All B/R update speculation.

[Barook]

KAvU PREDATOR, the new goyf =]

That would be a pretty interesting angle, though. Would work nicely with STP and Grove as well.

[dunk]

Now let's pretend we'd live in a parallel universe where Vintage is king.

[bruizar]

Now let's pretend we'd live in a parallel universe where Vintage is king.

You mean, pretend that we'd all go to BoM next month? Seriously, the only time I miss not having my power 9 anymore is when BoM comes.

[Lemnear]

You mean, pretend that we'd all go to BoM next month? Seriously, the only time I miss not having my power 9 anymore is when BoM comes.

Yeah and then then I remember that I don't have the time to durdle around for a whooping 4 days and am unwilling to spend a fortune for flight and hotel.

[Megadeus]

Yeah, and any aggro/swarm deck that rely on reach to win would be screwed hard time by this. Those lands would promote control/midrange, imho way too boring. There are lots of drawbacks that could make those lands moderately good without being too much so, like remove top 10 cards of library or remove a basic land from library (this doesn't look a big drawback, but it actually is for combo and 4+ color decks).

... I would love as a combo player to get to exile a land from my library for free after making a land drop. Not drawing it later is nice.

[Gheizen64]

... I would love as a combo player to get to exile a land from my library for free after making a land drop. Not drawing it later is nice.

That mean you need to have 3-4 basics land in your deck in the first place. Some combo decks don't. Such a land would be unplayable in belcher and TES for example. For others it would be good sure, but it restrict a bit your deckbuilding.

[evanmartyr]

For the heck of it- Tendrils can often pick the storm count, stopping at whatever is necessary. Grapeshot is more of a reach card than a kill card. EtW might be legit concerned, but then you consider all the alternate mana sources, petals, spirit guides, etc, and those sources don't increase life totals. Belcher... the player can stack their deck after activation, assuming their one land is in play. I hope you're playing [cards]Misinformation/[cards] or Thoughtscour so they don't draw and Belch again. That one land they play that hypotgetically put you at 23 won't be an incremental advantage for long.

And, although combo oriented, those are all typical wincons, damage related.

I meant more that tempo decks (and really all decks) would have to choose against making it easier for most decks to win (by paying life to use dual lands) vs giving them more time to win (by giving them life to use dual lands). 2-4 life lost to shock duals could easily be the difference between losing a race and winning it, as could 3-6 life gained by the opponent. Either way you're helping your opponent win the race, and that might be just enough to make combo and control much better or it may not have much impact.

Basically, the only choice regarding Legacy manabases currently is to mostly ignore hate cards by praying they don't happen, racing them, or not needing to care much (see Merfolk). Introducing more strategy and deckbuilding nuance to the format wouldn't be a negative thing.

And besides, the thing crushing entry to Legacy seems to be mostly the manabases. Most decks, certainly most beginner decks, don't rely on Tabernacles, Karakas, etc: they rely on fetches and dual lands. Most successful decks that are "fair" seem to rely on two primary colors and a minor splash, and that minor splash is very, very difficult without a large number of dual lands. Even two primary colors is difficult without dual lands in a format where there's so much non-basic land disruption that any kind of drawback other than "this land is nonbasic" has to be met with a massive upside (see Tabernacle, Karakas).

So, were you to ditch dual lands entirely, you'd have an in-print mana base with a fairly reasonable tacit agreement that a land being categorized as non-basic isn't enough to make it balanced, if it has upsides (like being much more versatile than basic lands in terms of color access, see: dual lands). There'd have to be some balance, whether it be that they're legendary, that they shock you or are slow, that they healing salve your opponent or are slow, that they're just slow, period, that they can't be fetched, etc. There's so much actually great non-basic land hate that we can't use, build around, or give a shit about (Destructive Flow springs to mind) because dual lands enable the entire format to be generally too fast form them to have any impact.

Just saying: small cardpool, clearly better than any other option...there are only a few circumstances where you wouldn't run them, and I don't think those circumstances are significant enough to point at them and say "See! You're running Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon and, no duals in large part because of it, so that's a significant tactical decision!" It really isn't. Ditch them entirely. Leave them to Commander and Vintage and be glad of it.

