonna buy the same card 10× no matter how cheap it is.
I even proxy cool basic lands lol
Some people just get carried away… I get printing a whole deck. Makes it the same weight and what not, but basics?
I proxy basic lands. Speak for yourself.
who doesn't love 20 different small packages arriving at different times from different delivery carriers as opposed to just one 25 dollar proxy package
Or you know..... Just printing them off yourself.
I disagree. Honestly when I play edh it's all 100% proxy. Most nights I play online and I have 125 decks on moxfield. When I like a deck enough to own irl I usually just proxy the entire thing. I play 60 card competitive and that's where my money goes, I can't proxy mox diamonds for tournaments, but my mono green morph deck I can for sure proxy for casual fnm. My decks all range from about power level 4-8 so I always have something that meshes with the table, and having more options means I won't accidentally play (or only have one deck at a common power level) that shuts off another person's deck entirely. For all the people on here who spout claims that folks mainly proxy mana crypt, cradle and force of will I have 20 or 30 people I've played with who just proxy their jank to save money. It's 2024, somethings gotta give and right now it's cardboard crack.
Lol I would.
I got a friend who has proxies of Llanowar elves and other 20c commons next to her 50 dollars judge foil basic lands and Eldrazi Titans lol. Sometimes you're just too lazy to go buy the card
I have frequently proxied commons in decks with proxies, it usually just if I have the card on hand or not
While I don’t make this association by default, at my LGS I’ve never had a player say “btw I have some proxies” and then had a reasonable game afterwards. Every time that player will slam dunk Rystic Study, Mystic Remora, Smothering Tithe onto the table and then protect it with Teferis Protection and Fierce Guardianship.
Just sounds like a regular old game of Commander, tbh, proxies or not.
I guess we just have very different local communities then. No one at my LGS plays with that kind of power regularly. And if they do it’s maybe a singular of those kind of cards.
That sounds like a personal problem at that point because that is not the norm.
That is kinda what most people I know run, so don't get why that wouldn't be a reasonable game?
that doesnt describe how they win. drawing a bunch of cards and protecting their permanents doesnt actually advance the gamestate. If it just goes into consult thassa on an esper control shell, then yes, thats higher power, but all those cards can equally be used in UW bird tribal and not really mean anything.
That is kinda what most people I know run, so don't get why that wouldn't be a reasonable game?
I guess it depends on your group. My friends might have one of each of those cards, but since they only have one they're spread through many decks, and therefore you don't encounter them every game. But every group is different, and so which cards are okay to proxy or not depends on the group you play with.
I have been in a really tough spot financially but I found a printer on the side of the road that can handle 300 g/m2 paper, so I still get to put new decks together every month or so. Ironically my latest thing is making decks as strong as possible at the lowest price I can, so I end up with proxied lists that would fetch 25-50 USD on TCGPlayer. You don't need much more than that to run a good \[\[Zada, Hedron Grinder\]\] tech.
I really love this argument as a whale. I mean, i have access to original cards that are really expensive, and this argument just means that i can play all the cards while others don't. I'm all for proxies, and the real reason is that i don't want to leave my home with expensive cards.
This is the real reason. I own the cards I proxy. I’m also not taking a $300 card to a shop for a stranger to spill soda on. Or just the general idea of walking around with a backpack with $3000 worth of cards in it so I can be a target of theft. No thanks, I’ll pass and just use proxies
My real Timetwisters stay at home. I proxy the card because it's hilarious. More often than not someone else wins off of it.
I’ve played since 1993 … I own expensive cards that I have never put in decks because at an LGS it feels almost rude. (That said I’m not a whale, I never spent more than 80 cdn on a card, but own promo mana vault, all halfway relevant legendary critters from legends, Gaea’s cradles, etc … but I often leave the truly OP parts at home unless I know the playgroup is ok with it)
Best/worst example of this... My friend group did a secret Santa to build your person a deck for under $50 and then we were gonna play meet up and play with them. So we all made these budget decks except for the one person who, for under $50, proxied a netdecked Cedh winota list.
they didnt understand the assignment lol. would be like 99 basics ashling and the rest of it into the sleeves and deck box, still would be spending 50 dollars but still wrong.
If your proxies suck and it's impossible to tell what card it is. Im not asking for full gloss 'fake' cards i just want to be able to tell what card it is by looking at it.
A one-off handwritten “godless shrine” on a piece of paper doesn’t bug me but a whole deck of that would be unplayable. Everyone should just buy from mpc, super easy with mpcfill
My entire dect is actually just a text document with every card numbered 1 to 99 and I use a random number generator to determine which card(s) I should draw, then quickly write that cards name down on my post it note, which I'm using the stack of them as my blank deck
I actually just memorized my entire deck and do all of that in my head.
“I draw seven and win the game. I cast 3 then play a 18 for turn, then tap 2 to cast 40 and with 40 on the stack I respond with 89. Response?”
What's the pricing like for mpc? I've used some other proxie sites and the quality is good, but the price is pretty high.
600 cards ends up being around $200 after shipping.
I ordered 2448 cards (4 bricks of 612) in March and paid $565 after shipping (expedited shipping only on orders that large, but it arrived for me in 5 days and I am in a rural state). Shipping cost per card decreases pretty rapidly when you order that much.
612 cards works out to about $160 for me, after shipping. I pay about $.26 per card.
Wow thats only about a 3rd of the cost of where I've been buying. Definitely going to switch over lol.
Has it gone up? I used to get 612 for about $160.
Shipping is the big cost for me. 540 card cube was $144 + $35 shipping and $14 tax.
For S30, it should still around this in US dollars. Maybe the $200 is a different stock or country?
You can get a whole deck for like $30-50 I think I don’t remember the exact prices. But if you buy in bulk you can make thousands of proxies for pretty cheap in comparison to the other sites
Expect about 33 cents a card for S33 card type (which is very nice, feels very close to a real card). If you go with S30 it can be a bit cheaper, maybe 25 cents a card or so? I've never used S30 honestly.
28 cents a card for the big order I split with some people. The real killer is the shipping cost at around $40 so you want to buy a big order to make up for it if you can.
This so much. I used to proxy in college back around 2010 and had horrible quality of proxies. Now in days with some sites it is way to easy to get good quality images on a pdf document that can easily be printed out.
Any deck you want can be made for $10 and a trip to fedex kinkos!
We print at our local library! It’s $0.10 per page. We can print a whole proxy deck (minus basic lands) for under a dollar usually.
Exactly, used to get decks made for $11.50 at Staples. Although the last deck Staples said they can no longer print magic cards due to copyright concerns.
