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Thread: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

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    Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Some recent threads on here and MTGS really got me thinking about this topic. Everyone seems to accept, without challenging the validity of, the reason for the limited support for Legacy being the Reserved, and that Legacy is destined to eventually die due to the Reserved List, and that Modern is supposed to be the Eternal format that is not bound to the Reserved List.

    Is this really a legitimate reason, or is it something else?

    I have begun analyzing results from the various SCG Legacy Opens, since they are the most frequent Legacy events that gather 100+ players on a regular basis (Memphis only had 94 people, oddly...yet Cincinnati had almost 300). I did notice one thing in common with the winning decks (which are widely varied from event to event, and seem to be a good random assortment that make good examples of their given types).

    They all typically consist of 1% or less of cards from the Reserved List. A couple had a bit over 1% of the deck consisting of Reserved List cards. And aside from mana (IE - duals), it was almost rare to find a card on the Reserved List in the deck list.

    The vast, vast majority of cards we play with in Legacy are not bound by the Reserved List. Aside from duals, there are very few Reserved List cards we'd consider staples - Moat and Tabernacle (which are rarely played anyways), Null Rod, Show and Tell, Humility, Meditate (rarely played anyways), Intuition, LED, Mox Diamond, City of Traitors, and Metalworker are the biggest. Some others are Replenish, Gaea's Cradle, Serra's Sanctum, Grim Monolith, Aluren, Abeyance, Firestorm, Undiscovered Paradise, and City of Solitude.

    Including duals, that is 30 cards in the format that are semi-frequently played that are on the Reserved List. That is a very, very small portion of the commonly played Legacy cards - probably around or under 5% of the semi-frequently played card pool.

    Is it really the Reserved List that is holding back Legacy...or is it something else?
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  2. #2

    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Solaran_X View Post
    Some recent threads on here and MTGS really got me thinking about this topic. Everyone seems to accept, without challenging the validity of, the reason for the limited support for Legacy being the Reserved, and that Legacy is destined to eventually die due to the Reserved List, and that Modern is supposed to be the Eternal format that is not bound to the Reserved List.

    Is this really a legitimate reason, or is it something else?

    I have begun analyzing results from the various SCG Legacy Opens, since they are the most frequent Legacy events that gather 100+ players on a regular basis (Memphis only had 94 people, oddly...yet Cincinnati had almost 300). I did notice one thing in common with the winning decks (which are widely varied from event to event, and seem to be a good random assortment that make good examples of their given types).

    They all typically consist of 1% or less of cards from the Reserved List. A couple had a bit over 1% of the deck consisting of Reserved List cards. And aside from mana (IE - duals), it was almost rare to find a card on the Reserved List in the deck list.

    The vast, vast majority of cards we play with in Legacy are not bound by the Reserved List. Aside from duals, there are very few Reserved List cards we'd consider staples - Moat and Tabernacle (which are rarely played anyways), Null Rod, Show and Tell, Humility, Meditate (rarely played anyways), Intuition, LED, Mox Diamond, City of Traitors, and Metalworker are the biggest. Some others are Replenish, Gaea's Cradle, Serra's Sanctum, Grim Monolith, Aluren, Abeyance, Firestorm, Undiscovered Paradise, and City of Solitude.

    Including duals, that is 30 cards in the format that are semi-frequently played that are on the Reserved List. That is a very, very small portion of the commonly played Legacy cards - probably around or under 5% of the semi-frequently played card pool.

    Is it really the Reserved List that is holding back Legacy...or is it something else?
    It doesn't matter the percentage of deck, it matters how important the cards are to the overall strategy

    Imagine you're playing RUG delver: Playing a game without obtaining mana from any dual land would be considered highly unusual (or even impossible, for some decklists), even if you're only playing 6 dual lands in the entire 60 card deck.

    In the same vein, imagine trying to make a storm deck without LED - it would be crap.

    It's not really an issue of card availability though - although this can and probably does limit the popularity of legacy as a format. It simply would be extremely bad business practice to heavily promote a tournament format that wizards can't print any more cards for.

    While legacy decks still need their snapcasters etc, wotc isn't going to make any money off the sale of duals on the secondary market, so less of their energy is put into supporting formats affected by the reserved list.

