The future of Legacy?

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Originally Posted by Richard Cheese

Eh, for me it's not the cantrips. I know this is just opening a tremendous can of worms but those cards are only as good as the cards they find. To me things feel stifled because of a handful of objectively excellent cards that have been printed over the past few years. It feels to me like a lot of decks now are just piles of the best cards in XYZ color combination, and a lot of those cards push you towards building a deck a certain way.

Delver, Snapcaster, Pyromancer, Mentor, and DRS all favor building a deck that's heavy on cheap spells and light on creatures and land.

The whole Miracle mechanic pushes you towards a critical mass of library manipulation.

Then you've got the huge bomby stuff like Griselbrand, Emrakul, and Omnomnomniscience that are just begging to be cheated into play.

Finally, there's a ton of excellent hate now like Thalia, Rest in Peace, Surgical, DRS(again), Canonist. So a lot of really lopsided matches got more even, which is good in some ways, but makes meta gaming seem less critical than it used to.

I think banning some amount of the "cantrip cartel" is probably the quickest and easiest way to give the format a big shake up, just sad to see something as iconic as Brainstorm on the chopping block for something as utterly boring as Delver of Secrets.

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I've felt this way just since Khans came out. Pre-Khans you could either pick one of the big decks to have a unfavorable matchup against while having even-to-favorable matchups against the others and still basically build whatever deck you wanted beyond that. We still saw crazy stuff like Aluren, Mono-green 12post, and Food Chain top 8-32'ing SCG events about as often as you'd expect given that almost no one plays them. Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise are what pushed the format to the position it's currently in.

But to respond to your post - I don't think Brainstorm has to go (and I'm not going to discuss that card further) - it would be better to just hit Ponder and Preordain. You protect the "classic" card while removing the critical mass that enables the decks that just want to chain cantrips into Digs. Sure, you can chain Opts and Serum Visions with Brainstorm, but that's way worse than having real card selection.

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Originally Posted by maharis

Let's be real: The only thing that will actually kill Legacy is the reserved list. Yes, there are problems with the metagame, but that can be solved with bannings, unbannings, new printings, or some other actual development of the format. Of course, that's just not going to be a priority for WoTC because they know the percentage of their player base that can even potentially play the format is capped and shrinking, because the availability of mana is restricted.

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There are a few ways they could get around the reserved list, and even end up making money on the non-reserved cards in the process. the problem is wizards will not implement any of them.
They could just allow so many proxies at certain levels of events, "to enable players to complete their deck easier) but not at any level with prize support form WotC (still need a full deck for FNM) so as to make sure people still tried to get full decks.
One thing I can think of, and would be a huge boost to Vintage, would be to create a class of event where you can link your MTGO account to your DCI # and use a certain # or proxies in your deck, as long as you can verify that those cards are currently on your MTGO account.
They could even make a variant of set redemption where they actually make and ship you the proxies with you DCI # clearly printed on them, but only in full sets, locking the cards "redemed" to your account so they can not be traded off (maybe including a return the proxies and they will be unlocked clause) providing some security against someone stealing your digital cards in the mean time. which could make collecting sets on MTGO worth more, and increase demand there.

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Originally Posted by Phoenix Ignition

Modern isn't 100% what I'd want it to be, but it sure as hell fits what I want out of magic more than Legacy does now. If you can build a solid deck out of left field and know how to play, you can go at least 2-2 at a weekly tournament. Heck, I 3-1ed with a UR deck that maindecked Leyline of Sanctity, Blood Moon, and Simian Spirit Guides, and had way more fun playing it than any deck I've played with in Legacy in the past 3 years. It hurts not getting to use some older cards... I'd love Armageddon or Cabal Therapy, but that's a price I'm easily willing to pay if that means we'll have a format that isn't completely trashed by the best card.

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I would agree with most of this. We managed to get 40 players each for UK Nationals Vintage and Modern events and 80 for Legacy. However our weekly Legecy events got replaced with Modern due to lack of players. Another store tried FNM Legacy but that got replaced with Modern when they were unable to get 8 players each week. Due to life/kids most Legacy players can not commit to a weekly event; there is still a month event but at $50 fuel there and back again I need to find other people to share the cost in the car to make it worth the trip whereas for Modern I can just go out and play every week and there are always people wanting to go to larger events.

Legacy in ATL was dying off slowly. Then we started streaming our weekly event and it went from 8-12 every week to at least a solid 25 every week. Now instead of 2 weeklies that were getting 8-12 in the ATL area, we have like 5 weeklies, 2 of which get 20+ and the other generally fire, plus now one store is going to begin offering quarterly legacy events for Moxen and other sweet prizes. Team Tusk drummed up interest in the format and it has been a massive success no matter what anyone has to say about our stream.

