Legacy Is Dying At My LGS

[Ziveeman]

Yeah, this year we've experienced the same thing here in Phoenix. In the past month or so though we've been picking up slowly. The main thing that helps us is lending out decks and pushing these events in our local Facebook groups.

Do you guys have any proxy tournaments? How do those fare for you?

[Richard Cheese]

Yeah, this year we've experienced the same thing here in Phoenix. In the past month or so though we've been picking up slowly. The main thing that helps us is lending out decks and pushing these events in our local Facebook groups.

Do you guys have any proxy tournaments? How do those fare for you?

There was a 10-proxy in Boulder recently that did fairly well. On the other hand, the local Vintage shop stopped doing big proxy events because it wasn't moving anyone towards the format, they were just selling their prizes immediately for cash or Standard stuff.

[Tammit67]

Wow! I wish I could get more than 5 people to show up to mine. I usually have to hand out decks to get it to fire at 8 players. Frigging connecticut.

I wish there was a place in Pittsburgh that would get 20-40 weekly on a Wednesday night. Feel lucky you have that! Some folks have to drive very far for Legacy.

I wish I could go! You try getting off work at 530 and making to basically the Philly Zoo at 6pm from well outside it.

Lending is a good idea and all, but you got to be careful. What I've done is just have a generic legacy playtesting night. It's not organized by the store but several of us just show up on Tuesdays/Thursdays/FNM to playtest and now we have several more people interested and hanging out.

[Ziveeman]

There was a 10-proxy in Boulder recently that did fairly well. On the other hand, the local Vintage shop stopped doing big proxy events because it wasn't moving anyone towards the format, they were just selling their prizes immediately for cash or Standard stuff.

Hm yeah that's a worry. I noticed that whenever I give out door prizes people just try to flip the cards into store credit or a trade.

I wish I could go! You try getting off work at 530 and making to basically the Philly Zoo at 6pm from well outside it.

Lending is a good idea and all, but you got to be careful. What I've done is just have a generic legacy playtesting night. It's not organized by the store but several of us just show up on Tuesdays/Thursdays/FNM to playtest and now we have several more people interested and hanging out.

That's what we do too. Whenever my buddies and I play Legacy between rounds at FNM it always gathers a decently sized crowd. I always try to get some of those people watching to play and then help them out with whatever decks we're playing. Usually gets people interested in the format.

[Zombie]

A stable casual ("not tournament", not "playing jank") presence > tournaments.

[Dzra]

There's a weekly Saturday tournament in my area that usually gets a good crowd. It starts at 6:30 and has cash prizes. It's four rounds and 4-0 means you get 50$ and 3-1 or 3-0-1 wins you 20$. Although the prize structure doesn't benefit some of the veterans as much as a top 4 would, I think it is really good for new players. Another store nearby actually had their first Legacy event last night (on Tuesday). I was really surprised by the turnout (about 15), but as it turns out, no one has anything better to do on a Tuesday. It was also cash prize. It also helps that I usually have a deck or two that I can lend out to people who are interested in Legacy but don't yet have their own decks.

[Ace/Homebrew]

I wish there was a place in Pittsburgh that would get 20-40 weekly on a Wednesday night. Feel lucky you have that! Some folks have to drive very far for Legacy.

Three big stores in the Philly area started a monthly series that has been going on (more or less) non-stop for quite some time. For weeklies... We are lucky that one of the highest concentrations of college students exists in Philadelphia, but we also have people that are willing to travel in order to play Legacy competitively. It takes me over an hour to get home from Philly, but I wouldn't miss a weekly unless I had to.

[boneclub24]

A stable casual ("not tournament", not "playing jank") presence > tournaments.

This is about all we can get here, but I can't complain. I'm playing Zerk after all lol

[Warr]

There was a 10-proxy in Boulder recently that did fairly well. On the other hand, the local Vintage shop stopped doing big proxy events because it wasn't moving anyone towards the format, they were just selling their prizes immediately for cash or Standard stuff.

Same thing happened in many places--it ends up being terrible in the long run because no one ever gets really invested (emotionally or financially) in the format. I go out of my way to find Legacy and Vintage to play because of this and others who have committed to picking up staples feel the same way.

Not sure what your buy-in is, but the local Sunday Legacy in Worcester, MA has been getting at least 16 a week. They only ever cut to top 4 (payout to top 3) and raised the buy-in to $10 apiece this year but I believe the high payouts ($80-$120 for first) have helped maintain attendance.

[tinker]

Whereabouts in Canada are you located? I know that there are certain places in Ontario which has a decent size legacy community.

[Megadeus]

I feel as if large monthly events are the way to go. It gives people a decent reason to have a legacy deck, since a lot of people feel as if random weekly event that pays 50 bucks max is meh. Large tournaments prove to work, at least in SCG wise. Those events have grown it seems while everyone's weekly legacy events have shrunk.

[LeoCop 90]

In the region where i live in italy we have more or less one legacy tournament every month organized by 2-3 different stores. So every single store organizes a legacy every 2 months. The attendance is quite high : 40/50 people usually, the top was at 70 people. These high numbers show up mainly because there are so few legacy events, and because always 10 proxies are allowed.

In the end is good to experience quite large events, but i really wish i could play legacy weekly... All you can do during the week is modern, standard, draft and occasionally edh.

[Mr. Froggy]

Whereabouts in Canada are you located? I know that there are certain places in Ontario which has a decent size legacy community.

