[Discussion] Do you think Modern Magic threatens the viability of Legacy or Extended?

[Tiago_B.]

It would be stupid for Wizards to turn it's back on them.

+1

If Legacy was to end, i would probably stop playing.....Vintage is way off my budget, i dont like Extended, T2 is always rotating and has a short card pool, and Draft is just not my thing......

Despite being annoyed by some things in Modern, i could turn into that format, but it wouldnt be the same thing.

And yes, Legacy players always buy a lot of stuff, since they regularly have a bigger financial capacity (not my case, since im a student). Still, i buy a lot of singles, boosters, duel decks, etc.
Some ppl even buy 4 duel decks just to get 4 of each card.

[workingdude]

Will it eventually supplant Legacy if they move forward with it? Maybe. SCG will hold out as long as they can on replacing Legacy with Modern at their opens even if Modern does catch on because Legacy has a larger pool of singles to sell.

I don't agree with your statement. SCG (Ben) has always said that they would rather have cards that are more available and sell lots of those because it would mean more players/customers, then just sell small amounts of rare, impossible-to-reprint cards for a lot. While I suppose there is a larger "pool" to sell from in Legacy, the staple/playable cards in modern are much more accessible and numerous than the staple/playable cards in Legacy. Therefore, I'd imagine SCG would prefer a modern tournament scene as opposed to the legacy tournament scene.

we've repeatedly taken a stance of "we'd rather sell 4x $25 cards and have people playing the format, than sell 1x $100 card and have nobody playing the format".

If WotC announces Modern later this year as an official DCI format, I'd be wary of SCG announcing that the 10k weekends for next year's seasons would now be Saturday Standard, Sunday Modern. If this happens, modern magic WILL threaten the viability of Legacy.

[frenchy-man]

I don't agree with your statement. SCG (Ben) has always said that they would rather have cards that are more available and sell lots of those because it would mean more players/customers, then just sell small amounts of rare, impossible-to-reprint cards for a lot. While I suppose there is a larger "pool" to sell from in Legacy, the staple/playable cards in modern are much more accessible and numerous than the staple/playable cards in Legacy. Therefore, I'd imagine SCG would prefer a modern tournament scene as opposed to the legacy tournament scene.



If WotC announces Modern later this year as an official DCI format, I'd be wary of SCG announcing that the 10k weekends for next year's seasons would now be Saturday Standard, Sunday Modern. If this happens, modern magic WILL threaten the viability of Legacy.

The fact is that legacy players depend much less on hasbro and wotc than standard players. I mean, at least in Europe and in France, many tournament organizers organise tounraments without any help from wotc. Have you heard about the bom ?
This new format won't affect legacy, but extend. I believe that extend is dead with modern magic.

Seriously, who on this forum could stop playing in a format with fow and duals ?

[phonics]

personally I would like it if standard has extended card pool size, and extended was a 'overextended' format. I think of legacy like the format 'where the big boys play', not necessarily saying that standard and extended are for noobs, duking it out with some of the most broken (yet accessible) cards is a lot more fun than pecking eachother to death with birds holding swords. using extended as a eternal format (like masques on) would fill the gap between standard and legacy much more than it does now.

[mossivo1986]

I don't think Modern threatens Legacy at all.

If you asked me which is more fun to play? I would say Modern. Reason? Kind of obvious, it hasn't been explored; people keep playing the same decks with few changes, and honestly; i'm having a blast creating. I was really shocked that both wotc and the community didn't try to come up with anything new strategy wise. It was quite depressing to see. Other then that dredge deck, which could be fun.

[lordofthepit]

I don't think Modern will threaten the viability of Legacy because it simply isn't as attractive a format outside of budget constraints. The vast majority of players who want to play Eternal want to do so because they want access to essentially every card ever printed. If you like really broken, swingy games, there's Vintage; otherwise, there's Legacy, and the latter has suited the needs of many Magic players until the recent rise in entry costs.

Fortunately, there are enough players (at least in my local area) who are already able to play Legacy that "entry costs" isn't really a concern with respect to having a healthy local Legacy community (which I understand may not be the case elsewhere). I don't believe anyone who's able to play Legacy will ever willingly "downgrade" to a lower budget option as long as Legacy remains viable, and I believe while Legacy may not be able to continue to grow due to increasing costs, it will certainly remain healthy.

