[Discussion] Legacy: Past, Present and Future.

[Bryant Cook]

Legacy's past
Back in the summer of 2004, September 1st to be exact, the lists for "1.5" and "Type 1" were split. Before this "1.5" was thought to be the bastard child of "Extended or 1.x" and "Type 1", when the lists split and the dust was cleared there was a new format, Legacy. When the lists were split many people were angry and outraged at what Wizards did to "Their format". While people couldn't all agree on if the change was for the better or worse they all knew Legacy was here for good and it wasn't leaving.
September 20th, 2004 the changes were now active to the format and people were now terrified of combo decks. Many terrified people grabbed all the Null Rods and other artifact hate cards that they could find and held them as guns. While people stalked their local metagame with these cards in their maindecks and sideboards they never ran into these ghost combo decks but a sudden surge in control such as Blue Bull Shit and Landstill sporting their favorite new toy Fact or Fiction. People feared a dreaded "Combo Winter of 2004" with all the new broken cards such as Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petals and Moxen, but it was a warm winter and the combo was no where to be found.
As the year went on people were coming to realize that Landstill, ATS and the combo deck of the format Solidarity (Which didn't abuse any of these new profound unbanned cards) were powerhouses in the new metagame. "Gaea's Blessing all round" people would say as they shoved them in their sideboards for David Gearhart lookalikes and "Tormod's Crypt for all" for the disgusting card advantage that ATS was creating. Landstill was slowly being pushed out of the upper tier from not being able to deal with the combo deck and only having a decent match-up versus ATS.
Soon little green men swarmed over the format from its cousin Extended, these men were swarming metagames everywhere and weren't planning on leaving. These little green men and their Wastelands, Rishadan Ports, Lackeys and Aether Vials were the final straw for the decline of Landstill in the metagame. The crowds screamed "Ban the Lackey, No! Ban the ringleader" but Wizards heard no screams. Goblins was crushing the format and forced people to play removal on turn one in the forms of Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt. During this period of time, both Solidarity and ATS were slipping on the radar but ATS was free falling without a parachute.
A few members of The Source, were brainstorming what it took to stop the hordes of little green men from overwhelming the format, it took cheap large creatures, multiple answers for a turn one Goblin Lackey and free countermagic. When people got their innovation and homework done there was Threshold/Gro/and NQG.
Big Arse 2 happened in Syracuse, NY in 2005, people played all day and when it came down to it there wasn't a Goblin player in the top 2!? There was a Gro player without the "Gro" in his deck but instead Meddling Mages. After big Arse 2 there was a solid three decks that formed a triangle that finally seemed like it was never going to go away. Threshold, Vial Goblins, and Solidarity were all claiming tickets for Christmas Town and they were not giving them away.
A year pasted and this triangle remained unbroken, Vial Goblins still the best deck in the format and Threshold still close on its tail. With newer sets coming out and newer cards such as Rite of Flame, Empty the Warrens, Jotun grunt, Counterbalance and many others Solidarity found its self the slowest and weakest of the Brady bunch and slowly drifted back to tier 1.5. Soon predictions of a "Combo Summer" would appear.

Present Legacy
Currently combo is thriving in the new metagame, pushing Goblins on its butt and is slowly starting to send those little green men back to the hills. Although, with Threshold's newest toy Tarmogoyf and Counterbalance/Top it's trying to hold the combo down keeping the little green men in the bay's of Legacy. With combo's newest toy Empty the Warrens being everywhere many decks are currently packing cards such as Engineered Explosives and maindeck Pyroclasm. As effective answers for Combo, Threshold AND Goblins many cards such as stifle are now being used because it counterspells Goblin Ringleader as well as Tendrils of Agony and Empty the Warrens. Decks like Faerie Stompy and Red Death are thriving being able to deal with the upper tier with positive match-ups.

