The future of Legacy?

[meffeo]

One thing that is worth pointing out--though I don't know how much this necessarily affects things--is that Legacy starts an hour before Modern on Sunday. For anyone who's driving a significant distance to get to the tournament, the fact Modern lets them sleep an extra hour could be a factor in which they want to go to. I sure know if I was uncertain which one to go to, I'd definitely go for the later one.

Why do they start at different times, anyway? That always struck me as a bit odd. Why not start both at 10 instead of Legacy at 9 and Modern at 10?

How on earth could this be a thing? People always traveled hours for tourneys if they love to play Legacy / Modern / Pauper / whatever; I won't believe that players' decisions are based on the starthour of the first round.

By the way, Modern really sucks.


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[jrsthethird]

It's like 20+ players on Monday weeklies in NYC (Twenty Sided Store). I hope you could find some decent challenge there. (At least you will see Roland Chang there)

That's the one place I found that looked promising. Glad to know there's a weekly that fires on a weeknight. Great as a bartender that I don't have to lose a good weekend shift to sling cardboard. Last time I was in Brooklyn to look at apartments I Googled it to check it out, but it was pretty far out of my way at the time. I've heard about Midtown Comics, but nothing about Legacy events there.

[bruizar]

What I find interesting is that most local legacy scenes are about 30 to 40 players in size. That type of demand in no way explains the outrageous prices of eternal staples which in turn is having its toll on the size of the legacy scene.

[TsumiBand]

What I find interesting is that most local legacy scenes are about 30 to 40 players in size. That type of demand in no way explains the outrageous prices of eternal staples which in turn is having its toll on the size of the legacy scene.

There are like 3 major formats that want Eternal staples - Vintage, Legacy, and Commander (4 I guess if you count Cube, I guess). Any time that the card can also be played in Modern, that's even more demand.

Plus you know, something something collectors something. Which, honestly, I have no idea what the motives are there, or if it affects anything but AB cards while RU are typically for players, or what.

[sjmcc13]

There are like 3 major formats that want Eternal staples - Vintage, Legacy, and Commander (4 I guess if you count Cube, I guess). Any time that the card can also be played in Modern, that's even more demand.

Plus you know, something something collectors something. Which, honestly, I have no idea what the motives are there, or if it affects anything but AB cards while RU are typically for players, or what.

Ya, I think most of the legacy/reserved list price issues come from EDH and casual players, due to the difference in #'s. Is it me or do you normally see worse price differences between physical and MTGO versions of casual/EDH cards then of competitive cards...

[CabalTherapy]

How on earth could this be a thing? People always traveled hours for tourneys if they love to play Legacy / Modern / Pauper / whatever; I won't believe that players' decisions are based on the starthour of the first round.

By the way, Modern really sucks.


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So true, my friend. On a regular Legacy Saturday I get up around 6am, travel almost 1h to visit my parents, eat breakfast there, travel again 1h to the shop to meet meffeo 1h before the tournament starts to talk, drink energy drinks and make fun of Standard players. And then we are around 6-10 people.
#Berlin

[GrimoirePath]

This might sound strange to a lot of people, but i played Magic way back when, and as a sixteen year old i was all about type 1 as opposed to type 2 which was about all the formatting that existed. I sold out of magic and came back many, many years later. Want to know what changed in that time? The internet.

The whole concept of seeing someone elses decklist and being able to to just build it card for card is a recent phenomenon. Maybe not recent per se, but it definitely affects how magic is played (not to mention card accessibility via ebay, online stores, etc.)

Way back when, everyone brewed because you had to. And you had whatever was in your own stash or within your own circle of friends/stores to build with.

Im not saying the internet, net decking, etc. is awful or anything, but it absolutely reduces the variance in decks being played. When it becomes predictable as to what you will play against, down to the point of essentially knowing what the entire deck list is, it does reduce the amount of situations you encounter, on the fly decisions, etc.

Also, when the big events like SCG's have top prizes of a grand, and cost thirty bucks to play in plus travel expenses, people are less likely to bring some weird home brew they have been toying with and would rather bring a stock list tier one deck. Cant blame them, I guess.

This is all a tangent, now, so sorry. I guess my general notion is that magic is supposed to be fun, and if Legacy gets distilled down into a hobby robbed of much creativity, it will probably feel pretty uninspiring after a while. So I guess the solution is to keep Legacy alive, it has to be fun, so it cant be dominated by a handful of companies that hold all the big events, and the local and friendly scene should be nurtured.