On the other hand, I think if Modern Magic takes off (which will certainly require official sanction from Wizards, some random player-created website won't due the job), it can certainly take away (to some extent) from the Legacy player base. I wish the Modern folks all the best, but I never intend to play it, and I ask that they never promote Modern as a replacement for Legacy.

[Eksem]

I think the best thing to do is to kill Extended and Modern and it's ilk in all it's forms; double the size of Standard, leave Legacy as it is and leave Vintage and Commander to player driven communities. Less work, less confusion, less awful formats.

[SpikeyMikey]

I don't agree with your statement. SCG (Ben) has always said that they would rather have cards that are more available and sell lots of those because it would mean more players/customers, then just sell small amounts of rare, impossible-to-reprint cards for a lot. While I suppose there is a larger "pool" to sell from in Legacy, the staple/playable cards in modern are much more accessible and numerous than the staple/playable cards in Legacy. Therefore, I'd imagine SCG would prefer a modern tournament scene as opposed to the legacy tournament scene.



If WotC announces Modern later this year as an official DCI format, I'd be wary of SCG announcing that the 10k weekends for next year's seasons would now be Saturday Standard, Sunday Modern. If this happens, modern magic WILL threaten the viability of Legacy.

What you say is largely true, however, your premise is somewhat off.

For any business, inventory is a necessary evil. Reason being, inventory represents money that is unavailable. It's an asset, but it's not as liquid as cash. And your RoI on your inventory is based entirely on how fast it turns. I'll use a simplified example to show you what I mean. If you have a card that you bought at $10 and sold at $11, you made a dollar any way you look at it, but if it turned in a month, you're grossing 120% APR (compounded once annually). If your turns are closer to a year, suddenly you're grossing 10% APR. It's the same amount of money on the sale, but less money over the long haul. And added liquidity is always good. 4 sales at $25 profit each are better than 1 sale at $100 because the faster you're turning your product, the more liquid you are and the more things you can do with your money. When it's not tied up in inventory, you can invest it in other areas, whether it's improvements to the business or literally just investing it in short term bonds or commodities markets(because just buying more inventory will not improve profitability if demand does not increase apace).

So yes, Ben ideally wants to get his turns as low as possible (there are situations where you don't want to increase your turns, such as when the volume you're moving is the capacity for your system and a small increase in volume would require additional labor, decreasing net profitability, but they're are corner cases). But I don't see Modern increasing net profitability in comparison to Legacy for two reasons.

One, Ben has to keep the inventory on the Legacy singles whether SCG is supporting the format or not. I'm not sure if SCG is organized enough to have actual set safety stocks on cards (a safety stock is a number of a given item that you want to keep in inventory in order to meet the expected demand from customers in relation to the lead time of the item) or if Ben & co. just eyeball it, but they're keeping some level of stock on every single they can. I'm too lazy to look, but I'm pretty sure that if I wanted an Aurochs, SCG would have them in stock. And if they turn once a year, I'd be shocked. Compare this to say a Tropical Island where Ben can turn his safety stock once or twice a week. If you remove a pool of half the cards ever printed from the tournament scene, you still have to stock that pool. You might be able to shave a little inventory here and there on items that won't generate as much demand (such as Force of Will) but your turns will go down and your net profit per sale will go down (as the price falls), so you lose on the balance of things.

Two, and I say this with the caveat that Modern is brand new and relatively unexplored so I *could* be wrong (but I doubt it), Modern does not and will not have the number of playables that Legacy does. It doesn't have as many high-turn, high-volume cards. Legacy is fantastically wide open and always has been. There are more viable decks and more viable singles in Legacy than in any other constructed format. This is fantastic for turns as it decreases the number of cards that you stock that are low-turn, low-RoI propositions. What this means is that if demand for the two formats is equal, Legacy is the format that will make them more money. There is, of course, a tipping point, at which excess demand for Modern would increase net profitibility on the business overall to compensate for the decreased profitability of half their stock, but like I said, SCG will (if they're smart, and they've never shown any signs of being anything but) hold on to Legacy as long as they can.

