This is not 'almost as good'. This sucks.Originally Posted by quadibloc
Brainstorm? Dark Ritual? Those seem like a good reason to draft MM to me!
Last edited by yankeedave; 04-19-2010 at 08:14 AM.
"Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted." - John Lennon
I think Mercadian Masques alone has more playables than the entire Kamigawa Block.
Those are four for a dollar. They aren't going to be driving any drafts.
That's a non-sequitur. The choice won't be between drafting Masques and Kamigawa; it will be between Masques and the current core set/newest two blocks.
As much as I hate this idea, I dont mind giving this format a chance. I currently do not own any Onslaught Fetches and Duals and I still love Legacy because of its diversity. Not to mention that on this "hyper-extended" format, most of my decks would be suboptimal (I play Elves, Goblins, Merfolk, Quinn, Building Ichorid and D&T and trying to "fix" my Counter-Rebel deck.
Hey, at least I am giving it a chance right?
I am convinced that WotC is "dumbing" the game because of all the stupid posts they come across on MTG-related forums
QFT. I believe that Legacy is still a solid format, but it is reaching a wall in terms of availability. As someone said before, yes, people quit and recycle cards, but if two people come in for each person who quits, we have an issue.
Reprints are a necessary part of the game, and the reserved list is an incredibly stupid idea.
Speculators, in my eyes, are the leeches of the game, hardly ever playing: and now Wizards is deciding to support this activity?
Dredge in the format +
No Wasteland, No FOW =
----------------------------------
Broken Format
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity - Seneca, Roman dramatist
Extended Dredge is beatable.
Your argument = kaput.
This announcement is a slap in the face to legacy. Wizards thinks that it can create a safety valve to ignore the reserve list issue but capture the enthusiasm around Legacy. Dedicated Legacy players should hope that this fails, so that Wizards will be forced to once again confront its poor decisions around the Reserved List.
How many extended decks would stand a chance against dredge + Breakthrough, Cabal Therapy, Ichorid, Careful Study, City of Brass and Coliseum?
What was that about arguements again?
Team Bad Guys
I have come up with an excellent way to be happy! Every time someone says a sentence I simply add on a few words after it:
Oh my goodness, it's been so great. People with stupid opinions now immediately acknowledge how dumb they are! Internet fights still have all the swears and name calling but now they're instantly undermined by my new suffix.
Hate to break it to ya, broski, but if Wizards was manly enough to own up to the Reserved List mistake, it wouldn't be doing this in the first place.
I doubt it's real. Legacy is on MTGO, where every staple card - including the duals! - can be "reprinted" at any time (interesting aside - despite that threat, many of the digital format staples still hold quite a lot of value and are in some cases more expensive than the paper versions). If Wizards wanted a Legacy PTQ season, they could make it MTGO-only or something. They've already had MTGO PTQs for paper Pro Tours, so the only thing holding it back would be the lack of precedent for a qualifier season without physical tournaments - and, I guess, the comparatively much smaller Legacy MTGO population.
This format seems like it's already mostly solved anyway. Just look up decks from the last Extended season before things started rotating annually and add stuff from Masques and the recent sets to them. It doesn't seem that exciting, but it's nice to know that the lack of Force of Will is balanced out by the lack of LED, Lotus Petal, and Mystical Tutor, which make Storm decks worse. They'd have to use shit like Lotus Bloom or Heartbeat of Spring, both of which put a floor on the combo turn.
If (big IF) the OP is not feeding us a fake at least I get some satisfaction at the thought of all the short sighted "collectors" that screamed against the abolition of the reserved list.
Their precious multis and "staples" will start losing value the same day this format starts.
Stuff like the dual lands won't lose value, they'll just stagnate. The things that could potentially lose value would be things like LED or Phyrexian Dreadnought, which aren't playable for whatever reason in Vintage. However, I'm not sure if there's a precedent for stuff like this happening - Menendian would know for the Vintage market.
Not like anyone plays Vintage anyway.
The more I think about it, the more I see this format as being purely seasonal, like Extended. That is, for the better part of the year, no one thinks about or gives a shit about this format, and then the qualifiers roll around and there's a mad rush that ends in the associated Pro Tour, and then people go back to not giving a shit until the next season.
Dredge was out of control in Extended/Standard years ago. Wizards realized this and has been printing powerful graveyard hate ever since. Crypt/Leyline/Trap/Relic/etc. keeps Dredge in check, not FoW and Wasteland (although as a Dredge player, I attest that these cards certainly help). Dredge will not be anymore out of control than when it was around in late 2005 through 2007 in Extended: graveyard hate more than kept it in check.
Now, on to the question at hand. First, a conclusion:
CONCLUSION 2
A new format would likely face the same problems as Legacy, because even though it may be cheaper, money does not seem to be the inhibitor of format growth. Other factors are at work.
And now, here is how I reach it.