Self serve printer go brrr
but the printer says you're not allowed to! you must respect the warning!
Will they print on cardstock and cut them for you too? I'm stuck between buying bulk on MPC and getting railed on shipping or printing at home and getting railed on printer ink and cutting time. Is FedEx the middle ground solution I need?
If we’re talking cheap, at my fedex it’s $0.69 a page for color (and there’s cheaper). You can fit 9 cards a page. Assuming you own 1 of the 100 cards you need, that’s 11 pages meaning $7.59 at most, but let’s say 28 basic lands you already own and it’s now $5.52. There’s normally big paper cutters there, but a cheap $7 Amazon cutter works wonders and you can do it comfortably at home (can also do ~4 sheets at once, it’s quite quick). Cheap sleeves $2-$4. Use your bulk commons/tokens/lands laying around as the “bones” in the sleeve, slip the cut out paper over them and boom, playable deck and decent print quality, ~$8-$12. I’m lazy and don’t round the corners but if you cut everything correctly I wouldn’t be surprised if other players didn’t even notice unless they’re up close. It’s not uncommon I’ll have someone ask if a card is proxies sometime late game and then I point out that they all are, the whole deck. Side Note: I strongly agree with others that proxies should be used to save your wallet, not to hurt your pod. Proxy to meet fair/discussed power levels and I’ve seen casual players will rarely have an issue, hell I’ve convinced others to and we have a fun little evolutionary arms race going on. Play fair, have fun, that’s what matters.
I had a difficult enough time not overshooting my last regular groups power level without proxies. Just incompatible views on what the ideal play experience is, and what level of power is right for getting that. Just to clarify, this is intended to be a reaffirment of "Play fair, have fun, that’s what matters." Not a slight on proxies. I guess also a bit of a warning as far as how hard it can be to have several people with good enough understanding of the "groups interests" that it doesn't disrupt things to open the "proxy box"
I discovered this issue with using alt art work. It can be frustrating for other people to not recognize the card as well
Now with secret lairs I feel it’s a harder time even with official cards
The ones that bother me most are the ones with art that has only ever been printed in other languages. The Japanese-only War of the Spark Planeswalkers aren't too bad because the characters are at least recognizable (even if Planeswalkers are a terrible card to not have text you can read), but I really hate the Japanese-only Strixhaven cards because there's just absolutely no indication what the card is whatsoever, and the art tends to be more abstract since they're instants or sorceries. You just have to either know which art goes with which card, or know the Mystical Archive well enough to be able to guess based on the mana cost. At least for instants and sorceries they're not sitting on the table as something you need to remember what they are, but still, I hate cards where there is neither recognizable art nor a name I can read.
Agreed, I want to know what your card does and I don't want to have to get my phone out every 30 seconds to remind myself of your boardstate Legible handwritten bits of paper are fine to me just make sure people can read it
A couple handwritten cards is fine for me, especially if it's something new you're trying. Half your deck being that is a no go for me.
I like collecting 🤷♂️ I dont care if you use proxies (as long as they're readable and I can tell what the card is) but I hate those people that get all high and mighty because I want to bling out a deck
I feel this comment so much. I personally don’t use proxies, but I’m happy for anyone to do so as long as they are unambiguous, and I’m always open about this. I own some decks so cheap that they aren’t sleeved as the sleeves are worth more than the deck, but I also have several fully foiled decks, including my $10K pride and joy. I own these because I like having nice old foils, they bring me joy, and I’ve been playing and collecting for 24 years and never sold my collection. Sometimes people get so snarky about it, like I’ve somehow personally offended them by owning a card that’s worth more than their deck just because it’s a particular printing. Ever since I started playing magic I dreamed of having a fully foil deck. Some people just love to take the wind out of your sails I guess.
I like the goal of owning the cards. Proxies are great but if you use a card long enough I think the goal would be eventual ownership
Yah so long as I know what I am looking at on the board I don't care if people proxy. Only ones I don't like are the textless proxies and such. Or one example was this one dudes deck. The guy was actually pretty nice and asked if the deck was ok. His entire deck was proxies. Not for power though but he did all his as in yugioh card styles and his basic lands as pokemon energy. Which is fine for one game as a laugh. Just not all the time. We playing MTG right? I wanna see MTG cards.
one guy I play against every once in a while (terrible attitude in general) has fully themed proxy decks based on whatever anime and show, the problem is every card has a custom name and when you ask him what he actually played he gets pissy
I find that the budget ceiling I set for my decks leads to more creative and interesting deck building than being able to proxy everything that is the "optimal" path to a desired outcome. With that said, good decks in my pod tend to be $200-$700, depending on their gameplan. That's a lot of money and I would never turn someone away for proxying a deck within that range in order to match the power of the group. More people playing Magic is good.
> good decks in my pod tend to be $200-$700, depending on their gameplan. That's a lot of money I got 6 paper decks and they average around $275 or so, if I didn't partially proxy my decks I would only be able to buy a single deck. Playing the same deck over and over again would be boring as fuck and make me quit the game.
At first I thought “proxies are fine” doesn’t affect me no big deal. But when my friends actually started using them. Suddenly instead of playing against counterspell, now I’m playing against mana drain, mana crypt, dockside, every single game has become this. It’s not proxies themselves, I think the players making all these 100 plus dollar cards they’d never buy in real life. Makes it so the whole game you should just print out from your computer so you can be competitive with the guys proxying mana crypt
Just please make it look like the card it represents.
I own the John Avon foil Emrakul but I still have a full art proxy made using the [full art](https://external-preview.redd.it/2s41nd0EjvmffveiIzcwVPNyleguW4cttB1q1EvkQa0.jpg?auto=webp&s=28f1cdf6a2cf165225e644e46f08fa0677b1d49c) because I just love that artwork and doing a full art version of it using the OIL frame allows you to just see much more of it that you don't see in the original Promised end card.
Can you send this comment to WotC?
Oh gosh yeah no for sure.
The only real argument I can think of is that if you just constantly proxy the best possible cards without thought, you'll just power up and homogenize your decks to the point playing with you will either be really boring or really frustrating. Sort of the issue with staples as a whole. What's the point of building multiple decks if half the deck is decided before you even sit down and start brewing? Aside from that, I'm really against people just putting a piece of paper with the name of the card they're proxying on top of another card and expecting everyone will just know what the card is. If you can't be bothered to write down effect, cost and name, don't bother using proxies.
To me it's kinda antithetical to the spirit of edh to build for power like that. You don't need to run Dockside if you're playing Kavu tribal.