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Originally Posted by Megadeus

Legacy in ATL was dying off slowly. Then we started streaming our weekly event and it went from 8-12 every week to at least a solid 25 every week. Now instead of 2 weeklies that were getting 8-12 in the ATL area, we have like 5 weeklies, 2 of which get 20+ and the other generally fire, plus now one store is going to begin offering quarterly legacy events for Moxen and other sweet prizes. Team Tusk drummed up interest in the format and it has been a massive success no matter what anyone has to say about our stream.

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What is the name of the stream? I'd like to get in on that :smile:

Streaming sounds like a really good way to get local community traction going. Well done team Tusk

Tuskvision is the current name. Stream on Thursdays at 730 and we've begun doing our Sunday events at 1:00 though I'm not sure if that will continue to be something we do weekly. We're getting kind of burned out on it.

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Originally Posted by Megadeus

Tuskvision is the current name. Stream on Thursdays at 730 and we've begun doing our Sunday events at 1:00 though I'm not sure if that will continue to be something we do weekly. We're getting kind of burned out on it.

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Well, I say do whatever it takes to not burn out :smile: That being said, I'm a euro so 7.30 pm American time is in the middle of the night for me, so I'd personally hope for more Sundays... I'll be subscribing on Twitch just the same.

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Originally Posted by Richard Cheese

Eh, for me it's not the cantrips. I know this is just opening a tremendous can of worms but those cards are only as good as the cards they find. To me things feel stifled because of a handful of objectively excellent cards that have been printed over the past few years. It feels to me like a lot of decks now are just piles of the best cards in XYZ color combination, and a lot of those cards push you towards building a deck a certain way.

Delver, Snapcaster, Pyromancer, Mentor, and DRS all favor building a deck that's heavy on cheap spells and light on creatures and land.

The whole Miracle mechanic pushes you towards a critical mass of library manipulation.

Then you've got the huge bomby stuff like Griselbrand, Emrakul, and Omnomnomniscience that are just begging to be cheated into play.

Finally, there's a ton of excellent hate now like Thalia, Rest in Peace, Surgical, DRS(again), Canonist. So a lot of really lopsided matches got more even, which is good in some ways, but makes meta gaming seem less critical than it used to.

I think banning some amount of the "cantrip cartel" is probably the quickest and easiest way to give the format a big shake up, just sad to see something as iconic as Brainstorm on the chopping block for something as utterly boring as Delver of Secrets.

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True, and this can't be reversed, the game evolves in several directions many find undesirable, yet it's the subjective element of "fun" is the smaller problem legacy has, if you're bored with legacy you probably have the luxury to play it which is 1 step ahead of the problem...

the whole cycle creates what the "boring" - which can be summed up by one word - netdecking - lazy people not trying to innovate or even think about the game, that kind of which plays bad and cries most, atmosphere of optimalization and lost hope self assured by hivemind of the same kind of individuals which fuels the former attitude... the designspace is not what it was in 2010 yet it's hard to compare because different cards are there to build around, blaming cantrips is not seeing the forest because of the trees, the "staleness" is stupid argument, stale compared to what? legacy in 201x - not true, other formats? you know the answer (go play...x)... is legacy it better now than it used to be? (not just gameplay itself) definitely not (at least for me) will it be better? definitely not if you played the game for years ... but if there is no more new people to find out if they like it or not there is no way of changing anything

I remember reading similar threads back in the day and those would generally be people complaining about the prices and the inability to get into the format while the format aficionados defending how healthy the format is. Now seeing the pessimistic replies in this thread sort of shows me how things have changed in the last 4-5 years.

I hope the format doesn't die on MODO but I wasn't willing to bet the value of my collection on it so I sold out a few days ago. I know I'm not doing Legacy any favors by mentioning this but I bought in last year during a nice dip in price on cards like Force of Will and actually turned a profit by selling out now. If you bought into the format around this time last year you may consider doing the same if you no longer play frequently.

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Originally Posted by maharis

Let's be real: The only thing that will actually kill Legacy is the reserved list.

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Precisely. Legacy has gotten a reputation for being too expensive, a format for rich kids and old people. Unfortunately that isn't far from the truth. Prices have gotten to a point where getting in is simply not an option for many people, even if they would love to. The reason for the high prices is rampant financial speculation on key format staples, and the reason for that speculation is the stupid promise of "safe investment" that is indirectly implied in the reserved list.

Is the reserved list legally binding?

Cheers

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Originally Posted by cheerios

Is the reserved list legally binding?

Cheers

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Can falling over. Worms spilling everywhere.

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Originally Posted by cheerios

Is the reserved list legally binding?

Cheers

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No, but it's not getting terminated.