[Mr. Safety]

The perfect situation would be for Modern to augment Legacy, as in pulling the legacy noobies into another format but doesn't completely eliminate them. I think a quasi-eternal format without Wasteland and Force of Will is incredibly appealing to most players. Just think about the lack of those 2 cards (combo concievably becomes the dominant type and pretty much ALL DUEL LANDS become playable)

Wizards can combat those problems with re-printing of solid combo hate and also printing newer more creative counterspells...just look at Mental Misstep and tell me that card wasn't a freakin' awesome job done by wotc? The new Flusterstorm? Definately playable in the Modern format.

Cards like Pyrostatic Pillar and Sulfuric Vortex being reprinted would put a solid check on the combo decks, especially decks like Dragonstorm and Elves combo. Hell, remember that Oblivion Ring and Angel's Grace are in the format alongside Thoughtsieze and Inquisition of Kozilek. AND it would be a format where people can sling their (now banned) Jace's again.

I understand personal sentiments, but looking at it objectively, I see it becoming an incredibly popular format. I think it will go forward in some shape or manner, it just hasn't been finalized yet (I don't think anyways...) It creates a format where folks will still be scrabbling to get newer cards (more so than legacy), lets them play cards from older sets, and yet doesn't even come close to challenging the reserved list. It's actually pretty smart.

EDIT: Stop and think about how popular EDH (well, commander) is becoming. This is one more indication of the demise of Legacy...folks will be playing all their legacy staples in EDH or Vintage...and modern becomes the eternal format of choice. Not sure that will happen, but it is concievable considering EDH is rising in popularity. I'm fairly certain that most legacy players use EDH as their casual format of choice, at least it seems that way.

[Mr. Safety]

I don't think Modern threatens Legacy at all.

If you asked me which is more fun to play? I would say Modern. Reason? Kind of obvious, it hasn't been explored; people keep playing the same decks with few changes, and honestly; i'm having a blast creating. I was really shocked that both wotc and the community didn't try to come up with anything new strategy wise. It was quite depressing to see. Other then that dredge deck, which could be fun.

BINGO! Players want to build new decks again, rather than re-hash and update older decks. Even if the decks don't really vary that much, the idea of doing something DIFFERENT with a new set of boundaries appeals to a TON of magic players (no Wasteland? YAY! My Twilight Mires are playable again! No Force of Will? YAY! I don't have to have my tempo deck so blue-dominant anymore!)

[joemauer]

BINGO! Players want to build new decks again, rather than re-hash and update older decks. Even if the decks don't really vary that much, the idea of doing something DIFFERENT with a new set of boundaries appeals to a TON of magic players (no Wasteland? YAY! My Twilight Mires are playable again! No Force of Will? YAY! I don't have to have my tempo deck so blue-dominant anymore!)

You can play twilight mires in extended without worry of FOW or wasteland. :/

[Mr. Safety]

Yeah, but everyone knows that the current extended is pathetic, lol. Opening it up to 8th Edition+ would make it pretty exciting again.

[Flan R-E]

actually we can't play our twilight mires in extended.

Because nobody plays extended. there's zero tournaments in my town save the odd PTQ.

I'll probably play modern more than legacy simply due to not having bought duals and forces before the price-jump..

one nitpick though, I've been pushing for a Pauper community with some success at my gamestore and I worry that Modern will steal everybody away.

[edgarps22]

