Legacy Is Dying At My LGS

[Mr. Froggy]

My beloved format is dying :( Everyone (except me it seems) has switched to Modern... People have given it up on it.. :(

[Koby]

My beloved format is dying :( Everyone (except me it seems) has switched to Modern... People have given it up on it.. :(

Not enough info. Can you elaborate?

What kind of events does your store run?
How many people used to show up?
What changed recently?
Are there competing stores nearby drawing players away?
Is there a PTQ coming up nearby?

First you need to take a barometer of the scene, then decide if you want to make an effort to fix it.

[kingtk3]

My condolences... :frown:

[Mr. Froggy]

Not enough info. Can you elaborate?

What kind of events does your store run?
How many people used to show up?
What changed recently?
Are there competing stores nearby drawing players away?
Is there a PTQ coming up nearby?

First you need to take a barometer of the scene, then decide if you want to make an effort to fix it.

Saturday Modern
Sunday Legacy

For legacy we were about 10-12 players that would show up, but costs and "Modern PTQs" drove people away from the format.. also, no "real" competing LGSs (its the biggest in the region).

Also we had a pretty competitive metagame (Maverick, D&T, Reanimator, Elves!, ANT, etc.)

[Koby]

And what kind of Sunday Legacy events does your store host? What is the prizing? When is it ran (time of day)?

These may all be factors.

[Tammit67]

One of our stores in my area had weekly legacy every Sunday. Fired well for a while until Football season started and people would rather spend Sundays elsewhere and all the college kids went back to school.

Meanwhile another store in Philadelphia gets 20-40 weekly on a Wednesday night. Some of the best players in the area go there because of the turnout and consistent event firing. Also, what else is there to do on a Wednesday?

[Mr. Froggy]

One of our stores in my area had weekly legacy every Sunday. Fired well for a while until Football season started and people would rather spend Sundays elsewhere and all the college kids went back to school.

Meanwhile another store in Philadelphia gets 20-40 weekly on a Wednesday night. Some of the best players in the area go there because of the turnout and consistent event firing. Also, what else is there to do on a Wednesday?

Wednesday is EDH I think at my LGS.. Thursday is Standard.. Friday is Draft...

:(

[nedleeds]

Take a huge chunk of the money you earn by working and distribute it to others who don't have as much money in the form of staple eternal cards. This way everyone can enjoy the fruits of the labor of a few.

[danyul]

One of our stores in my area had weekly legacy every Sunday. Fired well for a while until Football season started and people would rather spend Sundays elsewhere and all the college kids went back to school.

Meanwhile another store in Philadelphia gets 20-40 weekly on a Wednesday night. Some of the best players in the area go there because of the turnout and consistent event firing. Also, what else is there to do on a Wednesday?

This is similar to what is going on in the Seattle area. The Legacy scene is very strong. But people all gravitate to 1 or 2 locations.

We are trying to build up a community in other cities but cost has been a significant issue. Also, people tend to only show up to sites that have established themselves as being able to consistently fire large events. It creates a bit of a Catch-22 for newer stores trying to build up a community.

My suggestions: lend out decks when you can. Be supportive rather than dismissive of budget decks. And try to get your LGS to make prizes in the form of cards that people can use to build decks, as opposed to giving out Standard packs or something. Also, if you have an excess of cards (a 5th Volcanic, perhaps) then sell or trade it back into the community instead of selling it on eBay in an effort to maximize profit or something. There is no point to sitting on a hoard of extra staples while other people can't even find an affordable copy of an essential land.

[Star|Scream]

One of our stores in my area had weekly legacy every Sunday. Fired well for a while until Football season started and people would rather spend Sundays elsewhere and all the college kids went back to school.

Meanwhile another store in Philadelphia gets 20-40 weekly on a Wednesday night. Some of the best players in the area go there because of the turnout and consistent event firing. Also, what else is there to do on a Wednesday?

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.

[Mr. Froggy]

This is similar to what is going on in the Seattle area. The Legacy scene is very strong. But people all gravitate to 1 or 2 locations.

We are trying to build up a community in other cities but cost has been a significant issue. Also, people tend to only show up to sites that have established themselves as being able to consistently fire large events. It creates a bit of a Catch-22 for newer stores trying to build up a community.

My suggestions: lend out decks when you can. Be supportive rather than dismissive of budget decks. And try to get your LGS to make prizes in the form of cards that people can use to build decks, as opposed to giving out Standard packs or something. Also, if you have an excess of cards (a 5th Volcanic, perhaps) then sell or trade it back into the community instead of selling it on eBay in an effort to maximize profit or something. There is no point to sitting on a hoard of extra staples while other people can't even find an affordable copy of an essential land.

The little staples I have I have (as in a set of Wastes, Ports, NOs, etc) are all in decks already. I'm all up for lending them out though, if its to build a bigger scene.

[Richard Cheese]

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.

[Dice_Box]

The shop I play at in Brisbane is the only one in the city to play Legacy at. There are some people that travel 2 hours each way to play and I am thankful that they are willing to. The sad thing is that I am watching person after person cash out. While this makes duals and fetches cheaper for me, I wonder how much longer those cards will have real "Play value" over just cost value.

