Thanks guys for reporting the problems with the previous import, some fixes today:

* added Isolated Watchtower judge promo
* fixed the 3 split cards
* Added the tokens in double sided form

Regarding the last bullet point, it ties into a larger discussion on what to do with single sided token cards from the database that actually never existed printed as such, only paired as double-sided cards.

The issue is that when correcting these, I would need to remove the previous "one sided" cards, which would mess with users that already used them in their inventories. I discussed this earlier with a few of you, recently very in depth with meldon44, and there's also a newish thread in Site Feedback about it.

My current thought is to just add the double sided versions to those editions, and leave the single sided ones in there for 2 months or so, then just remove the single sided ones. I'm still not completely sure how to deal with users that have exported their collections as CSV and will get errors on import, as I don't really want to leave both the single sided and the double-sided versions in, mostly because of the confusion that creates, since the single ones do not physically exist...

I totally get everyone who wants to treat them as double sided tokens, but I sleeve my tokens by color and put them in by the face that I leave forward. So I would actually love it if the single side was still an option because that would be how I would want to categorize my card.

I would love to be able to catalog the older double-sided tokens as double-sided cards rather than as one side or the other (or both). I'd be fine either way with leaving the single-sided versions of those cards in the database, or deleting those after a buffer period of several months to give users who care about cataloging tokens a chance to manage our inventories to the new double-sided reality.

Now after reezel's post I'm leaning in favor of just leaving both versions in... despite the confusion.

Perhaps it would be enough to just set a note on the single printings saying "Only printed double-sided"?

sebi wrote:Now after reezel's post I'm leaning in favor of just leaving both versions in... despite the confusion.

Perhaps it would be enough to just set a note on the single printings saying "Only printed double-sided"?

I would love this idea.

sebi wrote:Now after reezel's post I'm leaning in favor of just leaving both versions in... despite the confusion.

Perhaps it would be enough to just set a note on the single printings saying "Only printed double-sided"?

I was thinking about this more. In the case of a site like scryfall, where they are showing what exists, it makes sense for them to only show them as double sided. But here we're categorizing our collections, which everyone does very different, so the more options we have, the better this site will be. That's just my opinion of it.

reezel wrote:I was thinking about this more. In the case of a site like scryfall, where they are showing what exists, it makes sense for them to only show them as double sided. But here we're categorizing our collections, which everyone does very different, so the more options we have, the better this site will be. That's just my opinion of it.

This is why I think the idea presented by Giumbus in that newish thread in Site Feedback that Sebi alluded to is ultimately the most ideal solution — it allows for multiple ways to catalogue your inventory, offering a very flexible, robust, and simple interface. If you want to add all of the C19 as single-sided tokens to your inventory, it would let you, and not force you to pair those tokens with their other faces. If you want your inventory to reflect the physical cards you actually own, you could add them as double-sided, but then in your decks, you could still just add a single side. So e.g., C19 has both a Saproling // Morph and a Saproling // Manifest, so you could add them as such to your inventory. But say you never play with Morph or Manifest and instead sleeve those tokens so that only the Saproling is showing. In your deck that uses the Saprolings, you could then add just Saproling tokens rather than the full double-sided token. Or finally, you could choose to list only double-sided tokens ANYwhere, inventory or deck. It would be fully up to the user.

As nice as that system sounds, we probably shouldn't hold our breath. I have no idea what Sebi's backend coding and database structure looks like, but my gut feeling is that the proposed system would be very difficult to implement.

In the meantime, the key consideration in my opinion is this: Deckbox is fundamentally a place to track, trade, and sell physical cards. While a C19 Saproling token is a valid virtual card for deckbuilding, and a person can choose to only ever use that single side of it, that's not actually the card we own in our physical inventories. It will never be a physical card, because it doesn't exist. We can't trade it (not that people commonly trade tokens) and we can't sell it. Having nonexistent cards in the database undermines a core feature of Deckbox — its Market.

That all said, I'm personally fine with single-sided tokens continuing to exist on the website for those like Reezel who really want to input them like that. I have no actual desire for them to be removed (they're just objectively not correct to have). All I want is for them to not prevent the double-sided tokens from being added, since those are the more important version to have on the site.

sebi wrote:Perhaps it would be enough to just set a note on the single printings saying "Only printed double-sided"?

In addition to a per-card note, I recommend also having a notice written at the top of the affected edition pages, so that when people navigate to e.g. Extras: Commander 2019 and see both single- and double-sided tokens, they'll understand what both versions are doing in there.

Also, thinking about future compatibility here — If there's the possibility that you ever WILL remove the single-sided tokens, then it would be better for the double-sided tokens to not be listed after the single-sided. E.g. right now, you have C19 double-sided tokens using collector numbers 30-50. But what happens if you one day removed the single-sided tokens? Would the double-sided still start at 30? Or now start at 1 like they should? It obviously doesn't really matter, since there's no official WotC numbering for double-sided cards But still, it would affect people like me who heavily utilize CSVs for my inventory management. Right now, the two different Beast // Wurm tokens are 39 and 40. But if they suddenly become 10 and 11 post-single-sided removal, then my CSV listing them as 39 and 40 will no longer show the correct version (they'll be combined into multiple copies of 10 after import).

That's not super important, but still, it's a consideration as you're deciding how to add in the double-sided tokens.

My personal recommendation would be to treat them like you do the Core Game cards from e.g. Ninth Edition — let them share collector numbers. So in C19, you'd have:

#1 Bird
#1 Bird // Sculpture
#2 Bird
#2 Bird // Sculpture
#3 Human
#3 Pegasus // Human
etc.

For collecting purposes, I totally want to catalogue my double-sided tokens accurately (i.e. as the exact double-sided versions they are).

But I also think it's good to have a list function in parallel that allows you to note which side you're actually using in a given situation. Maybe that's something best handled in the deckbuilding side of the site. I currently use the sideboard and scratchpad functions to capture elements like tokens and contraptions. What if, when adding a token to one of these sections, you allowed the user to select which side of the token is being used in the given? You could also add a separate section alongside sideboard and scratchpad specifically for tokens.

This would also be able to handle a situation like reezel's: you just create a deck called "tokens master" or some such, and add all your tokens to it, noting which side of each double-sided you're using.

Oh, and a small thing I've been meaning to inquire about: can we get the Lathliss media promo added?

The database should not list cards which don't actually exist and it should not have multiple entries for the same card. If you are going to do this, there should be some kind of tag which clearly shows the card is not a real card or that one of the versions is not the "primary" version.

I agree, the core database records should only reflect the actual physical (or virtual) cards that exist, as accurately as possible.

Maybe the notes feature could be expanded (if it doesn't already have this) to have a functionality that lives with the card outside of a particular deck, so for example you could add a note "#zombie" to a token to indicate which side is sleeved on a double sided token, but you could also add wear notes or other notes that would carry with the card and appear in inventory and deck lists. I prefer this to dedicated double sided token functionality since it has a desirable general use case as well.

I'm suggesting this because the main issues people want to solve are:

1. How people sleeve their cards (tracked in notes)
2. How to avoid confusion where there could be two database entries for the same card (remove single sided entries for double sided cards)

I also recommend immediately changing the card numbering for all existing cases where both double and single sided database entries exist for the same cards, to head off future confusion about numbering once non-existent database entries are removed.

Based on this, a message should be sent to any members who have recorded one sided tokens that they will need to update to the two sided tokens, and ideally a list of their one sided tokens should be provided for reference in case they don't fix the issue before one sided tokens are removed.