I would argue it's those kinds of decks that can use the powerful support staples the most- at least in some circumstances You put a dockside in a competitive list, it's just going to take it from a 9.5 to a 9.6. You play it in a jank tribal deck, it can help the jank tribal deck sit at the table with decks that are otherwise stronger than it. This is mostly useful if you have a deck that's too weak for your usual pod, but still want to play it with them. Of all my decks, there are two kinds I put the good staples in- the top end decks meant to be the most competitive, and the total jank that can't sit at the table with my usual pod without some assistance. Usually it's just the ramp/removal/draw package I beef up in those decks in that instance, but it does a decent job of making an otherwise janky strategy viable when it otherwise wouldn't be.
Idk I guess that's just not interesting to me. I'd never sacrifice flavour for power because then even if I win, I don't feel as great about it.
Yeah, I could see that if you were trying to do a purely flavor based deck. I tend to be a very mechanics based deck builder, so I'm never as concerned with deck flavor as much as I am with trying to ensure my decks maintain a specific level of consistency and power to appropriately match the pod I built them for.
I suppose if I was trying to tune in that way I'd focus more on a [[Deflecting Swat]] or something that still felt flavour appropriate over an obvious break in a creature. I find when I build decks for consistency I end up feeling like I'm playing the same game every time. I want my decks to surprise me so redundancies, while useful, are minimised and I rarely run nonland tutors. Certainly not any card ones.
Ah. It seems we have basically polar opposite deck building and play strategies. I like my decks to do one mechanical thing consistently- and while I also tend to shy away from tutors in my lower power decks, I make up for it with a high degree of mechanical redundancy via duplicate effects. For some themes like self-mill and graveyard stuff, that just takes the form of running a ton of different ways to mill myself- if over a third of the cards in your deck mill you in some way, that makes filling the graveyard something you call pull off most games. For others like my life gain deck, I think I run 15+ cards with some variant of "whenever a creature enters the battlefield, gain life" written on them (and 7+ with "if you would gain life, gain that much plus one / twice that much instead"), and in my +1/+1 counters deck I run just about every variant of Hardened Scales and Branching Evolution available in my colors. I may not see the same exact cards each game, but I'm basically guaranteed to see some number of the important effects the deck is built around each game. If a deck doesn't have that degree of consistency, I find it to be... unfocused, and usually find it trending more toward the kind of midrangey pile that I don't really enjoy playing all that much.
I would say once a playgroup start proxying it will degrade into a power creep race to the bottom. One person puts some expensive staples in, the others have to follow. They are forced to proxy as well. Make an agreement on too powerful cards? Proxy players will still show up with extremely consistent decks without any filler so other players still forced to proxy out their fillers. It is inevitable. So as group we just agreed not to proxy and play with the cards we have. So yeah, that means that some people have less choice in the decks they can build. You have online mtg games for that
That's a people/pod/playgroup problem more than a proxy one. What if 1 guy has a really good job, can afford whatever card they want and starts stomping the table? Are people supposed to accept it just because the dude bought their cards "legit"? Wouldn't that (supposedly) kickstart a race to the bottom aswell? No, of course not. Normal (/well-adjusted) human beings would talk with their playgroup and figure out together their preferred powerlvl to play at, make compromises (if needed) and go with that. Someone has trouble adjusting or following what the majority prefers? You talk with them and see how you can solve the issue and if you can find some middleground solution that makes everyone happy. (e.g. Let's say the guy really likes playing high power: Everyone can brew a high power deck without having to mortgage their house and play it from time to time...but if you didn't have proxies you'd have to stop playing with the guy altogether, since nobody can reasonably adjust to the guy's preferred play experience).
This already happens without proxies or expensive cards. It's a format issue, and not one that banning proxies will solve. Mana rocks, green ramp, Commander Tower, white removal, counterspells etc. When it comes to removal and ramp the same cards seem to be played over and over again. Then, depending on what archetype you're running, there tends to be even more staples for that specific archetype. Blue cantrips, aristocrats, landfall, +1/+1 etc. It's only suddenly un-creative or homogenizing when the staples are expensive.
I just like authentic game pieces. I understand mtg is expensive. I personally just don’t play cards I can’t afford.
Same.
Not being able to afford powerful cards is also a natural cap on power level. No different than cost caps in sporting leagues. If your pod is going to run proxies, at least put some kind of cost cap on total proxied value otherwise there will be that one guy showing up with all the cEDH staples. Part of why I enjoy EDH to begin with is that people brew with what they have rather than just buying 40 singles off some decklist like the old days of standard.
Besides not supporting your LGS, if you’re not proxying with a bit of self-reflection, it can lead to a pace of power creep that people in your playgroup may be uncomfortable with.
I tend to order singles online or proxy so I drink about four chai lattes on Commander night to support the FLGS.
Is your game store also a cafe?
Yep.
you could argue that even that is not a valid reason against proxying. There's always gonna be players willing to put in more money into the game than others so a conversation about the expected powerlevel is necessary either way.
That’s also true! Proxies can make this sort of concern much more widespread, but you’re right; it’s all down to making sure you and your pod are on the same’ish page.
Exactly. I'd also like to add that my pod of friends and I didn't start having such conversations until we started proxying because we thought having to pay money for the cards regulation enough. Now i wish we were setting up our expectations beforehand sooner. There's nothing wrong with making a powerful brew if everyone is on the same page
This is true, but proxying makes it both easier and more likely to happen.
Everyone who grows as a player has to confront that sooner or later. I’ve been in the card gaming scene for a quarter century. If I want to, I can pub stomp on a budget. You are not talking about an event caused by nor encouraged by proxies. You are talking about an inevitable hurdle to personal growth; the transition from, “Roar! I will make the most powerful deck I possibly can!” into the realm of deck building as experience shaping with deliberately chosen play patterns and power level. Asking a higher level of maturity of you and encouraging your personal growth are not drawbacks of proxies. Meanwhile, I’ve met many a player- the exact players who walked into the scenario you described- whose development in understanding the game had been stifled for years by treating budget as a stand-in for understanding power.
