Why the demise of Legacy is greatly exaggerated

[nedleeds]

I do still wish Modern had started with Mercadian Masques. That gives Rishadan Port, Foil, and Daze as good police cards. (and gives us a lot of interesting cards and decks from Masques through Scourge that aren't playable in Legacy but can't be used in Modern)

Those cards would all be banned. Along with about 50 more judging by WotCs stance on modern being a turn8 format. For christs sake bloodbraid elf is banned. An elf.

Dark Ritual
Tendrils
Stifle
Nimble Mongoose
Misdirection
Cabal Ritual


Would all get the axe ......

[Megadeus]

I just wanna cast Cabal Therapy in Modern.

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

I just wanna cast Cabal Therapy in Modern.

I want to have a format where Gerrard's Verdict is still playable. Preferably alongside Vindicate and Deed.


Also, on the life/death of Legacy, I don't see it dying. But I certainly see it contracting in a big way soon. New Legacy playgroups can't sprout up with relative ease in the way that Standard, Limited, and EDH ones can because of price* (Modern suffers from a similar, albeit less severe, problem). And because of entry barriers, it's a lot harder to "patch up" playgroups when one player quits or goes, shall we say, dormant. Especially in the case of "dormancy", when a player steps out of Legacy for the time being, but holds onto their cards due to the fear that if they ever wanted to play again, the buy-in cost may have sky-rocketed again; this is the thing that will hurt the format a lot, while ironically being one of the biggest draws. That means you are going to have a lot less opportunities to play, less ability to showcase and build interest in the format, and the "use-value" of your cards diminishes greatly.

Legacy will still have tourneys, but there will come a time when SCG no longer sees the benefit in hosting Opens, when local playgroups diminish as players depart with no replacements ready to take their place, and people hang on to Legacy cards for a few occasionally tourneys every once in a (long?) while.

*This certainly requires explication, so here goes. Limited is a very easy format to make a playgroup for. Get people, get boosters, go nuts. EDH is also very easy to make a playgroup for. Commander decks practically do it for you, and a newer player can easily assemble a decent deck for a politics-regulated, multiplayer format. These are very different from serious constructed formats however, so they aren't the best comparison. Type 2 is a lot better choice for that.

Standard has a high cost to entry if you want to be able to build (multiple) Tier decks, but you can make budget decks (actually budget...not 150 bucks to play LOLBURN) that both stand a chance in a non-pro meta, and also are likely of having an interactive game of Magic in any given match. Not so much in Legacy (and Modern), where the main tools of interaction (Force, Cashseize, Wasteland, Port, V-Bomb) are prohibitively expensive or require expensive complements and win conditions (Fetch/Dual manabase, Goyf, Clique, Karakas, Snappy, Lili, JtMS). You can't really budgetize interactive decks. The closest is to go for a "budget" archetype like Pox capable of interacting, but even that's pretty expensive nowadays.

The cheapest decks tend to be linear, low-interaction "combo". Burn, Elves, and uh....well LED's recent price increase has made Belcher, Storm, and Dredge pretty expensive, so scratch them. I guess you can also have some really "bad" combo decks that can be bought on the cheap too. The problem with all of these kind of decks being cheap is when a financially constrained group tries to get into Legacy altogether, to make a new playgroup. They'll all gravitate towards the cheap options and you'll end up with a meta full of noninteractive shit matches. Ever play Enchantress versus Burn? Ever play that matchup twice in a row?

Game 1: I get my lock or I get burned out

Games 2&3: Mulligan to Leyline....LOLBURN!

That's what a budget meta is going to look like. In Standard a budget meta can actually produce interactive games that while simple, can be fun. Legacy almost requires a certain proportion of the meta to be running interactive decks in order to create a high probability of engaging matches. And with those decks being expensive...well, you get the picture.

[ukyo_rulz]

That's what a budget meta is going to look like. In Standard a budget meta can actually produce interactive games that while simple, can be fun. Legacy almost requires a certain proportion of the meta to be running interactive decks in order to create a high probability of engaging matches. And with those decks being expensive...well, you get the picture.

I never thought of this concept from that angle, but it makes a lot of sense to me. I've actually seen it play out when a group of my friends who normally play standard decided to make legacy decks for the occasional tournament. Almost all of them ended up with Dredge and Elves, plus one each of Burn and Affinity. They had to find people outside their playgroup to test against because playing against each other was so miserable.

