Community Awareness Let's Talk About Splinter Twin WRITTEN BY Michael Paul Skipper

Hello! Welcome to a new article on PucaTrade, Community Awareness. These articles are intended to keep our members informed about upcoming Magic events and how they might affect card prices and trading. This first article is in response to what we saw occur with the banning of Splinter Twin.

PucaTrade is a giving economy, and we aspire to make all of our members aware of this fact. ‘Give and Let Give’ is more than a slogan; it’s a description of how our infrastructure is designed. Magic players the world over are giving each other cards in exchange for the opportunity to be given cards by someone else, so on and so forth. For any of you who have been able to put together decks or acquire special card printings, you know how well this system can work when people are using it with good natured intentions. We probably all have had failed trades in our local game store when someone has a card you really want, but they can’t say the same of your collection, or they inform you that for some of the cards in their binder, “those aren’t for trade.” PucaTrade alleviates this frustration, because PucaPoints can be turned into any card you desire. Trade up, trade down; as long as someone is willing to give to you, you can get what you’re looking for.

Many people know that some cards are still hard to come by. Staples like Shocklands and Snapcaster Mages don’t move around very frequently in the same way they don’t move out of trade binders in real life. The same was true of Splinter Twin, up until January 15, 2016. That card represented the absolute center of the Modern format, and for anyone who speculates on cards, it seemed like a reasonable investment to stockpile them. Additionally, because the deck was always a good tournament choice, many members waited for weeks and months to be sent this card.

On the 15th, news of the impending Twin ban spread at my FNM and was the talk of the night. People flocked to PucaTrade to send their cards, not wanting to lose value.

This activity hurt our community.

As an admin, my job is to look at the trades that create problems for one or both members. 98% of trades go through just fine, and myself and the rest of the team check out the transactions that are causing problems for members. If you didn’t realize, or never thought about it, sending someone a card that just got banned might make him or her feel incredibly taken advantage of. Our rules state that recipients are required to keep their want list up to date, and they become on the hook for price spikes and situations like this. The simple reality is that many senders were quicker to initiate trades than members were able to remove the card from their want list. Splinter Twin became the number one traded card overnight. We are a global community, and many members had these trades initiated while they were sleeping.

For anyone reading this who happened to send their copies, I’d like to simply ask that if roles were reversed, and you were on the hook for a banned card, “How would it make you feel?”

It’s important to state that this type of trading, dumping obsolete cards, is totally within our rules. There’s nothing technically wrong with this activity. This is a moral issue. This is a question of character. If you don’t feel connected to the other members of PucaTrade, I urge you to reconsider how connected you truly are. PucaTrade is a global website and all us are invested in a game that we love. For many of us, Magic is a way of life, and Magic has greatly affected our lives for the better through friendships, decision making skills, and fun!

"What do you expect me to do, get on TV and tell everyone to be nice to each other?" - Ghostbusters 2, Columbia Pictures

Everyone goes through lapses, but if we look at the community as a whole, we'll be better off. I myself was committed to send a Deceiver Exarch after the ban, but talking with the other member made me realize this was a mistake. Lesson learned. That experience along with the sea of feedback in our case system inspired me to write this article.

That lack of desire is not going to hold as a hard-and-fast rule, and communication with your trade partner in such situations is key. Splinter Twin has put up results in Legacy, and there's always Commander to keep in mind, so if you still have copies lying around, there are different homes you can put them in. If you played Twin in Modern, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker has returned to prominence as a way to still get those wins out of nowhere with Deceiver Exarch and Pestermite.

PucaTrade feels great responsibility for the situation this ban resulted in, and the admin team wants to do our part to prevent these situations in the future. Our promise to you is that we will have ‘Community Awareness’ announcements leading up to banned & restricted list announcements and leading up to Pro Tours as well. Magic players weren’t born with the knowledge of volatile trading card markets, after all. PucaTrade knows to expect price spikes and plummets at certain times of the year, and we will do our best to ensure that our community is aware of these impending changes and has enough knowledge adjust their activity on PucaTrade accordingly.

Thanks very much for reading and for considering your trading partners to be friends and for putting yourself in their shoes. The more we look after one another, the more fun all of us will have. Happy Trading.

Give and Let Give.