Legacy's Future
With more and more combo coming into the format there will be a surge of control decks making those Goblins in the bay come back for seconds, and maybe thirds. Combo will continue to become stronger and stronger with newer sets, because what's fun and cool in standard is broken and obscene in Legacy. Threshold will continue to do well, but slowly have less and less numbers. There will be a new competitor that creeps up from behind in the form of Ichorid decks. I believe the format will become faster and faster and eventually resemble the former Vintage before Flash and the banning of Gifts Ungiven.

What do you believe the future of Legacy is?

***Flash never happened(Wink, Wink) so it wasn't included.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

There was no Goblins in the top 2 of BA2 because it wasn't considered a top deck yet. The top decks at the time were Landstill, some Survival variant, and possibly Goblin sligh. It'd be another couple months before Goblins became the new deck to beat, although it was building momentum. I don't think it had even added Ports then.

And Threshold was not clearly part of anything until Philly. While it was pushed and developed by NoVA for a while, and saw some play, it wasn't really recognized as tier 1 until the Grand Prix and it's 3 top 8's (and look at how underdeveloped some of those lists are).

Solidarity's been off and on popular for a while. It'll be really good for a while, then people will talk about how it sucks, it'll suck for a while, then it'll dominate some tournament... Solidarity is highly dependent upon having the right metagame to do well in, much more so than Threshold and Goblins.a

[BreathWeapon]

Wasn't Threshold just a direct port of Birdshit with out the Null Rods?

Any way, I have a really strong feeling that aggro-control-combo, aggro-prison and prison are going to have to show up at some point in the future, Goblins, Goyf, Discard, Control, Storm and Ichorid shouldn't be that difficult to shake up with something innovative.

[SpikeyMikey]

My hope is, as long as we all play nice and don't go crying to WotC every couple of weeks, they won't print anything too format warping. Vintage didn't get gay until Mirrodin block, after WotC got sick of hearing how they didn't care about T1 and printed a bunch of Stax cards. I don't want to see Legacy turn into T1, then I'll have to move to playing in a format where I can't use my dual lands :(

[Nantuko88]

I personally see Legacy choking itself out in the next five or so years. One criteria for banning older cards was their price. In five years the price of duals will sky rocket to beyond what most persons are willing to pay. Not to mention other cards like Force of Will.

To keep Legacy strong, WotC will have to do three things...ban ban ban, watch what they print and REPRINT. Yes you heard me say it right....reprint. WotC needs to reprint some of the staple cards, the newer players need to be able to get them affordably to draw any kind of crowd to Legacy.

Thats my two cents.

P.S. Storm was a really bad idea on WotC's part

[AnwarA101]

I would quibble with the part about ATS. While people believed that it was one of the decks to beat it never really put up any numbers. I only have 1 appearance of ATS in T8 with at least 50 players. Its fall I think can be attributed to the fact that it was never really as good as people thought. When really good decks like Goblins and Threshold showed up, it was nowhere to be found.

[thefreakaccident]

I personally see Legacy choking itself out in the next five or so years. One criteria for banning older cards was their price. In five years the price of duals will sky rocket to beyond what most persons are willing to pay. Not to mention other cards like Force of Will.

To keep Legacy strong, WotC will have to do three things...ban ban ban, watch what they print and REPRINT. Yes you heard me say it right....reprint. WotC needs to reprint some of the staple cards, the newer players need to be able to get them affordably to draw any kind of crowd to Legacy.

Thats my two cents.

P.S. Storm was a really bad idea on WotC's part

dual lands are hardly unaffordable, storm was a great move on Wizards part... if they hadn't made it then combo would be nonexistant as we know it right now (belcher would stil exist, but just have belcher).

without stom, the format would be all creature decks (aggro and midranged aggro).. control would be pushed out of the format, except for certain ones like rifter (which would then get first in ever tourney, since it rapes aggro).

that's just how I see it.