There is a prevailing rumor out there that Legacy costs as much as Standard, if not slightly more. Source contributors constantly bemoan players that are too cheap to buy cards, unwilling to dish out the money for a deck, and that have unrealistic expectations in card price. "Don't bitch about the cards." "You have to be willing to spend money to play this game." These are common criticisms in the Legacy community. How do they hold up under scrutiny?
I visited Magic.tcgplayer.com to use their awesome Deck Price tool. I looked at a number of decks of various archetypes in Standard to see an average price for the decktype, and then an average price for the format. I have examined the midrange price for all the Standard decks of note (Jund, UW Control, Naya, etc.) to find these values. I also have used the largest, recent events in calculating these averages: SCG Opens, GP Brussels, GP Kuala Lumpur, etc. This is not a holistic, perfect, completely random sample. It is, however, representative in a general way.
Jund: 317.12
UW Control: 671.22
Mythic: 744.55
Naya: 583.78
RDW: 190.59
Format Average: 501.4528
Now, Standard has a pretty clear cut metagame. These are the big 5 decktypes in the format, and anything else is basically an outlier. Legacy is a different matter. There are many more viable decks in Legacy, so I was hardpressed to choose 5 that were representative in the same way that Jund, UW, Mythic, etc. were representative of Standard. To do so, I used Menendian's values from this article: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=185131. All pric edata is taken from the relatively up-to-date and accurate "Price for Legacy" thread on MTGSalvation (http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=185131). NOTE: All prices here are the LOWEST listing, not the mid-range price as per Standard.
Merfolk (no Goyf): 316.15
Countertop: 1430.96
Zoo: 645
Threshold: 768.34 (average of both values given on the MTGS thread)
Goblins: 267.77
ANT: 614.47
Format Average: 673.78
This is not the most scientific or rigorous economic evaluation, but it gives some sense of the bigger picture. Legacy proved, on average, to be about $170 more expensive than Standard. This is not that serious overall; it's basically a playset of Duals more expensive on average. Players that are playing Standard and dishing out money for UW Control, Mythic, and Naya could easily be doing the same in Legacy for ANT, Zoo, and Threshold. Jund, the most popular archetype in Standard by leagues, is barely over 300 bucks. Goblins is less, and Merfolk is around the same (to say nothing of Dredge, Affinity ($175), Burn, Elves, etc, all of which cost less or the same). Even poor T2 RDW players can afford Dredge, Burn, and Affinity!
That said, it is unlikely that Standard players would ever pick up Countertop. This is a stupidly expensive deck as far as deckprices go, almost 100% more than the highest standard deck (UW Control). This is too bad, considering that in the SCG Open series, it was the second most played deck, and is certainly a powerhouse in its own right. Then again, the first most played deck was Merfolk, a deck that is unquestionably in the price range of any standard player.
So, what do we make of this data? How does it bear on the supposed new format? How does it bear on the potential for a new format, even if this current rumor proves to be false? What relevance does it have to Legacy?
CONCLUSION 1
People that play Standard have the economic means to play Legacy
The real teller is Fish. Merfolk is one of the strongest decks in Legacy. A player that wanted to win events could run this deck and have a damn good chance of scoring prizes. Merfolk is cheaper than every T2 deck except RDW, and this latter deck appears far less than all the others. Merfolk is the exact same price as Jund.
So, if Standard players are not switching to Legacy, or even trying it out, it has nothing to do with the actual costs of the format. So why is Legacy less popular than standard? Here are some ideas
1. Perceived economic value: players think Legacy costs more, even though it does not
2. High transition costs: players already have some standard cards, and it is easy to buy others. They do not own any old cards, and therefore do not want to enter a format where they have no commons/uncommons that are relevant.
3. The choice dilemma: Legacy has a lot more viable archetypes than does standard. Players may be overwhelmed with options and unable to decide on a deck to buy.
4. Exclusive format: Legacy is a bit exclusive and arrogant as a community. It is easy to enter into Standard through online forum browsing and netdecking. Legacy is far more aristocratic online, and potentially unattractive to new players.
These are some options, but by no means all of them. So, why is this relevant to the initial post?
CONCLUSION 2
A new format would likely face the same problems as Legacy, because even though it may be cheaper, money does not seem to be the inhibitor of format growth. Other factors are at work.
-ktkenshinx-
I think this is the main reason why a lot of players don't like crossing over to Legacy. I have seen a lot of asshole that think they are better because they play Legacy. Its funny because those same asshole tend to lose to standard decks such as Jund and Vampires with their Legacy decks.
Also, rogue decks are always frowned upon the by community for some reason. I remember when I started playing Quinn in my meta. A lot of players started saying WTF as they thought I was running a legacy highlander deck. Little to their surprise, it actually produced some results.
I think this new hyper-extended format is going to be an ofshoot of the Online Classic format, before the older sets were actually released on MTGO.