I don't know about you guys, but at my LGS we have a single legacy event per month. Sadly we're always struggling to reach eight players. Modern tournaments always bring up 20 people or more, so I'm so thankful to the owner of the shop for giving us a chance. However, here's the funny/sad part: I do own more than a deck, since I started playing a long time ago, and I'm willing to lend them to who wants to play, but nobody shows up! Modern players don't want to try legacy for reasons that are far away my comprehension, and this really shows how my local players just like to smell their own farts...
Now, about modern, I play it and play it hard, it can be fun at times and it is, but every game feels the same. You're just doing he same thing with your deck over and over, wile your opponent do he same. Sure, people play tons of different decks, but there's no variety in their plan, just goldfish. Besides, can you actually count how many funny stories you have playing modern? Not many. Legacy!? Zillions! And every legacy event brings me something new to laugh at!

Possible alternative: they could create another new Eternal Format that has essentially one uniting factor -- All Mythic Rares are Banned (in addition to the usual list of dexterity/ante/misc. banned cards).

This would include cards that were later upgraded to Mythic Rarity via online and special print-runs, e.g. Power 9 and other Vintage restricted cards, (maybe stuff printed in From the Vaults), Modern Masters, etc.

Some of the cards that would notably be banned:
-Tarmogoyf
-Dark Confidant
-Sword of X+Y, Jitte, Batterskull
-Griselbrand, Emrakul, Omniscience, etc.
-ALL Planeswalkers

This might be a fairly interesting format that would allow access to Magic cards from its entire history while still reducing the power level back towards a more acceptable level. I'm sure there are some cards that I'm forgetting about that would still need to be banned for power reasons, but at the very least this would be arguably less arbitrary than the Modern banlist.

WotC reneged on its stance on Mythic Rares. When they were originally announced, I believe they were supposed to just be the sort of cards a Timmy would put into kitchentable.dec or the kind of splashy 8-mana crazy effect that'd only see play in EDH multiplayer formats. Just something to think about.

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Originally Posted by Richard Cheese

Eh, for me it's not the cantrips. I know this is just opening a tremendous can of worms but those cards are only as good as the cards they find. To me things feel stifled because of a handful of objectively excellent cards that have been printed over the past few years. It feels to me like a lot of decks now are just piles of the best cards in XYZ color combination, and a lot of those cards push you towards building a deck a certain way.

Delver, Snapcaster, Pyromancer, Mentor, and DRS all favor building a deck that's heavy on cheap spells and light on creatures and land.

The whole Miracle mechanic pushes you towards a critical mass of library manipulation.

Then you've got the huge bomby stuff like Griselbrand, Emrakul, and Omnomnomniscience that are just begging to be cheated into play.

Finally, there's a ton of excellent hate now like Thalia, Rest in Peace, Surgical, DRS(again), Canonist. So a lot of really lopsided matches got more even, which is good in some ways, but makes meta gaming seem less critical than it used to.

I think banning some amount of the "cantrip cartel" is probably the quickest and easiest way to give the format a big shake up, just sad to see something as iconic as Brainstorm on the chopping block for something as utterly boring as Delver of Secrets.

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I don't think it's a coincidence that there hasn't been a post in the B/R thread in a week and now we have this thread. If you care at all about the diversity of the Legacy metagame, the last announcement going by without even a cursory glance at the format was extremely demoralizing. There's no reason to even argue on the internet about a format that is essentially an orphan.

I'm not in favor of banning Legacy back to the stone age to preserve the cantrip shell, because there will always be a best card for the cantrip deck and the cantrip deck will always be the best at finding its key cards. Cards like Stoneforge Mystic, Jace, Thopter Foundry don't encourage building a deck heavy on cheap spells and light on creatures and land -- but they do play incredibly well in those kinds of decks. (As do, of course, Tarmogoyf, Nimble Mongoose, or to pick more recent examples, Tasigur and Gurmag Angler). So then you have to ban SFM and/or Batterskull, and Jace, and Sword of the Meek, then True-Name Nemesis, then Tarmogoyf, then where are we?

However, I think it's increasingly fair to suggest, OK, Brainstorm is a card people have very intense feelings about, we are going to get rid of Ponder and Preordain and let you wrestle with the second-best cantrip being either Opt or Serum Visions.

Of course, all that does is solve the metagame problems, and not the accessibility problem. So whatever.

Couple other things: Thalia is, IMO, one of the best cards printed for Legacy in the four years I've been back in the game. It does exactly the opposite of the problematic cards you listed in that you want to play more land and fewer cheap spells. But it's very balanced in that decks that have trouble with it can find ways to get it off the table easily (Massacre was a huge blowout when I played Maverick this week, and paying 1W or 1R for STP or Bolt isn't that bad.) The trouble Wizards has had is finding more cards that fit into that space. Eidolon of the Great Revel is the next-best thing, but it's unrefined.