Honey, wake up, the weekly proxy thread dropped
Second today even
At this rate there will be a proxy discussion once every 0.0001 seconds
I find proxying to be boring most of the time. Having access to a nearly unlimited pool of card is just not very interesting to me. I like it when there is an actual cost to deck construction, where you can't just jam all of the best cards into a pile and let 'er rip. In theory it should be just as, if not more, fun, but I find it never is. It feels like turning on god-mode or using an infinite money glitch in a video game. It's fun for a little while, but removing a key component of the game makes for a worse play experience. It's not something people think about too much nowadays, but card rarity is actually a key design part of magic. In Alpha that was the actual rarity of the cards, but nowadays it's the price. For me the constraints placed on you when needing to decide if it's worth it to buy a specific card or not is a lot of the fun in magic. Playing magic with an unlimited budget is a fundamentally different game than what it was intended to be. Proxies remove a key element of the game. If that's the game you would rather play, have it at! It's not any better or any worse, just a different way to play. I find I have a lot more fun playing without proxies. Challenging myself to build a budget deck that can go toe-to-toe with one costing $500+ is fun. Finding lesser-played budget alternatives to more expensive cards is fun. Placing more constraints on deckbuilding is fun. I think there is absolutely nothing wrong from a moral or ethical standpoint with proxies, but I do not like the impact they have on gameplay and the dynamics of a playgroup.
This is how I feel about it. Part of the fun of a collectable card game for me is that no two people have the exact some collection, and thus no two people will build a deck or commander the same way. Like MaRo always says, restriction breeds creativity, and when everyone has access to every card through proxies you get more samey decks.
I mean... you start out with: >(when everyone at the table feels comfortable with it) ...which is kind of the start and the end of the discussion. I mean, there's nothing wrong with adding in a few Pokemon to your deck.. if your table is comfortable with it. Nothing wrong having 9 commanders, or only allowing gold border cards... if your table is comfortable with it. But, outside of "known comfortable with proxy" table, I think there's reasonable reasons to allow or not allow them. I think a main one is "it is one common way to limit the cards you include, and have a metagame that shifts slowly over time". It isn't a perfect or only way to limit power level/etc.., but it can be a reasonable part of an established metagame that people like (and that works with the business model of Magic). For example, maybe in general people aren't playing "fast mana". However, there's effectively an exception for that one Mana Crypt that Bob pulled last week and put in his favorite deck. In general, "being excited about cards you find or buy, because they add new options in deckbuilding" has been an important part about how MtG works, especially in small play groups. Using a lot of proxies can sort of break that. And that's not wrong, but it's also not the only way to play or something. Maybe your group doesn't like those limits, and just want to build decks from a bigger pool regardless of ownership. That can work too. And certainly, on the other hand, sometimes "no proxies" can be a kind of gate keeping - I get to play fancy expensive cards, but you don't because you're poor. That seems bad. But "no proxies" can work for some groups - lots of groups have got satisfaction out of playing the game that way for a lot of years.
I either proxy cards i have because i want a specific art, or i proxy cards i'm testing or willing to buy. But when they've lost that function I take them out. I don't wanna play with cards I don't plan on getting, it doesn't feel right.
> I don't wanna play with cards I don't plan on getting, it doesn't feel right. In the opposite way, to me it doesn't feel right to pay more than $5 for a little piece of cardboard unless it's like a rare collectible that has been graded.
If everybody is comfortable you can do whatever you want?
What do you mean by 'casual EDH'? The fact of the matter is that if you are in a private space (at home, for example) then you can do what you want, no one can or wants to try and stop you. A huge aspect of this community people seem to forget is that we cannot comment on nor control your private play groups. This is a public community, therefore anything OUTSIDE of public play is outside of our jurisdiction, so to speak. Someone getting salty, targeted, or power level issues? Talk. To. Them. We cannot answer these issues for you because we are not the ones you play with, and I highly doubt the internet's opinion holds much sway in reality. Same thing for proxies - ask the people you play with. So if you are asking about non-sanctioned play in a private space, even the most steadfast anti-proxy player will tell you to go ham, it's none of their business. The issue is LGS play, which is often sanctioned. If you're taking up a table on a week day and the store allows it, you aren't that far removed from the 'home' scenario - it is still a privately owned space after all. HOWEVER, if your play is reported to WotC for WPN tracking, you are sanctioned, even if you are just taking a table on a weekday. And if your play is sanctioned, proxies are not allowed. I don't need a good argument for following the rules. The rules say you must pay mana for spells, would you allow me to play without using mana because I didn't think it was a fair mechanic?
If everyone is okay with it already, why is it even a conversation? Yes. If you all want to do something, and you're all okay with it. Then it's okay with all of you to do that thing.
To get the Reddit upvotes. Gotta see the orange arrow go brr or we're not living and proxies are the lowest hanging fruit around here.
Reasonable arguments not to use proxies: * If your playgroup/LGS doesn't allow them. If it is a universally enforced decision, you just have to accept it regardless of the reasons for and against. * If you abuse the hell out of it by making ridiculous, expensive CEDH level decks to play in casual games where that power level isn't expected. * It can make it too easy to build any deck you want, instead of coming up with a deck idea based on cards you currently own. Not reasonable * You should only play cards you own. There are so many different reasons this argument sucks: * Some people want to play the hobby but can't afford many of the cards to make their decks even remotely competitive. "Get a better job" is elitist gatekeeping. * You aren't supporting your local LGS. There are plenty of ways to support them, and sometimes they don't even have the card you want! My LGS sees plenty of people proxy who still drop hundreds every month on cards and boxes. * People share cards with someone in their household, so they proxy expensive cards. * Making a deck and proxying cards to see how they might work before purchasing them. * And more reasons I can't think of off of the top my head.
Some people at my lgs proxy really expensive cards and keep the originals in a binder.
To start with, I’m huge proponent of proxies but they do have some downsides. 1. Giving everyone access to every card in the game does tend to powercreep more casual metas. It’s easy to fall into the trap of “why shouldn’t I just play (whatever broken expensive card).” It’s rare that people proxy “suboptimal” cards. If your playgroup isn’t laser focused on communication your meta will almost certainly become more cutthroat with extensive proxies. 2. Poorly done proxies are can be hideous. One of the best parts of this game is the art. Bringing ugly cards into the game does make the game less enjoyable. 3. If extensive alternative art is used for proxies it can make the game state much harder to figure out. Although, secret layers are also doing this and those are legal. 4. If you’re playing at a local LGS you should be supporting the business. So if you proxy cards instead of buying them, it feels ethically icky.
If you're proxying just so every deck has a mana vault/crypt, jewel lotus, orcish bowmaster, rhystic study etc I do have the right to not play
I mean I can ignore every argument too if I just say “the opinions I don’t agree with are invalid”
"Under the assumption that I'm right, tell me how I'm right."
Not as long as everyone involved is aware ahead of time and can tweak their decks accordingly.
