How to get an entire store full of players in to....

[stalkerzero]

Legacy.

Seriously could use some tips. At the moment the local store has about 50-60 regulars who play Standard. I hate Standard but desperately want to get some Legacy in. Some of the complaints about Legacy I've heard have been the typical junk (too costly, not enough support).

Any ideas could help a ton. It's been years since I last played Magic because of my refusal to play Standard.

[rocketrae21]

You really have to show them how fun it can be. Legacy is a ballin format but people just see the negative of it. Legacy is obv no longer being hated on because scg is giving it mad support. Need to find cheap decks for them to play and offer up good prizes. People don't want to spend the money and are scared of a new format. When pros like GerryT and Kibler rock CawBlade they know its good, but those people don't really post legacy decks so they are scared of the format.

[mchainmail]

try to get the store to start a weekly event.

Start at 25 proxies or more, and decrease that by 1 every week. It helps if the tournament awards credit / high value cards.

[OurSerratedDust]

Also, it might not be a bad idea to host a large prized legacy tournament and advertise it on the forums. Players who play legacy in the area but don't go to/know of your shop would be drawn there, and others may travel to it as well.

[Dragon_Whelp]

Good luck. I've advocated Legacy on the Wizards forums for years.

It's been... Moderately succesful. People want to play, but then they realise that they don't have anyone to play it with and go back to Standard and Limited.

[perm]

spend 800 dollars on each of them in cards

[CorpT]

try to get the store to start a weekly event.

Start at 25 proxies or more, and decrease that by 1 every week. It helps if the tournament awards credit / high value cards.

Completely disagree. Proxies are a terrible idea.

We've successfully done this at our LGS. It started with a few, dedicated players with large collections. I took and built 4 viable, competitive Legacy decks and brought them with me and begged people to play. Literally begged. Gave them decks and showed them how to play them.

At first, it was tough to get to 8 people, but we generally did. A few months later, we're sitting at an average of 16 people and I have spare decks sitting in my bag in case more show up. The people that I gave the decks to, loved them and started building them themselves. It takes awhile and some dedication of both the lendor and lendee, but it's working.

[Malchar]

I got into legacy because I met people while playing standard/limited and they also happened to have some legacy decks on them. The format looked cool. One of the nice side effects is that standard decks and extended decks are usually legal in legacy, so you can start playing right away.

[lorddotm]

The LA Legacy scene was practically dead two years ago. After hounding people at FNM, and having people watch me and a few friends play Legacy, we have gotten to a point were we have weekly tournaments with an average of about 20 people for decent prizes. Its pretty nice, just get a few friends to play Legacy with you, and show people how much fun this format is (I would not recommend busting out the Storm decks in these early stages).

[TheArchitect]

Lending decks is the best way I've seen to get people interested and then get them to play in a tournament with it. Even if that means traveling a little ways since your local place doesn't play legacy. I have a friend who plays magic pretty casually, and mostly standard. I was trying to get him into legacy so me an another friend lent him affinity and we entered a casual legacy tournament downtown. His first time ever playing at a legacy tournament (given a small 16ish person one) he smashed though our fish and burn decks, and beat some guys dredge and some janky combo deck to get himself 1st place and loved playing the deck so much he went out and made it for himself, and this is a guy who usually doesn't put much money into the game.

Thats another point, if you trying to get people without staples into the game, dont say "hey you should go make NO bant cause I'm sure you have 1500$ laying around that you want to spend on a format you have never played before!" Start them off on like dredge, affinity, burn, elves: something cheap so they don't feel over invested.

Also, I hate standard. I don't understand how people can enjoy playing the same 3 decks against eachother and not get bored of it. It might help to show people the diversity of viable legacy decks out there. I had another standard only friend I got into legacy when I started showing him all the options out there.

[mchainmail]

C
Completely disagree. Proxies are a terrible idea.


Proxies are terrible as an end, yes. But this isn't an end, only the means to an end. Without people with large collections, it is one of the easiest ways to make something from nothing.

[Piceli89]

into...

BARBRA STREISAND.


On topic: allow proxies and then decrease the quantity by 5 each week. Or allow proxies for expensive staples. This should motivate players to start playing the format without having to cash out for an entire deck immediately, which is also a nice bonus because they're allowed to try out the different archetypes.
I would recommend stopping at 5 proxies or so.

Also, having a core of "veteran" players that have entire decks and/or can lend sets is very useful.

[CorpT]

Thats another point, if you trying to get people without staples into the game, dont say "hey you should go make NO bant cause I'm sure you have 1500$ laying around that you want to spend on a format you have never played before!" Start them off on like dredge, affinity, burn, elves: something cheap so they don't feel over invested.