    When wizards was considering the possibility of getting rid of the reserved list a few years ago Stephen Menendian wrote a couple of good articles explaining why the list is bad news for eternal, I recommend you read them if you haven't already.

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    You said it yourself: DUALS
    How can you build any non-monocolored deck without them?

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    There is a replacement for duals, although many people consider themselves "better" than the alternative or "above" them.

    I speak of the shocklands from Ravnica block.

    Sure, they make certain aspects of the game significantly riskier if you play aggressively - such as breaking a fetchland into a Watery Grave to Thoughtseize on turn 1 (taking you to 15 life) instead of breaking a fetchland into an Underground Sea to Thoughtseize on turn 1 (taking you to 17 life). But if you play a bit slower and a bit more patiently, such as in a control deck or a deck like Stoneblade (where you have lifegain through Batterskull), would cracking a fetchland EOT for a Hallowed Fountain untapped be much different from cracking a fetchland EOT for a Tundra (assuming you aren't looking to Brainstorm EOT)?

    Sure, a deck like UR Delver would definitely want Volcanic Islands over Steam Vents - it is a very fast, very aggressive deck. But a deck like UW Stoneblade...would it lose much by running Hallowed Fountain over Tundra? Or a deck like One Land Belcher - does it really matter if a Taiga or a Stomping Ground is used?

    I think we, as players, are too accepting when we are told how much sway the Reserved List has over our beloved format. Sure, it has an impact - but WotC not reprinting duals or LEDs won't be the end of Legacy unless we let it be the end of the format.
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  5. #5

    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Nothing is holding back legacy atm. Afaik, this format has already exploded. The real question out there is: If vintage is slowly dying, could it come back from the grave?

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    I disagree with your assesment that anything is holding Legacy back. All of the largest constructed Grand Prix events have been Legacy, which should signal that card availability is not as big of a concern as it is made out to be.

    In regards to the Memphis SCG turnout being low, that was an abberation caused by a couple of factors (date and location, primarily). Most of the SCG Legacy events are in the realm of 150-300, which is very healthy for a Sunday tournament (when many people in town for the weekend will leave to head back home).
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    would cracking a fetchland EOT for a Hallowed Fountain untapped be much different from cracking a fetchland EOT for a Tundra

    It depends, what if they use the point where your shields are now down to swords your SFM, even though you had spell pierce in hand. How many games do you stabilize at around 3/5/7 or so assuming more then one shock land activation against burn/delver/zoo. Would it effect every match, no. People play vintage unpowered and underpowered, but generally powered decks win more consistently. It is a very similar situation when using underpowered mana bases in legacy.

    What about Dual zoo vs Shock zoo who will win more often? yeah no questions there.

    Perhaps with a control deck you could split 2/2 shock/dual and be fine most of the time. But if you really want to win a tournament will you?

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by JACO View Post
    I disagree with your assesment that anything is holding Legacy back. All of the largest constructed Grand Prix events have been Legacy, which should signal that card availability is not as big of a concern as it is made out to be.
    The issue is though, outside of huge events with giant prize support, turnouts are not that good, I know many players in my area that would cards be more readily available and affordable, they would be playing legacy right now, but cannot.

    While I agree the format is exploding and I love the fact more people are playing it, I would rather this not turn into Vintage where it becomes:
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    Other Decks that cannot have duals/power.
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Solaran_X View Post
    They all typically consist of 1% or less of cards from the Reserved List. A couple had a bit over 1% of the deck consisting of Reserved List cards. And aside from mana (IE - duals), it was almost rare to find a card on the Reserved List in the deck list.
    It is mathematically impossible that anything but a Battle of Wits deck had 1%, much less than 1% Reserved cards.

    I am also incredibly skeptical that only a couple decks ran more than 1 dual land, which would be 1.33% assuming you're counting the sideboard.
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin View Post
    It is mathematically impossible that anything but a Battle of Wits deck had 1%, much less than 1% Reserved cards.

    I am also incredibly skeptical that only a couple decks ran more than 1 dual land, which would be 1.33% assuming you're counting the sideboard.
    My math is off...dangers of doing math late at night at work. And I am now on OT, making that money to pay for my car I am going to start doing work on.