EDIT:


I would quibble with the part about ATS. While people believed that it was one of the decks to beat it never really put up any numbers. I only have 1 appearance of ATS in T8 with at least 50 players. Its fall I think can be attributed to the fact that it was never really as good as people thought. When really good decks like Goblins and Threshold showed up, it was nowhere to be found.

it was a good deck, but it needs a very good pilot to do well... unlike goblins, where anyone can pick it up (including people who have never played our format before) and do well. I don't play it anymore because there are a lot of cards tat have been printed recently that makes it impossible to play... It was good though, maybe not as good as hyped to be, but still good.

[Nydaeli]

It doesn't make sense to present Threshold as a metagame foil to Goblins, since Goblins is usually favored in that matchup. (This may no longer be true with the recent addition of Tarmogoyf, but I am speaking historically.) I'm not sure what motivated its development, though, besides its inherent synergy and power.

[Bryant Cook]

It doesn't make sense to present Threshold as a metagame foil to Goblins, since Goblins is usually favored in that matchup. (This may no longer be true with the recent addition of Tarmogoyf, but I am speaking historically.) I'm not sure what motivated its development, though, besides its inherent synergy and power.

Back during Philly red was the most played color for Threshold and red threshold has Pyroclasm.

[Samshire]

I personally see Legacy choking itself out in the next five or so years. One criteria for banning older cards was their price. In five years the price of duals will sky rocket to beyond what most persons are willing to pay. Not to mention other cards like Force of Will.

I recall reading a thread on MTGsalvation about Wizards printing some cards that won't be used for Standard play, but will be valuable to older players, it's doubtful that it will be duals and Force of Wills, but...one can certainly hope!

I think that Combo decks will be running around for a while. The only decks that will be able to survive are the ones that can answer first turn 10-12 tokens and/or a possible first turn belcher activate. After this I think that the format might slow down and control decks that have good matchups against combo (landstill, gro).

Of course, all of this could change. It really depends on what gets printed in Lorwyn...

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

I would quibble with the part about ATS. While people believed that it was one of the decks to beat it never really put up any numbers. I only have 1 appearance of ATS in T8 with at least 50 players. Its fall I think can be attributed to the fact that it was never really as good as people thought. When really good decks like Goblins and Threshold showed up, it was nowhere to be found.

Quite. I think it had the strongest hype-machine in place when everything was topsy-turvy, and that was the main thing it had going for it.

[bigbear102]

ATS beats randomness, like most survival builds, and it was the one deck from the old 1.5 that went untouched and actually got some help. It did reasonably well in the old format, and when it came through stronger, it seemed like a logical dtb. It seems pretty straight forward that it would be considered one of the best decks in the new format because it takes a while for the dust to settle. That is the same reason why landstill was still popular for a while.

[Di]

I would quibble with the part about ATS. While people believed that it was one of the decks to beat it never really put up any numbers. I only have 1 appearance of ATS in T8 with at least 50 players. Its fall I think can be attributed to the fact that it was never really as good as people thought. When really good decks like Goblins and Threshold showed up, it was nowhere to be found.


Quite. I think it had the strongest hype-machine in place when everything was topsy-turvy, and that was the main thing it had going for it.

I actually agree with this. To be honest, ATS was probably the most overhyped deck in the format. A lot of its hype was based on the fact that I won a majority of local tournaments (both small and large events) with it, and that somehow spread throughout the entire internet. What's worse is that the lists were very poorly refined. The difficulty of the deck was partially to blame, but the rest of the blame I put on myself for actually designing it that way. I'll admit that the decklists I used back then were rather questionable (whether they worked or not is beside the point), and it could've been easier for everyone if I designed a list that was more streamlined and not a giant mess of hard decisions. Plus, I failed to adapt correctly to cards being printed (Just a side note, but I believe ATS honestly died out because of hype through Pithing Needle and Supression Field. Ironic, no?).

However another problem that the deck faced was the Solidarity syndrome. It just never really had the support other decks did, and thus wasn't able to put up results. It had far fewer people playing it than Solidarity did, which could partially explain why it lacked results.

There, just wanted to clear that up. I don't want to derail the thread or anything.