[Megadeus]

I dont know. Playing Blood Moon against a greedy opponent who has no non basics is pretty much the greatest thing ever.

[thefringthing]

I wouldn't mind having original duals banned when they eventually get expensive enough to threaten the viability of the format. I don't think we're there yet.
Relatedly, I think Mana Drain could probably come of the list safely, but it's too expensive to do that.

[Megadeus]

Is that a viable reason to have a card banned because of price? I mean obviously at this point thanks to no mana burn Mana Drain is almost just a strictly better counterspell which already sees some play... I guess drain would probably see a good deal of play if it were unbanned? (Assuming people can get their hands on them)

[Zombie]

I prefer a format that can live with Restricted List bans to a format that's dead as a doornail.

[Barook]

I prefer a format that can live with Restricted List bans to a format that's dead as a doornail.

That opens up an interesting question:

What's going to happen if Modern fails? With the current direction that format is going, it isn't that unlikely to happen.

But Wizards does need a format where older cards can be played, otherwise tons of players would be pissed. And Legacy is getting more and more inaccessible over the time due to the original duals and some other cards.

What if they introduced an alternate format where you can play all cards except those from Legacy's banned list + all of the cards of the Reserve List?

The tools to fight combo are still there. Main difference for most decks (if there are any) would be the loss of duals to replace them with shocklands or other alternatives.

Main problems I see with this "Legacy Light" format would be:

- a huge banned list
- Wasteland being bonkers

Edit: Relevant cards for Legacy that would be affected, and even then, quite a few are a stretch in terms of relevance:

- Duals
- Candelabra of Tawnos
- The Abyss
- Chains of Mephistopheles
- Eureka
- Moat
- The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
- Dystopia
- Lion's Eye Diamond
- Phyrexian Dreadnought
- Shallow Grave
- Undiscovered Paradise
- Abeyance
- Firestorm
- Null Rod
- Aluren
- Cursed Scroll
- Humility
- Intuition
- Dream Halls
- Mox Diamond
- Volrath's Stronghold
- City of Traitors
- Recurring Nightmare
- Gaea's Cradle
- Serra's Sanctum
- Time Spiral
- Deranged Hermit
- Grim Monolith
- Academy Rector
- Metalworker
- Powder Keg

Aside from duals, losing LED, Intuition, Mox Diamond, Stronghold and City of Traitors would probably hurt the most.

Monocolored stuff like Goblins or Death & Taxed could be converted 1:1.

Hard to tell how such a format would play out. Monocolored decks that lose nothing would be obviously stronger. We would see less multi-colored decks. Combo would be weaker without LED. Card prices for Legacy staples would raise for further, but on the flipside, with official support, they could churn out "Legacy Masters" and reprint staples to help both formats.

[Gheizen64]

A realistic alternative would be MM onward, so you don't have the hassle of the reserved list at all. In such a format, the ban list would be pretty short, something like:

Hypergenesis (with sacland and no waste/force, this deck may be a tad too fast/annoying)
Skullclamp (card is bonker in any non-vintage format honestly)

Considerable bans:
Bridge from below
Sword of the meek
Dark ritual

Dark ritual may or may not be banned here. It's true that this format don't have FoW, but there's Mental Misstep, and that wouldn't be banned in a shock format with considerably more midrange than legacy, and combo loses Lion's Eye diamond and Lotus petal. There's also still Daze around, Misdirection, Foil and Disrupting Shoal. You also still have all the good discard minus Hymn (but therapy, thoughtseize, inquisition, unmask etc... should be enough).
Sneak and Show decks would obviously not exist, and i think Elves! would be the best combo deck here, you lose Titania's priest and Gaea's cradle but you still win fast and can fight aggro decks unlike pure-spell combo decks. I don't know how you'd build AnT without Petals and LEDs, and Belcher wouldn't exist either. Consider that while it may not looks like a big deal to be 1 turn slower, aggro decks would be still just as fast as they are in Legacy, maybe even more if you include shocks in your calculations.

Gush in a format with shocks instead of duals would also be fair because of the cost associated with replaying those lands (no Exploration to abuse it either).