    Few decks ran even 8 of the 75 as cards from the Reserved List. Most ran less than 6, and they were almost always duals (occasionally others such as Humility, Null Rod, and Show and Tell). I just saw the (let's say) 0.08 in my calculator and mistaking assumed it was 0.08%, not 8%.

    I feel that it is not the Reserved List that is bottlenecking Legacy as we are led to believe, but moreso it's the belief of that bottleneck that is holding us back. As I said before, I feel that there are many decks that have nothing to lose by switching over to shocklands in lieu of duals - namely some of the combo decks and the slower control-style decks.

    As for Vintage, I fear there is nothing that can be done to revive that format. Availability is a true issue in that format - even the Null Rod-based aggro decks still run an on-color Mox and Lotus frequently, and even if you lump together all the Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited Power...it is insignificant when compared to the Revised duals alone. While I would absolutely love to see a Vintage GP or something like a SCG Vintage Open...I know it is unrealistic because of the availability of Power. Although between the limited availability of Power and the printing of Grafdigger's Cage, I feel that a semi-level playing field for Vintage now exists on a larger scale - I am just worried that the Top 8s would frequently be Powered decks piloted by people with endorsements (such as SCG or CFB) and are supplied with Power by their endorsers, and as such would dissuade the other players. I would love to see Vintage rise to prominence again (in my city, we used to have weekly sanctioned Vintage events with a good half dozen Powered players and 20-30 semi-Powered and unPowered players during the Onslaught-era of Vintage), but I have to realistically accept that that is not going to happen.
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Shocklands are strictly worse than ABU duals. Daze becomes a lot crappier. Thoughtseize taking you to 15 on turn 1? That's a quarter of your life total, the burn player is practically rejoicing since if shocklands became a mainstay of legacy burn would be a very powerful deck since I hear free lightning bolts that involve you watching your opponent fetch an untapped shockland are generally great for burn players and even storm players would love it. I know I would, I would love to not require a storm engine and just play out 7 cards into a tendrils after you get an untapped shock with a fetchland or just 2 shocks untapped. You can't make the argument that shocklands can replace revised duals because, again, they are strictly worse than the ABU dual lands.

    And yes, the reserved list is holding back legacy. Legacy isn't a PTQ format because of the lack of supply of dual lands, because any multicolored deck in legacy runs some number of revised dual lands the minimum being 1 the max being 40 but generally 12 is the cap for the number of dual lands in a given deck and even that number is generous.
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Solaran_X View Post
    I feel that it is not the Reserved List that is bottlenecking Legacy as we are led to believe, but moreso it's the belief of that bottleneck that is holding us back. As I said before, I feel that there are many decks that have nothing to lose by switching over to shocklands in lieu of duals - namely some of the combo decks and the slower control-style decks.
    Is your argument here that the issue with availability is actually just a perception issue because players can technically just play with suboptimal decks?

    If I know that Taiga exists and is legal, then dying to my own Stomping Ground even once would piss me off so much that I'd quickly lose interest in playing. Your proposition does not address the reality that a player with shocklands is playing with inferior cards, nor the perception that playing with inferior cards/being unable to play exactly what you want is less fun for these players. I don't think it's any surprise that players find this unacceptable to an extent that they would opt not to even attempt to participate. Legacy isn't dying, but it is suffering in that there are a lot of people who would play if they had the ability to play exactly what they wanted to.

  13. #13

    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    The important thing to judge is what % of the cost consists of cards on the reserved list, no- absolute numbers aren't as relevant.

    Let's look at the top 8 decks one at a time

    Using deckstats.net

    The MUD deck costs around 410 of which 203 is made up of reserved list cards.

    Burn is 100% non-reserved list and costs around 120 dollars. Many have expressed doubts as to its viability.

    The Elf deck costs around 180 and has no reserved list cards, though this list conspicuously lacks Gaea's Cradle, which is an expensive reserved list card.

    The Junkblade (?) deck costs around 1220 of which 335 is made up of reserved list cards.

    The Bant Stoneblade deck costs around 1180 of which 451 is made up of reserved list cards.

    The RUG Tempo deck costs around 1350 of which 401 is made up of reserved list cards.