The store I play at is Hobbygame, its in Quebec. The place is great, just wish the Legacy community was bigger.

[Richard Cheese]

I feel as if large monthly events are the way to go. It gives people a decent reason to have a legacy deck, since a lot of people feel as if random weekly event that pays 50 bucks max is meh. Large tournaments prove to work, at least in SCG wise. Those events have grown it seems while everyone's weekly legacy events have shrunk.

I still think the answer to keeping Legacy healthy is to make it a gentleman's format. When your manabase is as old as a very good bottle of Scotch, you should be able to enjoy a glass while you play. This could work for vintage too, but I see it as more of a velvet smoking jacket and pipe format, while Legacy is tuxedos and good cigars.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Having a similar issue in Denver. It doesn't seem to be Modern so much as a gradual proliferation of Standard/Limited events on the weekends. Now on top of qualifiers for GPs and PTs, you've got feeder events for SCG, TCGPlayer, etc, game days, pre-releases, releases, two different organizations running "States". It's just over-saturated and people that play multiple formats don't want to take their entire weekend up with Magic.

Our other problem is that the player base is so spread out, we could run weeknight events but you would just have a handful of people able to make it out to any given store by a reasonable time. There are also people like me that hate taking a few grand in cards to work, then fighting with rush hour traffic just to miss dinner (or eat something terrible between rounds) and get home just in time to go to bed.

Has anyone been able to breathe life back into their scene? We're thinking of doing a quarterly high-stakes tournament to try and compete with the glut of other large events, but as far as increasing interest in the format and possibly converting some of the standard/EDH crowd...haven't had much luck.

This is unfortunate to hear, as I am from Denver and would like to move back there eventually (currently in Houston where we have a large/dedicated Legacy crowd centered around Asgard Games). I've seen some activity on the internet but it doesn't seem like any stores are hosting consistent events. I guess even the current state of affairs is better than when I moved out about three years ago - there was absolutely no Legacy that I was aware of then.

[r3dd09]

Yeah, this year we've experienced the same thing here in Phoenix. In the past month or so though we've been picking up slowly. The main thing that helps us is lending out decks and pushing these events in our local Facebook groups.

Do you guys have any proxy tournaments? How do those fare for you?

I could count the number of legacy events that have triggered on one hand in the past two years.
BUT I've been talking to locals about proxied legacy and they sounded interested.
Two weeks ago was the start and we had a turnout of 11, last week we had 12. today I expect 16 +

*I've proxied over 40 decks so there is a variety to choose from. Also having a "gauntlet" to test on when big events come around is a plus. *

A lot of players are interested, but can't justify making the trip... yet. It's a free event with payout. People are loving it and legacy is actually being talked about. When I have dropped into stores the past few weeks, people pull me aside to talk legacy, such a good feeling and knowing my efforts aren't going unnoticed.

Talk to your locals about a proxy event, see how they feel about it. Best of luck.

[Richard Cheese]

This is unfortunate to hear, as I am from Denver and would like to move back there eventually (currently in Houston where we have a large/dedicated Legacy crowd centered around Asgard Games). I've seen some activity on the internet but it doesn't seem like any stores are hosting consistent events. I guess even the current state of affairs is better than when I moved out about three years ago - there was absolutely no Legacy that I was aware of then.

Yeah you and I basically traded places a few years ago. I was able to cobble some people together for testing before the SCG open at Mile High a couple years ago, and for a while we had a pretty good little meta going. Several new stores have opened though, and there's just this constant barrage of big Standard and Limited events going on.

I think one big mistake we made was not trying to actively recruit more players from other formats, and several people from the core group can't make it out much anymore because of outside circumstances, work, school, moving, kids, etc. Hopefully things will pick back up this winter, with less outdoor activities going on and football over.

Definitely come back though. Asgard and the players there are awesome, but it's not enough to make up for how insanely shitty Houston is.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Yeah you and I basically traded places a few years ago. I was able to cobble some people together for testing before the SCG open at Mile High a couple years ago, and for a while we had a pretty good little meta going. Several new stores have opened though, and there's just this constant barrage of big Standard and Limited events going on.

I think one big mistake we made was not trying to actively recruit more players from other formats, and several people from the core group can't make it out much anymore because of outside circumstances, work, school, moving, kids, etc. Hopefully things will pick back up this winter, with less outdoor activities going on and football over.

Definitely come back though. Asgard and the players there are awesome, but it's not enough to make up for how insanely shitty Houston is.

I used to play Standard every week at Mile High on Wadsworth back when I was in college, always liked that shop. Occasionally played at Black Gold as well. I looked into things a little more and heard that Denver Central Comics is doing weekly Legacy events now, although they're the only ones that seem to have regular events. Yeah, Asgard is awesome, and so is the food down here lol. I still hate the climate and how overcrowded it is though.

[BrettF]

Have you tried proxy events to lure people?

At my LGS we alternate weekly between Full-proxy legacy events (with nice printout proxies only) and Sanctioned legacy events (no proxies, i lend out a couple decks each time and we often get 8-10 people).

Its quite important to have large legacy events to test for, it definitely gives people a reason to own a deck. Besides our weekly events in Victoria there is the "Vancouver Legacy Classic" every 3 months and "SCG: Seattle" every 6 months.

[BeardTron]

@Admiral

I PM'ed you about the Houston Legacy scene. I'm not far from Houston and have been thinking about jumping into the format.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the shop that you mentioned.