[Nantuko88]

I think Landstill could be playable again in Legacy's future if Mana Drain were to be unbanned...back in T1.5 I can remember those great turn four free Disk, one mana FoF, and abusively big Decrees. But alas, I don't see this happening.

[emidln]

I think Landstill could be playable again in Legacy's future if Mana Drain were to be unbanned...back in T1.5 I can remember those great turn four free Disk, one mana FoF, and abusively big Decrees. But alas, I don't see this happening.

With mana drain unbanned we could probably get a working Gifts deck in Legacy.

[Nightmare]

With mana drain unbanned we could probably get a working Gifts deck in Legacy.Or Slaver. Either way, we could come up with something better than Landstill to do with all that mana.

[MattH]

I tried my best, but I cannot read that without the aid of more paragraph breaks. Forgive me, I am weak.

[Nightmare]

Underground Sea is already at $45
http://search-completed.ebay.com/underground-sea-revised_W0QQ_trksidZm37QQcatrefZC5QQfclZ3QQfisZ2QQfromZR7QQfrppZ50QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ1QQnojsprZyQQpfidZ0QQsacatZQ2d1QQsofocusZbs
eBay says you're a liar. You can get revised Seas anywhere from 28-35 each, which is completely reasonable. They're actually cheaper to buy in sets. I refuse to believe that anyone could not possibly put some of their junk up on eBay to help facilitate the cost, and have their duals a few weeks later. We all have a ton of crappy type-2 rares. They add up to duals.

[Anarky87]

http://search-completed.ebay.com/underground-sea-revised_W0QQ_trksidZm37QQcatrefZC5QQfclZ3QQfisZ2QQfromZR7QQfrppZ50QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ1QQnojsprZyQQpfidZ0QQsacatZQ2d1QQsofocusZbs
eBay says you're a liar. You can get revised Seas anywhere from 28-35 each, which is completely reasonable. They're actually cheaper to buy in sets. I refuse to believe that anyone could not possibly put some of their junk up on eBay to help facilitate the cost, and have their duals a few weeks later. We all have a ton of crappy type-2 rares. They add up to duals.

QFT. Also, add in the fact that they just reprinted the entire set of duals. Granted they aren't like using the earlier duals, but functionally, they work almost the same. If that's not good enough for you, cash in those crappy duals on ebay for real ones. Or cash in anything really, I do it all the time. I go around my area to the local shops, pick up all their high dollar T2 crap (For next to nothing) and then sell it on ebay and make cash, which I put towards Legacy/Vintage things I want. I finally bought my set of Seas for 26 apiece, so anyone who tells you they're 45 is talking out their ass.

The only time I hear that Legacy is too expensive is from people who don't want to even try to get into the format. No matter what format you play, sooner or later, you're gonna have to make an investement in cards. It's the same for T2 (And you're paying outrageous prices for bad cards) and it's the same for Legacy...And Vintage, and Extended. That's just something people will have to face.

[Pale Moon FTW]

Originally Posted by Nightmare
eBay says you're a liar. You can get revised Seas anywhere from 28-35 each, which is completely reasonable. They're actually cheaper to buy in sets. I refuse to believe that anyone could not possibly put some of their junk up on eBay to help facilitate the cost, and have their duals a few weeks later. We all have a ton of crappy type-2 rares. They add up to duals.
I wasn't talking about EBay prices I was talking about the price you'll have to pay for a Sea at your local store which is about $45. Most new players don't trade on EBay, when talking about attracting new players you have to think from their perspective instead of what "the exprienced legacy player" does.

[Anarky87]

I wasn't talking about EBay prices I was talking about the price you'll have to pay for a Sea at your local store which is about $45. Most new players don't trade on EBay, when talking about attracting new players you have to think from their perspective instead of what "the exprienced legacy player" does.

But there's only so much hand holding you can do. Sooner or later, little Bobby will have to learn the concept of 'shopping around' and 'buying on the internet.' If a shop's singles are ok, I don't mind buying there. But when they start getting ridiculous ($25 for a Deed/Mage, $24-25 for a Plateau, Taiga, or Intuition...) then I don't shop there and I encourage others to do the same.