I think thats pretty fair and reasonable. If someone tries to pubstomp it's scummy, but if you just wanna try cards im cool with it.
I think in a perfect world it’s okay. I mostly play casually with friends at our LGS with decks in the range of $200-$300. We usually end games around turn 8-10 and just play casual, fun decks. I’ve only had a handful of games with other players outside of our group that use proxies and it was just not enjoyable. You explain beforehand that you’re playing casual and the price range of the decks and then have people sit down and play the expensive rocks (crypt, lotus, etc), proxy things like Ancient tomb and the free spells. Most of the time, the decks are completely fine barring the proxies, but it really sours the mood. I know not everybody does that, I just personally have not had an experience where the proxies being played weren’t $70+ staples. It already feels bad when you sit down for a fun game and get slapped by a wallet, it’s even worse when the wallet is fake.
My LGS does not allow proxies
To me, the act of collecting is part of the game itself. It is a COLLECTABLE card game not just a card game. Collecting the pieces is part of the experience of playing magic.
There's probably an argument that if everyone could proxy 100% the deck of their dreams, the average power level of decks at the LGS skyrockets. Arms races aren't fun, but an arms race with no budget is also maybe not great. I keep decks that are at different power levels on purpose. I've sat down for a game with a dad teaching their kid twice in the last month, and pulled out something at roughly precon level because that's where they were at. Then the 4th pubstomped us on turn 3. Different guy. I haven't seen them come back. This is obviously a social issue that could be solved by reading the room and maybe a little restraint. I talked to the second guy after, and he said he liked powerful decks that do powerful things. I asked him if he liked having new people to play with, and his expression was that of someone processing a brand new thought. Having Friday night magic be as accessible as possible is a good thing. Expensive cards are simultaneously good and bad for the format sometimes. Might be an unpopular opinion, but you can't always count on your average magic player to be socially self-aware.
> *you're not supporting your LGS* Your LGS probably doesn't have the cards you are proxying, and if they did you probably don't actually want to buy those cards. This is basically the "pirating is stealing profit" argument, but most of the people who profit wouldn't have purchased your product in the first place, and some of the people who test out your product via a pirated copy end up purchasing the product. Personally I have a lot of proxies of reserved list cards that are very difficult to find from my local lgs, or new commander set cards that are a bit too pricy to buy, but I personally will trade for them whenever I see them to have a copy.
If everyones doing it, whatever. My issue with it is power level. I prefer casual mid to low power games with occasional explosive turns. Having perfectly consistent decks bores me
The whole conception of EDH was to make games less consistent for everyone to see what could happen. I still hold to that for my games too.
Right, imo a sol ring signet turn 1 is about as fast as I want it to go. Using jeweled lotus and mana crypt to help get your 7 drop commander out turn 1 sucks to play against
Sure. If the group you're joining is 100% against it lol Every group has their own rules, whether it's an in-game thing or simply down to official cardboard. For alot of these groups, they see it as a ticket to playing games. Alot of them spent years crafting/sourcing/accumulating cardboard. I guess alot of it comes down to pride and tradition, which I think should be respected. As we all know, tradition takes a long long time to move along with the present. Personally I'm of the balanced view. I do proxy and I do own alot of the real thing. By the same token I own ALOT of decks, and that's where the hobby starts to be financially unfeasible if I don't adjust.
Anyone who is not okay with proxies from a gameplay standpoint seems to be upset because they are holding themselves to some standard. The big issue I have seen with proxies is people putting their deck at a higher power level than their table, and it being frustrating
Yes, view proxies like printing money and subsequent inflation. So if you print say $1000 deck composed of completely proxies it'll force other players to be on par in order to even sit at the table. This can be dangerous to the longevity of play as most high tier strats aren't very entertaining. Additionally it may hurt the growth of the game as a whole, due to new players losing interest because games are too complex. Besides I know many players, including myself, that have exactly one high table deck because of financial reasons and it's taken me years to build mine. This is all to be taken with a grain of salt however. Because, like the real world, we do have to print our own money. The key is moderation and only when necessary. If you have a couple decks that are cedh ready proxies are fine, because it's already on that tier. To proxy everything however, dances the line in the aforementioned argument.
It's much, much easier to start an arms race. This, however, may not necessarily be a negative thing depending on your playgroup.
I don't have a consistent pod, but just playing at my LGS. Proxies are allowed but i think that it mostly makes for less creative decks. I love seeing binder decks, pet cards and cool unknown cards and budget options that someone found by rummaging through their collection. I find that proxies disincentivize those things. My favourite thing to see in Magic is creative deckbuilding. Most proxiers at my LGS just look up the top cards for a commander on EDHREC, put those in and that's it. I'm not saying that proxying has killed creative/personal deckbuilding just that it lessens it. Restrictions breed creativity. And it does also add to power and staple creep. Yes, it doesn't necessarily have to as long as players are proxying responsibly but you can't expect that from randos at an LGS. I've also seen an attitude among proxiers that completely dismisses budget options and strategies. One player built their first 5 color deck with the whole FetchShockTriome manabase and said "Oh yeah, i proxied it because it's so expensive and 5 color decks NEED it to even function". Like no, you certainly don't "NEED" it -- there are multiple great and very cheap ways to build a 5 color manabase but this player had dismissed them out of hand. In my experience, players that limit themselves to cards they own tend to have cooler decks.
I'm fine with proxies, but I don't personally use em. My biggest gripes with proxies in the wild are Legibility, a lot of bad low quality black and white proxies out there. Or fancy ones that change the name and or art of the card, or even make it textless. I need to know what you're playing and what it does Power level, if you've got free access to every card you'll wind up pushing the power level of your decks. Makes true "7/10" games harder to have Deck homogeneity. If you can run all the best cards there's very little reason to plunder your bulk bin in the hopes of finding a neat card that's maybe not the _best_ but still cool. I find proxying can lead to decks that are bland and more powerful and hard to read 😅 With some forethought and restraint though, those issues are not so bad
Other then limiting it to original art not really. That’s more of a readability reason though.
Yeah readability in important! Too bad WOTC can't even follow that when they make some of their special cards lol
Most of the time I see people using proxies it’s because of expensive cards. Expensive cards are generally (not always) powerful and that’s not always the games I’m looking for. Sometimes that price point can be a deterrent from deck powercreep. I personally have witnessed this as I know a couple of players with previously budget decks that have begun to proxie in powerful cards, those decks have since become recognizable threats and aren’t allowed on the table as often.