[Lord Seth]

Those cards would all be banned.

Daze and Rishadan Port, maybe. Though I still doubt it. They don't enable turn 4 wins, they don't do anything particularly broken, and as far as I know they weren't centerpieces to decks that dominated any formats.

Foil? Extremely unlikely. I think they've made some dumb calls in regards to the Modern banned list, but I don't see them banning a 3-for-1 card.

Along with about 50 more judging by WotCs stance on modern being a turn8 format.

Turn 4. And yes, there would be some more bans. Brainstorm would be banned, Dark Ritual would be banned, Mind's Desire would be banned... I'm honestly fine with that. We'd still get a lot of interesting cards that wouldn't be banned that would make the format a lot more fun, along with some useful police cards so they wouldn't have to ban as many things.

For christs sake bloodbraid elf is banned. An elf.

Uh...okay, it's an elf. So what? What does that have to do with it? Does "it's a human" mean anything for whether Hermit Druid should be unbanned? That's like the most irrelevant argument I've seen in regards to Bloodbraid Elf. If it were renamed "Bloodbraid Berserker" and had a different creature type, would you find it more acceptable?

As for Bloodbraid Elf itself, while I do still contend that its banning was only necessary due to them being unduly banhappy earlier on, the fact is that Jund was dominating the format to a ridiculous extent and something had to be done about it. I would have preferred they unban cards to enable opposing decks, but the format after Bloodbraid Elf was banned was honestly a better one due to Jund's stranglehold on the meta being alleviated.

Dark Ritual
Tendrils
Stifle
Nimble Mongoose
Misdirection
Cabal Ritual


Would all get the axe ......

Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual, almost certainly. Tendrils of Agony, probably. I'm highly dubious on Stifle, Nimble Mongoose, and Misdirection getting banned though. And yeah, I know, Wild Nacatl in regards to Nimble Mongoose, and while I do think the banning of Wild Nacatl was dubious, it becomes a 3/3 faster and easier and was part of the deck that was dominant in the format at the time.

Overall I'm not really sure what your point is other than to complain about the Modern banned list. And I'm not going to say complaints about it aren't legitimate considering I complain about it myself, but you seem to do a poor job connecting that with my post you replied to.

[Megadeus]

I just think that the turn 4 rule is dumb. If you really want the format to not be dominated by combo decks then make Force into a modern card. Sure blah blah blah we dont want legacy lite, but if the only combo decks are extremely shitty then people wont play them as much, and as we have seen with the rise of Jund and BUG decks, force of will isnt a good card in a format full of MidRange grindy decks. So force would see SB play more than likely (Combo wouldnt be as prevalent as it is in Legacy) and the format would have powerful things to do... Maybe Im just mad that Chrome Mox is banned. I just want some kind of not so shitty fast mana. Simian Spirit Guide just doesnt cut it.

Also to whoever said Misdirection would be banned, would it really? I think Masques block would have been great. You get some sweet stuff like Deed and Stifle and so much sweet shit. I would probably play modern if it went back that far. Nothing broken other than the storm mechanic really would be introduced to the format. Watch out for Lin Sivvi though ;) You also get all of the fetchlands. Allied fetches would be insanely fucking expensive, but that is nothing that a good old reprint cant fix.

[(nameless one)]

I'm a little sad that Chrome Mox is banned in Modern as well. Tezzerator isn't as it used to be when it was in Extended.

Legacy will die when people stopped paying attention to it. Price doesn't matter. People will either buy/borrow/steal (which is sad) cards to play the format. It will only die if the DCI wanted it too. Look at Extended (too much DCI meddling) and Vintage (they restricted Brainstorm)

[Gheizen64]

Overextended was a fine format and had like, a 10 card banned list (started from invasion tho', so no ritual, neither ports).

Bridge From Below

Disciple of the Vault

Hypergenesis

Mind’s Desire

Narcomoeba

Sensei’s Divining Top

Skullclamp

Sword of the Meek


If MM were to make it in, only ritual would be a sure ban. Daze with Shocks is much less annoying, and Port is a good card, but without wasteland i think there must be some options to punish greedy manabases.