I have a hard time picturing a Magic player that has never heard of Ebay, or any online store for that matter. There are a few here, but that's because they have like...non-alligned eyes, 6 finger hands, etc. Shopping around is a pretty basic thing, "This is $45 here. I don't really want to pay that, I should look somewhere else." not, "This is $45. I guess I will never own one."

I just feel like that's saying I should feel sorry for someone who doesn't check for cars when walking into traffic.

[raharu]

I wasn't talking about EBay prices I was talking about the price you'll have to pay for a Sea at your local store which is about $45. Most new players don't trade on EBay, when talking about attracting new players you have to think from their perspective instead of what "the experienced legacy player" does.

Who actually buys cards from card shops? When I started, I never did. I never have. Anyone else that has?

[Anarky87]

Who actually buys cards from card shops? When I started, I never did. I never have. Anyone else that has?

I have on occassion, when the prices were reasonable. And a lot of our locals do buy whatever the store has, because they're more of a casual group. So they will buy a lot of packs and singles at uber inflated prices for their poorly built decks. All I do is come in, pull out cards I want, and trade away my crap cards for highly tradeable stuff. I don't think I've 'bought' a card from a shop in a very, very long time.

[raharu]

I have on occassion, when the prices were reasonable... All I do is come in, pull out cards I want, and trade away my crap cards for highly tradeable stuff. I don't think I've 'bought' a card from a shop in a very, very long time.

My point exactly.

[Pale Moon FTW]

I'm under 18 so I don't have the luxury of buying through EBay, however I've saved a lot of money on buying from American card shops on the web instead of in my local card store where any rare costs at least $8 simply because they're rare. But you can make good bargains at card stores, I've just bought 4 Goyf and a Tundra for $55 at a Danish card store. A lot of semi-serious players do buy their cards at stores though it's not the pro way because they don't own a credit card/are underaged/have bad experiences with online trading etc.

[Anarky87]

But you can make good bargains at card stores, I've just bought 4 Goyf and a Tundra for $55 at a Danish card store.

This is the only reason I go into the stores around here, because I know I can get great deals. Today I traded 4 Terminates, 2 Land Grants, and an Armageddon for 5 Coalition Relics (around $7 each because of Block) to one of the stores owners. I've picked up $2 Flooded Strands, $1 Temple Gardens, you name it. Sometimes I'll look in their cases to see what they're marking their junk rares at, pick those up for dirt, then take them back there and trade them uber high. There's hardly a reason to even buy singles really if you're trade smart.

There was a guy in my town who took a stack of junk rares and in a years time, turned those into power. Just because he knew how to work the trades, toss in good rares with a stack of bad, ask for toss ins when actually doing trades. After watching him go from store to store clearing them out, armed with only a binder of junk, I began to feel inadequate. He was insane.

But I think this is all beside the point of the thread, which is where the direction of Legacy is heading. A thread about trades, card prices, etc. would need to go somewhere else.

[C.P.]

This is off topic, and I'd like to see a thread on this, but I do not like your perspective on local shops. They do overprice things, but if you but nothing from them, you will lose the store. My old local store had a weekly Legacy and 2 other magic tourneys a week, and then ebay came along and people bought nothing. They went down, and it took a good six month to get back what we lost(weekly T2, Legacy, and Draft), and it is not the same. Local shops may be expensive, but what good is your Black Lotus if you do not have place to play it? Your 'Buy it on Ebay' altitude will not help local stores, at least small ones. When they go down, hardcore players that spend lots of money on the game are the ones who are going to miss it the most.

Now I own 40+ duals and 30+ fetches with everything that I would want in Legacy, but I still remember how hard my first dual was to get. When you are high schooler or younger, the scarcity and price of some legacy staples can be a huge wall. While I do admit that Pale moon FTW is bit extreme, he has a point. Legacy is not vintage, but legacy has its own barrier and we legacy players have to do something to make the format more accessible.


