Yeah, you're an old fartOriginally Posted by Lemnear
. It's OK, I fall in the same category (as do many of us).
I'm an older player myself (nearly in my mid-30s), and I also worry about Legacy's long-term future. I've been playing since 1996, and I have most of Legacy's (potential and actual) card pool in my collection, which I bought for fractions of the amount of money you have to pony up these days to enter the format. I am convinced the only surefire way to keep Legacy alive and attractive is to lower that cost of entry/participation for interested individuals, and the obvious solution to that would be abolishing the reserved list and reprinting all the important stuff. And I'd be 100% OK with that, because I don't give a damn about my collection's "worth" on paper, as I'm intending to play with, and not sell, these cards.
Now, we probably can't expect WotC to do that by themselves, and we probably also won't succeed at coercing them into doing that any time soon. So, given that the problem of supply can't be fixed from that angle, one thing I've been contemplating lately is some kind of "social contract" between oldfarts like me and (potential) newbies who show an active interest to play Legacy. I have a number of cards cards in excess of what is actually needed (more than a playset of some Revised duals, for instance) to play Legacy, and I'm warming up to the idea to offer selling these at a significantly reduced price to people who "pledge" to actively play these cards in the format I happen to love. Since contract law is a lot less fun than Legacy, that'd have to be people who I feel I can trust to honour their pledge - but if it works out, and with that kind of model (maybe combined with mentoring and guidance on how to approach the format) gaining traction, it might be a way for the Legacy community to avoid sharing their fates with Vintage players and their format.
Could anyone of you in a similar situation imagine doing that, too?
Shit. I'm a dinosaur.
Anyone have a sign at hand they could put on their doorstep?
WotC could just start printing boosters full of just duals/fetchlands/staples above a certain pricepoint w/ a slightly different name and a rule that says "May not be in a deck that contains card X". Just a selection of 50-100 cards or so, in an unlimited print run (just make it a continuously available product) and for the reguler few bucks a pack. As time progresses, limit print runs a bit when demand lowers and that's it. Give all the cards the same rarity (probably common) so you can distribute them evenly among packs so we won't have to bother w/ rarity bullshit and the scarcity that might create. Buy 10 packs, get 150 eternal format staples.
For example, Penny Underground Sea could be the same as a regular Underground Sea with the addition "This card may not be in a deck that contains one or more cards named Underground Sea". The same could be done w/ Penny Jace, Penny Tabernacle & Penny FoW.
Original versions keep their collectors value, Penny versions can be used to get into the format cheaply and still be competitively.
Heck, it'd be cool if you as a player could just order the product straight from WotC/Hasbro. A boosterbox a person (or address) per month, to prevent hoarding.
This pretty explicitly violates the "spirit" of the reserve list though. If they are going to do that, they are going to release masters edition X.0 - the one where all the mythics are dual lands! and sell it for $10 a pack. And that would STILL dramatically decrease the cost of duals.
If they actively wanted to keep the reserve list, *and* wanted to improve the dual situation there's plenty they could do. They jsut don't want to.
A few hypothetical lands that are in no way violations of the reserve list or spirit, and would still be somewhat passable at lest for specific decks:
Wooded Peak
Land: Forest Mountain
~ enters the battlefield tapped unless it was played from your hand.
Wooded Peak 2.0
Land: Forest Mountain
~ cannot be played if you control four or more lands. [Note: played isn't the same as put into play, so you can still fetch it].
Wooded Peak 3.0
Land: Forest Mountain Dual [new land type!]
~ comes into play tapped unless you control no other Duals.
And, my personal favorite - and can have 25 variations instead of 10:
Treetop Battlefield
Land: Forest
Tap: add {w} or {r}. Treetop Battlefield deals 1 damage to you.
I'm not saying any of these designs are top notch (except the last one), but they are all spaces that could be explored, if wizards really wanted to make lands able to compete with duals. But they don't want to.
I don't care, I just want to fix the problem
The reserve list isn't sentient, it won't notice a thing.
Sure, but if we're willing to go that far, then there's no reason not to just reprint the actual duals as is. I still want a treetop battelfield cycle. Hell, in a khans / Alara style standard they'd probably not even be broken. Would access to three colors, but two fo them causing pain, be a problem in legacy? I don't know, but I do know that I want to find out! :).I don't care, I just want to fix the problem
The reserve list isn't sentient, it won't notice a thing.