Legacy is a fading format. Its not dying, but it is starting to become harder to play in smaller locations.

[Benjammn]

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.

As someone who lived near Tammit before and who now is in Pittsburgh, I agree (and it only gets worse for me, I'm moving to Detroit in a month!). Mr. Nice Guy Games gets a pretty good turnout on their monthly Saturday Legacy event and has a scheduled event every Friday although it doesn't fire all the time (especially when the new set came out since everyone wanted to draft).

[rockout]

One of our stores in my area had weekly legacy every Sunday. Fired well for a while until Football season started and people would rather spend Sundays elsewhere and all the college kids went back to school.

Meanwhile another store in Philadelphia gets 20-40 weekly on a Wednesday night. Some of the best players in the area go there because of the turnout and consistent event firing. Also, what else is there to do on a Wednesday?

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.

[Humphrey]

I almost sold my entire legacy pool already. Ill keep Belcher and Goblins.
There only 2 small tournaments the whole year and the cards were dead money in the end. And to be honest, Im tired of the format anyway.

But although I despise WotC for inventing the reserved list, its the hoarders who are destroying the format. In the end, theyll own all the staples, but then the cards are useless and later worthless.

[lyracian]

My beloved format is dying :( Everyone (except me it seems) has switched to Modern... People have given it up on it.. :(
That is sad.

We get around 20 players a week for our Legacy events. Actual meta is about 25% Legacy, 50% Modern, 25% Standard(ish) decks. I lend out spare decks to help get people interested in playing. Most players are focusing on Modern and have a single Legacy deck so the meta can be quite predictable.

[Ellomdian]

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.

I think its a little ironic that all the people taking down these standard quals are then turning around asking the Legacy vets for advice... when our Meta is at best 6 mos old because no one shows up to the small weeklies for practice.

[thecrav]

One of our stores in my area had weekly legacy every Sunday. Fired well for a while until Football season started and people would rather spend Sundays elsewhere and all the college kids went back to school.

This was a big problem for us as well. We've since moved to Saturday because I'm the only college football fan.


Wednesday is EDH I think at my LGS.. Thursday is Standard.. Friday is Draft...

:(

Definitely consider what other days you could run an event. Is there any reason your store wouldn't run a legacy event at the same time as another event? Ideally, schedule it on a day where the other event is something that's not likely to compete with legacy. For example, there's probably not a lot of drafters who are also playing legacy.

Our LGS has the policy that if you can find enough people to fire a tournament, they'll do it. We've started playing on Thursdays because the only competition was modern. Ironically, this actually boosted attendance at both. People would show up saying "if legacy fires, I'll play that. If not, I'll play modern." Additionally, we see a lot of people scrub out of legacy and drop into the later-starting modern event.

Talk to the people who run your shop. See what they're willing to do to help boost turnout for legacy.

[TsumiBand]

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.

It's been like that here in Lincoln Nebraska for a very long time.

The last time there was any real action around here was like 2008 and that was just because there was some kind of WotC-sponsored event at the end of the rainbow, can't remember.

Eternal is EDH around here. I guess maybe Modern gets played. Truthfully I have a crap Modern deck that I built for work - about a dozen or so people play, from casual to non-casual-but-not-wanting-to-be-a-dick - waiting for a real challenger to approach. It'll lose to money, but that's kind of my signature.

A long time ago I accepted that most Vintage belonged to the coasts in the US. I don't know that Legacy is quite as sparse, but it certainly had a reputation as being "boring, expensive, and non-interactive" in 2008. Whatever the fuck they were talking about then, I have no idea, but it kept people out and not even the box store hobby-stores could hold any event that cleared Legacy's good name around here; people just chose not to show up and not care.

[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.

[Richard Cheese]

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.

Have you noticed the player base at sanctioned events increase since running proxy events. It's definitely something we've looked at, but there doesn't seem to be any real data for or against.

[Ellomdian]

but I see it as more of a velvet smoking jacket and pipe format..

Why would you wear a nice jacket to smoke the glass-dick of a crack-pipe that is Vintage? It's not even fun to watch anymore at the local level, it's about as interesting as watching people play old Vampire or L5R games...

I don't think Proxy Legacy is going to solve much of anything - Vintage can be fun because you are proxying something obscene you could never justify owning, where legacy you are often proxying Lands. I've spent less money on Duals in the last 3 years than on Standard Manabases for the same time period, and I know I am lucky if I only lose %50 of the value of the Standard cards in 18 mos, but the thought of spending $5-600 on cards that will never rotate still goes over people's heads.

I get to play a Ton of the cards I enjoyed playing in T2 back inna day, and for a large contingent of Magic Players, Modern now offers the same thing. I think it's telling that you have the same pet-deck phenomenon there, just with Jund and less Blue because OMG FAERIES NOT FUN OP GGZ!

I have a sneaking suspicion that Commander is going to be the quiet savior of Legacy, because people are now trying to build and keep together multiple Commander decks, and they are freeing up lots of lands from stagnant binders. It's a short step from doing something busted in commander to wanting to do similar things at a SCG:Open or GP.