EDIT: Now I think about it, this has a lot to do with the format's future. The older the games gets and more players we have, the entry barrier will haunt us more.

[Ewokslayer]

Pretty much the only reason price is an issue is because there are so few major tournaments and no tournaments outside of the two GP that lead to anything. Building a Legacy deck doesn't cost anymore than building a deck for Extended, Standard, or Block, but you can't play in 2-3 Legacy PTQs each year. Though Legacy is in a bit of a Catch-22 in that the cost of the format staples (duals and FOW) are reasonable only really because no one plays the format. If they did have a Legacy PTQ season the cost of those cards would quickly get out of hand due to scarcity. Not that I want a Legacy PTQ season, but more GPs would be awesome.

As for Local stores, supporting them is important but they also have to be responsible and not charge outrageous prices. The ideal store would also sell product on ebay and would charge the market value for cards. Most people would spend a dollar or so more on a card from a local shop because you get it now and you don't pay shipping which is a large cost off of ebay.

[Anarky87]

I don't really think me not buying singles at inflated prices is going to make my shop close. The store sells tons of other stuff that Magic singles are not its only revenue. They do sports jackets, license plates, glasses, cards, etc. And that's they're major money maker. But local stores shouldn't expect players with common sense to pay ridiculous prices for cards, because they will always lose that battle.

Like Ewokslayer said, if a Deed is going for $9 online ($7 originally and lets say $2 for shipping), I wouldn't mind buying the card at a local store for the same $9-10, being that I can get it NOW and not have to wait or pay shipping. But when the same $9 Deed online is in the case at the local store for $25, then no, don't expect me to pay that. Online ftw in that case; I'm not going to be stupid just to support a store, sorry.

Local stores need to be in touch with the actual card market and not expect players to be ignorant. Supporting your store is very important and healthy to the game, but players shouldn't receive a gouging in return for their support. "Here's a place to play Legacy with store credit as prizes, but my singles are about $15 more than what you'd normally pay." That just disgusts me.

Singles at the shop I play at seem to be priced and then forgotten. Like, maybe a card was worth that at a time, but not anymore and yet the price is still $12 when it should be like $3-4. In summation, respect needs to be exhibited by both the players and the store owners.

[Sparkamiss Prime]

Building a Legacy deck doesn't cost anymore than building a deck for Extended, Standard, or Block

ok extended i could believe depending on what decks your comparing. but standard doesnt cost anywhere near as much as legacy mainly because the cards are always in print and easier to find.

and the fact that you say block is as expensive as legacy is laughable and actually almost gave me a code blue. block is probaly the cheapest PTQ/GP format overall as far as building a deck from scratch goes.

[emidln]

ok extended i could believe depending on what decks your comparing. but standard doesnt cost anywhere near as much as legacy mainly because the cards are always in print and easier to find.

and the fact that you say block is as expensive as legacy is laughable and actually almost gave me a code blue. block is probaly the cheapest PTQ/GP format overall as far as building a deck from scratch goes.

My Legacy deck requires a bunch of bulk commons/uncommons/rares, 3 Underground Sea, 2 Polluted Delta, 2 Bloodstained Mire, and 4 Cruel Bargain. It would be extremely difficult to build a t2 deck from scratch for what I paid for what I run right now in Legacy.

[Di]

Wow people, just wow. This is a thread regarding the future of Legacy, not where people buy their cards. For the love of God, gtf back on topic.

[Bryant Cook]

Legacy's Future
With more and more combo coming into the format there will be a surge of control decks making those Goblins in the bay come back for seconds, and maybe thirds. Combo will continue to become stronger and stronger with newer sets, because what's fun and cool in standard is broken and obscene in Legacy. Threshold will continue to do well, but slowly have less and less numbers. There will be a new competitor that creeps up from behind in the form of Ichorid decks. I believe the format will become faster and faster and eventually resemble the former Vintage before Flash and the banning of Gifts Ungiven.