In such a format, most non combo decks would be ported 1-to-1 from legacy (duals->shocks), without wastes and with Mental Misstep instead of FoWs, and Path to exile instead of StP. You'd lose Belcher, SnT, and probably Delver-RUG and fast 3-color decks wouldn't be viable because they'd be killed too easily by monocolor/bicolor aggressive decks with all the self-damage.

I'd play such a format if WotC supported it, for sure.

[evanmartyr]

I'd play the hell out of that too. Every time I'm thinking about Modern I keep remembering sweet cards no one has thought of, then realizing they didn't think of them because they're in Masques/Invasion/etc. Bah.

[TheArchitect]

When wizards was developing what became modern, for a while they were thinking they were going to make it from MM forward. I was really bummed when they announced the official cut off was going to be the modern card frame.

Man modern would have been like, actually playable if it was masks forward. Dark ritual, tendrils, DRAGON STORM, cabal therapy, daze, entomb, vindicate, ports, counterspell, all 10 fetches, deed, wishes, playable goblins, ichorid, dust bowl, standstill, enchantress stuff, sulferic vortex.

What if Legacy had a restricted list like vintage? Duals and maybe some of the other reserved list cards could be restricted. So instead of 4 UG seas, youd have to do 1 sea, 3 watery graves or something similar. Combo and tempo would probably have the most to gain here since they often only really need 1 land, while the mid-range or control decks that want 3-6 duals throughout a game would suffer a bit. Also, some things could come off the banned list and go resticted instead, obviously still leave power, bazaar, library, etc on the banned list. But unban>restict the stuff that feel like "legacy cards", survival, mistical tutor, earthcraft, etc.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Would you guys kindly GTFO?

A new format? Legacy Lite?

That's exactly what real Legacy players don't want to play.

Wizards isn't going to sanction Legacy forever no matter what, but asking for the removal of a good portion of the fun cards which make the format what it is, including duals, is a worse fate than just playing with proxies someday.


*Edit*
IMO- At this point WotC has decided to stick with the reprint policy. We just need to accept this for the time being. It may come to pass that one day this issue will be revisited, but for now it stands and is unlikely to change until there has been enough turnover in WotC employees that the next generation decides to take a fresh look at things. Modern is Wizards go to eternal format, that much is clear. In the past people like me who would mill in and out of the game and rarely bother with Standard we would play Legacy. We didn't want to have to buy a new $400 deck every 3 months if we just wanted to pick up and play in a few events then maybe go back to not giving a fuck for another year. The reprint policy is the problem, that format wasn't going to be a viable option for the next generation of MTG players because of reserved list cards. WotC looked at their options and chose to keep the reserved list, so Modern is the next Legacy in that respect, an eternal format to hold onto old players who mill in and out of the game.

So, as time goes on it's going to be more and more Modern as the next generation buys into that format. Lots of us love Legacy because it reminds us of how Magic used to be. Today's Standard players are tomorrow's Modern players and they are going to be used to a completely different kind of Magic, and that's what Modern is going to provide for them.

So eventually Legacy is going to be more of a community supported format than a WotC sanctioned format. Here's where the loopholes come in. We all hate playing with proxies because they are unsightly and cause confusion in the game state. If there were official proxies, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Sure you wouldn't be able to play in WotC events with them, but is that really going to be the future of Legacy anyways?

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Art.../reprintpolicy

Tournament Legality

All policies described in this document apply only to tournament-legal Magic cards.

So the solution becomes obvious. When WotC decides they are no longer going to support Legacy officially (IE no more GPs) they could print an "Eternal Masters" set, similar to Modern Masters. In random packs in the token slot there could be a chance at a "History of Magic" MTG card, which would basically be similar to a world championship deck version of a reserved list card. Unplayable in sanctioned events but still the same size/shape/weight as a regular card and a gold border. Stick it in a opaque sleeve and use as proxy at non-sactioned event coordinators discretion.

[Gheizen64]

Would you guys kindly GTFO?

A new format? Legacy Lite?

That's exactly what real Legacy players don't want to play.

Wizards isn't going to sanction Legacy forever no matter what, but asking for the removal of a good portion of the fun cards which make the format what it is, including duals, is a worse fate than just playing with proxies someday.