This is key. It's not like I have 4 sets of duals laying around, so it takes some smart non-overlapping deck building decisions to make several decks to lend out. I started one guy off with Affinity, another with Goblins and kept Rock for myself. So looking at the problem cards: duals, Forces, Wasteland, Goyf... we could all play competitive decks without overlapping on each other.

The upside is that the loaner decks were cheaper to make so it was easier for them to start replacing my cards with cards they bought or traded for.

It really does come down to getting them to try it. The only problem I've seen are the people who show up with clearly non-competitive decks and get trounced. I've tried to let them borrow decks and for whatever reason they just don't want to. One guy brought a burn deck one time with all sorts of terrible cards, so the next week I brought a real burn deck but he didn't want to play it. Frustrating.

[stalkerzero]

Definitely appreciate the tips. I'll probably talk to everyone about the idea of proxies for a while at the store. The major complaint up there about Standard is the price of decks now and that they lose so much value when they rotate unless they are really that solid for Extended/Legacy and can be sold off after rotation.

That complaint alone sounds like a foot for legacy to shove in the door.

[TheArchitect]

Definitely appreciate the tips. I'll probably talk to everyone about the idea of proxies for a while at the store. The major complaint up there about Standard is the price of decks now and that they lose so much value when they rotate unless they are really that solid for Extended/Legacy and can be sold off after rotation.

That complaint alone sounds like a foot for legacy to shove in the door.
Thats definitely another great selling point of legacy; they cards just go up in value, not down. You can buy a deck for 400$ today and in a half a year later when you want something new, you can sell/trade it away for like 500$.

[Neilol]

This is my first post here, but I thought I'd give my opinion. Today was the first time I had ever played a game of Legacy. My friend needed a ride to the local shop where they run a Legacy tournament every Sunday, so I thought I'd come along and do some trading. A few people asked if I was playing, and I told them I didn't own a legacy deck. Someone then offered to lend me a deck, so I agreed to play. I ended up playing a sneak attack type deck, and even though I went 0-3, it was the most fun I've had in a long time. I'm a Standard player, and I actually had more fun 0-3ing in a Legacy tournament than when I win a Standard event. Now I really want to get into Legacy myself.

I think the price point is what turns many people off. At the Standard tournaments I go to, especially FNM, I hear people complaining about Jace nonstop. While Jace IS an expensive card, the average legacy deck that isn't dredge or something similarly priced is very expensive. Legacy is also a much bigger format, and is a bit more confusing, which gives it a steeper learning curve. This can be intimidating to a lot of people. I think if they give it a chance, they will come around.

-Neil

[jandax]

Completely disagree. Proxies are a terrible idea.

We've successfully done this at our LGS. It started with a few, dedicated players with large collections. I took and built 4 viable, competitive Legacy decks and brought them with me and begged people to play. Literally begged. Gave them decks and showed them how to play them.

At first, it was tough to get to 8 people, but we generally did. A few months later, we're sitting at an average of 16 people and I have spare decks sitting in my bag in case more show up. The people that I gave the decks to, loved them and started building them themselves. It takes awhile and some dedication of both the lendor and lendee, but it's working.

This.

This is how you do it.


this is how you do it

[Kojiro]

I've found a really good way to get players interested in playing Legacy is to sit down and play at the LGS during an FNM or prerelease. If your store isn't used to playing Legacy, players will be interested the moment they look at the board and see 'Goyfs, Forces, Duals, and other various older cards. Bonus points if you play something exotic like Enchantress or Lands which have some really fun old cards you can get pimped out. Play a couple Beta duals or Japanese foils and watch how many people peek their head over to see what format you're playing.

Get them hooked with the sizzle and show them how great the format can be. Be willing to provide advice on breaking into Legacy, and offer suggestions on which cards to pick up. Be an advocate for the format!

[jandax]

It seems to me that meta games don't shift, collections do. People with a lot of decks can go anywhere and start up a scene, just lend out decks to begin the first few tournaments, then surely those new to the format will be left wanting. A void in the market will be created and inevitably they'd build their own decks. More people will show up to play and then to the savvy, a supportable prize structure could entise repeat attendance.

People with Duals and Forces aren't going to want to game for FNM foils. Cash or other Forces and Duals are the good prizes. This takes a lot to pull off, but building a scene all starts with one step.

[Malchar]

A good way to get people into Legacy is to emphasize all the inexpensive cards that are really good in legacy, like daze, swords to plowshares, dark ritual, and counterspell. Just upgrade any existing standard deck with some of these and you'll see instant results. You can also show off some inexpensive combos. For example, 4x helm of obedience and 4x leyline of the void costs about $25 total.