What do you believe the future of Legacy is?

Do people think its going to become slower or faster like old vintage? I've heard alot of different opinions and answers.

[C.P.]

Do people think its going to become slower or faster like old vintage? I've heard alot of different opinions and answers.

The format will, or should be maintained so that it will be slower than vintage at all times. More cards will guarantee faster format, eventually speeding the for mat to the Vintage-ish extent. However, Baned list should be maintained so that the format is reasonably slow.

EDIT: The reason that I think the for mat should be kept slow, is that the legacy was meant to be the format(or so it seems to me) where the power level is kept reasonable enough to allow great diversity. A format where the fundamental turn is 3 or less is not suitable for that, in my opinion.

[Illissius]

If they don't intervene, it's obviously just going to get faster with time. And I do think they should intervene. This may be arbitrary and subjective, but in my mind, Legacy should be the format where Survival of the Fittest is playable.

[Anarky87]

I'd like to see the format slow down just a tad, but I think players are reaching some innovation by pushing the format's envelope. Combo has gotten a little bit faster and ridiculous (not in a bad sense), and the rest of the format needs to catch back up.

I think they should keep an eye on the format though. Because if it just becomes faster like old Vintage, then why wouldn't players just take the next step and play Vintage and open themselves up to whole other world of broken. I enjoy Legacy like it is, but I think I'd enjoy it either way, unless it just got stupid, then I'd play Vintage.

[BreathWeapon]

Do people think its going to become slower or faster like old vintage? I've heard alot of different opinions and answers.


Coming from both formats, the fundamental turn in T1.5 is faster than the fundamental turn in T1 after the restriction of Gifts Ungiven. Unrestricted LED in Belcher and Ichorid give us faster combo decks and our aggro-control-combo decks are just as fast as their aggro-control-combo decks from what I've seen (not that other people bother with aggro-control-combo in this format for whatever reasons).

I think the fact that not all of the deck's in our format have Force of Will means our format is faster as well; Not in terms of the fundamental turn, but in terms of people's willingness to watch the opponent goldfish them and then go to game 2 with delusions of winning a match. I enjoy playing Goblins, Affinity or Zoo as much as the next person, but running aggro and hoping U/g/w Tarmogoyf keeps combo in check is quite a gamble. At least aggro-prison and B/w or B/r can coin flip against the decks that are setting the fundamental turn.

I don't think the speed of our format is a sign of whether or not the format is "broken" tho', that speed comes with a Counter Spell = Mind Twist attached to it for Storm combo and Leyline of the Void is a ball breaker for Ichorid. I'm more afraid of aggro-control-combo owning the entire format because it's fundamentally superior to every other archetype except aggro-prison.

[Tacosnape]

Wow people, just wow. This is a thread regarding the future of Legacy, not where people buy their cards. For the love of God, gtf back on topic.

I think this is highly relevant to the future of Legacy, however. Not -where- people buy the cards, but the price itself.

Everyone seems to have a misconception that a few hundred dollars is not cost prohibitive. It is. It keeps out more players than you can possibly imagine. Cost and card availability keeps the city I live in from being able to have regular Legacy tournaments: Most of the time, everyone who plays borrows a deck from one of two people. We're just now getting to the point where most people have a playable Legacy deck.

[MattH]

One problem with merely adding up the total value of decks in various formats and comparing them is that a $30 card is not really 'worth' the same as three $10 cards, or six $5 cards. It is much harder to trade for a $27 Tundra than to trade for three $9 Flagstones of Trokair.

[mikekelley]

Wow people, just wow. This is a thread regarding the future of Legacy, not where people buy their cards. For the love of God, gtf back on topic.

I agree with the 'who gives a damn where you buy your cards' part, but I think that the price of cards is one of the biggest parts of predicting the future of this format.

