Exclude surge foils from image downloads (option to optimize card images strategy to use only 1 card version)
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- Java
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Description
Scryfall contains all variants of a card's appearance, including new artworks / borders, etc. It also contains "surge foils", a printing of the card that can only be foil, which specifically appears in collector products. Shown below are a couple of examples of the original card image and the surge foil card image on Scryfall:
Piper Wright


Pip-Boy 3000


If you're having a difficult time differentiating between them, it's because the images are 1:1 identical except for the number in the bottom-left corner. In the case of both these cards, they also have extended art variants, which in turn have surge foil variants, despite the fact that the image is, again, the same (see [here](https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=released&q=%21%22Piper+Wright%2C+Publick+Reporter%22+include%3Aextras&unique=prints) and [here](https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=released&q=%21%22Pip-Boy+3000%22+include%3Aextras&unique=prints)). Given the HD quality of Scryfall images, it seems spectacularly inefficient to have users download the exact same HD image twice for each variant of these cards, and it additionally further serves to clog up the deck editor when searching for image variants for cards. Would it not be more sensible to exclude surge foils from the image downloads?
Contributor guide
No contributing guide indexed for this repository
Research direction
Start by tracing the Scryfall image-download path and the deck editor's image-variant search. Determine how surge foils are identified and whether the requested one-version optimization is optional; done means surge-foil duplicates are excluded without removing needed card appearances.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- java
- Domain
- frontend
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100