[Yui]

What we did at our local store was, we bought all the top legacy at that moment.
People could rent them for a certain amount of money, ppl borrowed a few cards or entire decks.
Within 3 month's we already earned our money back. The problem is that you need allot of money to start this up but i helped our meta
and it was a fun expirement
After i think 4 or 5 months we sold the cards.

[GexxX]

I think you should ask people:"What was your favorite Standart Deck of all time?" They reply and all you have to say is:" You can play it again in Legacy. Maybe even better!" Some very nice Legacy Decks were "invented" like that. Looking at the T2 Ravager Affinity and comparing it to the current Legacy lists does not really fit the abovce stated, but I think people will love both Decks for their brutal explosiveness. And just like that people will have something to feel connected to Legacy somehow.

I also like the idea of lending decks to people. Were I live people call it: "Was der Bauer nicht kennt isst er auch nicht!"
It means that the farmer wont eat what he does not know. People have to experience what Legacy is like. And for example Burn is not very costy to build, but it can be very fun and competative as well. So is Dredge and Affinity. Also Elves can be very good. It's not only the Archetypes that win all the tournaments and neither are all the Decks worth $1000 or more.

Also the Metagame is very important. If everyone plays burn, and elves, don't play storm for example. You have to be patient taking things to ne next level. That does not mean you should not challenge people, but Legacy tends to seem unfair sometimes, just because you have so many choises and so many really great cards.

I hope I was of any help and you can play Legacy in your store some day

regards

[The Wolf]

Convince the store to have 5-10 dollar tournament on a day they have open. Make the prize something cool and talk to people in the store to try and get some buzz about it. Be around and have multiple decks that people can play against you. Don’t play combo against people as it will turn them off instantly. Try to have this every month and if it takes off at all try to do it once a week.

The key is making the first tournament cheap, but the prize cool enough that people have a reason to play. Store credit isn’t good enough. Get your hands on some standard foils if you have to. Anything the people at your store will want.

[LegacyDan]

A good way to get people into Legacy is to emphasize all the inexpensive cards that are really good in legacy, like daze, swords to plowshares, dark ritual, and counterspell. Just upgrade any existing standard deck with some of these and you'll see instant results. You can also show off some inexpensive combos. For example, 4x helm of obedience and 4x leyline of the void costs about $25 total.

+1.

Lending out decks is risky. However, local players updating Standard and Extended decks with Legacy goodies is an interesting option. The LGS have taken an interest in Extended in a similar way. Dudes still want to play their old Faerie and Cruel Control Standard decks so they ported them to other formats. Now they play Excallibur and whatnot.

[jinxmitchell]

If you can just get one person to start playing with you at the shop, others will watch and start to understand that eternal formats are a ton of fun and not as scary as people think. Magic players start off watching, then once they begin to understand a bit, they tend to want to try their hand at it. At that point, allowing them to proxy a deck or lending them a deck to play with (with your supervision) will let them decide if they like the format or not.

[stalkerzero]

So, we've not restarted this project at our LGS. There is a strong Legacy community about 45 minutes away but I wanted to support the shop that's been so good to me.

So, I built a Legacy deck and between two of the shop workers they built five decks. Two or three people at the shop have (or have the means to acquire) budget Legacy decks.

Probably next week will be our first unlimited proxy Legacy tournament that will drop to 25 and hopefully just keep going down.

The store has also started investing more in to buying older collections from anyone who walks through the door (so far they've spent $3000 and have amassed a pretty random but awesome collection).

The goal is to try to get a dual a week as the top prize (first one I will have to come out of pocket on) and show the store owner that the proxies are a means to an end and aren't all that bad (he's terribly against it but at the moment players are offering to pay for a tournament with no real prize support).

[RogueMTG]

Completely disagree. Proxies are a terrible idea.

We've successfully done this at our LGS. It started with a few, dedicated players with large collections. I took and built 4 viable, competitive Legacy decks and brought them with me and begged people to play. Literally begged. Gave them decks and showed them how to play them.

At first, it was tough to get to 8 people, but we generally did. A few months later, we're sitting at an average of 16 people and I have spare decks sitting in my bag in case more show up. The people that I gave the decks to, loved them and started building them themselves. It takes awhile and some dedication of both the lendor and lendee, but it's working.

This.

This is how you do it.


this is how you do it

+1... This is how you do it.

Allowing proxies may sound like a good idea, but it isn't. Most players that have the cards probably won't come play a proxy event (seen it happen). Players that don't have the cards won't be motivated to get them. The format/event won't be taken seriously, and it won't be sanctioned.

Lending cards/decks and letting other players have a blast playing them is the best way to get them truly interested. That's how Jupiter did it. Dedicated players who love the format, doing everything they can to make it possible for others to get started in it. Now they have once a month events that average 80-100+ players. (Several years later, this takes time, but it works.)