    (Another Bant Stoneblade deck finished 7th)

    The UW Blade deck costs around 1400 of which 396 is made up of reserved list cards.

    It's also worth noting that it's far easier to pick up the non-reserved list cards. I can trade 15 dollars worth of standard legal cards for a Batterskull with ease; I'm not going to have a fun time trying to trade 60 dollars worth of standard cards for a 60 dollar dual land.

    I might have forgotten that some cards were on the reserved list or made some calculation errors, but I don't these any of these numbers are that far off from reality.

  14. #14

    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Are there lots of people who dont currently play legacy but would if it was cheaper (let alone if it was a ptq format)? Yes

    If wizards printed a bunch more dual lands, would it make legacy cheaper? Yes

    Legacy is being held back by the reserved list in this sense.

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Personally, in quite dissappointed that I can't play Dutch Staxx. So yes, some decks are getting held back by the Reserved list.
    I am convinced that WotC is "dumbing" the game because of all the stupid posts they come across on MTG-related forums
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Legacy is a hobby.
    Hobbies are expensive.

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by JACO View Post
    In regards to the Memphis SCG turnout being low, that was an abberation caused by a couple of factors (date and location, primarily). Most of the SCG Legacy events are in the realm of 150-300, which is very healthy for a Sunday tournament (when many people in town for the weekend will leave to head back home).
    At the same time there were 2 GP's, something to keep in mind also.

    Back to topic:

    I just finished Canadian Threshold by buying the last missing pieces (4 Trops. Again, thx mates) and I completely agree upon the fact that the prices of cards do hold back people who are interested in playing Legacy.
    The only cards I did own for the deck, back then when I decided to build it, were a playset of Forces, 6 Fetches and all commons required. The rest was completely up to me and even if I did quite a good job at getting most of the cards at a decent price, I sure had to invest an ammount of money that is not irrelevant for someone of my age/income.
    Luckily, the format has a strong (supporting) community and enough players to run large events, but this doesn't negate the fact that if you want to play the format on a competetive level, you have to invest quite some money to have some sort of long-term ensurance to do so.
    Budget-Decks like Dredge, Burn and Robots (Ascension?) for example are decent and fun to play but at some point you want more than that, especially when you want to compete at the higher tables constantly.
    I am not one of those Legacy dinosaurs who were lucky enough to get twice (or more) the money out of their investment and and I definetly wouldn't call myself a good trader, but even I am a supporter for reprinting cards on the reserved list to ensure Legacy's future.

    So yes, I think the format has a problem, but right now (and in the near future) this doesn't cause too much trouble, even if it will at some point.
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Philipp802 View Post
    Legacy is a hobby.
    Hobbies are expensive.
    I know, my response was borderline trolling.

    Honestly, you don't need Dual Lands to compete to this format. Outside of being dissappointed of not being able to play Dutch Staxx, I'm happy with what I choose to play. I love broken (albeit linear) decks.
    I am convinced that WotC is "dumbing" the game because of all the stupid posts they come across on MTG-related forums
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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    As long as they never print better lands than the Alpha duals, then yes, the Reserved List is holding the format back. I've taken my fair share of shockland-filled decks to Legacy events and to be blunt, it just fucking sucks going to 17 just to play the right thing on the first turn. And as much as I love seeing budget lists and things like Burn and Ascension showing up to Top 8 from time to time, I think increasing the appeal to people that enjoy being able to metagame well instead of just showing up with the one deck they could afford to put together can only increase the player base.

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    Re: Reserved List: Is it really what is holding back Legacy?

    Quote Originally Posted by TsumiBand View Post
    As long as they never print better lands than the Alpha duals, then yes, the Reserved List is holding the format back. I've taken my fair share of shockland-filled decks to Legacy events and to be blunt, it just fucking sucks going to 17 just to play the right thing on the first turn. And as much as I love seeing budget lists and things like Burn and Ascension showing up to Top 8 from time to time, I think increasing the appeal to people that enjoy being able to metagame well instead of just showing up with the one deck they could afford to put together can only increase the player base.
    This. Until Wizards print situationally better duals, Legacy will be greatly constricted by the price of its manabases.

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