*Edit*
IMO- At this point WotC has decided to stick with the reprint policy. We just need to accept this for the time being. It may come to pass that one day this issue will be revisited, but for now it stands and is unlikely to change until there has been enough turnover in WotC employees that the next generation decides to take a fresh look at things. Modern is Wizards go to eternal format, that much is clear. In the past people like me who would mill in and out of the game and rarely bother with Standard we would play Legacy. We didn't want to have to buy a new $400 deck every 3 months if we just wanted to pick up and play in a few events then maybe go back to not giving a fuck for another year. The reprint policy is the problem, that format wasn't going to be a viable option for the next generation of MTG players because of reserved list cards. WotC looked at their options and chose to keep the reserved list, so Modern is the next Legacy in that respect, an eternal format to hold onto old players who mill in and out of the game.

So, as time goes on it's going to be more and more Modern as the next generation buys into that format. Lots of us love Legacy because it reminds us of how Magic used to be. Today's Standard players are tomorrow's Modern players and they are going to be used to a completely different kind of Magic, and that's what Modern is going to provide for them.

So eventually Legacy is going to be more of a community supported format than a WotC sanctioned format. Here's where the loopholes come in. We all hate playing with proxies because they are unsightly and cause confusion in the game state. If there were official proxies, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Sure you wouldn't be able to play in WotC events with them, but is that really going to be the future of Legacy anyways?

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Art.../reprintpolicy


So the solution becomes obvious. When WotC decides they are no longer going to support Legacy officially (IE no more GPs) they could print an "Eternal Masters" set, similar to Modern Masters. In random packs in the token slot there could be a chance at a "History of Magic" MTG card, which would basically be similar to a world championship deck version of a reserved list card. Unplayable in sanctioned events but still the same size/shape/weight as a regular card and a gold border. Stick it in a opaque sleeve and use as proxy at non-sactioned event coordinators discretion.

Talk for yourself. I'd rather WotC supports a new Legacy-lite (MM onward, or even just ban relevant reserved list cards) than seeing Legacy go the way of Vintage and die the proxy-death.

[allek]

Why do people think that WotC are hating on legacy? We get new toys with almost every set (the last two stinking piles being the exception) and Legacy today is a pretty sweet mix of the best creatures from modern and the best card filtering and countermagic of the past, all topped of with a manabase that makes every possible combination of colors viable.

Personally, I'm a devout legacyplayer and play no other formats regularly but I think modern will have a pretty nice card pool in a few years time. Right now, it sucks though since it's just a re-hash of strategies that just rotated out of standard and a unwieldy ban list. Reprinting FoW and cutting the banned list in half might help.

Creating a "legacy-light" will be bad and confusing. I love playing broken cards, that's why I love legacy. I want to play Thalia from a Cavern of Souls + Noble Hierarch AND Wasteland my opponent on turn two on the play and lock him out of the game for two turns. Or Reanimate Griselbrand while holding double Daze and FoW in hand.

[DragoFireheart]

Why do people think that WotC are hating on legacy?

No one is thinking that from what I see. Rather, WotC is very indifferent to Legacy and maintaining the Reserved List is going to kill it in the long wrong.

[TsumiBand]

It's got to be a major league PITA to design stuff for Standard that makes it to Legacy, though.

Most of the time when it happens, people go, "Oh look they fucked up. Now X deck is really good again." talking about Snaps and Delver etc in this regard. It's not very often that something like Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay happen at the same time and just power up a color combination that was just sort of subsisting before. I mean usually it takes a keyword like Affinity or whatever to be a "precon" that you just assemble with Legacy pieces.

DRS by itself wouldn't have probably gotten much attention in Legacy, but DRS and AD together suddenly offer a ton of relevant support cards to those colors. And AD has to say "can't be countered"; I wonder if it would have nearly the impressive effect without that. If it had gone any higher than like 3 cmc, then people be complaining about how it destroys too many planeswalkers or how it was "obviously a Jace killer" or whatever. Which, whatever, maybe; in order words I think that was a total fluke, it just happened that way b/c they made a cycle of uncounterable cards and DRS happened to also exist. No one was "thinking of Legacy", most likely.

I think I've said as much before but if I were in R&D I would be stressed as shit to come up with cards that work in Legacy and Standard. May as well just throw up your hands and wait for your collective selves to make the next "mistake" that finds its way into Legacy.