So without jumping to conclusions here, I'll just state the facts. Today, our local store apparently received phone and email contact from a Wizards Play Network representative regarding the regular full proxy Legacy events we run every Tuesday. To my knowledge, these events have been going for years and were never sanctioned through Wizards Event Reporter. The correspondence stated that regardless of whether an event is sanctioned, "Magic events... can only allow genuine Magic: The Gathering cards." This essentially means that all stores with WPN sanctioning (any store that runs an FNM) can be threatened with having that sanctioning revoked by running any events allowing proxies in their store.

Extrapolating here, so brace yourself for a bit of doomsaying. I think this has dire repercussions for Legacy and in particular Vintage. How many of you have local Legacy proxy events, or were perhaps even ushered into the format by these sorts of casual nonsanctioned tournaments? Vintage players, when was the last time besides Vintage champs you played sanctioned vintage? I think the health of the format declines significantly if there is no "soft" way to get into the format without directly spending thousands upfront. Standard is relatively easy to get into and you can succeed with budget options, Modern has a variety of successful budget decks as well that very easily build up into tier decks once you acquire staples, but Legacy has no alternative for duals, wastes, forces, and even worse you can have 90% of the cards in a deck and still owe a thousand or more on your manabase. Many people at these local events had Deathblade or Delver minus only the duals, or Death and Taxes minus Waste/Port/Karakas, they were not "budget players, they were Legacy players who hadn't acquired the priciest parts of their decks.

For those who are curious, the original thread on facebook is here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/4450...2954593792525/
I don't know if that link works if you're not a Facebook group member but it might let you see the initial post.