To most people, I'd venture to say like 95% of people, price is the deciding factor of this game. They aren't going to want to spend over $100 on this hobby at one point. The other 5% of us are those that are borderline obsessed, or are obsessed. I remember when I first played, I couldn't imagine spending more than 20 bucks on singles at once, granted this was before the advent of the crazy amount of internet singles stores running around, but I think the concept holds true for most people.

The price is definatley a lot to swallow for people.

[Di]

If anyone read what I said, I specifically mentioned the where. That is completely irrelevant information. The price of cards, otoh, does have an impact. However, I do not believe that this thread was intended on a discussion based around the price of cards. Although you're free to discuss them, I'd appreciate it if you guys could stop going around in circles and address what was actually asked in the initial post. Thanks.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

If anyone read what I said, I specifically mentioned the where. That is completely irrelevant information. The price of cards, otoh, does have an impact. However, I do not believe that this thread was intended on a discussion based around the price of cards. Although you're free to discuss them, I'd appreciate it if you guys could stop going around in circles and address what was actually asked in the initial post. Thanks.


What do you believe the future of Legacy is?

I think that price of cards is very relevant to the discussion. The long-term health of the local stores that support the majority of Legacy tournaments is also very relevant.

Now, that may not be what Bryan intended, but his question was very vague, so I don't think the discussion should be stifled for that reason.


This may be arbitrary and subjective, but in my mind, Legacy should be the format where Survival of the Fittest is playable.

It's so odd that I agree with this. Not in any highly technical, analytical sense, but it's a pretty reasonable bar for what Legacy should be. If you've reached the point where no Survival build is even tier 2, then the format's probably gotten ahead of itself.

I'm not saying we're there now, but I think, odd as it seems, that's a pretty good test of the format.

[Nightmare]

That's a completely arbitrary deck to choose, but I agree 100%. The interesting thing is, aside from Belcher (the card) and Tendrils (the card), Survival is a completely legitimate deck. Green has at least two sufficient answers to EtW in Sandstorm and EE, so it's really the old combo win conditions that invalidate it.

[Machinus]

To most people, I'd venture to say like 95% of people, price is the deciding factor of this game. They aren't going to want to spend over $100 on this hobby at one point. The other 5% of us are those that are borderline obsessed, or are obsessed. I remember when I first played, I couldn't imagine spending more than 20 bucks on singles at once, granted this was before the advent of the crazy amount of internet singles stores running around, but I think the concept holds true for most people.

The price is definatley a lot to swallow for people.

You can't play any format for $100, that's absurd. Legacy doesn't cost more than Standard.

This is not a free game anyway! WotC is a business.

[mikekelley]

Sure you can...sealed, limited, block, mono colored decks in all formats can be pretty cheap sans vintage, and you can play casual. I was also trying to say that they didn't want to spend $100 on one purchase, such as a playset of some supercard.

Magic can be played for super cheap...how do you think kids in middle school are doing it? They certainly aren't imagining scooping up a set of duals or anything.

Plus, I don't think WOTC is riding the profits from 1.5 to the bank.

[SuckerPunch]

With more and more combo coming into the format there will be a surge of control decks

That's still thinking in the old mindset.

Before, all a control deck had to do was counter the critical combo piece and you can take all the time in the world to win. Before, a deck with a decent amount of countermagic has extremely good odds against a combo deck. But storm makes it so that you can't just counter the key combo piece. The stuff that you can counter (draw, acceleration), the combo decks run lots and lots of. Storm decks can even ignore counters altogether with Xantid Swarm. And they can bounce back hate cards pretty easily too.

The best any deck can do is slow down storm combo and win before it can combo out. A deck can't take too long a time to win like control typically does will not have a big advantage over combo decks like they did in the old days.

MaRo was right in saying the storm was the most broken mechanic they ever printed, and a probably the biggest mistake they made in recent memory.

The biggest foil to combo decks aren't control decks but aggro control decks that combine a fast clock cards that slow combo down. And with the exception of bwg thres, many aggro control decks still have a disadvantgae versus storm based combo.