I think this will certainly take some of the player base away from Legacy, specifically the ones who have their Ravnica Duals but not originals, but overall this is a replacement for Extended, and a damn good one at that. This format, if you haven't noticed, is what Extended was before the switch, only now adding the 2nd Mirrodin Block. The field of playable cards and decks were known when they made the new ban list, which I don't agree with half of it. But this will make Extended obsolete and open up a new and enriching format. I hope that they change the ban list drastically though. Thopter Sword is fine, Hexmage Depths is fine. When those were a powerhouse in Extended I played a Zoo deck that made that matchup basically a Bye. Now with more tech like the new, and old, swords with Stoneforge Mystic, the metagame would be drastically different. It would also be drastically different than Legacy, which is why I do not think it will threaten it too badly at first. Over time when the prices rise to the point of alienating new entrants, yes, immediately no. I would love to be able to play all the newer strategies that do not work in Legacy because they simple don't interact enough with combo, or Force, etc. Things like Punishing Fire/Grove of the Burnwillows, Faeries, Jund would be funny with some Ravnica support, etc etc. Heck Pickles combo, Teferi decks, Greater Good, I can keep going listing really fun and entertaining decks that are powerful that would be viable in Modern, but not Legacy, and that in and of itself would be a draw to the format. As long as it is not "Legacy minus bombs" then it will not threaten Legacy. If it were like Overextended, and started at say Masques, then we would have a real problem because it would be just like Legacy, except without the bombs. I don't want that, and neither do the rest of us. If a new format is going to exist, it needs to feel different. This would feel very different and be very fun.

[Mr. Safety]

@edgarps22: spot on, bro. I feel the same.

[nedleeds]

BINGO! Players want to build new decks again

80% of the people that play magic don't want to build decks at all. Or can't.

[4eak]

80% of the people that make up statistics don't want to do the empirical research. Or can't.

My sheerly anecdotal experience leads me to believe that most magic players are interested in building new and very different decks, but, of course, most of them "can't."

The spirit of Mr. Safety's claim doesn't seem in jeopardy to me.



peace,
4eak

[mosaic]

Modern actually might threaten Legacy in a way. I remember quite well when old Extended rotated (Onslaught), many people started to play Legacy. The main reason was rotation itself at least here on old continent.
Modern can take over Legacy, but if thats the case I think (hope as well) it will be very very slow process, which may never tame Legacy completely.
Reasons why it won't happen 'overnight' like with Vintage is, that staples are out there in a way larger numbers than P9 cards. And to be honest, just look what old cards are played these days in huge numbers and are on reserved list?
The number is very small and over time it will shrink just to original duals, wotc is doing quite good job, slowly replacing old cards with new ones. The only problem will be replacing those original duals, no other cards are really that crucial or that hard to replace, are they? (those on reserved list I mean)
Moat, Tabernacle ... well, not that they are played in huge numbers.

I prefer just to break that promise and even as a owner of old duals (and few others) I don't care if they lose value as a tradeoff for having my favourite format to continue.
Well that might not happen, wotc will probably give us this Modern format and as supply of old duals thin on a nonacceptable levels, Modern will start to grow, just like Legacy took over Extended players. But I hope, that Legacy will remain here, after all, there is quite big difference in numbers of available staples between Vintage and Legacy.

[alderon666]

Modern will only threaten Legacy if Wizards put some good money in supporting it. Nowadays Legacy gets very little attention from Wizards and only survives because it's a format that many people love.

If Wizards starts throwing money at Modern, what will you prefer: playing your local self-organized Legacy tournment or the Modern magic one supported by Wizards with huge prizes and stuff?

Take the example of Vintage. It's still played by some people, but Wizards simply invests no money into it. It still lives just because of the work of those who love it. Legacy is following the same path...

PS: special note to SCG for putting a lot of effort into making Legacy more popular and succeeding.

[SpikeyMikey]

Modern will only threaten Legacy if Wizards put some good money in supporting it. Nowadays Legacy gets very little attention from Wizards and only survives because it's a format that many people love.

If Wizards starts throwing money at Modern, what will you prefer: playing your local self-organized Legacy tournment or the Modern magic one supported by Wizards with huge prizes and stuff?

Take the example of Vintage. It's still played by some people, but Wizards simply invests no money into it. It still lives just because of the work of those who love it. Legacy is following the same path...

PS: special note to SCG for putting a lot of effort into making Legacy more popular and succeeding.

Legacy grew into a popular format without any Wizards support. However, it would not be as large as it is today without the GP's. Who knows if SCG would be hosting Legacy Opens if Wizards hadn't started throwing GPs at the format?

But Legacy gets more attention from Wizards now than it ever has before, so I guess I'm not seeing where you're saying it gets very little attention. The sets have more eternal playable cards, the banned list is moderated (with a somewhat overly heavy hand, but still) and there're major tournaments for the format.