[Phoenix Ignition]

I don't think netdecking is even that big of a part of it, since it's been around and prevalent for like 10 years now. It's just that the power creep has finally gotten to the point where:

1) There are enough blue cards that FoW is always "on" and it is no longer a drawback to run 20+ blue cards in a deck
2) Cards that can be cheated into play actually win the game extremely efficiently (Bogardan Hellkite vs. Emrakul... it's just dumb), which allows blue based combo/control decks a foothold in the metagame that only the extremely finicky old high tide used to have.
3) There are threats now that are so much better than others that making rogue decks means using sub-par threats. There didn't used to be cards that were fundamentally turns better than every other alternative out there. Like, Werebear used to be the biggest beater, so you could easily replace that with something else and not get automatically blown out.


John Finkel's quote still rings true in response to:
You have seen the evolution of Magic from a spell-based system to more of a creature-based system; was there a favorite time in Magic for you as a player?

"I liked when magic was a game of incremental advantages where getting a small edge here or a small edge there and over time you accumulated victories that way. Now I feel like they've ramped up the power of threats, not just creatures but planeswalkers as well, and it's made magic a much swingier game. I don't love the kind of magic of people throwing hay-makers as opposed to getting card advantage here, getting a land advantage here."

Now you have to worry about threats that win the game in 1-2 turns, so you need your answer right now or you die. The best answer is Force of Will, it's free and answers everything, but FoW isn't the reason magic sucks now, and neither is netdecking. It's just that threats are so stupidly powerful that the design space of Legacy is now at an all time low. It isn't because people are just lazy, like so many here love to suggest.

[kinda]

This might sound strange to a lot of people, but i played Magic way back when, and as a sixteen year old i was all about type 1 as opposed to type 2 which was about all the formatting that existed. I sold out of magic and came back many, many years later. Want to know what changed in that time? The internet.

The whole concept of seeing someone elses decklist and being able to to just build it card for card is a recent phenomenon. Maybe not recent per se, but it definitely affects how magic is played (not to mention card accessibility via ebay, online stores, etc.)

Way back when, everyone brewed because you had to. And you had whatever was in your own stash or within your own circle of friends/stores to build with.

Im not saying the internet, net decking, etc. is awful or anything, but it absolutely reduces the variance in decks being played. When it becomes predictable as to what you will play against, down to the point of essentially knowing what the entire deck list is, it does reduce the amount of situations you encounter, on the fly decisions, etc.

Also, when the big events like SCG's have top prizes of a grand, and cost thirty bucks to play in plus travel expenses, people are less likely to bring some weird home brew they have been toying with and would rather bring a stock list tier one deck. Cant blame them, I guess.

This is all a tangent, now, so sorry. I guess my general notion is that magic is supposed to be fun, and if Legacy gets distilled down into a hobby robbed of much creativity, it will probably feel pretty uninspiring after a while. So I guess the solution is to keep Legacy alive, it has to be fun, so it cant be dominated by a handful of companies that hold all the big events, and the local and friendly scene should be nurtured.

This plus the point on power creep. There are a few very high power level, very consistent shells dominating the format. If your goal is to perform well...your odds r better with a deck that has been tuned by thousands of people and places consistently. Your odds of winning with a rogue deck are better in modern.

[mishima_kazuya]

As long as the Reserve List remained in place, the contraction of Legacy was inevitable as the competitive scene grew.
I believe that there are enough of the recent new Legacy players (post Zendikar) to keep the format relevant until we have a way to get around the Reserve List.
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint, vendors (SCG and the like) along with WoTC have taken pro-active measures to gradually curtail Legacy to ease players out of the format and/or pick up other formats.

With those items in mind, I think that the number of players in Legacy will stagnate and/or slowly decline. Local tournaments will undoubtedly maintain the format presence, Northeast USA and Europe communities notably, as the rest of the world drops Legacy. Semi-competitive players and casuals will switch over to EDH and Cube while Spikes can just keep playing the remaining competitive formats.

As for myself, I'm a decent player (humble brags) and have built up a large collection from my winnings over several years. I have the advantage of being flexible enough to hop into any Constructed format, maintain relevant Legacy decks (I live in the US Northeast) and keep pumping winnings into pimping out my Cube. So let the apocalypse come.

[Julian23]

It's like 20+ players on Monday weeklies in NYC (Twenty Sided Store). I hope you could find some decent challenge there. (At least you will see Roland Chang there)

That place is amazing, totally recommended! We went there with Team #EuroSwag right after GP NJ and had a great time with the other players. The couple who runs the store are also great people and I really enjoyed my time there a lot.

Bonus: Marc won with Stasis. He beat my Elves in the swiss. How does that even work :D

[GrimoirePath]

I don't think netdecking is even that big of a part of it, since it's been around and prevalent for like 10 years now. It's just that the power creep has finally gotten to the point where:

1) There are enough blue cards that FoW is always "on" and it is no longer a drawback to run 20+ blue cards in a deck
2) Cards that can be cheated into play actually win the game extremely efficiently (Bogardan Hellkite vs. Emrakul... it's just dumb), which allows blue based combo/control decks a foothold in the metagame that only the extremely finicky old high tide used to have.
3) There are threats now that are so much better than others that making rogue decks means using sub-par threats. There didn't used to be cards that were fundamentally turns better than every other alternative out there. Like, Werebear used to be the biggest beater, so you could easily replace that with something else and not get automatically blown out.