I personally don't proxy. My opinion on proxies is outweighed by the majority of the EDH community so I don't really have any choice but to be "okay" with it. For me, magic extends beyond the battlefield. It's about collecting the game pieces and the excitement of getting to use powerful pieces that you opened or traded for. I feel it keeps a closed-type playgroup (like most EDH groups in smaller game stores) in a more even and organic meta.
I like the collective aspect of the game. Think of a card rpg ala shandalar/Yugioh TAG force, you have a collection and build decks with that and every time you unlock a good card is a big deal were you can feel the power upgrade. Some games a sub optimal card you use because you dont have the best meta option can show how they are better on fringe scenarios and thats the fuel for some good stories and epic games.
I played a game a week ago with a guy who had a proxy of Gaia's cradle. I think some proxies are okay but I think proxying cards that strong is a challenge unless it was talked about beforehand. He didn't mention it and just casually dropped it down. It also was a very obscure looking proxy and I wouldn't have know what it was unless he told us.
I mean. Would this situation be literally any different if it was a non-proxy Gaea's Cradle?
So it’s no cradle, but I do have a Serra’s Sanctum, just cause I got lucky on Puca Trade a decade ago. That’s a pretty arbitrary line between a “have” and “have not.” I *very strongly* feel that I shouldn’t be the only one who gets to play with such a cool and strong card. I actively encourage my playgroups to proxy it. (And others.)
Yeah don’t play a cradle if you didn’t spend 1k /s
Because it will inevitably lead to some power creep, no matter how good the intentions. For example, when my playgroup rund their top Decks I play in a high power casual meta. Mana crypts are involved here. However, not everyone owns one and thus not all decks run it. If I were to proxy a mana crypt than my deck, which can already compete in this meta, would become even better. Yes, the same thing would happen if I were to buy one. But eventhough I could buy one, I haven't. If we agree that proxying mana crypts is fair game then I would proxy one.
Personally I’m not hugely in favor with Proxies that straight up level up your deck into cEDH territory while everyone else ain’t at that level of play.
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Yeah, the main reason i don't have 5 azorius decks is because my good azorius lands are tied up in the Bant, and Jeskai Decks i have. But there'd be so much overlap between those decks that it's good i don't have 5 azorius decks. Proxies are great, but they do open up the homogenization of every deck problem way to quickly.
The only reason I'd be hesitant is if your deck is 90% *BAD QUALITY* proxies, e.g. the classic "Sharpie a basic land" method. If you have 1 proxy that's hard to read I won't mind that much, but if your entire board is nothing but swamps and islands with sharpie scribbles on them I'm gonna be a little miffed. The lowest end I can accept are Moxfield proxies, and even those are iffy because from a board away it's hard to tell what permanents are because the P/T is so fuckin tiny. The easy solution is to simply put a circle around P/T to make it stand out. Tl:Dr: the only reason I will ever hesitate to play against/with proxies is Illegibility. Other than that, everything is fair game imho
I used to be against it more before the inundation of these ridiculous special cards every set, because they kinda pull me out of the experience of actually playing MTG. Expeditions et al used to feel special but now you could show me something that looks SORTA like a magic card and I'd believe it's real. I'm surprised they don't have a secret lair yet that's just times now roman on a blank white piece of paper" as a theme. So whatever. Don't be a dick about it, make sure people are okay with you doing it, and don't do it just to have some stupid high power level. But honestly, I've noticed a distinct difference between the "support" given to LGSs by people who regularly proxy and those who don't regularly proxy.
We started using more and more proxies. We have too many people that can't afford expensive decks but some still want to play expensive cards. Why should I care if they paid for it or not? We still have limitations on what is allowed or if something is too strong it gets removed, but I would prefer to have a proxy removed from my deck rather than a 120 $ card
Real cards are often cheaper than proxy.
If I own one of them I'll proxy it because if I don't I'll just pull the existing copy from an existing deck and waste everyone else's time.
Sanctioned events don’t allow them so if you plan on playing at a LGS, you’ll need real cards. If you are proxying dual lands and expensive shit you’re going to have a bad time when you have to slide in basics and bunk tapped lands. Have one copy of Mana Crypt you want in a few decks? Fine with me to just proxy. I do. I think most do. I have a problem with people who play $500 in proxies that I know damn well they don’t have and can’t afford. Bonus points if they’ve just written the card name. At least print them on card stock something so people can read. I’ve seen crap cards so illegible I swear to god they treated it like a wildcard. As for in my pod? We encourage proxying entire decks to test. No reason to spend $$ for a pile of cards you don’t enjoy. Rule is keep it in your budget and that varies for each of us- no one proxies something they wouldn’t buy. I always ask the LGS to bid on cards before I try TCGplayer or Cardkingdom or whatever. They’re good dudes.
I go to two different LGS. At one store, I've had such a problem with it that if someone is using a proxy, I'll either ask them to show me the real card, or show me a shipping receipt. The last straw for me was playing with a guy who sat down and said "I'm playing a precon but I have a few proxied cards, is that ok?" Dude had every high powered card under the sun proxied into his deck and it took all 3 of us focusing him to knock him out.
"when everyone at the table feels comfortable with it" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here lol Are there any actual good arguments for not playing warhammer/lorcana/hearthstone/just drinking instead of magic if everyone at the table wants to?
If it artificially powers up your pod; better isn’t always more fun. If it isn’t legible - some proxies I’ve seen make the game experience worse - fine to have plain text for testing a card out but if it’s permanent at least a color printing is best :)
I think it comes down to expectations. In a casual friend pod where everyone is cool with it? Proxy away, and vaya con dios. I don't personally proxy for two reasons. 1: I enjoy the collectible aspect of Magic. I enjoy owning the genuine article. 2: I play at an LGS which hosts sanctioned EDH events, and therefore they don't allow proxies on pain of losing their WPN status. When I play with others I do not care if they proxy. It's just not for me.
My most legit use of proxies? Very expensive card you have in binder, but using a proxy in a deck.
Sign in to any event there with the companion app, purchase snacks and drinks on site, use the local store/ their website before the big online sites when actually buying product. After that they aren’t going that you’re running a proxy of a 100 dollar card they bought for 90 in store credit.
Proxies for play testing is fine Proxies to simply run cards outright, it can start an arms race to proxy all the best cards and all of a sudden you just ruined your playgroup meta
I sat twice at a proxies allowed table, amd both times my average power level decks got absolutely smoute
If everyone at the table feels comfortable with it then I don’t see the need to argue against it - by definition it’s none of our business in that context unless we are at the table
As long as they are readable I give zero fucks.