I am convinced that WotC is "dumbing" the game because of all the stupid posts they come across on MTG-related forums
Really? I've never really encountered this, but then again I tend to live in areas with approximately zero Legacy scene. The bigger thing for people in these areas is card availability and price. I know ktkenshinx addressed the price issue, but one thing he only tangentially touched on is "getting your money's worth" from that investment. There are tons of opportunities to play Standard, starting on the FNM level and moving all the way up to big, Wizards-backed events. Furthermore, there are tons of people playing Standard. Because of this, your deck tends to "pay itself off" much better in terms of enjoyment and gaming time with Standard as opposed to Legacy, where many places have monthly events if they have events at all. Many players will automatically invest in Type II because of the availability of both cards (there's lots of them because of Limited and the sets still being in print) and opportunities to play, but many of those same players shy away from investing in Legacy on top of that because the returns are much lower. You're giving up a lot of potential playing time by not investing in Type II, but you're not losing anything by not investing in Legacy. Doing both is actually quite costly for many people even if the Legacy investment tends to be more of a one-shot deal.
At least, that's how I see it. I don't play Type II but play Legacy quite religiously. However, there have been very few tournaments for it where I've lived, so now most of what I play is Limited when I want to get my Magic fix.
Is there a reason why you used mid-range prices for Standard and lowest prices for Legacy? Magic.tcgplayer.com also has decklists for Legacy so it would make sense to use these for a better comparison.
I strongly agree with this statement. Legacy players have a large sense of entitlement, probably from some combination of money spent on their decks and perceived tournament/Magic experience. In many cases, this may be a discrepancy in age. Legacy players have access to all Magic sets, and older players may be more inclined to involve themselves in a format where they can maximize their card pool. Naturally, friction is going to arise between older and younger players. Yet, this is only one possible explanation. I have seen Standard events with many 30 year-olds and Legacy events with many 13 year-olds. Perhaps it is just the power level of Legacy decks, ostensibly much more powerful than their Standard counterparts. Perhaps it's a matter of honor, using only the good old days of Magic instead of the newfangled card frames and mechanics. Whatever the reason, the end result is clear: an exclusive format that is widely perceived as such by potential players.
The rogue deck phenomenon is particularly bad, and I am glad you point this out. Deck suggestions, and card suggestions, are often met with intense skepticism and outright hostility. Naturally, this leads to a stupidly stagnant format with most ideas being outright dismissed. A prime example of this was Vampire Hexmage and Dark Depths. Marit Lage's lack of shroud met with instant opposition from most players in the Legacy community. Players responded in the Hexmage thread with long lists of vulnerabilities and cards that kill the combo. Constructive? No. Ego-satisfying and e-peen earning? In their minds, yes.
In the end, the Hexmage advocates won, with their decks scoring major victories and appearances in the format.
AZ's point about "getting your money's worth" is an excellent one. There are two sides to this factor. One is economic, and AZ does a good job covering it in his post. There are simply not a lot of tournaments for Legacy, whereas FNM and States competitions abound. The end result is less competition for Legacy players, and less prize money as a result. But there is also the "fun" value in getting your money's worth. If you buy a big, bad Legacy deck, it is unlikely that you will have many people to play with relative to other Magic formats. Yes, theoretically Legacy is all about deck and card diversity, but in practice, it is full of staples. No one wants to play casual against ANT or Dredge, and no one likes getting countered by FoW and Daze. Standard decks, while pretty good, are not as good (for the most part) as their Legacy counterparts. This lends them to more play, as more non-tournament players will play against them. Even if you are SOLELY a tournament player, Standard is the better "fun" investment. Why? You are going to be playing more tournaments and thus having more fun if you play T2.
I liked the cohesion of the MTGS thread and its price compilation, although I admit that the comparison is a bit skewed. I also had trouble finding "representative" lists on tcgplayer.com, as their Legacy section is very poorly sorted, compared to their T2 one. I will go back and fix this, however.
-ktkenshinx-
^I very much agree with you, thinking outside the box is frowned upon in Legacy far more than in Standard and Extended because the palyers are much more used to random strategies nobody ever thought before like Owling Mine or that crappy 9cc spell called Tooth and Nail.
In my experience, Legacy players are actually quite a bit more mature and more fun.
Standard has way more whiney kids at their first tournament who don't know any of the rules and it also has more extremely competitive people who would rather piss everyone off and win 1% more games than make friends and have a slightly lower Total Rating. People playing Legacy have found something in Magic that makes them come back to the game that's not just a tournament win.
Legacy is, by its nature, more conservative. The vast majority of new ideas are bad, so it's pretty obvious that new ideas are met with criticism until they put out a lot of results. I think you'd see the same pattern in Standard if new decks didn't change so much and players had time to acclimate to winning strategies and concepts (like Brainstorm Fetchlands).
You really look at it that way?
I don't think anybody was saying that Hexmage Depths was unworkable, just that it was not a big improvement on Stiflenaught or Painter's Grind and more vulnerable than NOPro. Which is pretty much what it proved to be, with the hype around Hexmage Depths really dying down. Now it's regarded as a playable, but not a tier 1 strategy.
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