I wonder if WotC partly want to have as high RL prices as possible, because that contributes to setting the expectations in a way for the value of cards that they actually can reprint. Maybe just a little bit true..
Wizards wants super high RL cards because it forces people out of Legacy. I think you have a point too, super high RL cards point to players "This is what happens if we don't reprint Goyf/Snapcaster every other Master set". So while they take a hit on their collection, they also see that getting other cards/brewing would become impossible.
I think they have to balance how much money they can make with Treetop Battlefield sets, vs how pissed collectors would become and people losing faith in the value of their inked cardboard. I imagine you also lose a ton of faith from vendors (SCG/CFB/local shops) when their Reserved List inventory loses half of its value overnight, since now there are explicit, playable alternatives to duals for Legacy. Not to mention a loss in value for all other RL cards when people see that there are loophopes Wizards might take.
Seems like it would get complicated, and I think Wizards would rather just ignore any sort of risk and just keep chugging away with their "spirit of the list" talk to avoid questions.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your last point. Wizards doesn't need anything from the RL to keep doing what they're doing so why would they risk potential problems with vendors just so that niche formats get the support their communities think they deserve.
I started playing Legacy about 6 months ago after playing Modern for about 6 years and I have to say that playing Legacy got me interested in playing Magic again. I lost that spark about two years ago and I played just every once in a while.
I have to be honest and say that all this talk about the future of Legacy is sometimes making me regret picking up Legacy because I know it will probably end in a couple years and I have to get back to Modern again to play tournaments and games on a regular basis.
Luckily I did not spend to much money getting into the format because I just love the Dredge life and the only RL card I had to buy was Lion`s Eye Diamond wich I got for a good price with some trading involved but expending into other decks is something I won`t be doing because of the ridiculous price of some of the Duals.
The Legacy scene where I live and in Japan in general is pretty big so I will keep playing Legacy for as long as it keeps firing, I don`t have that much time to play like I used to but atleast I want to have fun when I can play my 1 or 2 tournaments a month :D
Hey mate. You made the right move. Legacy may in fact be on a downward slope, but it is a very gentle slope with years of good gameplay still in it. And it is by no means a done deal that Legacy is doomed either. Starcitygames dealt us a big blow by ending their major support for Legacy a couple of years ago. But then their support grew the format to begin with. If they or any other big player comes along and figures the profit of throwing support into Legacy is worth it, there will be a revival. And lots of other stuff can happen too. The malaise the wizards feels toward this format is the result of relatively temporary elements (market forces, staff members, etc.) and can also change.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
I agree with you there and tahnks for the calming words :D
I love playing it and like I said after two years I finally have a lot of fun playing again and I`m always looking forward to play FNM or another tournament. I`m going to play in Eternal Weekend in Yokohama this August, place is like 30 minutes from my house :D
I know about Star City Games because they are the ones that got me interested in starting Legacy because I was always watching their streams. To bad they swotched to Modern most of the time, I understand why but it is still bad.
Anway thanks for the reply and I won`t stop playing Legacy for as long as I can play it here, like I said the Legacy scene is pretty big here so that makes me happy.
Only in Legacy and Vintage. In Modern and especially Standard, Blue was probably the color it was least affiliated with.
I too greatly enjoy Legacy, and also believe its exaggerated decline to be temporary. Everything waxes and wanes, and in these 'doldrums' I've been enjoying EDH.
Got me a shiny new warrior commander to build with too :)
7 out of 8 decks in the PT were Goblin Chainwhirler decks: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles...op-8-decklists
We're most likely going to see another Standard ban, since it was a huge part of the field AND had an extremely good conversation rate to Day 2.
The irony is Dominaria was the first set the new Playtest team did work on, exactly to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
At least this time its a heavy red goblin card... :D.
It was unplayable in standard but that’s just me being pedantic
Why is that not a 2/2? And why does it have First Strike? That's just dumb. Who would have thought with all the bullshit WotC brings on themselves naturally, their downfall would actually be forgetting how to make good magic cards?
A sizable number of Junk Rites decks played Deathrite Shaman, actually. Granted, as a 1- or 2-of, but it did see actual Standard play in a major deck.
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