John Finkel's quote still rings true in response to:
You have seen the evolution of Magic from a spell-based system to more of a creature-based system; was there a favorite time in Magic for you as a player?

"I liked when magic was a game of incremental advantages where getting a small edge here or a small edge there and over time you accumulated victories that way. Now I feel like they've ramped up the power of threats, not just creatures but planeswalkers as well, and it's made magic a much swingier game. I don't love the kind of magic of people throwing hay-makers as opposed to getting card advantage here, getting a land advantage here."

Now you have to worry about threats that win the game in 1-2 turns, so you need your answer right now or you die. The best answer is Force of Will, it's free and answers everything, but FoW isn't the reason magic sucks now, and neither is netdecking. It's just that threats are so stupidly powerful that the design space of Legacy is now at an all time low. It isn't because people are just lazy, like so many here love to suggest.

Really great post! That John Finkel quote is really spot on.

[phonics]

As long as the Reserve List remained in place, the contraction of Legacy was inevitable as the competitive scene grew.
I believe that there are enough of the recent new Legacy players (post Zendikar) to keep the format relevant until we have a way to get around the Reserve List.
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint, vendors (SCG and the like) along with WoTC have taken pro-active measures to gradually curtail Legacy to ease players out of the format and/or pick up other formats.

With those items in mind, I think that the number of players in Legacy will stagnate and/or slowly decline. Local tournaments will undoubtedly maintain the format presence, Northeast USA and Europe communities notably, as the rest of the world drops Legacy. Semi-competitive players and casuals will switch over to EDH and Cube while Spikes can just keep playing the remaining competitive formats.

As for myself, I'm a decent player (humble brags) and have built up a large collection from my winnings over several years. I have the advantage of being flexible enough to hop into any Constructed format, maintain relevant Legacy decks (I live in the US Northeast) and keep pumping winnings into pimping out my Cube. So let the apocalypse come.

The thing is they can try as hard as they can to move people away from reserve list magic, but as long as the alternative is a neutered format like modern, legacy and vintage will continue to have communities because they offer something that will never be available to any other formats as long as Wizards is in charge of the game. I'm guessing after a while Wizards will just kill off the formats by introducing absurdly broken cards that are only legal in the two formats, sort of like what they are already doing by printing cards so powerful they invalidate a large portion of previously viable alternatives, which will force format homogeneity.

[bruizar]

The thing is they can try as hard as they can to move people away from reserve list magic, but as long as the alternative is a neutered format like modern, legacy and vintage will continue to have communities because they offer something that will never be available to any other formats as long as Wizards is in charge of the game. I'm guessing after a while Wizards will just kill off the formats by introducing absurdly broken cards that are only legal in the two formats, sort of like what they are already doing by printing cards so powerful they invalidate a large portion of previously viable alternatives, which will force format homogeneity.

lodestone golem and the restriction of blue cantrips killed vintage. But mostly lodestone golem.

[Reaver027]

Let me add my littel story to the mix.
I stopped playing magic in 2012 and sold all my cards with the exception of a pauper cube. I still watched a lot of magic and always had the interest to get back into the game.
Time, money and the closure of my LGs always prevented me from getting back into the game. Never been a big fan of standard because of the rotation and Modern never really seemed as good as Legacy.
Now i got enough time again to play some games of magic but i can't get back into Legacy because of money.
In comes modern where i can get a decent enough deck that will let me win some games and have fun for 150€. And that deck i will be able to play for a long time.

Modern is just a much easier format to get started in or like me to get back into the game.

[Quasim0ff]

lodestone golem and the restriction of blue cantrips killed vintage. But mostly lodestone golem.

Not correct.

[mishima_kazuya]

Just in via the PT Live Stream interview with Helene Bergeot.

WoTC is going to be giving out PT invites to select independent series top finishers in the near future.

My speculation is that they may cut Legacy GP's and give PT invites to SCG Legacy Open winners, BoM Winners, Eternal Weekend winners, etc.

[Darkenslight]

Three Legacy GPs next year - one in Chiba post- WMC, and two in June.

Not looking good here.

[Julian23]

Looks like I won the BoM in the wrong year

Legacy GPs in Columbus, Chiba aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand PRAGUE! Awesome! :)

[Whitefaces]

Prague is one of the most amazing cities I've been too, what a great place for a Legacy GP. It should be excellent!