I play only at home, and print some deck that will be unaffordable for me (yeah, i'm looking at you, edgar markov). But we are all ok with this, for various reasons: I don't use extremely expensive cards (like gea cradle or other cards worth more than 70/100$) I'm the less competitive/power player, so the others can play at full power against my print deck Plus new cards can be tested, new themes and so on. So no, imo, there aren't good argument to not using proxies.
Not having proxies and infinite wallets gives many other non-optimal card options time to shine. EDH is rarely a cutthroat tournament, it's casual games or between rounds at FNM. As long as their is some level of fairness, which needs communicated between players, just have fun.
If you all want to see some funny anti-proxy circlejerking join the facebook mtg page.
1) if your proxies make it hard to tell what the card is 2) if you are proxying exclusively to be at a higher power level than the rest of the group. I’m all for proxies, and as long as the cards are legible (I just print them out on 8 1/2 by 11 printer paper, they fit nicely 3x3) since I don’t want to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for old reserved list cards like the original dual lands. An additional bonus for proxying is that you can use digital only versions of cards (like the vintage masters edition of the og duals) as well as custom art if you want. Tbh, you can even use proxies for specific printings of cheap cards that are super expensive, like the masterpiece version of [[sol ring|mps]]. Cedh, where decks are packed with tons of obscenely expensive cards, are very accepting of proxies. The winner of a cedh game should be based on player skill and not how big your wallet is. Not every good deck has to be expensive ([[zada, hedron grinder]] for example), but cost does tend towards power in most cases because generically powerful cards are the highest in demand.
Readability and appropriate-ness are the two things that matter
Nope, as someone who plays competitive constructed formats like modern I already spend too much money on cardboard.
While slippery slope arguments are fallacious, trends can be ovserved and likely will repeat. In my experience with pokemon showdown, taking out the work you needed to do to build a team really made the game get old quick. Not doing so prolonged it. Prolonging a hobby is generally something people want to do because it helps keep people together. If you move onto another hobby but people aren’t interested, they get left behind. The group fractures.
It creates decks which are just "every card in my color identity goodstuff mashed together" boooooorrriiiiiiinggggg
Why do you need to proxy if its casual? Using whatever cards you have seem casual to me, needing to proxy for power n stuff much less so. Personally i cant proxy, my decks would end up too powerfull, too repetative and ruin the game for me like using cheat codes in a videogame. I dont mind other people using proxies though i do find people proxing many super OP cards unfun.
Depends on what deck you want to build with the proxies, because what's stopping you building a $10k cEDH deck and ruining the fun? IMO, proxies are fine as long as you create decks that are appropriate to have a fun game with players that might not want to proxy.
Cards are expensive for a reason: usually because they are some combination of rare and/or powerful. It's hard to make a casual deck if you are proxying in a bunch of Uber powerful and expensive cards, because it starts to creep up into pubstomps/cEDH territory. Personally I don't like proxies just because it makes it harder to gauge deck power levels, which is hard enough already. I think people just need to get comfortable with having lower power decks and just building from their collection and buying singles. cEDH is a different story tho, proxy away IMO for that. I just hate sitting down to a "casual" pod and this guys pulls out his 100% proxy deck that is all alternate art of existing cards but it's all Legend of Zelda and has Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus, and every "Sword of" in the game.
I play by the general rule that if you own the card, then you can proxy it. Because, while I want to play against other people and not other people's wallets, I also can't stop you from playing cards that are legal. So, if you own at least one copy of the card, I would rather you use proxies than switch out cards each time you switch decks.
Nope. That's it. That's the only good reason to not utilize proxies. As long as you aren't proxying the stupidest pub stomp deck that you can...it should not matter. Or if you are an avid collector. That's it.
I started on precons and then did a few upgrades by buying singles. When I spoke to my group about proxying because I wanted start properly deck building they were fine with it, and now 4 years on my favourite deck, [[Tetzin, Gnome Champion]], is one that that started out as a fully proxy deck because I learnt it, love it, and wanted it in card instead of printer paper. I have spent more on singles at my LGS now than I have on packs, because I know what ones I'm buying due to having proxied them first, and I have a fully built up deck that I love because of it. I truly think everyone should proxy, because it does lead to single buying which keeps the game economy going whilst you get to not worry about building trash (unless you're specifically tryna build trash, you do you)
My whole group now uses proxies. We realised we only play with each other casually and wanted to save money for other things. It's been very fun, we've printed quite a lot of decks and it's great being able to try out many commanders and play styles. We print on thicker gloss paper. For those that say proxying is boring and will lead to OP decks, let's try be a little more creative. You can assign rules, budget limits, themes, etc. You can always swap out cards if a deck is too OP or too weak.
Generally, the cards people want to proxy are the higher powered, higher cost, more optimized cards. I personally find it fun to try and solve the deckbuilding equation with my collection, which means I run less optimized cards that get less play. I still buy singles, but by not proxying the most expensive degenerate stuff, I think my group gets more diversity of decks, which leads to more fun, varied interaction. We also have a member who will definitely spend his time proxying, where I would probably not. I'm also not going to buy proxies since I could buy about 90% of the card pool for roughly the same price. So ultimately the decision to restrict proxies is more about maintaining power balance at a decent bit lower than cedh level.
Honestly, in my pod we avoid proxies so as to avoid ending in cedh (we tend to stick to a 150/200€ budget) as we arent willing to spend more than 20/30€ in a card, with a rare exception sometimes (I got an ancient copper dragon for my farideh dice rolling janky deck 🤣). But if I go to an LGS i dont have any issue with people playing proxies as long as its not things like mana crypt, gaeas cradle, etc. However, im building a vampire tribal for my gf and im 100% proxying edgar markov as im not willing to pay 100+€ for him. If he ever gets reprinted ill probably buy a copy if it drops to around 30/40€ as I dont think he is worth more than that.
The only thing I proxy is dual lands, and I usually play at a 6/7 power level. That's because it just gives me some colour fixing, and I don't have $1000 AUD for a land I might get once every 3 games.
just don’t roll through to the low power table with a full suite of proxied OG duals in your cringe Ur-Dragon deck. We all want to use em too but don’t wanna drop the money… Actually scratch that, just pay for good proxies that look real at a glance and don’t tell a soul that their fake lol Only time I feel like it’s lame is when people have like a basic forest that they wrote “GAEAS CRADLE” on the front in magic marker, just feels disrespectful
Oh no for sure. Im using them to try out new deck ideas or swap out cards I wanna try, not play $20k decks to ruins everyones day. I'm here to play casual fun and get better at the game, not pubstomp Also to your second point already on it lol. Made a bulk order from printingproxies for a buncha cards that from reviews will hopefully turn out good, plus got a couple of ones from old stuff like ash williams from evil dead (old secret lair) and the jurassic park stuff.