And a card that you missed listing, but one that I'm more bummed about recently, is Abrupt Decay. It's not even that it's uncounterable that's a problem. It's that it nails literally anything in Legacy's sweet spot. If you want to try and explore an engine in non-blue colors, you're probably going to use at least one permanent with cmc <=3, and possibly even have to untap with it. The fact that any deck with two mana can snap you off at instant speed makes things really rough.

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Originally Posted by wcm8

Possible alternative: they could create another new Eternal Format that has essentially one uniting factor -- All Mythic Rares are Banned (in addition to the usual list of dexterity/ante/misc. banned cards).

This would include cards that were later upgraded to Mythic Rarity via online and special print-runs, e.g. Power 9 and other Vintage restricted cards, (maybe stuff printed in From the Vaults), Modern Masters, etc.

Some of the cards that would notably be banned:
-Tarmogoyf
-Dark Confidant
-Sword of X+Y, Jitte, Batterskull
-Griselbrand, Emrakul, Omniscience, etc.
-ALL Planeswalkers

This might be a fairly interesting format that would allow access to Magic cards from its entire history while still reducing the power level back towards a more acceptable level. I'm sure there are some cards that I'm forgetting about that would still need to be banned for power reasons, but at the very least this would be arguably less arbitrary than the Modern banlist.

WotC reneged on its stance on Mythic Rares. When they were originally announced, I believe they were supposed to just be the sort of cards a Timmy would put into kitchentable.dec or the kind of splashy 8-mana crazy effect that'd only see play in EDH multiplayer formats. Just something to think about.

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This is an interesting idea, but I still think you'd need a supplemental ban list. Jitte isn't banned in this format unless you count the special GP printing. And Top isn't unless you count FTVs, which means Stoneforge Countertop Thopters would probably be brutal.

And if you do count FTVs, FTV: 20 really guts this format, taking out Dark Ritual, Swords to Plowshares, Hymn to Tourach, and Green Sun's Zenith, not to mention Lotus Petal, Aether Vial, and Berserk in other FTVs.

You're not wrong about the mythic rarity messing with Legacy though. Omniscience is a cute Timmy card in any format except those where S&T, Eureka, Hypergenesis, and Academy Rector are legal.

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Originally Posted by maharis

I don't think it's a coincidence that there hasn't been a post in the B/R thread in a week and now we have this thread. If you care at all about the diversity of the Legacy metagame, the last announcement going by without even a cursory glance at the format was extremely demoralizing. There's no reason to even argue on the internet about a format that is essentially an orphan.

I'm not in favor of banning Legacy back to the stone age to preserve the cantrip shell, because there will always be a best card for the cantrip deck and the cantrip deck will always be the best at finding its key cards.

And a card that you missed listing, but one that I'm more bummed about recently, is Abrupt Decay. It's not even that it's uncounterable that's a problem. It's that it nails literally anything in Legacy's sweet spot. If you want to try and explore an engine in non-blue colors, you're probably going to use at least one permanent with cmc <=3, and possibly even have to untap with it. The fact that any deck with two mana can snap you off at instant speed makes things really rough.

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Yes, the announcement was incredibly demoralizing although not entirely unexpected. WOTC has shown they don't give a rat's ass about Legacy by the incredibly low frequency of unbans we've gotten in the last few years (IIRC only Worldgorger has been unbanned since Land Tax in 2012). There are some serious no-brainers on the list but I won't get into that as it's been harped on over and over in the correct thread.

The strategy I've always advocated has been fixing the mistakes WOTC made starting with Innistrad, but I see your point here. No amount of bans outside the cantrip shell will make other strategies more consistent than that shell (or remotely near it, for that matter). A ban on Ponder, Preordain, Gitaxian Probe, and DTT would rewind the blue cantrip shell back to 2009 and would lead to some entertaining arguments about the second-best cantrip...Opt, Serum Visions, Thought Scour? Who knows. That approach also appeals to me as it would allow people to continue playing with all the cards they like while dramatically evening the playing field in terms of consistency.

Yeah, Abrupt Decay is a card that I have a love/hate relationship with, but mostly hate. It's an obnoxious card that has to exist to keep another obnoxious card (Counterbalance) in check, but also causes a huge amount of collateral damage. A blue cantrip deck having a maindeck out to Chalice/Ensnaring Bridge/Choke/etc. no matter how many Chalices are in play is nonsense and makes the BUG vs. anti-blue matchup far better than it should be. Unfortunately, Abrupt Decay is here to stay, at least as long as Counterbalance is a thing.