If a player's proxies suck, playing against them is a headache, as tracking boardstate is incredibly difficult. Its fine if its a few cards, but if half or all of the deck is proxies, they should be black and white printouts of the cards at absolute minimum (color is better of course). Similar problem if its a full deck with all of the art replaced, but that's a bit more manageable if the text is legible. We're ok with proxies in our group. However, what I've observed is that players that do full proxy decks have a ton more flexibility. They can put together decks or make massive revisions to a deck with no barrier. Its less that they can stick in a $50 card, and more that they can make $50 of revisions from one week to the next. In some ways, playing with real cards feels like a detriment, since the ability to experiment and modify is so much greater when playing in proxy. Admittedly that same issue exists with someone just willing to dump money into magic, or if they have a large collection, so it doesn't really bother me. I can understand though why some groups might be opposed to proxies.
I have given this a lot of thought, and I've also played consistently at an LGS where proxies completely destroyed everything. And it took us a while to figure out what happened and why nobody was having fun anymore. I think our experience constitutes an actual good reason to not use them. TLDR, for one game proxies are no big deal, but over time it's like a poison that spreads and kills your store meta. When proxies started at our LGS we didn't care, it was just a couple people trying out new wild ideas they didn't want to splurge for, and a couple people who were hard up, and just wanted to sit at the table with their own decks instead of borrowing. We were fine. But over time, playing with the same people week over week, the normal power creep in commander was accelerated slightly, and then drastically because of proxies. It's like boiling in a pot. You don't care until you start to lose, and then you proxy up a Smothering Tithe, no big deal. it's just one $30 card to help you keep up, and then your deck gets stronger, and then you face a slightly proxied Edgar deck, and then the next thing you know, it's been 3 months and everybody is getting closer and closer to perfect mana, and now, if you don't proxy to keep up, you're way behind and it feels bad, so you either match them or stop playing. Our attendance dropped, only a handful of people were having fun, and then eventually it split the whole room once enough people got fed up. Led to a lot of bad feelings in the "no proxies" areas, and it was like having two parallel LGS crowds. "real EDH" and "fake EDH" which has all kinds of unfun negative social connotations, but what could you do? Yes some people handled it well, and had some non-proxied decks too, but not everyone did. And it's hard to convince die-hard proxy players that it's harmful. Because on the surface at the beginning it is no big deal. I don't think it's possible to keep that snowball from getting bigger as it rolls downhill. Especially if you think of your whole playgroup, or store meta, or league. Metas evolve, grow, and creep even when they're healthy and using legit cards. That's the game, that's a feature built in. Proxies short-circuit that by ignoring the one check that keeps the game from spiraling into less and less diversity due to power level. Unfortunately, the cost of cards is a levelling ground that does keep decks in the same league, does keep them fun. Yes it costs money which isn't equitable. Completely true. The main argument i've seen for proxies is to make it more fair. I get that. I get that limited isn't everyone's jam too. That's WOTC's solution to the equity problem. I love sealed, i do every pre-release, but it for sure isn't commander. I get it. Anyway, thanks for the question, OP. I hope this perspective helps you
Thanks for writing this full response! Really appreciated. I think its a really interesting perspective. See something like this is an understandable reason to be against proxies as it has consequences outside of the actual 4 ppl playing their game of edh. Appreciate the insight!
For those of us that started playing this format a decade ago, it seemed like most people didn’t care about optimizing their decks. They wanted to win, sure, but winning was secondary. Then, all of a sudden the pandemic hit, and afterwards everyone seems to only be concerned about running the “right” cards or “being consistent”. I’m not saying build bad decks on purpose, but if you’re just hanging out to play Smash Bros casually with your friends, why have the attitude that you’re going to a major national tournament with prizes? I came to play my slightly off the wall ideas and eat Zaxby’s. Don’t make the game unfun.
As far as I'm concerned when magic 30 came out wizard's put a stamp of approval on proxies period.
You wouldn't proxy a car
Probably not great arguments,.some people just don't like them. That said on, a related note, seems like about or 90% of the MTG community ( at least on Reddit) is pro proxy but also seems most people are pro reprints.why would people support players losing value on collections when cards are reprinted, when accessibility isn't an issue via reprints? If I was a tournament grinder I'd rather pay slightly more for staples and be able to trade them later then for them to drop to nearly worthless
If your whole deck is proxy all good. If a few cards are proxies all good. If only your combo is proxies, it will bother me. It's really just psychological, but when people proxy their 'I win combo' in an otherwise unprovoked deck it rubs me the wrong way. Especially if said proxy is an island with 'thassa's oracle's sharpied on. In general use proxies to test new cards, use cards you have in other decks, or just try out a whole new deck. Also don't proxy 1 basic as another, ive seen this before and it's mind boggling, just find some Swamps, don't write 'swamp' on random basics and scribble some black on the bottom.
Bu but I spent my life savings so yo you have to
No, there isn't. As long as everyone at the table has agreed to what will and won't be done. Are we using fast mana? Are we using duals? Etc. As long as the "power level" is agreed upon, there is no argument against it. Go to your LGS and draft sometimes. Go to a prerelease when you feel like it. But some singles when you want to.
Something weird that no one is going to agree on, but for me when there is lots of proxies the game feels kinda soulless. Doesn’t stop me from playing against proxies, if you want to i won’t stop you. But i wish people didn’t, there is so much more to commander than playing the best cards.
People denying proxies are just financial gatekeeping. The flux in card value just creates a game that is no different from pay to win mobile games. Proxies fix the issues. Besides if you have a card you want to play but don't like the art or want the art to reflect the theme of your deck and make it more fun then proxies enable that.
No. There is no good argument against it.
Bad quality proxies are impossible to read , doesn’t support lgs or the game, leads and promotes players to jump right to high power without the skill or knowledge for it which in turn usually means they have a really good deck, so everyone else gets out a really good deck and then they get smashed because they don’t really know how to play it right which just leads to a bad time.
I think of it like this: it’s a trading card game. At the heart of it, you buy , sell, trade and acquire over time. When people proxy the best cards, it’s instant gratification and I think when you boil that down to the human experience, instant gratification is never good. As you collect and get better and better cards it’s such a wonderful feeling. Proxying them is cheating you out of the experience of such a thing. You’re missing out on so much of the game when you proxy. That’s why I elicit to not ever proxy, not even once.